For the last few weeks I’ve been preaching through Mark 15 and the events of Good Friday. Sadness and loss imbued the first century followers of Christ as our Lord was rejected, beaten, mocked, and killed.

And there is a sense in which such emotions are appropriate for the 21st century Christian. But they ought to never dominate our thinking of Good Friday. Why? For we know how the story ends! We know the fulness of what Christ did on that cross in a way the 1st century participants did not immediately comprehend.

With typical eloquence, Spurgeon encouraged his people to see Good Friday more as a festival, than a funeral:

The Lord of life and glory was nailed to the accursed tree. He died by the act of guilty men. We, by our sins, crucified the Son of God.

We might have expected that, in remembrance of his death, we should have been called to a long, sad, rigorous fast. Do not many men think so even today? See how they observe Good Friday, a sad, sad day to many; yet our Lord has never enjoined our keeping such a day, or bidden us to look back upon his death under such a melancholy aspect.

Instead of that, having passed out from under the old covenant into the new, and resting in our risen Lord, who once was slain, we commemorate his death by a festival most joyous. It came over the Passover, which was a feast of the Jews; but unlike that feast, which was kept by unleavened bread, this feast is brimful of joy and gladness. It is composed of bread and of wine, without a trace of bitter herbs, or anything that suggests sorrow and grief. …

The memorial of Christ’s death is a festival, not a funeral.”¹

The takeaway for preachers? Let joy permeate your spirit when you proclaim the glories of Calvary. Be reverent, not flippant. But don’t be dour as though you have come to a funeral. The opposite is true, you have come to the soul’s festival of salvation.