Sermon

His Death

Springhouse Church Sermons

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  1. Well, good morning. So glad

  2. to be in the house this morning. If you're joining us on livestream, thank you

  3. for joining us today. It is it is certainly a

  4. a good day. A couple of things,

  5. want to encourage you, that we have a midweek

  6. gathering, 6 o'clock, pastor Justin on Thursday

  7. night, 6 o'clock. Pastor Justin has been doing, a

  8. series, about the table and, it's been

  9. really rich. And so I want to encourage you if you can make

  10. that happen, if your capacity allows for you to be here on Thursday

  11. night, come and be a part of that. It's certainly

  12. in keeping and in line with, where we are in the

  13. season of leading up to Resurrection Sunday.

  14. And with that also, on Good Friday, Good Friday this

  15. year, we are going to have a worship gathering here from

  16. 6 to 7. Okay? It will be an hour long. We are going

  17. to partake in communion together, and so, you can

  18. bring your family. We won't have kids ministry. The kids will join

  19. us in here. We will have, I believe we will have a nursery

  20. available, but during that gathering, families will will be in here. And we're God

  21. pray together, we're gonna worship together, and take communion. And so I encourage

  22. you, Good Friday, 6 o'clock to come and be a part

  23. of that hour service. And then, of course, we have resurrection

  24. Sunday, that's March 31st, And so, we're God celebrate the resurrection of

  25. our king because we get to live with him forever. Jesus is alive.

  26. And, and so we're excited about that. I'm going to

  27. ask you guys to, I'm going to ask you for a favor,

  28. okay? Typically visitors who will come on Easter Sunday,

  29. there may be some people who will come once or twice in a year, they'll

  30. choose that day to come to to church and as you can see, our

  31. auditorium is pretty full. If you have the ability to come to

  32. the early gathering that day, I would certainly

  33. appreciate it to allow there to be room in this gathering for our visitors

  34. who come. It is a repeat gathering. You won't miss anything coming

  35. to the early gathering. And so if it is within your capacity to come to

  36. the early gathering on Easter Sunday and participate then, I would

  37. greatly appreciate it so it opens up room for our visitors during

  38. this during this during this time. Speaking of Easter, we are

  39. into that we are into a series. We're gonna start a 3 week series. We're

  40. gonna talk about Jesus' death. We're gonna talk about his burial, and we're

  41. gonna talk about his resurrection on Easter Sunday. And today, we're gonna talk about Jesus'

  42. death and pastor Justin's going to kick off this new series. Would you welcome pastor

  43. Justin?

  44. Thank you,

  45. Thank you, sirs. Just give you a fair

  46. warning. I do not know how long this jacket will make it this morning.

  47. It's a little warm. I'm trying. It's green. Right?

  48. Olive is a shade of green, so don't even

  49. out there. Right? It's the only green I'll wear year

  50. round. If you're able to, would you

  51. stand with me? We're God go ahead and read our passage for this morning.

  52. We'll read it together and then we'll pray and we'll get into the

  53. message today. Are we ready?

  54. So they took Jesus, and he went out bearing his

  55. own cross to the place called the pray of

  56. a skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.

  57. There, they crucified him and with him 2

  58. others, 1 on either side and Jesus

  59. between them. Father, we thank you for this day that you've given us. God, I

  60. thank you for the sweet spirit that is in this room today,

  61. God. It is heavy and it is beautiful.

  62. God, I pray that your word would penetrate into our hearts

  63. and the ways that we have made the cross too small, that you would

  64. magnify our view of the cross and the work that you

  65. have accomplished therein. Father, I pray that everything

  66. I say today would be soon forgotten. But, Holy Spirit,

  67. anoint me to preach your words to your people for the

  68. advancement of your kingdom, that the name of Jesus would be

  69. glorified through the power of the Holy Ghost. It's in Christ's name

  70. that I pray. Amen and amen. You guys can be seated.

  71. How many of you guys remember Smokey the Bear?

  72. Right? Right? Everybody remember Smokey the Bear? If you don't know, you youngins,

  73. there was a commercial, pretty tragic and

  74. traumatizing when we were younger and,

  75. and there was a bear and he was a park ranger and

  76. he had a park ranger hat and his name was Smokey, Smokey the Prayer, and

  77. Smokey had a catchphrase. Right? What was the catchphrase Smokey had?

  78. Only you can prevent forest fires. Do you know how much pressure that is

  79. for a 9 year old kid? I'm serious.

  80. I thought my whole life that it was up to me

  81. to prevent force because that's what Smokey told me. They'd show a tragic story

  82. and then he'd come on in the end and he'd point and say only you

  83. can prevent forest fires. And that's heavy.

  84. I'm serious. I carried that for a long time to realize there ain't no way

  85. I was not even there. It had nothing to do with me.

  86. But the reason I'm telling you guys this is because for most of

  87. my life, this is how I have carried the cross.

  88. I have had felt this overwhelming sense

  89. of guilt and shame and this

  90. heavy weight because my sin is what sent him

  91. there. And my whole life I have felt this weight,

  92. this pressure that that if it wasn't for me and my

  93. sin, then he wouldn't have had to die. And there's

  94. hymns and songs and it was my sin that held him there and it was

  95. the thought of me and I'm just my whole life. I'm like God, this is

  96. this is heavy. And I feel like on my

  97. journey over the past, few months years that I've felt the

  98. love of God say, son, you've made the cross way too small.

  99. You have made the cross way too small.

  100. I we will never understand the magnitude of what was accomplished

  101. on the cross of Christ, but the love of God is

  102. whispered to me over days months years of

  103. what exactly has been accomplished on the cross.

  104. And every new revelation magnifies

  105. its beauty and lessens the burden for me in my

  106. life. I know that my sin was

  107. responsible, but that's an incomplete and a small

  108. and minuscule

  109. the accomplishment of the cross.

  110. I'm gonna give you guys a disclaimer. I am fully aware that there are many

  111. things that I don't know. I don't know what I don't

  112. know, but I know that I don't know what I don't know,

  113. and therefore, I'm open to God showing me what I don't

  114. know. Somebody got that.

  115. I know that's that's Southern, but there was one guy was like, I'm tracking.

  116. I am tracking you today.

  117. So, however, this is an attempt for us to find even more

  118. value, even more value

  119. in the cross than we already have. So

  120. we're gonna start with one thing we do know, the forgiveness and the

  121. atonement, since that's what we know.

  122. The cross provided the means for our redemption. First

  123. Corinthians 57 says this, cleanse out the old leaven

  124. that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened for

  125. Christ, our Passover lamb

  126. has been sacrificed. Our Passover lamb

  127. has been sacrificed. Paul describes

  128. Jesus as our Passover lamb. Pastor Kevin, referred to a series

  129. that we've been doing on Thursday nights. And I've I shared some of this

  130. information with you guys that have been attending. But

  131. Paul describes Jesus as our Passover lamb. Where does this come from?

  132. This originates in Exodus chapter 12 verses 1 through

    Exodus 12:1–13

  133. 13. The Israelite people are about to be brought out of slavery

  134. from Egypt and God is giving them specific instructions

  135. on what's going to happen before the angel of

  136. death comes and all of the firstborn of

  137. everyone that does not have the blood covering their

  138. house will be killed that night. And God gives him specific

  139. instructions. He says, matter of fact, look, everything we've done up to this point, I'm

  140. changing it. This month is gonna be the 1st month of the new year.

  141. Starting in this month, this is gonna be the 1st month of the new year.

  142. And what I want you guys to do is on the 10th day of this

  143. month, I want you to take a lamb, a perfect spotless

  144. lamb, and bring it into your household and keep it there for the week. Then

  145. for the whole week, what you're going to do is inspect this

  146. lamb for spots and blemishes. And then on

  147. the 14th day of the month at sundown, you're going to

  148. slaughter the lamb and you and your family are going to take the blood of

  149. the lamb and you're gonna sprinkle it on your posts and the angel of the

  150. Lord will see the blood and passah or

  151. pass over. Passah

  152. is the Hebrew worship means to spare or protect it

  153. was not that the angel of the Lord just skipped over the house it

  154. spared that house. Passover was to

  155. passah, spare or protect.

