We are in a wonderful series on the Ministry of Jesus. We have been doing this study for two full years, and we are reaching close to the end of the journey. And today, we are going to talk about the suffering and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. As you know, next week is Easter, and we’re going to talk about the resurrection next week. But now we’re going to take a straight look at the suffering of Jesus Christ and what he went through for us to achieve our salvation. Now, I’m going to do something a little bit different. Usually in a sermon, you get the Bible study at the beginning and in the middle, and at the end of the sermon, you have some life application. Like, how can we take this Bible study and apply it to our own lives? But what I’d like to do is reverse that because of the topic we’re covering We’re going to do the life application at the beginning. Here’s what I mean. I want to charge you to fully appreciate what happened on the cross, which I believe was the greatest act of love in history. Listen to the most famous verse in the Bible.
In John 3:16, it says, For God so loved the world that he gave us one and only son, that whoever believes in him, shall not perish, but have eternal life. So the challenge I have for you is this, how does God want us to respond to the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Does God care about that? And I believe he very much cares about how we all respond to the cross. Listen to the impact it ought to have on us. It says, For Christ’s love compels us, which to me would mean motivates us, inspires us, drives us. Christ’s love compels us because we are convinced that one, Jesus Christ, died for all, and therefore all died, and he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again. Should the cross change our lives? It should, shouldn’t it? So sometimes when you appreciate something, it can change your life. Does this ever happen in your marriage or your friendships? You more fully appreciate your spouse, and it can change the marriage. You more fully appreciate your friendship, and it can change the friendship.
And I believe as we more fully appreciate the cross, it can change our lives. Here’s a dictionary definition of appreciate. It means to recognize the full worth of and to be grateful for. The second definition is to understand fully and to recognize the full implications. Do we recognize the full worth of the cross. And so that’s our challenge. That’s the life application because we’re going to be looking at scriptures on the suffering and crucifixion of Christ. And I think it would be helpful to maybe consider these three questions as we attempt to appreciate what Jesus did for us. One of the things you could ask yourself is, how can I grow in my responsiveness to the cross? How can I grow in my responsiveness to God’s love? And am I moved by the cross, or do I try not to think about it? Like the cross demands a response from us. So many of us, included myself, have had times in our life where we just don’t even think about it, we don’t reflect on it, or because it places a demand on us, maybe we just don’t even want to think about it and just go on with our life.
And what did Jesus actually go through in sacrificing for me and in suffering for me? I have a couple more remarks before we go ahead and start looking at some scriptures. We’re going to be using a resource, a wonderful, powerful essay written by a physician called The Crucifixion of Jesus, the Passion of Christ from a Medical Point of View. Now, this was written in 1965 by an MD, Dr. T. Truman. What is it? C. Truman Davis. And you can find it in many places online, including our own government’s National Institute of Health, where they have it in their as an article. So we’re going to be referring to that four or five times and reading from it to more fully understand what happened on the cross. I want to let you know that the story of the cross is found in four different accounts. So we have four different perspectives on the cross. We have Matthew telling the story. We have Mark, we have Luke, and we have John telling the story. I’m going to be moving through the different Gospels, taking different things from them to put together the story. Just to give you an illustration of what I’m talking about, when Jesus was on the cross, he said seven different things on the cross that are recorded for us today in the Gospels.
But not one single gospel has all seven of those statements in that particular gospel. We piece that together from reading these four different accounts. So you’re going to see me as we read scripture, I’m going to be moving from gospel to gospel, putting together the story. On top of that, there’s so much to the story that there’s even some fairly important elements of the gospel story that for the sake of time, we’re not even going to be able to cover all of what happened. I’m just trying to catch the high points of what happened, like the highlight reel of what happened on the cross. And the last thing I wanted to point out before we go ahead look at what Jesus suffered for us on the cross is that nothing caught Jesus by surprise. Nothing. Like the person in control, you might think it was the Roman soldiers. You might think it was the Jewish Sanhedrin, but the person in control all the time is Jesus. And everybody around Jesus is out of control and acting out of character because of Jesus’s impact on them. Listen, Listen to what Jesus said before he even reached Jerusalem to his 12 disciples.
