series on the atonement – 5

Today we are going to complete our mini-series on the Atonement. This morning we’re going to come to the climax of God’s plan of salvation where everything culminated in the death and resurrection of Jesus. The greatest single act that was ever performed in the history of the world. Sometimes I think that the deepest, most profound revelation comes when, not when we’re listening to a lecture or reading a book, but when we just get into a quiet place, alone with the Lord and ourselves. Just close our eyes and begin to meditate on a particular event or truth and think about it in all of its detail, all the little tiny parts of it that we never considered before. Every time I begin to think about the Atonement and about the fact that the Son of God actually came to this earth and died and was buried and then rose from the dead, there’s all kinds of new little things that I see and I’m made aware of. And the Holy Spirit can reveal truth to us better than anyone else. He knows how to make that truth stick too; He knows where to put it inside of us so that we’ll find it again.

Yesterday afternoon we talked about the Old Testament sacrificial system and about the significance of the blood; that it was symbolic not of death but of life; and that as God saw the blood on the alter and on the mercy seat, it was a sign to Him that men had seen a life taken or a life poured out. A life again was something that men considered to be a commodity of ultimate value and when life was removed, when life was taken, it ushered the beholders to the sobering realization of what sin really was. In addition, when men saw that blood, it also symbolized to them that life had been taken. A life had been taken, not just a body but a life, an existence, had come to an end because of their sin; and the life that had been taken was innocent, was prime and there was no reason for that existence or life to end except for the fact that they needed to be reminded that their behavior was unacceptable to the righteous Moral Governor of the universe.

We talked about the fact that this process had the capacity to really break the heart of the beholder. To humble them. It had a lingering effect for perhaps weeks or months but the unfortunate part of the old testament sacrificial system was that it didn’t have much in the way of staying power. The act of sacrifice had to be repeated over and over again to continually usher that person back to the place of realization and it was only when they were in that place of realization and contrition and really truly seeing themselves for what they really were, only when they were in that place, could God wisely forgive them and dispense with the penalty. We also said that sometimes the sacrifice or act of offering before the Lord was not acceptable nor was it effectatious or in other words it didn’t work, it did not accomplish that which it was supposed to accomplish. They would offer sacrifice, they would shed blood but no forgiveness would be forthcoming because that shed blood, that taking of a life, made no impact on their hearts or their minds. Hebrews 10:3 tells us something, reminds us that the sacrifices are limited, when it says “But in those sacrifices, there is a remembrance again made of sins every year”. But in those sacrifices (the Old Testament sacrifices) there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. Had to be repeated. What we really needed desperately was a system whereby we could be totally and permanently changed from within. A system whereby our sin wouldn’t merely be covered but it would be removed.

I mentioned yesterday that there were two functions that the Old Testament sacrificial system accomplished. The first function we said was that it allowed God to cover our sin – to temporarily pardon us. Looking forward to the writer of Hebrews reminds us a better promise, a better way, a better system, a better service. We might say that the first function of the sacrificial system really majored on God’s governmental problem to a limited degree; it focused on solving that temporarily although it did deal somewhat with man’s hypocritical problem, helped man to see himself and to some extent it helped with the personal problem, revealing the heart of God, but even that was to a limited degree or scale.

What it did not do very well was solve the fourth problem, the motivational problem, except for the shortest period of time.

We’ve also discussed earlier the fact that because man had strayed so far from God that he had lost his concept of God, what God was like, what He thought and felt, it became accordingly necessary for God to slowly and progressively bring man back to a place of complete fellowship. You cannot take somebody who has drifted out of relationship over a long period of time, years and years, and then expect instantaneously to move right back into the relationship that you originally had expecting that person to have an understanding of who you are and who they are instantly after that long separation. God realized that. So He began, many, many centuries ago, through various ways and means to reveal to us as the human race what He was really like. And we can say that the old covenant, the old system was really a foreshadowing of an awesome event. It was to build anticipation, to build expectation, to get our attention, to get our mind on tract to begin to expect something to happen. All of this Old Testament sacrificial system, all the old covenant was pointing towards Calvary and the whole solution of the problems of reconciliation in the person of Jesus Christ.

At this point, I’d like to have you jot down a few scriptures. We won’t spend a lot of time on this but it may be something you’ll want to look at later. We want to compare the Old Testament sacrificial system with the Atonement of Christ and see what each was able to do and how the compare to one another. You might want to draw on your notes two columns; divide your paper down the middle with a line; and on the left had side you might want to entitle that column as follows: Blood sacrifices could not take away sin. On the right hand side: the Atonement of Christ did take away sin. Underneath the left hand title; jot down the scripture reference Hebrews 10:11 and Hebrews 10:4 on the right had side Hebrews 9:26.

Blood Sacrifices could not take away sin The Atonement of Christ Did take away sin Hebrews 10:11 and Hebrews 10:4 Hebrews 9:26 The repeated ritual of blood sacrifices: The one time, voluntary sufferings of Christ: Hebrews 9:9 Hebrews 10:22 Hebrews 10:1 Hebrews 10:14 Hebrews 10:2 Hebrews 9:14 and Hebrews 10:16

Let me read these scriptures to you.

Hebrews 10:11 “In every priest stands daily ministering an offering time after time the same sacrifices which can never take away sin.”

Hebrews 10:4 “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”

But the Atonement of Christ did take away sins;

Hebrews 9:26 tells us “But now once at the consummation (the consummation of what? The consummation of the old covenant) of God’s whole glorious plan to reveal himself to us. He (Jesus) has been manifested or revealed publicly to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”

We want to make some further comparisons between the old covenant and the new covenant here.

So underneath those scripture reference you might want to make a horizontal line across your page and make some new subtitles in each column. On the left hand side as follows:

The repeated ritual of sacrifices: On the right hand side, The one time, voluntary sufferings of Christ: Here are some future scripture references that you’ll want to jot down now in each column. Left side Hebrews 9:9; Hebrews 10:1 and Hebrews 10:2; Parallel on the right hand side: Hebrews 10:22; Hebrews 10:14; then Hebrews 9:14 and 10:16.

I’ll read you the essence of these scriptures here to compare the repeated ritual of sacrifices, in the Old Testament with the one time voluntary sufferings of Christ.

First of all the repeated ritual of sacrifices in Hebrews 9:9 cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience. Basically, what it’s saying is that it can’t take away guilt; it can only cover it, pardon us for a time but not take away guilt. Nor can it bring us to a point where we’re able to effectively understand and combat sin but the one time voluntary sufferings of Christ cleansed our hearts from an evil conscience and an evil conscience we could call a superego (for those of you who have had some psychology).