  156. John chapter 12 verse 1 tells us that Jesus

    John 12:1

  157. arrived in Bethany 6 days before Passover

  158. on 9th day of the month. And then John theater 12 verse

  159. 12 tells us the the next pray, that

  160. was the word that he used, the next pray, which would have been the 10th

  161. day of the month that Jesus on a donkey

  162. rode into Jerusalem, which was the center of the house of

  163. worship for the Israelite people. The lamb of God

  164. brought in to his house on the 10th day.

  165. And for the rest of the week, all they did was try to find

  166. faults in Jesus. They was asking him, like, tricky questions. They were trying

  167. to trip him up. They were inspecting the lamb for blemishes

  168. and spots. And then on 14th day,

  169. the Friday, the lamb of God, the Passover lamb

  170. was slain on the cross at the same time that the

  171. priests were taking lambs and slaughtering them for the

  172. people. The true Passover lamb was being

  173. slain at the same time that those Passover lambs were being

  174. slain right before sundown.

  175. Revelation 138, John describes Jesus this way.

  176. And all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose names has not been

  177. written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the lamb

  178. who was slain. I don't particularly like the way the e f ESV says it,

  179. but if you didn't catch that in all that language, Jesus is the

  180. lamb who was slain before the foundation

  181. of the world.

  182. That's hard for me to get my head around. That's hard for me to

  183. get my head around that before the world was created, the Spirit

  184. had some type of conversation. We're gonna

  185. make a world, we're gonna make man, and they're gonna mess this

  186. up big time.

  187. But I know what we'll do. I know what we'll do. I know what we'll

  188. do. Jesus said, matter of fact, I'll go and be slain for

  189. them. I'll go in their place

  190. and be slain for them and but that's not really good enough. God's

  191. like, you know what? I love the way Graham Cook describes it. He says, no.

  192. We can't just forgive them. We're gonna have to kill them.

  193. We're gonna have to kill them, And then what we'll do then what

  194. we'll do is we'll we'll we'll we'll tell them that if you if you

  195. die with him, that will will submerge you in theater.

  196. And when you come out, that'll be called being born again.

  197. We'll kill them too and then they'll be born again. And Holy Spirit, it'll be

  198. then your job to reveal them everything that Jesus had done for them and empower

  199. them. Before the foundation of the world, this

  200. had already been established. You know what that tells us? Redemption

  201. is in his nature.

  202. Redemption is in his nature.

  203. We can see this in his interaction before Pilate with

  204. Barabbas. If you're not familiar with the

  205. story, before Jesus goes to the

  206. cross, they're standing before Pilate and it was their

  207. custom that on a holy pray, they would let somebody go free,

  208. a prisoner go free and so they bring out Jesus

  209. and they bring out Barabbas and Barabbas is a bad guy.

  210. Barabbas murders people,

  211. murders people. He's a

  212. rebel. He leads insurrections against the government.

  213. He tried to overthrow the government. Him

  214. and a whole bunch of other people, and they bring this guy out and they

  215. put him here and then they bring Jesus, son of God, who's never

  216. done anything wrong, Perfect spotless

  217. lamb and they bring him out and you know what Pilate says. Pray. Who do

  218. you want? Who do you want? And what do they

  219. say? What did they say?

  220. Give us Barabbas. He said, who do

  221. you want, Barabbas? Yes. Give us Barabbas.

  222. And Jesus is there silent because he

  223. knew what God knew. And I love the way that Judah Smith says it. He

  224. says that God knew, Jesus knew that

  225. God had to treat Jesus like Barabbas so he

  226. could treat Barabbas like Jesus.

  227. Even his name, Bar means son,

  228. Abba means father, the son of the father for the

  229. son of the father.