Jesus took the twelve aside and told them, We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. Listen to what he already knows in advance. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him. On the third day, he will rise again. So as he gets flogged, you might think, while this is really unfortunate, or this is out of control, or this is much more than should have happened to Jesus. But Jesus already knew, and it was prophesied in advance, exactly what would transpire. Are you ready? Let’s pray together. Father, please open our hearts, open our minds, open our eyes, Father, to what you sacrificed, Father, and help us to appreciate, Lord, your great love for us as demonstrated in the suffering, the giving, the crucifixion of your son, Jesus Christ, for us. Help our response, our appreciation of this, Father, to be pleasing in your eyes. We pray in your son’s name. Amen. Last week, Tony left off Jesus in the garden of Gethsemani. Jesus went as usual to the Mount of Olive, and his disciples followed him.
On reaching the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you will not fall into temptation. ‘ He withdraw about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed. I think I went back. Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me Yet not my will, but yours be done. An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. I would like to have our first reading from the medical account of the Crucifixion on the bloody sweat. Dr. Davis says, Every ruse imaginable has been used by modern scholars to explain away this description, apparently under the mistaken impression that this just doesn’t happen. A great deal of effort could have been saved had the doubters consulted the medical literature. Though very rare, the phenomenon of hematotidrosis or bloody sweat is well documented. When I was in college, I had an a friend of mine named Jeanne, who was a fellow student at UF while I was going to school. And for about a year up in Gainesville, I didn’t see her anymore. In church, after church, we have fellowship conversations with each other.
I didn’t see her for a year. And then after a year, I saw her again, and she was wearing a wig, and she was 25 years old, and she wasn’t wearing a wig before. So I went up to her and I said, Hey, Jeanne, how are you doing? I I see you’re wearing a wig. Can I ask why you’re wearing a wig? She said, This year, my mother died. She said, I went home to take care of my mother, and the process of watching my mother die eye, and then her actually coming to her death, it made my hair all fall out. And so now I’m wearing a wig, and I hope and pray that someday my hair grows back out again. Is there Is there such a thing as mental anguish? Is there such a thing as emotional suffering? That’s what Jeanne experienced, an emotional suffering that so traumatized her that literally her own hair fell out. And this is what we’re seeing with Jesus. He’s having, what I used to call as a kid, the edge of a nervous breakdown, like a mental breakdown. He’s pushed all the way to the edge of emotion.
It says right here that he was in anguish. This is the beginning of his suffering. And what’s so remarkable, I can’t explain this, but what’s so remarkable is he pulls himself together. And the next thing that you see happening with Jesus is an incredibly emotionally mentally, strong man who is on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Let’s continue. We’ll be reading in Matthew, this is the arrest of Jesus in the garden after he has swept blood. Put your sword back in its place, Jesus said to him. He’s talking to Simon Peter, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels. But how then would the scripture be fulfilled that say it must happen this way? Who’s in control here? They’re arresting Jesus, but not against his will. He is in the process of fulfilling his Father’s will. I want to show you a map of what’s going to be transpiring here. I know the print’s a little small, but I’ll walk you through it. So this right here is the Mount of Olive, which is a great viewpoint of the walled city of Jerusalem.
So if you’re standing on the Mount of Olive, you’re looking across the Kidron Valley. Down here is the Hinnom Valley, which, by the way, is where the Southern end of Jerusalem, which is where they burn the trash. In the Hinnom Valley, that’s where Jesus talked about the fire will not go out and the worm never dies. It was an illustration that people would realize from the Hinnom Valley. If you go down the Mount of Olives, which is full of olive trees, you come down to a garden at the foot of the mountain, which is a garden of olive trees, and that’s the garden of Gosemany. This is where Jesus was arrested. So they arrest Jesus, and this scale here is only a thousand feet for this distance. So everything’s within walking distance right here. It’s a bit of a walk, but it’s walking distance. So they’re going to walk the soldiers, which are temple guards, not Roman guards. They’re going to take Jesus and walk him around bound. And there’s a debate on where they take him, whether it was the palace of the high priest or the palace of Herod Antipus. It was probably the palace of the high priest where John and Ciofus slid.
