Good Friday??

Have you ever asked yourself, "What’s so good about this particular Friday?"
Why are we celebrating the day that a Jewish carpenter was executed almost 2000 years ago? And not only executed, but executed in one of the most torturous, painful forms of execution ever invented. The pain and suffering that came from crucifixion was so horrific that a word actually had to be invented to describe it, the word excruciating means "from the cross". The Persians invented crucifixion approximately five hundred years before Christ was born, but the Romans ‘fine-tuned’ crucifixion to be truly one of the worst deaths to die.
Before the subject was actually nailed to the cross, he was first scourged. Scourging was a brutal form of whipping, where a person was violently shredded by a whip with multiple cords, each cord interlaced with metal strips, and bone chips. Many men actually died from the scourging alone. For those who survived this beating, the pain had only begun. Next, they were nailed to a cross with seven inch spikes. One spike through each wrist [the Romans defined the wrist as a part of the hand], and the other through both feet. The weight of a person’s body would cause their shoulders to dislocate, putting tremendous stress on the diaphragm, making breathing progressively more difficult. The only way a person could eventually breath would be to push up on the spike nailed through their feet, relieving the pressure on their diaphragm enough to catch their next breath. This torturous execution could take days until the person was actually dead. The Jews viewed anyone dying the death of crucifixion as being cursed by God, because their Scriptures told them that anyone hung on a tree was accursed of God.
Again I ask the question, "what is so good about this carpenter being executed in this horrendous fashion?"
To truly see the good of "Good Friday" a person has to look at it through the eyes of faith.
Jesus didn’t claim to be an ordinary man, he claimed that he was God, become a man. He said that he was the fulfillment of all the Scriptures [and rightfully so]. He said that he had come to save men from their greatest enemy. The people of Jesus day thought that their greatest enemy was their Roman oppressors, but they were wrong. Their greatest enemy was their sin, their sin that had separated them from the God who created them and loved them. The holy Scriptures told God’s people that God was the source of all life and to be separated from him would be eternal death. Long before Jesus was captured, sentenced and executed, he publically proclaimed that he had come to die, and that he would voluntarily give up his life as a substitute for his people [all those who entrust their life to Jesus], that he would die in their place, so that they wouldn’t have to. But his words didn’t end there. He said that he had the power to give his life...AND...he also had the power to take it back again. Jesus was telling people that he was going to die but he wasn’t going to stay dead, that he was going to raise from the dead on the third day.
The good news of "Good Friday" is that Jesus came to save us from our sins. He didn’t come to call people who have all of their ducks in a row, he calls us all, with all of our mess, all of our skeletons in the closet, all of our dirty deeds. The good news of "Good Friday" wasn’t clearly seen until Sunday morning...the tomb was empty...HE HAD RISEN AS HE SAID!!!