  230. It's it's in his nature.

  231. Redemption is in his nature. He

  232. Why? Because he was a substitutionary Passover

  233. lamb slain before he even decided to make the

  234. world. That's his character. That's who he is.

  235. Our redemption, the forgiveness of sin, our

  236. atonement is found in the cross.

  237. Calvary is also the fulfillment of God's promise to the serpent. Yeah.

  238. He made a promise to the serpent in Genesis 315. So get

  239. this. I will put enmity between you and the woman and

  240. between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head

  241. and you shall bruise his heel. This is God's promise to

  242. the serpent. This is referred to as a seed war. This is a

  243. millennia Holy battle

  244. garden.

  245. Man was created to have dominion on the earth.

  246. It was a birthright that god gave his people. Be

  247. fruitful, multiply, subdue the earth.

  248. Reign over it, rule over it. I want you to do a little thought exercise

  249. with me for a second. Think of something that has

  250. been created and then given a purpose.

  251. Name one thing that has ever been created that was created and

  252. then given purpose. You can't do

  253. it, can you? You can't do it. Why?

  254. Because nothing is created without purpose. You are created

  255. for a purpose. Nothing is created and

  256. then given a purpose. So how much more so

  257. mankind created for a purpose?

  258. We are created to be God's regents on the

  259. earth, representatives of the heavenly kingdom

  260. here on this earth. We we so detach

  261. the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth, and we and we

  262. and we say things like, well, that's just a supernatural. He has set things

  263. in order here on Earth the same way they are

  264. in heaven. Why did Jesus pray? Your will hear the way it is up

  265. there. What where do we even get these concepts

  266. of kingdom? We don't just come up with these on our own.

  267. God has set this in motion

  268. and the authority and dominion of mankind has been usurped by

  269. the enemy or given away throughout history. We have

  270. given away the authority that God has given us. And according

  271. to Deuteronomy chapter 32 verses 8 and 9, look at this. It says, when the

    Deuteronomy 32:8

  272. most high gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind,

  273. he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of

  274. God. But the lord's portion is his people,

  275. Jacob his allotted heritage.

  276. What does this mean? Growing up, my mom used to tell me, well,

  277. the Jews were God's chosen people. And I'm like, well, flip them a

  278. fish. Lucky them. Right? How'd they get that?

  279. Right? Have you you've heard that Jews were are God's

  280. chosen people. Well, where did that come from? This is where it came from. God

  281. divided the nations up and he took Israel as himself. Have you

  282. read passages in the New Testament theatre seem like, well, that was

  283. kinda harsh for Jesus to say that, but we don't understand it

  284. Where the Syrophoenician woman is coming to Jesus for something, he said, Look, it's not

  285. my time to come to you yet. I'm here for the Jews right now. And

  286. she's like, Well, even dogs get crumbs from the master's table. And he's

  287. like, I love your tenacity, lady. He did that's

  288. Justin speak, man. It's a little bit cleaner than that if you go read

  289. it, but that's the gist of it. It's all throughout the New

  290. Testament. You can see it, and Jesus is like, it's not my time for that

  291. yet. It's not my time for that yet. And I'm like, what is he talking

  292. about here? Why? Because God had come for the nation of Israel

  293. first. Why? Because those were his allotted people.

  294. The accomplishment of the cross is that Jesus reclaimed all

  295. authority that man had abdicated and gave it back to us as

  296. regents. Matthew 28 18, I love this.

  297. I love what Jesus says here. Jesus came and said to

  298. them now this is after the death, burial, and resurrection. And

  299. look at what Jesus says. What is that first quotation?

  300. All authority in heaven and

  301. on earth has been given to me.

  302. All authority in heaven on earth has been given to

  303. me. Go therefore and make disciples of

  304. all nations, baptizing them in the

  305. name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching

  306. them to observe all I have commanded you and behold I am

  307. with you always even through the end of the

  308. age. Jesus accomplished on the cross

  309. the reclamation of the authority that we had abdicated and that had

  310. been you served. And what did he do? He gave it back to us now

  311. empowered by the Holy Spirit for us to go and

  312. be regents and ambassadors of the kingdom in the earth.

  313. You gave up the authority I gave you. I'll come get it back,

  314. and I will give it back to you, but now I'm sending you

  315. with my spirit. And now the gospel is

  316. available to who? All nations

  317. that happened at the cross. I read a verse this past

  318. Thursday where Jesus said, and this used to mess me up.

  319. He said, hey, you'll do greater things than

  320. me. Have you read that passage? You'll do

  321. greater things than me, and I'm like, God is

  322. that possible Until you realize that Jesus was 1

  323. man in one place at one time

  324. and now and now he has given us

  325. the promised Holy Spirit. And now you get to be a regent at

  326. your job and you get to be at your job and you get to be

  327. where you're at on vacation and and where you go grocery shop at, and the

  328. places that you interact. And now we are doing greater things because

  329. the spirit has been multiplied and magnified and the gospel of

  330. Jesus Christ is preached to all nations.

  331. And he accomplished it at the cross. What we

  332. had given up, he took back for us.

  333. The way in which he died was one of the most brutal deaths in the

  334. history of the planet. The Romans had perfected crucifixion.

  335. They spent about 500 years perfecting their craft.

  336. Crucifixion was not just a way to die. It was a method

  337. of torture, and it was a statement to all would

  338. be opposition to Rome.

  339. Imagine we let out a service here, and we all get out, and

  340. we go down here on San Ridley and right in front of First Watch, There's

  341. 3 men hanging bleeding naked

  342. on crosses in the side of the road and a sign that

  343. says, this is what they did. Do you think you would be doing the same

  344. things to mess around and find out like that? You probably would not.

  345. Right? You would not and that was the point. That was the

  346. point. Anybody that's God come and defy

  347. the Roman rule like this, this is what'll happen to you. This

  348. is exactly what will happen to you.

  349. It was a method of torture. It was a particularly

  350. cruel and unusual form of disposing

  351. people. Disposing people,

  352. says Jeremy Ward, head of the physiology department at King's College in

  353. London. Each aspect of the death on the cross had its

  354. particular ghastliness, some less accurately depicted

  355. by artists than others, the discovery of the bones of a crucified

  356. man now in a museum in Israel point to the fact that the feet

  357. were likely not stacked on the front of the cross. In

  358. the remains, the nail goes through the heel leading to the conclusion that

  359. the crucified were more likely nailed with their ankles

  360. on either side of the cross mass. Can you

  361. imagine that? This it's not this

  362. picture we see here. Most likely, your feet are on both

  363. sides of the pillar, and there's a nail through both

  364. ankles. So so the only thing

  365. to support you is your ligaments and your tissue

  366. resting against that nail. It's not like they said, well, let's put him a

  367. little foot rest up there to stand on. No. They probably

  368. laid him down, nailed it through, and then slid it up and

  369. let it drop into place.

  370. Both sides of the mast. Both sides of the

  371. mast.

  372. Ward says some artist interpretations have been especially accurate. The

  373. classic position of the hands in paintings is that they are clenched.

  374. A neurologist suggested that the church was due to the fact that if the median

  375. nerve was struck, it would cause neuropathy,

  376. which controls the thumb and finger so they would indeed clench in a particular

  377. way as that would have been contributed to death, but it would not have been

  378. nice. As far as a nail goes through your hand,

  379. it causes nerve damage, and you can't control the

  380. way your fist will church up. So now

  381. you don't have anything to grab onto. There's there's

  382. nothing to grab onto anyway, and there's nothing to really support

  383. your weight except the nail that's through both ankles and a

  384. beam of wood. Your arms were usually positioned

  385. higher than your torso.

  386. Said that he is said to have expired after 6 hours

  387. on a Friday. In addition to the positioning of the cross, Ward says that

  388. the length of survival also depended on the health of the individual

  389. being crucified and on the severity of their treatment beforehand. They

  390. routinely whipped them and had them carry at least part of

  391. their cross to the side of the execution. I mean, we we quote this

  392. verse, and by Christ's stripes, we are healed. And we have no idea what

  393. those stripes actually were. The Romans were

  394. brutal. There were some instances that the man being

  395. crucified never made it to the cross.

  396. Never made it to the cross. They would take

  397. them and they would strip them down. They would strip them down and

  398. they would tie them to a block. And they had this

  399. crazy thing with pieces of leather hanging off of it

  400. with glass and metal or whatever that they could inflict pain

  401. with, and they

  402. whipped him. I tried to

  403. cut my 2 fingertips off the other pray.

  404. Didn't particularly like that, but if you've ever hit your finger

  405. on something or or it's like if you get hurt, now your body says, hey,

  406. touch everything with that. Right?

  407. So you imagine you get hit one

  408. time with this brutal device

  409. and it just lands wherever it lands

  410. on your back flesh bone muscle tissue

  411. ligaments anything and then the only way to get it out is for them to

  412. snatch it and everything goes flying with it and that would have

  413. been enough but they go right back to the same spot he'd been hit

  414. in. Some of these criminals hung on this

  415. cross for days and Jesus died within 6 hours. Why?

  416. Because they were killing him on the way.

  417. 39 times they hit this man

  418. over and over and over and over and

  419. over and over and over and over and over and over

  420. and over and over and over and over and over and over and

  421. over and over and over and over and over and

  422. over and over and over and over and over and

  423. over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over

  424. and over. They hit him.

  425. 39 times.

  426. And then they said, get up And they put they they put a

  427. robe on him. And if you've ever put a band aid on something

  428. that's hurt, right? They put a robe on him and then it

  429. stuck to whatever was wet, whatever tissue was there

  430. long enough where they could spit on him and and put the crown on him

  431. and humiliate him. And then when it was time to carry the cross, they snatched

  432. it off and ripped open whatever wound was there.

  433. Can you see why 9 year old me is like, God this is heavy. My

  434. sin did this. He's like, it's bigger than you.

  435. It's bigger than just that son, don't make the cross this small.

  436. I didn't do all this just to have you have a small view of the

  437. cross.

  438. Then they then they put his they were ordered to carry parts of their

  439. cross. And so he had to carry his cross and I

  440. love the way the gospels, I love the way God understands

  441. us because they brought somebody along

  442. to help him carry it. I read

  443. passages that say, pick up your cross and follow me and some

  444. days, oh my God, I can't do this. I wanna quit.

  445. Now I realize he sent somebody to help me carry it.

  446. He sent someone to help bear the burden. If he did it for his son,

  447. why wouldn't he do it for me? He did do it for

  448. me because he did it to his son. The son

  449. of the father for the son of the father.

  450. By the time they got there to the side of the execution,

  451. they were already pretty traumatized and had probably lost a

  452. major amount of blood. For some,

  453. it could be a day or more and how they were treated once installed on

  454. the cross had a significant effect as well. You have to maintain the

  455. weight of the body on the legs so that the weight of the arms isn't

  456. too much so that you can breathe properly.

  457. As he hung there, he would slowly suffocate.

  458. His body would slink down so church, and the only way to

  459. get a good breath was to pick himself back up against the

  460. nails. It's torture.

  461. It's brutal. They were making a

  462. statement and this is what the Jews asked for. Give

  463. us Barabbas

  464. They They didn't know what he would accomplish.

  465. Gradually, the exhaustion gets worse and worse, and you can't keep the weight

  466. up as warden. It is known that the guards would break the legs

  467. in order to hasten death sometimes. So was the case with those

  468. on either side of Jesus according to the gospels.

  469. Romans 5:6 says, for

    Romans 5:6

  470. while we were still weak at the right

  471. time Christ died for the ungodly. Do you think it's

  472. any coincidence that he came when he

  473. came? Pray out to me, I would say, can I be

  474. poisoned and and die in my sleep? Or it

  475. could have been an electric chair in 2019. Or it could have

  476. been a lethal injection, or he could have been killed,

  477. when they were trying to wipe out all of the babies. But instead, he comes

  478. at the point in history where the most brutal way to

  479. die is the way to die. Do you think that's coincidence? He

  480. just so happened on a Roman cross? No. He said, I'll take the most

  481. amount of pain for the most amount of time if that's

  482. what it takes. Why? Because he was the lamb who was slain before

  483. the foundation of the world. Redemption is in his

  484. nature.

  485. This is the death we should have died. This

  486. is the death we should have died. And as a matter of fact,

  487. it is the death that we died.

  488. We need to understand that we were so corrupted in our

  489. flesh. Mankind had been so corrupted

  490. in our flesh that we could not just be forgiven, we

  491. had to be crucified.

  492. We had to be crucified. Romans

    Romans 6:6–7

  493. 6:6 to 7 says, we know that our old

  494. self our old self

  495. was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be

  496. brought to nothing so that we would no longer be

  497. enslaved to sin for one who has died has

  498. been set free from sin. Galatians 2:20

    Galatians 2:20

  499. says, I have been crucified with Christ.

  500. Nevertheless, I live yet not I, but Christ lives in me. The

  501. life that I live now, I live by faith in the son of God who

  502. loved me and gave himself for me. That should be our life verse

  503. every single day of the week. I have been crucified with

  504. Christ. Literally, I died with him.

  505. Jesus did not just die for us, he died as us.

  506. He did not just die for us, he died as

  507. us. The accomplishment of the cross

  508. places us in a present future life instead of a

  509. past present reality. Our old nature has been

  510. killed and our past has been redeemed. I love

  511. I love so much that Jesus' very first miracle

  512. was turning water into wine. And you know why I love it so

  513. much? Wine takes time. Right?

  514. You don't just put the pray. I still hadn't figured out how that works, by

  515. the way. I said, I told y'all that's I God need a little

  516. bit more time. I just now realized that. I don't know how to thresh or

  517. press grapes yet, but I'll get there. Wine

  518. takes time. Am I right? There's a fermentation

  519. process, but look at what Jesus did. He gave the

  520. water a past it never had.

  521. I don't know if I'm even talking to anybody today.

  522. He gave the water a pass it never had.

  523. The the cross gives us

  524. a present future reality instead of this

  525. present past mentality that we're always walking in.

  526. We're always looking back, oh, I did this and I'm so this, and our mind

  527. is back here when we have been crucified with him. That means

  528. all that is dead too. Now, I am responsible

  529. to live a present future life. I

  530. am presently wonderful

  531. because of the cross. I love the way Graham Cook says it.

  532. I'm not everything I'm supposed to be yet, but when he

  533. died, I died.

  534. When he died, I died.

  535. Most of us has Spirit our entire lives living past,

  536. present and not present

  537. future. The work of the cross,

  538. the gospel of Jesus is not about improving your life

  539. or learning to be kind to your neighbor. The

  540. gospel is not, I used to do drugs, and now I don't.

  541. The gospel is not, I used to be mean to my wife, and

  542. now I'm kind to her. That's you can find that any

  543. other place. You can find that in other

  544. religions. You can find that at AA meetings. You can find that in a number

  545. of places in the world. And I'll and the world will tell you, you can

  546. sometimes you can even find that in yourself. You've all known

  547. people that have gotten sober or got older and and stopped being

  548. so mean and crass. That's not what the

  549. gospel is about. The gospel was about and the cross was

  550. restoring mankind back to the family of God.

  551. He restored us back into the family of

  552. God, a place we could not go

  553. before the cross. We are

  554. all of Adam, and therefore, we all have the same problem.

  555. And Jesus is the solution for the problem.

  556. Jesus said in John 14, I am

  557. the way, the truth, and the life. That phrase, I am, is the

  558. exact same phrase that he used later when he when they asked,

  559. are are you Jesus? He says, I'm him. It's the same phrase. It's

  560. in Exodus when they said, who are we gonna say send us? And God said,

  561. I am. Jesus reveals that he is God and he

  562. is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the only way to have

  563. a relationship with the father, and he did it through the means

  564. of the cross.

  565. From the beginning, all God has wanted is a

  566. family with us included in

  567. it. And everything that has happened

  568. along the way has separated us from that,

  569. separated us from that.

  570. And there have been things that have been good enough

  571. over the centuries, Atonement,

  572. sacrifices, but it was never good enough.

  573. None of it was ever good enough.

  574. So god said, I'll do it myself.

  575. Every other religion, you have to find your way to God.

  576. But in Christianity, God says, I'll find my way to you.

  577. I'll find my way to you.

  578. If the focus is healing and life change and active service,

  579. then the gospel's not any different. But when we

  580. understand that Jesus is restoring us back into the family of God, then we have

  581. a relationship with the father through the Holy Spirit. So how

  582. much more precious is the blood of Jesus

  583. when I know that I can be relieved of

  584. that overwhelming feeling I've carried my whole life

  585. and I can walk free understanding that it

  586. was bigger than that. It's so much bigger than I can

  587. understand. I'll never get it. I don't even know if I'll get it when I

  588. cross over Jordan. But for now, the cross has become

  589. even more powerful when I see exactly what Jesus has done in my

  590. place. He has given me back the authority that

  591. I abdicated. He's restored me back into a relationship with the

  592. father. He has empowered me with the Holy Spirit

  593. for spiritual warfare. And that spiritual warfare is making

  594. disciples of all nations, telling of the gospel

  595. that Jesus came and died in my pray. And when he died, I

  596. died. And now I'm restored back into relationship with the father.

  597. How precious is the blood of Jesus? Worship team, you come out, and I'll pick

  598. my jacket up. How

  599. precious is the blood of Jesus to you? How

  600. small have we made the cross?

  601. The blood of Jesus will never lose its power to love.

  602. It will never lose its power to forgive. It will never lose its power

  603. to restore. It will never lose its power to a point. It

  604. will never lose its power to redeem. It will

  605. never lose its power to redeem.

  606. It will never lose its power to transcend our thinking.

  607. It will never lose its power to accomplish everything

  608. that God has set out to do. He could have gotten to a to b,

  609. a 1000000 different ways and this is the way he chose to do it.

  610. This is the way he chose to do it.

  611. How precious is the blood? It's for this reason I

  612. shout. When y'all see me acting stupid down

  613. here.

  614. When you see me with my earbuds in singing and you don't wanna hear

  615. it. When

  616. you see me on my face. When you see me

  617. crying in that corner. When you see me praying over another brother.

  618. This is why. It's

  619. always been Jesus. It's always going to be Jesus. It's

  620. never gonna stop being Jesus. And the power of his

  621. death and the beauty of his resurrection.

  622. Forgotten the power of the cross and the work that God has accomplished.

  623. But now, in this season, in this

  624. moment, at this time in history, I repent and I

  625. look to the beauty of the cross, and I see the blood that was shed,

  626. and I understand that this is bigger than me. God

  627. is restoring all of mankind back into his family.

  628. And we when he died we died with him. And I don't have

  629. to live back here. I don't have to carry that weight.

  630. This is the reason we shout. This is the reason we celebrate.

  631. This is the reason we proclaim his death until he comes

  632. again. This is the reason why

  633. we worship. So stand with me.

  634. If you made the cross too small,

  635. this is a moment for you too As we

  636. worship our risen king. See, he's not dead anymore.

  637. He's not dead. Come on.

  638. Because if he if he just died, then what good

  639. was that? But when he rose, I rose too.

  640. So we celebrate that this morning. That

  641. he didn't die, and it was brutal and beautiful.

  642. That was horrible and holy.

  643. But when he died, we died and now we live in newness of

  644. life as sons and daughters of the risen king king, and for that reason we

  645. worship. If you need to pray with somebody this morning for any need, I'm

  646. gonna ask brothers and sisters to come down here, and you can come down here

  647. and pray. But I just I would just like for us to just worship this

  648. king. How precious is the blood?

  649. It will never lose its power and I I get to

  650. celebrate with you for all of eternity.

  651. Let's worship.