They take him here, and we will pick up the story right here in the Book of Matthew. The high priest said to him, I charge you under oath by the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God. You have said so, Jesus replied, but I say to all of you, and now he’s going to quote Daniel 7:13, From now on, you will the Son of Man sitting at the right-hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, ‘He has spoken blasphemy. Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy. What do you think? ‘ ‘He is worthy of death, ‘ they answered. Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fist. Others slapped him and said, prophesy to us, Messiah, who hit you? Who’s hitting Jesus? This is the Sanhedrin. This is the body of 70 elders that is the most power wonderful, religious, and combined, religious and political body of leadership in the nation of Israel while it was under Roman occupation. These are old, wealthy, well-dressed blessed, educated, prestigious, dignified men acting like a street gang.
And the reason is that they are doing a bad job of leading the nation of Israel. They’re distorting money out of the people of Israel. They’re neglecting the needs of the people of Israel. And Jesus called them out in public on it. And they had a choice when he called them out on it and he confronted them on it, which he did over and over again for years, for three years of his ministry. They had a choice to humble themselves, take the correction, and repent. They did not. They were defensive, they were prideful, and they didn’t take the correction with humility. They took it with humiliation because they were prideful, and they got angrier and angrier the more Jesus spoke truth to power. Now, have you ever hated someone? Hopefully this has not been something you felt. Have you ever hated somebody so much that you wanted to make a point with them, and then after that, you wanted to kill them? That’s what these men are doing. These dignified men in the middle of the night, who’s keeping their dignity? Jesus Christ. And who has lost their dignity? These men who lead poorly the nation of Israel.
So what they’re going to do now is they’re going to travel from this kangoo of a court that they’re having to Pilate’s place. Now, Pilate may have been in Herod’s palace. Apparently, Herod’s palace had room for a pratorium, a gathering for soldiers Or it may have been at the fortress Antonio, where they took Jesus to meet up with Pilate. But that’s what happens next. I just want to show you a model of the temple area in Jerusalem. I showed about a month ago, but this is the temple, what the temple looked like in Jesus’s day. Attached, literally sharing a wall with the Jewish temple was a Roman, not a Jewish, but a Roman fort connected to the temple so that the Romans could let the Jews know we got you under our thumb. We’re not only controlling you, we’re even going to control your religious process. And we believe that Jesus, right by the walls the temple corps, probably met with Pilate here in this fortress or over in Herod’s temple. We pick up in the Book of Luke. Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, We have found this man subverting our nation.
Not true. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar. ‘Not true. And claims to be a Messiah, a king. By the way, Jesus He never told anybody he was the Messiah. Everybody kept telling him that. He knew he was the Messiah. He told a Samaritan woman he was the disciple. But the Jewish people, he let them figure it out from the scriptures, figure it out from his example, so that everyone around him knew by his actions, not by his claims from his mouth, his actions, that he was the real thing. Guess what he says to Pilate? You have said so. Didn’t he say that to the Jewish people? He said to the Jewish people, You’re telling me I’m the disciple. Now he’s telling the Romans, You’re telling me… He’s like, You guys already know who I am. Then Pilate announced to the chief priest. Are we forward here? Here we go. Then Pilate announced to the chief priest and the crowd, I find no basis for a charge against this man. But they insisted, he stirs up people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here. Here.
On hearing this, Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean. When he learned that Jesus was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem at the time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform a sign of some sort. Herod’s hoping for a magic show and an afternoon of entertainment or a morning of entertainment from Jesus. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the teachers of the law were standing there vehemently accusing him. Then Herod and the soldiers ridiculed him and mocked him, dressing him in an elegant robe. They sent him back to Pilate. That day, Herod and Pilate became friends. Before this, they had been enemies. Isn’t it sad as Christians that sometimes the non-Christian community can come together in persecution against us? Can you see Jesus through spiritual eyes here before Herod? It’s easy to see Jesus as the homeless, poor man in front of great power. But what’s actually the case, if you could see it from God’s perspective, God made the universe through his son, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ could have said to Herod, Do you know who you’re talking to? I breathe life into you when you were a baby. It is through my authority with the Father that you’re king in the first place. Have you ever had anybody say, I brought you into the world like a mom. I brought you into the world and I can take you out of the world. He could have very easily said that. But instead, you know what? He’ll pray when he goes to the cross, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. What he’s telling his dad is, Father, you know I made the entire universe. I made all these people. They’re rejecting me, even though I made them. Don’t kill them all. I want to die in their place to reconcile them and bring them to you. And the Father is like, I will go along with that. In God’s great mercy. So now they’re going to be taken probably back to the fortress Antonia, back from Herod. He goes before Pilate. Now we will be reading from the Book of Mark. But Jesus made no reply, and Pilate was amazed. Now it was the custom at the festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested.
A man called Barabbas Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. What is Barabbas guilty of? Murder. The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did. Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews? Asked Pilate, knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priest had handed Jesus over to him. But the chief priest stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead. What shall I do then with the one you call the king of Jews? King of the Jews, Pilate asked them, Crucify him, they shouted. Why? What crime has he committed, asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, Crucify him. Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged and handed him over to be crucified. Now, I should just pause here for a minute. This could be more fully unpacked, but what’s going on between Barabbas and Jesus is highly symbolic of what was accomplished on the cross for all of us. We have a man guilty of murder, worthy of death, being released and set free, no longer guilty of the crimes he committed, because an innocent man, Jesus, is going to die in his place.
Do you see how that applies to us? We all have sins that make us worthy of death. Jesus on the cross dies in our place, making us no longer guilty of our sins. Now, the Bible is so often very terse, very succinct, and all it says was he had Jesus flogged. And then he had him crucified. And the Bible does not go into great detail about what that looked like. But now we’re going to go back to that article, the Medical Account of the Crucifixion, where Dr. Davis did do research through others who also did research on what it was like, we know from ancient writings, what was it like to be scourged, to be whipped by the Romans. I don’t have slides up for this. I’m just going to read it. I ask that you would give your attention to this. Let me get to that slide here. The Scourging. The Roman legionnaire steps forward with the flagrum in his hand. This is a short whip consisting of several heavy leather thongs with two small balls of lead attached near the ends of each. The heavy whip is brought down with full force again and again across Jesus’s shoulders, back, and legs.
At first, the thongs cut through the skin only. Then, as the blows continue, they cut deeper into the subcutaneous tissues, producing first an ooosing of blood from the capillaries and the veins of the skin, and finally, spurting arterial bleeding from vessels in the underlying muscles. The small balls of lead first produce large, deep bruises which are broken open by subsequent blows. Finally, the skin of the back is hanging in long ribbons, and the entire area is an unrecognizable mass of torn, bleeding tissue. When it is determined by the centurion in charge that the prisoner is near death, the beating has finally stopped. They probably made no effort to hold to the Jewish of only having 40 strikes of the lash. They were Romans. The half-fainting Jesus is then untied and allowed to slump to the stone pavement wet with his own blood. The Roman soldiers see a great joke in this provincial Jew claiming to be king. They throw a robe across his shoulders and place a staff in his hand for a scepter. They still need a to make their travesty complete. Flexible branches, covered with long thorns, are plated into the shape of a crown, and this is pressed into his scalp.
Again, there is copious bleeding the scalp being one of the most vascular areas of the body. After locking him and striking him across the face, the soldiers take the stick, the staff, from his hand and strike him across the head again and again, diving the thorns deeper into his scalp. Finally, they tire of their sadistic sport, and the robe is torn from his back. Already having it adhered to the clots of blood and the serum and the wounds, its removal causes excruciating pain, just as in the careless removal of a surgical bandage. Almost as though he was again being whipped, the wounds once more begin to bleed. Just in case you think Dr. Davis is overly dramatic, making this dramatic, I want to read from the Old Testament in Isaiah where it describes Jesus’s suffering. It says, See, my servant will act wisely. He will be raised and lifted up and highly exaltet. Just as there were many who were appalled at him, his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form, marred beyond human likeness, so he will sprinkle many nations. Dr. Davis talks about this some more. He says, There’s much disagreement among authority parities about the unusual scourging as a prelude to the crucifixion.
So in the ancient world, they did not usually flog somebody before they crucified him. They just crucified him. Most Roman the writers from this period do not associate the two. Many scholars believe that Pilate originally ordered Jesus scourge as his full punishment and that the death sentence by crucifixion came only in response to the taunt by the mob that the procurator was not properly defending Caesar against this pretender who was allegedly claiming to be the king of the Jews. Is this a surprise? Do you remember Jesus his disciples before they even reach Jerusalem. I know I’m going to be flogged, and then I’m going to be crucified. I want to say this, that I believe that this may have been extra unnecessary suffering that Jesus willingly went to to show the amount of his love. I believe the amount of sacrifice shows the amount of love. Jesus is not only willing to go to the cross for us, he’s willing to be beaten almost to death as a sign of how much he wants to show his love for us in the totality and the greatness of his sacrifice. We pick up in the Book of Luke.
As the soldiers led him away, they see Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and they put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there along with the criminals, one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. So I want to talk a little bit about what crucifixion actually is. So in the Roman world, we know from archeology and from writings that the Romans crucified people in four different ways, at least. They could have nailed somebody up to a single post They could have crucified somebody on what’s been called the Tau, like the Greek word Tau, the Greek letter, the Tau cross, the traditional Christian cross. Our people in the ancient world were actually sometimes literally just crucified to a tree. Like they would strip the branches of a tree and crucify people on a tree.
So the strongest argument from the ancient literature is that Jesus may have been crucified on a Tau cross rather than the traditional Christian cross, although this It would have been how he was crucified. But what they think is that Jesus, and then Simon of Cyrene, carried the top bar, which they call, I guess this is a Latin word, the stipies. They took this long, large wooden pole, and they carried it. And this pole was permanently put in the ground for repeated crucifixions. So what probably happened was they nailed Jesus’s hands to the stipies, lifted it up, set it in the notch of this permanent pole, and then nailed his feet to the cross. And I’m going to show you some things. I hope they’re not too graphic, but it looks like he probably did not have his nails put into the palm of his hand. So obviously this looks like an X-ray of the hand, which includes the wrist. So if they put a nail between the bones, the nail would have pulled out through the flesh because of the weight of his body. So most scholars think that they probably put the nail right here between these two bones in the wrist so that he wouldn’t fall from the cross.
Here’s a reenactment photograph of what they think this was like. They think that maybe the nail was put not in the palm, like I said, but as he’s on the ground being nailed to the top bar, that they put the nail into his feet. Now, I debate it whether I wanted to show this, but they probably put the nail through his feet like that. If they didn’t do it that way, the only ancient crucifixion nail that we have that has survived to today that we found is this right here. This was a nail that was driven through this the surviving bone that we have today. It was driven through the side of the ankle. And this is a modern, I guess this is plastic or something, a reconstruction of what they think happened, that perhaps instead of Jesus’s feet being overlapped, clapping, maybe they were tacked to the side, nailed to the side of the pole where he was crucified. Once again, I’m going to be reading from Dr. Davis’s account. The victim is now crucified. As he slowly sags down with more weight on the nails and the wrists, excruciating pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain.
The nails and the wrist are putting pressure on the median nerves. As he pushes himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, he places his full weight on the nail through his feet. Again, there are searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the metastarsal bones of the feet. At this point, as the arms fatigue, great waves of cramps sweep over the muscles, nodding them in deep relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push himself upward. Hanging by his arms, the pectoral muscles are paralyzed and the intercostal muscles are unable to act. Air can be drawn into the lungs, but it cannot be exhaled. Jesus fights to raise himself in order to get even one short breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood and the cramps partially subside. Again, Dr. Davis’s research was to find out what actually he died of on the cross. Spasmodically, as he is able to push himself upward to exhale, and bring in the life-giving oxygen, hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, and searing pain where the tissue is torn from his lacerated back as he moves up and down against the rough timber.
Then another agony begins, a terrible crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with and begins to compress the heart. It is now almost over. The loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level. The compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissue. The tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to grasp, even to gasp in small gulp of air. The markedly dehydrated tissues send their flood of stimuli to the brain. The body of Jesus is now in extremus, and he can feel the chill of death creeping through his tissues. This realization brings out his sixth set of words, possibly a little more than a tortured whisper, It is finished. His mission of atonement has completed. Finally, he can allow his body to die. With one last surge of strength, he once again presses his torn feet against the nail, straightens his legs, takes a deeper breath, and utters his seventh and last cry, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. Apparently, to make doubly sure of the death, the legionaire drives his lance through the fifth interspace between the ribs, upward through the pericardium and into the heart.
In John 19:34, it says, And immediately there it came out blood and water. That is, there was an escape of water fluid from the sac surrounding the heart, giving postmortem evidence that our Lord died not of the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure, a broken heart due to shock and constriction of the heart by fluid in the pericardium. We go back to the scriptures We’re in the Book of Luke. One of the criminals who hung there and hurled insults on him, Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself in us. But the other criminal rebuked him, Don’t you fear God, he said, since you were under the same sentence, ‘We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve, but this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus answered ‘Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. ‘ We read from the Book of Mark. It was nine in the morning when they crucified him. At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At 3:00 in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eloy, Eloy, lema sabachthani, ‘ which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
‘ When some of standing near heard him say this, they said, Listen, he’s calling Elijah. Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on his staff, offered it to Jesus to drink. Leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down. He said, With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. From Matthew. At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn into from top to bottom. The The earth shook, the rock split, and the tombs were broken open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’s resurrection and went in to the holy city and appeared to many people in the Book of Mark. And when the centurion who stood there in front of Jesus saw how he died, he said, Surely this man man was the Son of God. This pagan man who was familiar with death and war, familiar with death through crucifixion, saw how Jesus died, saw the courage he died with, saw the love he died with, and saw the physical miracles of the sun being blocked out and an earthquake all around, and that pagan man testified with his mouth, Surely this man was the Son of God.
I have a couple of minutes of closing remarks before we go to the Lord’s Supper together. The first thing I wanted to share with you was the significance of the temple curtain being torn into. I have an artist’s rendering of the temple curtain. I’d like to talk about why that’s recorded in the Bible. So this is a drawing of what it probably looked like inside the temple. Here’s the holy priest, where every day a priest came in. But behind the curtain was the Holy of Holies, which represented the presence of God. We could not come into the presence of God. Only the high priest, not any priest, and only once a year on Yom Kippur could come into the Holy of Holies and only carrying blood of a sacrifice. The temple curtain is torn into, not from bottom to top by man, but torn from top to bottom by God to represent the solving of a problem. And this is the problem. Our sin keeps us from Coming into the presence of God. And Jesus on the cross enabled us to have God the Father eliminate this barrier so that every one of us, you and I, don’t need to be a high priest.
Every Christian is a priest. We can have a personal relationship and come into the presence of God. This is what Peter talked about. He said, For Christ suffered once, the righteous for the unrighteous. Why? To bring you to God. He was put to death in the body, but made alive in the spirit. As we go to the Lord’s Supper, I’d like us to reflect on what we saw. Jesus went through long lasting, excruciating pain. He was wrongly accused. He was humiliated, rejected, betrayed, abandoned, beaten, almost to death, and murdered. And then he was not even put in the tomb of his family, but he had to have a borrowed tomb. And so, of course, the question we looked at at the beginning, are you moved and motivated by the cross or are you shielding yourself from responding to it? Before we pray, I want to read what Jesus said the night before he was betrayed. Greater love is no one than this to lay down his life for his friends. Let’s pray before the Lord’s Supper. Holy Father, thank you. Thank you so much for all that you went through. Father, we see that your sacrifice was the greatest sign of love ever in history.
Father, help us to properly respond to that. Help us to have a pleasing attitude about all that you have done for us. We love you and we pray in your son’s name. Amen.