The repeated rituals of sacrifices secondly can never make perfect those who draw near but the one time voluntary sufferings of Christ perfect for all time those who are sanctified. Think about that. The one time voluntary sufferings of Christ perfect for all time those who are sanctified. That, you must understand, is not some kind of instant, ultimate perfection. It means that we enter into a type of holiness whereby God forgives all of our past sins so we have a clean slate to begin with and then He helps us from that moment on to live up to all the moral enlightenment we have. Doesn’t mean our actions are perfect but it means from that time on we can live with a perfect heart, perfect motive, perfect conscious.

Thirdly, the repeated ritual of sacrifices, Hebrews 10:2 “…cannot remove consciousness or guilt of sins” but the one time voluntary sufferings of Christ Hebrews 9:14 says “it cleansed our conscious” and Hebrews 10:16, “puts His laws in our hearts and our minds”. Rather than being written down on tablets of stone now through what Christ did, they’re written in our hearts and our minds, inside of us. We know what that is because most of us have experienced that.

Hebrews 10:9, “Then say He, “Lo, I come to do thy will Oh God. He taketh away the first that He may establish the second”.;

Hebrews 7:19, “For the law made nothing perfect” It didn’t mean that the law was bad, it just didn’t make anything perfect, “but the bringing in of a miracle did by that which we draw nigh onto God”.

We could say this, to oversimplify the matter, the old covenant was an external system whereas the new covenant is an internal system. The blood of Christ opened, as the song says, “a new and living world.” No longer would we need to relate to God on the basis of an external set of laws; not just sacrifices. Sacrifices were only part of the old covenant. There were lots of laws and regulations too. Something presumably happened to us when we saw Christ die under the weight of our sin. It was at that point when we encountered the cross, all of us in some way, that we were won by the love of Christ back into the relationship. He put His laws into our hearts and minds. Those of us who have moved back into a relationship with God, a love relationship, keep His laws still today to the best of our ability but not because we have to, not because there are any rules and regulations but because we want to. That’s the big difference between the old covenant and the new covenant.

In the end God got what He wanted through both covenants but the second covenant was so much more effective had so much more lasting power.

You’ll remember, I’m sure those of you, who heard me share in your homes before, this story of this woman, this is a true story, I shared with you, who had moved very hastily into a marriage arrangement that was, that was something she would later regret because the man who she married turned out to be a real tyrant, very unkind and unthoughtful and the situation deteriorated very rapidly. He rarely spent any time at home, was out in the tavern with his friends, drinking, would come home drunk, beat her, wouldn’t help in anyway around the house.

One thing he managed to do faithfully, however, before he left the house for his job, which somehow he’d manage to keep, every morning he would hand his wife a list of chores to do, to accomplish. If she did not accomplish that list of chores, if she didn’t finish them completely or if she didn’t finish it to his satisfaction then he would start wailing on her when he got home. But the Bible says what the way of the transgressors are and that man died, a very bitter, very broken man. Shortly thereafter this young woman remarried and she married a man whose character was diametrically opposed that of her first husband. He’s a very, very gentle and sensitive man who spent many hours holding his wife’s understandably wounded personality in his embrace and in time there was a remarkable emotional healing that became manifest. One afternoon she was going through the house, singing and cleaning while he was away at work. She sat down on the sofa and found this scrap of paper wedged in the sofa, between the cushions, pulled this paper out, unfolded and began to read it and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Do you remember what it was she had found? It was a list that her previous husband had given her. She didn’t cry because she remembered how horrible it had been before, she wept because as she read the list she realized she was doing everything on the list without even thinking about it because now she was in a love relationship. Nobody told her to do those things, she wanted to do those things, she loved doing those things. That’s really the basic difference between the old and the new covenant. That list had become written on her heart.

Paul sums up in the New Testament, Hebrews, the effect of the new love relationship when he says, Hebrews 10:14-16, “..for by one offering, He God has perfected for all time those who are sanctified and The Holy Spirit also bears witness. “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them”” That’s fantastic, absolutely fantastic. Remember the Old Testament verse in Hosea, or Malachi, I remember now. The Lord says “What does the Lord require of thee”; Micah 6:8. Everything that we need to know in order to please God, in order live lives that make sense, in order to live lives of great fulfillment to God and to ourselves and to others, God is willing to reveal to us. We don’t have to guess, we don’t have to grope, we don’t have to assume, we can know exactly precisely what God’s expectations are because He’s revealed them to us. The blood of Jesus, as one writer put it, is no admission fee which God has accepted to let sinners into heaven. “The blood of Jesus is no admission fee which God has accepted to let sinners into heaven. It is the means that He Himself has given to sinners to cleanse them from sin. Jesus blood was not shed for the purpose of inducing God to let the unclean stand for the clean but to make the unclean, clean.”

That’s the basic difference between the commercial transaction theory and the biblical teaching, the true biblical teaching on the Atonement.

We’re told through the commercial transaction theory and those who believe in it and who believe in positional theology that there was this cosmic transaction between the first and second member of the Trinity, at the time that Christ died, and from that moment on God looked at sinners as righteous. In other words what Christ did on the cross was to induce God to allow the unclean to stand for the clean.

That would be really I think a band-aid job, don’t you think so? Isn’t the love of God strong enough and powerful enough to not just technically remove our sins but really remove them from our lives. If it only technically removes sin from our lives and it doesn’t really remove it from our lives then aren’t we in fact still living under the bondage of sin? Isn’t the Christian somebody whose released from the old man and the former life? Old things are passed away and all things become new and it doesn’t mean we become perfect and we never sin again but that we start sinning a lot less than we used to but that we think differently and we act differently, we are different?

Sometimes, a lot of teachers today, Bible teachers, when they’re talking about the old covenant and they are reading out of the book of Romans particularly and sometimes out of Hebrews during the teaching. They take the Law, the old covenant, and they just beat it to death. They castigate it as if it were something that was the brain child of, concocted of Lucifer, rather than God. Some horrible, horrible prayer…. Remember David’s words Psalm 119:77, “Thy Law is my delight. More desirable than gold.” He said, “More desirable than gold. Sweeter also than honey.” Moses words, Deuteronomy 6:24, “So the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always and for our survival.” There was a lot of good things about the old covenant and about the Law – a lot of good things. When the Bible talks about an imperfect law, in the New Testament, which it does, and a replacement of the old system, it refers to ceremonial law, not the moral law. If we fail to make a distinction here between what is being dispensed with here in terms of the law then we’re going to develop very serious difficulties in our lives, not to mention our theology. God dispensed with the ceremonial law and all these rules and regulations and the letter of the law and moved into an era, the spirit of the law, the laws become internalized. God didn’t do away with His moral law, ever, and He never will. That law will never, ever be dispensed with.

Alright so how did God through the death of Christ ultimately solve all of these problems? This is a critical question for us to be able to answer and understand if we are ever going to be able to fully understand the inner workings of Jesus’ atoning death. What killed Jesus? If we were talking about anybody else’s death the question might seem somewhat academic but when we are talking about the death of one who claims to be the Son of God the implications are far too demanding. Remember what Malcolm Muggeridge said about the death of Christ. “It’s manifestly the most famous death in history. No other death has been remembered with 100th part of the concern, the intensity, as the death of Christ has been remembered.” His death has been remembered with a great deal of passion for a very, very long time. A martyr’s death, there have been other martyrs, people who’ve given up their lives or had their lives taken for a cause, we remember them.

The revolutionaries have their Che Gueverras. We have our Patrick Henry’s, “Give me liberty or give me death”. Patrick Henry. The thing about every other martyr’s death is that while their deaths might temporarily stir a great deal of emotion and might be remembered for some time, their death’s, other martyr’s death’s are prone to fade into the expediency of modern day living. We don’t think so much about somebody who…for example, some fellows over in Ireland who starved themselves to death some weeks ago, in prison caused a tremendous stir for a while, it was in all the media..everybody was thinking about it.

How many of you have thought about that in the last few weeks. You have? Surprising, that still one of this roomful of people and as more time goes on, I mean its been with in the year, five years from now, ten years from now, who’s going to even think about it anymore? We may remember one, Bobby Sands, do you remember the names of the other nine guys who starved to death, do you even know who they were? I don’t even remember their names. Now I’m sure there are people in Ireland who still remember their names but as time goes on lifes got to move on. Get involved in the expediency of life and the memory of these martyr’s deaths, if they are martyrs, disappears. But Jesus Christ was no mere martyr. For while a martyr dies to support a cause, the death of Christ began a movement that has swept to the earth’s four corners.

While it goes without saying that the blood of martyrs, incites and inspires, it is perhaps even the seat of the church, who would be so brass as to claim that their blood had the power to forgive sins? That’s what really set Jesus apart. That’s what made His blood different. He didn’t die to support some cause but to begin a cause. He kept talking about this kingdom and people entering that kingdom through His blood, bore His poured out life. What killed Jesus? Most people when you ask them that question would immediately tell you that Jesus died as the result of being crucified. He was crucified to death.

People could be killed by being crucified. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of Jewish men, and women, who were crucified on the hills of Judea during the time of the Roman empire. When their bodies were taken down, they were hauled down off the cross, nobody asked “what killed this person”. The answer was obvious, they were crucified. But it wasn’t crucifixion that killed Jesus at all if the Bible can be taken as a reliable source – if you’re willing to do that. If Jesus died as the result of crucifixion then it follows that Jesus was murdered, His life was taken from Him. Murder is simply not consistent with the scriptural revelation because murder is the taking of a life and Jesus’s life was never taken from Him.

Jesus’s life was, in biblical terminology, laid down. Willingly given. And Jesus again Himself made this point clear in John 10:17-18 when he said, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me” that’s clear right there. No one has taken it away from Me, I lay it down myself, I lay it down on My own initiative. Now, the two questions on the death of Christ on which most theologians are pretty well agreed encompass first, where He died and second, when He died. Few people will dispute the fact that Jesus’s final, physical demise came when He was suspended from a Roman cross. There is likewise very little controversy over the fact that His death was unusually rapid. Pilate himself, you read in Mark 15:44, was amazed and astonished that Jesus died as quickly as He did. Piilate wondered if He (Jesus) was dead by this time in summoning the centurion he questioned him as to whether He was already dead. The point was that Jesus had died abnormally fast. He expired before, more rapidly, than a normal victim of crucifixion. Jesus died quickly on the cross. The real issue and question that has been debated by theologians and has been debated even more so in recent years as a result of very extraordinary and unusual piece of cloth in the city of Turin, Italy , called the shroud of Turin, which many people have come to believe is the burial shroud of Jesus Christ.

I think there’s a good chance that it is. I started a research project, it was assigned to me, it wasn’t something I would have ever chosen to do several years ago on this thing that to me seemed to be almost bordering on the occult. I spent a couple of years researching it and gathering research and data and have continued to gather information and data. I first thought it was one of those weird Catholic relics.

Catholics love to build shrines around things and I saw this gaudy gold work around this thing and I thought “what is this” but when I took a look at this image, it was really astonishing. All of the evidence points to the fact that there is an excellent chance that the man, whose image is on this burial shroud, is Jesus. The man has been determined by the best ethnologist that we have in the world to be a seraphic Jew. They have used computer enhancement techniques on this image to determine that on the eyelids of this man there are coins.

And those coins, and this was a very typical practice in those days when they were burying people to put coins over their eyelids after they closed their eyes when they died, those coins bear the image of Pontius Pilate. They date from the time of Christ. There is a wound in his side. There are puncture marks around his head that could have been made by a crown of thorns. There are wounds in his feet and in his wrists. There’s both a front and back image. It was wrapped around the man. There are all kinds of whip marks all over his shoulders and back and there is one shoulder there is a varied abrasion where he would have carried a heavy wooden cross on his shoulder. Now, nobody has ever found anything else like this. These scientists from, the list of experts that have studied this thing is incredible, from major universities like USC, Princeton, the University of Rochester, from the major scientific laboratories in the United States. US weapons laboratories where they have some of the most sophisticated computer gear like Los Alamos and Sandia Labs. They have pulled pollen off this cloth that comes from plants that are native to Palestine. None of these members of these scientific teams, none of them have been able to say we know how this image was made on the cloth. All they have been able to do is say we know it wasn’t made this way. There is no paint, it wasn’t painted at all. And they’ve eliminated every single possibility that they could possibly think of how this image could have been formed and the conclusion they have come to is that the image was formed on this cloth from some type of radiation. The first group of scientists that were really convinced and moved that this was genuine and not some kind of forgery were pathologists who said there was no way any human being could ever have duplicated so perfectly these wounds, all of these wounds in this body. So people today are looking at this thing and theologians are getting involved and scientists and everybody’s debating. How did Jesus die?

There are some people who feel, believe, that the soldier who took his spear and pierced Jesus side, did Christianity a real favor. It is probably doubtful that anyone who was there that day, any of the spectators at Calvary, sympathetic or otherwise, paused to interpret that subsequent blow that came out of Jesus’s side but today in retrospect when the account is read from John’s Gospel, one gets the instinct impression, from John’s almost impassioned emphasis on the event, that it is a clue that in time will bear some kind of noteworthy significance. John 19: “…but one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear and immediately there came out blood and water. And he who has seen has borne witness and his witness is true and he knows he is telling the truth so that you also may believe.” John is making a big deal out of what he saw. That’s an important clue in helping us determine the cause of Jesus’s death. With one fateful blow, one single Roman legionaire opened up a channel for position in theologianal life to gaze straight into the heart of the Savior. For Christians it merely substantiates what they have intuitively known all along and as for medical men it gave them an opportunity to have their mini-autopsy.

The plan of salvation didn’t begin at Calvary, it ended there. Where did the plan of salvation begin? In Genesis 3:15. What happened in Genesis 3:15. It’s the first time that we know of, that blood had ever been shed in the history of the world, up to that point. That was the first sacrifice, really, to provide a cover for man. So, God began that very moment, the process of salvation, the plan of revelation, of what He thought about sin.

Because man, at that point, Adam and Eve needed, God needed to show them how terrible it was. You can imagine if you’ve been living in this paradise condition situation and all of a sudden and I believe, this is my own personal opinion, that the animals talked in those days, and you’ll remember that God looked through all of the animals to see if there was an adequate helpmate for man. He didn’t form Eve right off the bat, He checked out all these different creatures that He made to see if there was an adequate helpmate and decided there wasn’t.

The point is, that he’d never known any violence, he’d never known anything but peace and serenity and holiness and suddenly God Himself takes the life of one of these other creatures and then takes the skin of that animal and puts it on Eve. I think that had a very profound impact on their minds. Then later on, God begins to reveal himself in many other ways; through the Old testament sacrificial system; though the prophets.

Finally we come up near the end of the old covenant or the first covenant. What happened at the very end of that first covenant? John the Baptist. John the Baptist was called a forerunner. He was a very, very unique and very special man. The Bible tells us he was filled with the Holy Ghost while he was still in his mother’s womb. That doesn’t happen very often. Sometimes you wonder what Elizabeth thought was going on in there, I don’t know whether he spoke in tongues or not. Not only did he kick, he spoke in tongues in there. I said this was a very unique situation. This man John was called the forerunner. And his purpose, his role, his function, was to further stimulate man’s anticipation of a stunning climax to this long historical process of revelation. And all the things that happened were turning man’s head forward, looking into the future, anticipating something to come and John the Baptist was the final voice provoking anticipation. And, of course, this stunning climax occurred when the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us.

John bore witness of Him and cried out saying, “This was He of whom I said. He who comes after me has a higher rank than I for He existed before me.” Everybody knew that John was at least six months older than Jesus and here’s John saying He existed before him. But this man, John described was also the man that the prophet Isaiah had written about many, many centuries earlier, saying, “He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of them; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face he was despised and we did not esteem him, surely our griefs He Hiself bore and our sorrows He carried.” That’s so sad, that’s such a sad passage. Speaking of the Son of God. He was the humble servant who came to earth to identify with our situation. The one that John recognized from the beginning as the sin bearer. John 1:29, we read “..the next day he saw Jesus coming to him and he said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.

We look at the life of Jesus and we examine what happened to Him and what was going on inside of Him. This climax to this long drama that had been building begins to unfold and we begin to understand the significance of Isaiah’s words, “surely He hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows.” In the beginning was the Word, Jesus, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the world and the world was made through Him and the world did not know Him. He came into His own, the Greek word for own, is, His own things, His own possessions, His own dominion. He came into His own and those who were His own did not receive Him.

Now, you stop and meditate on this. This is where the revelation really has to come. To understand what was happening in Jesus. I believe that the Trinity discussed creating man before they created him. They decided what the advantages were and what the dangers and risks were. But they so badly wanted to share of the overflow of their love with somebody else that they decided to create man to serve as further receptacles for the overflow of their love. They’re totally giving beings. Those original thoughts that God had about man when He was contemplating man’s creation were beautiful, they were wonderful, they were perfect. And God had very high hopes. He had real ambitions for man. To see man flourish and grow under the nurturing and admonition, the tutelage of God the Father. Jesus Himself made the world that we live on. The world was made through Him.

He created all that was created by the Word of His powers, through His authority, things came out of nothing. He created man and man was so special. Man was to Him what any of our children would be to us when they are born. They’re precious, they’re our own, they’re special, they’re unique, they’re wonderful. And man grew and man multiplied and God Himself came to live with man, to walk amongst them, to come to His own, His own possession, to walk amongst the men that He had made. And as Jesus walked through the marketplace of Jerusalem and walked through the hills of Galilee and He looked at all the multitudes of people, He walked by hundreds of them, thousands of them, and they did not even notice Him, they didn’t know who He was, they didn’t know that He was the one, the being who began it all. That He was the one who made them, that He was the one who made their country, that made the air and sky above, that created the sea at Galilee. That He was the source of all life that existed anywhere on the planet. As Jesus walked amongst these people and He wanted to reach out and embrace them. And say, I’m your Father, I’m your Daddy and say remember who I am. It hurt that they didn’t recognize Him; they didn’t care about Him. He was despised, rejected of men, a man of sorrows.

As Jesus treasured God’s original design, His original intentions for man deep inside His heart. That was compared against the reality of what He saw and encountered each and every day. Here’s this one who knew the original plan, saw the original blueprint, knew the intimacy and love that God had intended, the blessings He wanted to give and what men were supposed to be like. The way they were supposed to harmonize with one another and with the rest of nature. Jesus would walk down the street and see a couple of lepers sitting there on the corner, their flesh rotting. And what did that do to Jesus? He looked at that, it was unnatural, it was abnormal, He’d never intended that. He walks by through the marketplace maybe and He hears these men cursing at one another, hating each other, cursing at one another, cheating each other, stealing from one another. And then maybe He’d come across a group of men who had circled a woman who was caught in the act of adultery preparing to stone her to death. Looking at the woman, to what she had done with herself and with her mind, grieving thinking that it was never supposed to be that way and then looking at the men with stones in their hands and the stones in their hearts.

Everywhere He went he saw what sin had done to the human race. What it had done, how it had scared people, how it had destroyed them. It doesn’t destroy us to see sin or view sin like it destroyed Jesus because we don’t know, we can’t compare what is with what was originally in the mind and the heart of God. The closest we can come is when we have our own children and when they are born, these little bundles of innocence and potential, they are part of us, they exist because of us, our choices and our desires. We have such high hopes for them. Sure Jeff we do. Your two little ones. What would you feel like, if ten or fifteen years from now, they left, they walked out on their own and you saw Katie walking the streets as a prostitute?

What would you feel like? What would that do to your heart? You can’t picture it now. And that’s what God saw. He saw His own, He came to His own and His own received Him not. They said, who are you? Who are you? As I said, Christ treasured God’s original design for man in His heart and mind and although Jesus was in human flesh, He was, as Paul reminds us, the exact representation of God’s legion. From the multiple marriages of the woman by the well in Samaria, to all the deceit and profiteering in Jerusalem’s marketplace and temples, the rotting flesh of Lazarus, the unnatural perversions of sin, the broken blueprint began to weigh upon the soul of Jesus, who is repeatedly described throughout the Old and the New testament as the sin bearer. And when evening had come they brought to Him many who were demon possessed and He cast out the spirits with the word and healed all who were ill in order that it might be fulfilled He Himself took our infirmities and took away all our diseases.

And they brought to Him one who was deaf and spoke with difficulty and looking up to heaven with a deep sigh, Jesus said to him, facta that is Theona. And when Jesus therefore saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled and said where have you laid him and they said to him Lord come and see and Jesus wept. And He sighed deeply in His spirit and said “why hath this generation seek after a sign, verily I say unto you, there shall no sign be given to this generation. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee. How often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth together her chickens under her wings and ye would not.” And when He was come near He beheld the city and He wept over it. I believe that Jesus’s heart was growing heavy before He ever got to the cross. I believe that Jesus began to bear our sin before He ever got to the cross. That His identification with our situation with our sin began to weigh deep inside of Jesus before He ever got to Calvary. He sighed, He groaned, He wept time after time before He ever went to the cross. It hurt, He was hurting for us. Reality just wasn’t measuring up, wasn’t matching His original design.

It’s been many years since grief was openly recognized as a cause of death. Yet, today, a growing number of physicians are once again giving attention to the relationship between various socio-psychological factors and heart disease. Dr. James Lynch, wrote in his highly acclaimed book, The Broken Heart, “stress, pain, anxiety, fear and rage sometimes appear in indexes of textbooks on the heart but never love.” And yet, he goes on to say, ” in surprising number of cases of premature coronary heart disease and premature death, interpersonal unhappiness, the lack of love and human loneliness, seem to appear as root causes of the physical problems. We have learned that human beings have varied and at times profound effects on the cardiac systems of other human beings. Loneliness and grief often overwhelm bereaved individuals and the toll taken on the heart can be clearly seen. As the mortality statistics indicate this is no myth or romantic fairy tale. All available evidence suggests that people do indeed die of broken hearts.” Colin Parks, who is a grief researcher wrote a book entitled, Bereavement, he notes in his book that in 75% of the cases that he studied the cause of death in bereaved individuals was coronary thrombosis or arterial sclerosis. Dr. Arthur Brown of the University of Texas, has been involved in extensive research on nervous and ionic factors of sudden cardiac death and his findings which are acknowledged today in more than sixty publications and medical journals, his findings also strongly suggest a significant relationship between emotional stress and heart disease.

Another endorsement of the socio-psychological link in heart disease comes from Dr. David Jenkins, who after reviewing some of the psychological and social precursors or preliminary events or factors in the lives of those who come down with some kind of coronary heart disease stated recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, “that a broad array of recent studies point with ever increasing certainty to the position that certain psychological, social and behavioral conditions do put persons at a higher risk of clinically manifest coronary disease.” You remember the principle that grief is proportional to intimacy. Grief is proportional to intimacy. The greater degree of knowledgeable love that one has toward another, the greater is one’s potential for being hurt. But this is something that shouldn’t come as a profound revelation to us. It’s something that we’ve all experienced, or probably most of us have experienced at sometime in our lives. Hurt, or grief, is something that you will rarely find in casual relationships or encounters. Hurt or grief is the product of intimate relationships. Hurt or grief is the product of intimate relationships. Dr. George Ingle, of the Rochester University Medical School, ran a carefully controlled six year study in which he reconstructed the backgrounds of 170 sudden deaths and he was able to document that in the great majority of cases some type of intimate personal loss preceeded those deaths. The high coincidence of grief and loss that surrounded many of the deaths noted by Dr. Ingle is really striking.

There have been further laboratory experiments involving various clinical studies in psychiatric wards, hospital shock-trauma units and coronary care units that all suggest that the human heart is profoundly and sometimes mortally affected by human emotions. I’m sure you know what all this is leading up to.

Jesus prior to Calvary was hurt very, very deeply. Talk about intimate relationships. Think about the emotional toll that the fact that He came into His own and His own received Him not took. Jesus identified with the sin and the sorrow of humankind in a way that you and I probably could never experience. He was in a unique position to fully understand and fully identify with our sin. And finally the load that Jesus was carrying in His heart, deep inside Himself accumulated to the point, where He took His disciples aside one day and said, “Behold, we are going up into Jerusalem and all things that have been written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished” and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said “Father, the hour has come”. How did He know? How did Jesus know? Was He praying to the Father and suddenly the Father said “Okay Son, it is now time to go to Calvary. It’s now time to give your life”. Is that how He knew that the hour had come? You’ll remember there were several other times He said my time has not yet come. How did He suddenly know that it had come? I don’t believe that the knowledge came externally from the Father at all. I think that Jesus knowledge that His hour had come, came from deep within. I think that there is a chance anyway that, that inner time clock was regulated by the pressure upon His heart. That Jesus sensed within Himself that there were physical things happening inside His body as a result of the emotional stress of identifying with, of bearing the sin of the world. When the Bible tells us that Jesus encountered a situation and groaned deep within Himself, or He sighed or He wept.

We are talking about someone who was sinless, who had total control over themselves, someone who wasn’t given to extremes, someone who really had their act together. When Jesus groaned deep within, when He sighed, when He wept, you can be sure of the fact that deep and profound emotional things were going on down deep inside of Him. I think there came a point where Jesus was smart enough to realize the fact that He was dying, that His heart was at a straining point, that He could not take much more.

And He would soon undergo, what one French doctor described and I quote, “as an appalling mental agony produced by the foreknowledge of His physical passion and the knowledge of all the sins of man. The burden of which, He was Himself assuming for their redemption.”

He Himself had said to the apostles, “My soul is exceedlingly sorrowful”; not full of fear because I’m going to be crucified but “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death.” Such deep distress can bring on a phenomena which is known to medical man. This phenomena, which is also extremely rare, is provoked by some great mental disturbance following on deep emotion or great fear. The phenomena that this doctor is referring to is of course the sweating of great drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane. You remember that? That’s not a metaphor, that’s literal. Jesus recognized within Himself at that time in the garden that He was soon to face that moment for which He had come into the world. This was the moment of truth; the moment of destiny; for all humankind for all of heaven; the climax to which all of God’s prophets, covenants and forerunners had led was just about ready to unfold on Calvary.

Now, I’d like to share with you my personal theory. I don’t know for sure that this is the way it happened but it is the way I think it happened. Jesus made two very significant statements when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane. The first I just read to you when Jesus turned to His disciples and He said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death.” And then, He said to the Father in prayer; “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me”.

I’ve heard different speakers and preachers say, that what Jesus was thinking about was crucifixion and Jesus was saying, “Father, if I don’t have to die on the cross in the next day or so, I’d rather not.” I find that absolutely, utterly preposterous. Why go all that way, to all that trouble, to come all the way up to the very end? To give up the glories of heaven, become a man, suffer all that agony and then say I’m not sure that I’m willing that I want to go through with it? The Bible says Jesus endured the cross, endured the suffering for the joy it would set before Him. I think that what was happening in the Garden of Gethsemane was that Jesus thought He was dying there in the Garden. You can imagine, I mean, here He was sweating great of blood coming out, He’s got this tremendous pressure inside of His chest, this exceeding sorrow from bearing the sin of the world, from carrying our sorrows, from carrying our grief. And Jesus is thinking to Himself, “I’m going to die too early. I need to go to the cross. I need to be publicly displayed.” And He’s praying to the Father, Jesus is so absolutely obedient to the Father, He says, “Father, I think I’m dying. Now, it seems to me that this death, if I die now it will be premature. If it’s possible, let this cup pass from me, keep me alive, but nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done, if it’s Your will that I expire here, I’m willing to do anything.”

It’s an interesting scripture. In Hebrews 5, I want to read it to you, I’ll start at verse five, “So also Christ glorified not Himself to be made a high priest, but He that saith unto Him, Thou art My son today have I begotten thee and He saith also in another place, thou art a priest, forever after the order of Melchizedek. Who in the days of his flesh when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto to Him that was able to save Him from death and was heard in that He feared.” I believe that’s describing the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus crying out with strong crying and tears unto the Father unto him that was able to deliver him from death, and He was heard, His prayer was answered because He feared God. We know Jesus was not delivered from crucifixion but He was delivered from death – premature death. As Jesus took the sins of the whole world deep into His heart and mind on the cross, the anguish of His soul at that point reached a climax. He became one who has recognized the full terror of sin. A separation of God. A separation of fellowship. And at the ninth hour, Jesus called out with a loud voice, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” And that was it. That was the final straw. The increasing weight of our sin could be born no longer and Jesus who had identified so long with us died of grief, with a very broken, very heavy heart.

And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. 1st Peter 2:24 and then in Isaiah 53:11&12, we read again, “As a result, as a result, of the anguish of His soul He will see it and be satisfied. By His knowledge the righteous one, my servant will justify the many, as He will bear their inequities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great and He shall divide the booty with the strong because He poured out Himself unto death.”

Much of the excruciating agony that’s connected with crucifixion, as most of you probably know, centered on the victim’s incessant quest for air. Initially when the nails would be pounded into the extremities, the hands and the feet, the victim would be laid out on top of the cross on the ground, arms extended at a ninety degree angle, parallel to the cross beam. But as the cross was hoisted up into a vertical position with this pendant or hanging flesh on it, the arms with the weight of the entire body dragging on them, sagged to approximately 65 degrees. You just try hanging in that position for a little while. Even standing on something where your feet are supported. It is…God, it’s agonizing. As these crucifixion victims were hanging on the cross for a few minutes, they would begin to contract muscle spasms, violent muscle spasms. Have you ever had a muscle cramp or spasm? Hurts like the dickens doesn’t it?

Well, these cramps would begin in the forearms and then move to the upper arms and then the shoulders and then they would move quickly into the lower limbs, the legs and then to the trunk, to the body, until the whole body would be in a cramped position, everywhere. And soon, the spasms which caused the fingers and the toes to curl inward, would become generalized into a state of tetany and the stomach muscles would begin to tighten involuntary to form a hollow beneath what would become a grossly distended rib cage. The lungs would fill with air but due to the contraction of those muscles used to expel the air, the crucifixion victims were unable to expel that air. And asphyxiation would begin to set in, which was the way the crucifixion victims would die – not from shock, not from loss of blood, but from asphyxiation. And the thing is, the best way to really appreciate this is to just sometime do a little experiment, like I was telling you, and find some way to hang at a sixty five degree angle where you feel all of the weight of your body hanging on your arms. It’s just a matter of sixty seconds before you want to get out of that position. It’s hard to breathe even if you can move yourself around but if you can’t if your feet and your arms are nailed to the wall or to the cross and you’re just hanging there and suddenly your body starts cramping up and it starts getting harder to breathe and you feel yourself suffocating.

What these crucifixion victims would do to remedy this situation and to stave off death by asphyxiation was to relieve the drag on the hands and on the arms, which incidently in Jesus case was estimated to have been about 240 pounds of drag on his arms and hands, that’s 240 pounds per arm, per hand, that’s the amount of weight, the drag weight. What they would do is use the nail that was through their feet as a fulcrum and the victim could with considerable effort raise himself to an upright position and this maneuver would relax the effect of tetanization within the muscles, at least some of them, and it would unload the air that was trapped in the lungs and they would temporarily avoid asphyxiation. But the relief was only temporary and within moments the victim would sink inevitably back into a state of tetanization.

This sort of macabre struggle, you would see people on crosses pushing up and down, up and down, to try and get some air. You have to remember the nail was drilled right through the wrist, not through the hands like Sunday school pictures show, it would rip right off the cross and fall on the ground.

Only the wrist could support the weight of the human body, a little place where the bones in the wrist would move aside and it would perfectly hold somebody. The problem is that, that nail would rub against the median nerve which is the main nerve. Like a violin string, it would bow across the violin string. And the pain from that was absolutely excruciating, a raw nerve exposed to this metal nail and every time they would move to push up the pain was dimming, their faces would be contorting in agony. Depending on how much physical strength a man had and whether they were nailed to the cross or tied to the cross, some were tied, it could take a strong man up to ten days to die. Generally it didn’t but it could. It was the most cruel, hideous form of torture. You could walk around the hills of Judea in that day and everywhere you look you could see these poor, wretched human beings in this macabre up and down death struggle. Til finally they just ran out of energy and they couldn’t push up anymore and they would suffocate to death.

Now the Jews had a great dread about the overnight presence of corpses and this was a particular worry on that weekend that Jesus was crucified because it was the eve of the Passover – high holy day. Since few, if any at the time, recognized Jesus Himself as that Passover lamb, His presence along with that of His two fellow victims was construed in the holy city of Jerusalem at that time, to be an unsightly nuisance, an unclean nuisance.

Accordingly, the Pharisees, those rule-keeping, power-brokers in Jerusalem approached Pilate with the request, as John records in his gospel, “That their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.” The breaking of a crucifixion victim’s legs was merciful because it speeded up death for the obvious reasons that with broken legs they couldn’t push up anymore to get air. So when they would break the legs of victims on the cross, they would die very quickly. But Jesus’s bones weren’t broken, as the prophet said, there wouldn’t be a bone broken because when the soldiers arrived to end it all they discovered, probably much to their chagrin, that Jesus had already expired, He was already dead.

One legionaire who was no doubt frustrated that the fun had ended prematurely. You’re wanting to torment somebody and they die on you – it’s no fun anymore. They had a lot of fun with Jesus, plucking the hair of His beard out, smacking Him around, spitting on His face, whipping Him and then crucifying Him, thrust his spear, or his lance, into Jesus side, as kind of a parting coupe de gra and out of the wound, as John’s gospel records, flowed that blood and water that we talked about earlier. As we’ve already mentioned, crucifixion was a slow lingering kind of death that could take a strong man up to ten days to die. Thus when after only a matter of hours the body of Jesus was requested from Pilate, the Roman governor was astonished, he marveled that Jesus had died so quickly. In fact, he couldn’t believe it until he sent a centurion out there to verify it, that He was really dead. But again, Jesus did not die of crucifixion but rather from the internal agony of his own soul. He poured out his soul unto death. Crucifixion merely facilitated His death. No man took the life of Jesus. Jesus died as a result of a voluntary identification with the sin of the world crushing out his life.

You see, crucifixion was really, in a sense, the ideal means of death for Jesus because it provided Him with a prolonged period of consciousness necessary for His voluntary death. Jesus’s conscious identification in death with and death over our sin would have been frustrated had he been drugged which He refused pointedly to take the drug – remember, they offered it up to Him. In addition, had Jesus been executed in any other way, by sword or more likely by the Jewish method at that time of stoning, then He would have lost consciousness and would have been murdered rather than pouring out His soul unto death. Plus, crucifixion was a public display.

During a time, as we’ve said, in Israel’s history when all the hills, and there are hills that totally surround and encircle the city of Jerusalem, were literally blackened with a forest of crosses even a hardened and calloused Roman executioner recognized as he watched Jesus die that he had never seen a man die like that before. He was just like all the other victims, looked just the same, nails in His hands, hanging from a cross like everybody else, just another Jew. But as Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed His last, and when the centurion who was standing right in front of Him saw the way He breathed His last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”

What was it that he saw? What was so unusual? That Centurion knew what people looked like when they died of crucifixion. He knew how they died. And when he looked at Jesus and saw the way He breathed His last; saw the way He died; he knew He wasn’t dying from crucifixion and he looked into His face and His presence and knew there was something terribly unusual going on. And no doubt, he’d been told and there was a sign above, “Jesus, King of the Jews”, he knew that He claimed to be the Son of God and when he saw the way that He died, he believed that truly this man was who He said He was.

And as on the Holy Day of Atonement, the sacrifice of Jesus had a profound impact on all the beholders. Luke 23:48, we read, “And all the people that came together to that sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts and returned.”

“It is finished.” As Jesus uttered those memorable words, it signified, of course, the veil of the holy of holies was also ripped simultaneously from top to bottom, both of those things signified that an answer; a solution had been found to history’s most complex set of problems. How did the suffering, the life and the suffering and the death Jesus fully solve the problems of the broken God-man relationship? Well, first of all we need to realize that one does not solve an unlovely problem with a lovely solution.

When we take somebody who has been guilty of some heinous crime, like murder, and then we slap their wrist or we sentence them to work for a week in a florist shop, that’s not going to help him to understand the severity of what he has done nor is it going to protect society. But if all we desire to do is to protect society then full punishment is sufficient. If somebody goes out and commits a crime, we execute them. That protects society from them forever. God wanted to protect society but he also wanted the reformation of the sinner. As Jesus with all his rights to dignity and greatness died in that gruesome manner, the entire spectacle took on an overwhelming impact because this wasn’t just a mere bleating lamb but the man who claimed deity and who had substantiated His claim with numerous miracles and an impeccable life style. Nobody had ever met anybody like Jesus before. The moral force that was generated by the life and the passion and the suffering of this Lamb proved to be a far greater intensity that the threat of eternal punishment had ever been.

You’ll remember the well known story of the Greek king Zalucas. It’s a prime analogy of God’s remarkable solution of problems of reconciliation and balancing justice and mercy, His governmental problems and all the other problems that God solved on Calvary. Zalucas was a great king, an historical king not a fictional character, whose kingdom was plagued with chronic adultery. For some reason, King Zalucas didn’t like this and he issued an edict that anyone caught in the act from that day forward would lose their eyesight and as you might expect the result of that edict was that there was an instantaneous decline in the incidence of adultery in his kingdom. Either that or the people were very, very careful about what they did. But with a tragic twist of irony, the king’s own son was the first, the initial violator of the new edict, who got caught. Suddenly, Zalucas was placed in the same shoes as God and Darius. What was he going to do? So he wrestled with the situation, I am sure for a long time, before he made his decision. After some time went by, after he decided even, making sure there wasn’t some other way, he assembled all of his people together and in the audience of all of his subjects he proceeded to put out one of his son’s eyes and then one of his own. In this act, King Zalucas was able to uphold his law, reveal conclusively his hatred for the evil of adultery, and “free” the son that he loved, preserving at least part of his eyesight. Also, in that kingdom, the sight of a one-eyed king was a far greater moral deterrence than that of a totally blind son.

And so in the universe it is today, that the sight of a nail scarred guide is a far greater moral deterrent than the full punishment of any sinner. In the Atonement, God revealed Himself to man, in the clearest possible terms. The Bible tells us again that Jesus was an exact representation of God’s nature. Jesus states “He that has seen me, has seen the Father”. It was really the heart of God Himself that was up there on the cross, in front of the eyes of the watching world. And here are all these people saying “God is vindictive. God is blood-thirsty. God has to be paid back Himself” and God is saying, “No, I don’t need anything. I’m not going to take anything. I don’t need to receive anything. I’ve come to give life and to give it more abundantly. I’ve come to give.” So we look, the heart of God lifted up on the cross, watch Him suffer, agonize and finally break, under the weight of our sin.

It was evidently a new and a deeper revelation of the depth of God’s love to the host of heavenly beings and God and that act not only provided for our salvation but He destroyed the works of the devil through crime who argued in heaven and on earth that God was selfish, that God was trying to hold all of them in a life of bondage and subservience. In this revelation, God’s love, the ultimate revelation of His love, the depth and nature of His love would have been lost had there not been an opportunity for Him to pour Himself out in such a manner. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.

Malcolm Muggeridge, in his book, Jesus Rediscovered, sums things up in this way, “What then does the crucifixion signify in an age like ours? I see it in the first place as a sublime mockery of all earthly authority and power. The crown of thorns, the purple robe, the ironical title, King of the Jews, were intended to mock or parody Christ’s pretensions to be the Messiah. In fact, they rather hold up to ridicule and contempt all crowns, all kings, all roses. Look under the crown and you see the thorns beneath. Pull aside the purple robe and there is nakedness. Look into the grand, eloquent titles and they are seen to be no more substantial that Christ’s ribald one of King of the Jews scrawled above his cross. It was that sort of incidence, a man dying in that slow, public way which must have generated its own immediate attention in the beholders. Even though they were unaware of the nature and magnitude of the stupendous drama being enacted before them in some vague way they expect something to happen and so it does.”

The power of the cross, today, does not lie in some vague, abstract, ethereal cosmic transaction but rather in the literal subduing of the human heart. Do you understand what the difference is? The power of the cross does not lie in some vague, abstract, ethereal cosmic transaction. The power of the cross, the power of the blood of Christ, lies in its ability to literally, literally, literally, literally subdue the human heart. God’s desire was never just to suppress rebels – he had no problem doing that – but to subdue their pride and then once again enjoy their fellowship. The exertion of force although generally speaking will result in rapid submission does not subdue the heart. You can force somebody to do what you want but you cannot force them to love you and to respect you. Consequently, true fellowship devolves to respect based on fear whenever we use force to get what we want. God’s ultimate goal has never been, as we’ve said many times before, to save us from hell.

He came rather to save us from ourselves and from our sins. Matthew 1:21, “..she shall bring forth a son and thou shall call His name Jesus for He shall save His people from their sins.”

When we fully understand the cross of Jesus Christ, everything that happened there and all that it means, it provides us with the greatest, the most imposing barrier to the contemplation of future sin. Jesus was able through His suffering to do what the Old Testament sacrifices never could. Provide a lasting moral force to alter our entire outlook on sin. Perhaps in time, like the death of a martyr, the death of a lamb, or some perfect animal might fade in our minds and be forgotten. But when we consider, contemplate, what it was that God did for us…neither heaven nor earth…has ever to this day nor ever will been able to forget the day when God left the splendor of heaven and came to earth to wash the feet of his enemies. And while we were enemies, while we were enemies, we were loved and we were reconciled to God through the death of His son.

Next time we contemplate sin, when you are tempted to sin, and you see that road stretching out ahead of you toward that house of mirth, toward the pursuit of some kind of sin or inequity, remember there is a cross standing right in the middle of that road with Jesus on that cross. As you start walking, you’re going to find your gaze looking in two directions.

You’re going to be looking straight ahead at that temptation, that desire for gratification and you’re going to be looking at Jesus hanging on that cross and he’s going to be looking at you. And what we have to do now, after we have come to a knowledge of truth and what Christ has done for us, if we want to go down that path and get involved in sin, what we have to do, we have to lower our gigs and refuse to look in the face of a loving savior who knows where we’re going. As we walk underneath that cross, we have to brush off his blood that drips down, and we have to say, we don’t care. You see, there are too many Christian’s today who don’t have that cross in the road. It’s not a road block for them because they don’t understand. They don’t pursue it. They don’t ask God for revelation. They don’t meditate on what Christ did for them. So there is no breaking them and they are hard, they’re hard people and they love their sin. If that act of love does not subdue our resolve, as Charles Finney says, then our case is hopeless. If that doesn’t move you to tears, then …..

The full impact of what we have been talking about the last couple of days is something that only God’s Holy Spirit can bring to your heart and I’d like to encourage you to take sometime here in the next day or so, to get alone with God and say, “God, if I have not yet received the full impact of the cross, I want it”. Jesus didn’t pay for our sins, He bore our sins. It’s not some kind of slick, little commercial transaction. The heart of God broke over the choices that you and I have made. Let’s reverse things and let’s tell the Lord Jesus that when He comes to us, when He comes to his own, that we will receive Him, that we will take Him down off that cross. Remember the words, Paul, that if we sin willfully after we come to the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, what we do is we crucify Him afresh. We crucify Him afresh; we put Him through even more grief. I believe that Jesus has suffered enough. The non-Christian world is going to be putting God through grief every day. But you and I have the opportunity to give Him some breathing room. We expect them to put God through grief but let’s not us do it. Let’s not, members of His own household, crucify Him afresh. After we’ve received revelation and light and truth. After all that say, no, we chose sin and put Him right back up there again. No, let’s not be those kind of people. Let us pray.

Father, in a sense, what we’ve done here in the past few days has been take communion together.

Even though there’s been no wine, or grape juice or bread, we have remembered your body and your blood. Lord, I believe that you want to reveal to us all that you did and all that it meant in a far more deeper way than we yet understood. And Lord Jesus, I can’t do that, I am a human being with limited faculties, and that breaking and that revelation is something that only you can bring into our hearts this morning. Holy Spirit of God, only you can take these truths deep into our inner most being, into our hearts and lay the cross out open before us. Only you have the power to save us from ourselves. And I pray for this class, and I pray for each one of these students Lord, right now, that you would give them a revelation Lord like they’ve never seen before. I pray Lord that you have invaded their minds and their with the truth, that you take them into a dimension that they’ve never known before. To the most intimate moments with you that they’ve ever experienced. Lord they want to gaze at you on that cross, they need to see you that way. And Lord, we need to say thank you; Jesus, we need to say thank you. And Lord there are no words I can think of to express my gratitude. Father, I pray that what you have helped us to do, would be to thank you with our lives. With the choices that we make and by giving you everything that we are not because we have to but Lord because after what we have seen and what you’ve done for us, we want to. You didn’t have to die for us, we don’t understand fully why you did. We love you, we appreciate you, and you have definitely won our hearts through your selflessness. God we want to be like you. Break down our hardness, break down our callousness. That we might become soft before you and before others. I pray this Lord for your sake because you deserve this result. You deserve to have what you’ve done for it. I pray Lord this prayer in Jesus name. Amen.