"The Son of David is the answer to every one of David's cries" Good Friday Tenebrae 2026

03. April 2026
Good Friday Tenebrae
John 18-19

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

He went out. Across the Brook Kidron, into the night, into a garden. John wants you to notice where Jesus is going, because a thousand years before this night, another man crossed that same brook going the same direction. David, barefoot, weeping, his head covered in the ashes of his own shame, fled Jerusalem because his own son wanted to kill him and take his throne. The king was driven out by his own flesh and blood.

Now the Son of David crosses the same water. But He is not fleeing. He is going out.

You have been singing David's words all evening. The psalms of this service are the prayers of a man hunted by enemies — "Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men; preserve me from violent men, who plan evil things in their heart" (Psalm 140:1–2). David wrote those words. He knew what it was to have his own counselor betray him, his own son conspire against him, his own people turn their backs. But when Jesus crossed the Kidron, David's prayers found their final answer. The Son of David walked into every snare, every trap, every evil that David had begged God to deliver him from — not to escape them, but to spring them on Himself, so that they would be spent and emptied forever.

He went out.

John lays the old story of David over the Passion like one transparency laid on another, so that you see the pattern. The parallels are deliberate. Absalom gathered Israel against its rightful king, stealing the hearts of the people. The chief priests and the Pharisees did the same — they turned the crowds against the One whom the Father had anointed. Absalom's rebellion was the rebellion of a son against his father. The Passion is the rebellion of the creature against the Creator, of the children of Israel against the God who had carried them out of Egypt in His arms.

Ahithophel was David's trusted counselor who defected to Absalom's side. He had eaten at the king's table, knew his plans, shared his confidence — and sold him out for the promise of a new order. You know who that is. Judas had dipped his hand in the dish with Jesus. He knew where the garden was because he had been there as a friend. "Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me" (Psalm 41:9). David wrote those words, too. His greater Son fulfilled them.

Then there is Peter. When David fled the city, a man named Hushai came out to meet him — loyal to the king, but sent back to pretend allegiance to Absalom, to undermine the rebellion from within. On the surface, it looked like defection. Peter's failure runs along the same line, though Peter did not plan his cowardice. Three times he denied his Lord. And notice the words John records: Jesus, when the soldiers came for Him, stepped forward and spoke the Name — "I AM" (John 18:5) — and they fell to the ground. The God of the burning bush, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, standing in a garden, speaking the Name that shakes creation. And Peter, warming himself by the charcoal fire, said the opposite: "I am not." The I AM of God and the "I am not" of a frightened man, in the same chapter, on the same night. But Peter's denial was not the end, just as Hushai's apparent treachery was not the end. Peter would be restored. Peter would preach. Peter's proclamation would undo the rebellion of sin and death from within, as the Gospel always does.

He went out. Into their hands. Willingly.

Because here is where the stories of David and Jesus break apart, and the departure is everything. David fled. He had no choice. He was a sinner running for his life from the consequences of his own failures — the sword that would never depart from his house because of Bathsheba, because of Uriah, because sin fractures everything it touches, even the house of the man after God's own heart. David's suffering was tangled up with his own guilt. He deserved some of what came to him.

Jesus did not flee. When the armed mob arrived, He stepped toward them. He spoke the Name that knocked them to the ground, and then He stood still and let them bind Him. Do you see what John is showing you? This is no helpless victim overtaken by events. This is the Lord of hosts, who could have scattered them like chaff. But He did not. "Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?" (John 18:11). The cup of wrath. The cup that Isaiah said would make the nations stagger. Jesus took it willingly — not because He was guilty, but because He willed to drink it in your place. David crossed the Kidron running from judgment. Jesus crossed the Kidron walking straight into it. David's suffering was the bitter fruit of his own sin. Jesus' suffering was the bitter fruit of yours.

He went out. For you.

Isaiah told you tonight what this going-out accomplished: "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). Stricken. Smitten. Afflicted. You just sang those words. They are not metaphors. They are what happened to the body of God on the wood of the cross — stricken by the Father's wrath against your sin, smitten so that you would not be, afflicted so that you would be healed. And Paul told you the reason: "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). The sinless One was made to be what you are — sin — so that you would be made what He is — righteous. That is the exchange. That is what the going-out accomplished.

And then there is the matter of the tree.

Absalom, vain and beautiful, riding through the forest, got his head caught in the branches of an oak. He hung there between heaven and earth — the rebel son, suspended, pierced with spears, thrown into a pit. It was judgment. Judas, too, hung from a tree — the traitor's end. But Jesus was also lifted up on a tree. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree'" (Galatians 3:13). Absalom hung under the curse of his own rebellion. Jesus hung under the curse of your rebellion. The rebel son died for his own sin. The righteous Son died for the sins of the whole world.

Caiaphas, John tells us, was the one "who had advised the Jews that it would be expedient that one man should die for the people" (John 18:14). He meant it as politics — better one troublemaker dead than the nation destroyed. But the high priest spoke better than he knew. For this is precisely what the high priest was ordained to do: to offer the sacrifice. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest laid hands on the scapegoat and confessed over it all the iniquities of the people, and the goat was sent away into the wilderness bearing those sins into oblivion. Caiaphas, without knowing it, was performing his office for the last time. He was sending Jesus out — out again, always out — to die as the final atoning sacrifice, the one Man who would bear what no goat could ever carry.

He went out.

The candles have gone out around you tonight. The light is failing in this place, as the light failed over Golgotha that afternoon. The growing darkness of this service is not theater. It is the truth about what happened when the Son of God took the sin of the world onto His own body and died under its weight. The darkness is real. It was real then, and you know it is real now — in your own sin, your own betrayals, your own "I am not" spoken to the God who says "I AM."

But hear what we prayed this day: "Almighty God, graciously behold this Your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed and delivered into the hands of sinful men to suffer death upon the cross." Willing. He was not dragged against His will. He was not outwitted or overpowered. He went out — willingly, deliberately, for this family, for you — because this is what the Son of David came to do. David needed a savior. David's psalms cry out for deliverance, for mercy, for forgiveness — because David was a sinner who could not save himself. The Son of David is the answer to every one of those cries.

He went out. He has not come back empty.

What He won on that cross, He now delivers. "He was delivered up to death; He was delivered for the sins of the people." Delivered up, and delivered to — to you, in the Word spoken into your ears, in the water poured on your head, in the bread and wine placed on your tongue. That is what the going-out was for. Not merely to die, but to have something to give. And He gives it. The darkness is real, but it is not the final word. The final word belongs to the One who went out into the night and swallowed it whole.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin