"Peter 3:18" 1 Peter 3:18 Sunday Morning Worship Service

But that gives us just this one Sunday here.

And so I thought we'd go to 1 Peter chapter 3.

1 Peter 3 · chapter mention

This is a verse that has been on my mind a lot recently.

And uh somebody came and asked me about it, wondering how it fits into the flow of 1 Peter, and I had never really thought about that before, so I spent uh some time over the last few weeks thinking about that and reading 1 Peter over and over again.

I've just kind of fallen in love with this verse.

It's 1 Peter 3 verse 18.

1 Peter 3:18

So I'm gonna read it and then we'll pray and then study it together.

1 Peter 3 verse 18.

1 Peter 3:18

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit.

Lord, we pray for your grace and your wisdom this morning.

We pray for your Holy Spirit to be at work in our hearts.

We know that apart from the work of your spirit, we are cut off from truth.

We don't have access to it.

But the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to behold wonderful things from your word.

And so we beg you, Holy Spirit, this morning to help us appreciate the work of Christ even more.

I pray for anyone here who is not a believer, who's never appropriated the work of Christ for themselves, who's never looked at Christ with the eyes of faith.

I pray this morning they would see Jesus in a new way and that they would believe.

For the rest of us, Lord, I pray, as we prepare our hearts for communion, that this verse would do just that.

Would minister to us and help us see you clearly and powerfully, and more than that, that we would become like you through what we behold in these few words.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, perhaps you've heard the old question.

If you were stuck on a deserted island, what one movie could you have with you?

Or what one person would you want with you?

Or what one book would you want with you if you had to spend the rest of your life on a deserted island?

Well, let me change the question this way.

If you were stuck on a deserted island and you were only allowed to have one Bible verse with you, what Bible verse would you choose to take?

You might think, Noah, I can learn how to build an ark.

I think 1 Peter 3.18 would be that kind of verse.

It's a verse that really contains the whole in the one.

It contains the themes of Scripture channeled to one particular verse.

You know, John 3.16 is the famous verse, but this verse belongs on bumper stickers too.

Peter 3.18, right here.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.

So many of the themes and the prophecies and the narratives of the Bible culminate, they come together, they're tied together in this verse.

It's often been said that the whole Old Testament is relentlessly pushing you forward to the cross, and the whole New Testament is kind of flowing, water flowing away from the cross as we live in it, but it certainly has its nexus here in a verse like 1 Peter 3.18, that Christ the Savior came to earth to suffer for sinners, the righteous, he, our Savior, righteous, in place of the unrighteous.

Now it's a question how this passage fits into 1 Peter.

If you think about the themes of 1 Peter, Peter is celebrating the joy of our salvation.

We are a holy people separate from sin.

Our lives are short, he says in 1 Peter.

And then in chapter 3, there's this transition towards suffering.

And then chapter 3 ends with Noah and his ark.

And so that seems to come out of nowhere.

How are we talking about the preciousness of salvation?

And Peter drops back to studying the ark, which he transitions to baptism, and then he gets back to being a steward of God's grace in chapter 4.

And as you think about the themes of 1 Peter, the answer starts to become evident.

Peter is telling you that you are going to lead a distinct life from the world.

If you're a Christian and you love the Lord, you're not going to fit in in the world.

You're going to stand out.

To use Peter's language, you're going to be a holy people, separated from the world.

Peter calls you strangers, pilgrims, aliens, exiles, sojourners.

I mean, these are all words that are not mistaken for somebody who fits in.

You know, you have this kind of vagabond look to you as you go through this world.

You're in that sense a homeless person.

You don't fit in with everybody else.

The eyes of the world are on you.

You look like you don't belong.

That's you as a Christian in this world.

And as such, it's not just that you're going to fail to fit in, but as such, you are going to be the recipient of persecution.

The world is not content to let people just not fit in if they're not fitting in for the sake of Christ, for the sake of truth, for the sake of the word of God.

And so your lack of conformity to the world will produce obstacles to happiness.

It will produce obstacles to you living the self-centered life.

The world wants to push you to conformity, but the word of God wants to push you to conformity with Christ.

The two are not compatible.

So the point of this section of 1 Peter is that the world is going to look differently at you and they're not going to appreciate you.

In fact, they're going to hate you.

You are going to suffer for living out the kind of Christian love described in chapters 1, 2, and 3 of 1 Peter, you're going to suffer.

For living out the Christian concept of marriage described in 1 Peter 3, you're going to suffer.

For understanding what holiness is and refusing to conform to the lusts and the pleasures of this world, you're going to suffer.

Now Jesus says that you should store up your child for yourself treasure in heaven.

Where moth can't get it, thieves can't destroy it, rust can't get after it.

That's where you should put your treasure.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 that you're going to be rewarded for how you live your life.

1 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

2 Corinthians chapter 5, you're going to be rewarded for how you live your life.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

And so it's right for you to think of living your Christian life in such a way that you will receive a reward.

And then you come across a verse like 1 Peter 3, 17.

It is better for you to suffer for doing right, and that's kind of a wake-up call.

You think, wait a minute, I thought I would be rewarded for doing right.

I thought if I lived out Christian ethics and Christian virtue, I would be rewarded.

I would store for myself treasure in heaven, that I would stand before the Bemis seat and be rewarded, that good things would come to me if I was obedient and righteous.

And here, 1 Peter 3, 17 says that, au contraire, you lead the righteous life, you will in fact suffer for it.

Is that a contradiction?

The answer is no.

You might suffer in this world for it, but be rewarded in the next because you don't fit in in this world.

And so your pursuit of Christian ethics and Christian virtue and Christian love, your pursuit of the Christian life, which flows from your love for Christ.

Remember, you're not leading the Christian life so that you get saved.

You're leading the Christian life because you have been saved.

You're pursuing Christ out of the overflow for what he's done for you.

Your pursuit of that Christian life is going to lead to more and more lack of conformity to the world.

And you'll suffer for it.

Peter's very well aware of this reality.

He is about to be crucified upside down.

He's coming to the end of his life.

He writes this letter towards the end of his ministry as he's preparing to die.

He's not writing this from some scholastic ivory tower.

He's writing this from the pen of someone who himself has suffered for following Christ.

And he's writing it to a congregation whom he has shepherded, whom he has pastored to prepare them to suffer for following Christ.

He wants them to understand that that is what God's design was, that you would not be conformed to this world.

Your lack of conformity would result in persecution or suffering.

And so I harp on that for a second because I think our vision gets so temporal and so cloudy by the immediate, we get so wrapped up in whatever the political issue is of the day, and we start to believe different kinds of lies about what we deserve in this world.

We, you know, say things like, you know, if our country keeps going this way, our Christian legacy is lost, and our Christian past is lost, and we're losing our Christian culture kind of thing, and Christians aren't going to fit in anymore, kind of thing.

And listen, that is a sanitized view of your past.

There has never been a culture or a time in world history where Christianity has quote unquote fit in.

You're deluding yourself, honestly.

I mean, imagine Peter writing that.

Hey, church, you better wake up or the Roman culture is going to take over this world.

He's about to be crucified upside down by the Romans.

This is the early church.

And it has never, in a broad sense, gotten better.

Nor should it.

Because your example for whole for holy living, your example for pursuing Christ is the example of Christ Himself, who did suffer for leading the righteous life.

As you pursue Christ, you will suffer.

As you pursue Christ, you won't fit in in this world.

And so he says, in verse 17, it's better to suffer for doing good.

Again, not the kind of verse you would write.

If you were writing 1 Peter, if you were Peter and you were writing this book, you would say, if you do good, you will be rewarded and you will have a happy marriage and happy kids and a promotion at work and you'll win the culture wars because you're doing all you're supposed to do.

Love Peter.

That's how you would write it.

And Peter says, No, you're gonna suffer for doing good.

And there's no avoiding that.

And it's better to suffer for doing good than it is for doing wicked, for doing bad.

You know, the government makes a law that says you can't get together for corporate worship at church.

It is better to get together for corporate worship at church and suffer and face the consequences of the law than it is to be obedient to the law at that point and not suffer.

It's better for the world to look at you worshiping together and say, oh, you, you know, super spreaders, than to say, oh, I can't do that because I don't want the world to judge me.

Contrast, it's not good for you to suffer for breaking laws to steal things, you know, for breaking laws to have a massive birthday party.

Not good to suffer in that regard.

Yes, good to suffer for following Christ.

Do you see the difference?

If you're gonna get arrested, let it be getting arrested for righteousness, not for sinfulness.

If you're gonna get in trouble, get in trouble for good.

Get in good trouble, as one might say.

Not in trouble for being immoral.

That's pretty easy to say, isn't it?

Much harder to do.

It's a very simple Christian principle until you get to the point where you actually are going to get crucified upside down, to use Peter's example here.

And that's where verse 18 comes in.

And then it'll get to Noah.

You want another example?

We'll get to Noah later.

But right now, consider Christ.

Consider Christ.

That's what I mean.

This passage contains so few words, two and a half lines in my Bible, but so rich in truth.

Consider Christ.

For Christ, Peter says, He also suffered.

Also is tying it to his appeal to you.

Christ also suffered.

Christ also lived a life differently than the world.

Christ lived the completely holy life for which he suffered.

So, congregation, Peter says, you're concerned about the direction of the world?

Consider Christ.

You're concerned about what kind of legacy you'll leave in this world?

Consider Christ.

You're concerned about, and let's get out of the political world.

You're concerned about your own personal happiness, your own family situation, your own personal fulfillment in this life.

Hey, consider Christ.

Look at Christ and know that he also suffered.

It's noteworthy that Peter calls him Christ here.

Christ is the word for Messiah, the sent one from God.

It's a very technical term in the Bible.

It's not a generic term applied to lots of saviors.

There's lots of people in the Bible called Savior.

The first is Samson is called the Savior of Israel.

Jephthah was called the Savior of Israel.

There's lots of little saviors.

It's not the word that's used here.

This is the word for Messiah, the word for the sent one from heaven.

There is a promise of a savior coming to earth.

The first time you see the word Messiah used in the Bible is actually in Daniel chapter 9 in the 70 weeks prophecy, where Daniel says the wall is going to be rebuilt, you know, seven periods of seven, then the wall will be rebuilt, then 62 periods of seven until the Savior, the Messiah, comes to Jerusalem.

Daniel 9 · chapter mention

The Jews will be a captive people, ruled by a foreign power, and after that period of time, the Savior, the Messiah, will come to them.

But then what happens in Daniel 9?

The Messiah will be cut off and sent away.

And then in the 70th week he returns and conquers.

So Jesus arrives as the Messiah, sent from God.

The Jewish expectations of the Messiah were not the cut-off part.

The Jewish expectations of the Messiah were the conquering hero part.

They wanted Elijah to come from heaven.

They wanted victory over the Romans.

They wanted a savior who would come back and put the Jewish nation back where they belonged, independent of Roman rule, independent of Greek rule, back where they belonged as God's people.

That's what they thought the Messiah would do: overthrow Rome and be celebrated as a hero and ride in on a war horse and defeat the Romans.

And instead, they get the Christ, the Savior, Jesus Christ, who comes humbly on a donkey, not a war horse, who doesn't come to have his feet washed, but comes washing feet.

He doesn't come conquering Romans.

He ends up being crucified by Rome.

That's the example.

That's the savior we have.

Remember, Peter could not get his mind around that.

Jesus asked Peter, Who do you think I am?

And Peter says, You are the Messiah.

You're the Christ.

But that's the word Messiah.

You're the Messiah, the sent one from God.

And Peter says, You're right.

And now I'm going to the cross.

And Peter says, I forbid you to do that.

Because his concept of Messiah does not fit in with the cross.

But by the time he's writing 1 Peter, it fits in.

It doesn't more than fit in.

It's the centerpiece, it's the focal point.

But consider Christ.

He also suffered once for sins.

That word suffered is a huge word.

The Savior would be sent from heaven to earth, the sent one sealed with the Spirit of God.

The Spirit descends upon Jesus at his baptism.

But his whole life is one of suffering, isn't it?

In many ways, suffering was his whole life.

He comes from heaven, where he had the unparalleled riches and glory of heaven to earth.

Takes on a human nature, a human body.

He goes from the eternal, glorious one worshipped in heaven to being confined at a localized point in time and space.

He goes from having angels worshiping him and to being to needing angels to minister to him.

I mean, this is the transition.

This is the suffering.

He's born in a human birth.

He leads a human life, raised by his mother, raised to fear the Lord, but now having to serve and be obedient to all of the law.

I mean, this is in that sense, it's his humiliation from heaven to earth.

He was rich and he became poor for our sake.

He does that so he can lead our kind of life so he can, and by leading our kind of life, I mean he can be tempted like us.

He's in our weaknesses, and the human body is weak, it is frail.

You're coming from heaven, even more so.

He did that so we could know all of our weaknesses and our afflictions.

Hebrews 4.15 says we don't have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things like we are.

Notice that Paul there connects the incarnation, the descent from heaven to earth, to Jesus being able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses.

He takes on our weaknesses, our temptations become his as he leads our kind of life.

Why would he do that kind of thing?

It's not so he could learn about what being a human is.

I mean, he's the omniscient God.

He knows what being a human is, he knows what temptation would be without experiencing it himself.

He knows those things.

Why does he do that then for that sake?

And the answer is provided in Hebrews.

He does so so that he can deal gently with us.

And again, you would think, why does he have to become a man so he can deal gently with us?

Can't God do all things?

Couldn't he deal gently with us from heaven?

Well, the rest of the verse says he can deal gently with the ignorant and the misguided.

Of course, God could deal gently with us without becoming a man.

Of course, God could deal gently with us without himself being tempted, without himself bearing, taking on our weaknesses.

It's for our sake he does those things because we're ignorant, because we're misguided, because we don't understand what it would be like to have a divine person bearing our sins and being our intercessor, unless we knew that person once walked the earth like us, unless he really knew and experienced what we were going through.

And so it's because of our own ignorance he becomes weak and he suffers.

But in all of that weakness and suffering culminating in his death, of course, he never once sins.

It says in verse 18 that he is the righteous.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous.

He alone was righteous.

He alone was righteous, born to a virgin, raised to fear God, never sinning.

Keeping God's word, as I mentioned, he subjected himself, put himself in obedience to the Levitical law, and kept it his entire life.

He never sinned.

Had he been born into a Gentile family, that would still be astonishing.

Even if he didn't have to obey the Torah.

If he was born into a Gentile family and he still had to obey the law of conscience and the law of nature, God's general revelation, to say that he was sinless in light of that would be a remarkable statement because you and I aren't.

We sin all the time.

We go against our conscience all the time.

We go against the, in the sense, the laws of nature all the time.

We lie and we steal and we do immoral actions in our hearts and with our bodies that we know are wrong, that we know are sinful all the time.

Yet Jesus didn't a single time, and then on top of that, he adds the Torah, which he fulfills completely.

He keeps every jot and tittle of the Torah absolutely perfectly, never sinning, never failing to do what it requires, never doing something that it prohibits, keeping the law perfectly.

That's why he's righteous.

Nobody else can say that.

Do you remember the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus?

This is a, you know, our culture power prioritizes all those things.

Power and authority and youth.

And here's this guy who checks all the boxes.

He's rich, he's young, and he's a ruler.

And he comes to Jesus and he asks, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus asks, Why do you call me good?

Nobody is good except God.

So Jesus denies the premise of the question.

Why do you call me good?

You're not righteous.

When he says nobody, he's talking to the rich young ruler.

You're not righteous.

You may have the good looks and the charm, but you don't have the righteousness.

No one is righteous except God.

And of course, Jesus, divine God in human flesh, completely fulfills the law.

He alone is righteous.

And because he's righteous, his sacrifice is singular.

The high priests, if you remembered, had to do sacrifices with a duality.

They would do a sacrifice first for their own sins and then for the sins of the people.

But not Jesus.

He doesn't have to have that duality in his sacrifice.

He doesn't do a sacrifice first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people.

That's why, if you look back at verse 18, it says Christ also suffered once for sins.

One time he had to suffer.

Meaning his life culminating in his death.

It was a singular event.

It's not repeated.

He's not coming back to suffer a second time.

There won't be a second Savior who dies on the cross for sins.

He doesn't He didn't have to suffer every year on Passover.

Like the Passover lamb, he was put to death every single year because he could not actually change a heart.

He could not actually take away the sins of people.

But Jesus could, because he is actually righteous, he can suffer one time.

He doesn't need to daily, like the high priest, offer up the sacrifices for his own sins and the sins of the people, because he did it once for all when he offered up himself.

And he did that because he does it as a substitute in verse 18.

The righteous for the unrighteous.

That word for is doing so much work.

Do you see it there twice?

He suffered once for sins.

Now the righteous for the unrighteous.

That is a huge critical word.

The word for there means in our place, in exchange for.

In some countries, you can even volunteer to serve a jail sentence for somebody else.

In that sense, you might think, I'm suffering for their sins.

But no, you are a sinner.

You deserve the wrath of God as well.

So you're never really suffering for somebody else's sins.

In the divine framework, from the perspective of God's justice, you always suffer for your own sins.

Even when there's a miscarriage of justice or unrighteousness in the world, or listen, there's a concept of innocent victims in the world, people who didn't, you know, in a legal sense, deserve the punishment and yet they get it.

That's certainly a reality, but we understand that everybody deserves hell.

So there is no real cosmic miscarriage of justice.

When you die, you will stand before God, and you will have to answer for why you can go to heaven.

Why would you be allowed in?

And the answer cannot be because I suffered unjustly in this world.

Because this world was really hard.

I mean, that's the answer of some Eastern religions.

You had a bad life here, you get a better life next.

No.

What will you say when you stand before God for judgment?

You know, people have very low standards, don't they?

Most people believe in heaven and hell.

They believe when they die, there's good people who go to heaven and bad people go to hell.

I've even had people tell me they don't believe in God, but they believe in heaven and hell.

I don't know exactly.

Do you believe in God?

No.

What happens to you when you die?

I'll go to heaven.

Let's consult the tape and see what you said ten seconds ago.

You know, I mean if you push back, you know, how who determines who goes to heaven or hell?

Well, I guess God.

You know, so it's a God that does not exist except for determining who goes to heaven and hell.

It's a very low standard for God, right?

That's a God who does nothing at all, has no influence in this world at all, except when I die determines who goes to heaven and hell.

How will he do so?

Well, based upon, you know, I led a good life.

God will know I tried my hardest and I'm a pretty good person.

Which is ultimately not an answer that makes a lot of sense if you chase it down.

I mean, everybody would say I did my hardest.

I mean, that's that's what's on trial, though.

It's like a student going to his professor and saying, I can't believe you gave me a D in class.

I tried my hardest, all that I know, but all that I know equals a D.

My best effort is a D.

So how dare you give me the D?

But people take that approach to God.

I did as best I could.

Yes, I sinned all the time, but I tried my hardest.

Did you sin all the time?

Yes.

That's my hardest.

I mean, that's the problem.

So Christ here, your hope then is in verse 18 that Christ suffers the righteous for the unrighteous.

That you can't stand before God on your own.

So instead, Jesus takes your sins from you and suffers in your place, so that when you stand before God, you're standing before him in Christ.

So you have his righteousness.

And God's wrath toward your sin has been paid.

That's the point of the substitution in verse 18.

The righteous for the unrighteous, so that he can bring us to God, that he might bring us to God, is the next phrase in verse 18.

That's the point of all this.

The plan, God's divine plan to bring, God's divine plan is not to help you do the best life you can and then see how it turns out.

His divine plan is to actually bring you to heaven.

And that plan works through Jesus Christ coming to earth and you going to heaven in him.

That's how this works.

An angel cannot bring you to God.

Angels don't come down to earth and, you know, angel nap people and bring them to heaven.

Angels cannot bring you to God.

You might have a friend who invites you to church and challenges you to read your Bible and asks you kind of accountability kind of questions, but your friends cannot bring you to God.

He can point you to the gospel and encourage you to look towards God, but your friend cannot hold your hand and bring you to God.

When you stand before God, you cannot say, I should be allowed to go to heaven because my friend brought me here.

A husband cannot bring his wife to God, and a wife cannot bring his husband to God.

You can a husband can wash his wife with the water of the word and sanctify her and strive to present her before God, but he cannot bring her before God.

A wife through faithfulness and godliness can sanctify her husband, 1 Corinthians 7 says, but she cannot bring him to God.

Parents cannot bring their children to God.

They can show their children the way to God, they can mark it out for them, they can point them that way, they can pray for them, they can plead with them, but they cannot hold their hands and bring them to heaven.

A pastor can beg people to turn to the Lord, can show them the way through the scripture to get to God, and can plead with them, but he cannot take you to heaven.

Nobody can bring you to heaven except Christ.

And that's what verse 18 says, that the righteous would suffer for the unrighteous, that he, the Christ, the Savior, the Messiah, might bring us to God.

That's the way there.

And he did this because he was put to death in the flesh.

Remember, Jesus is an eternal being.

He is God, the eternal Son of God, and yet he takes on human flesh.

He takes on a human nature.

God doesn't have flesh.

Jesus did not have a body before he became a man.

But he takes on flesh at the incarnation.

Because he takes on human nature.

Two natures, divine and human, one person, Jesus Christ.

And the man Jesus Christ suffers for sin.

The man Jesus Christ lives his life and then is crucified on the cross.

And he's put to death in the flesh.

And people say, did God die on the cross?

God did not die on the cross.

Jesus Christ, who is the divine person in human flesh, dies on the cross.

But notice Peter's language here, how he says he's very careful now.

He says it.

Peter has good theology.

He suffered and died in the flesh.

Then what does that mean?

It means Jesus was put to death on the cross.

Suffered?

Yeah, he was dragged to the streets by the Romans.

Six in the morning, this started.

He was handed over to the Romans, six in the morning.

A legion, I read it earlier in Mark 15, a legion of soldiers drags him around the streets, 6 a.m.

through the streets of Jerusalem.

Streets of Jerusalem are tiny, they're narrow.

A legion is a lot of soldiers.

It's Passover.

People are camped out everywhere.

It's the Friday of Passover.

The streets would be crowded even at 6 a.m.

The city is starting to come out to life.

It's not only the Passover, but it's of course the Sabbath.

On Friday, Jerusalem wakes up earlier on Fridays than a normal day anyway, because they shut down earlier.

Even more extreme because it's the Passover.

So a massive battalion of soldiers dragging Jesus to the streets at 6 in the morning is going to be noticed.

Jesus is the one who's been teaching all week in the temple.

They all know who he is.

He's been on the steps of the temple Monday through Wednesday here.

They know who he is.

Now they see him surrounded by Romans, being abused.

Remember, they robed him in purple.

They put a crown of thorns on his head.

They mock him.

They're all bowing in homage.

I mean, how humiliating is this for the Jews?

A Roman legion of soldiers taking a knee before Jesus, robed in purple, pretending that he's a king or he's the Jewish king and all that, as they beat him and mock him, lead him through the streets, whip him.

At 9 a.m.

they crucify him.

They put him on the cross by 9 a.m.

He suffers there for three hours with a crowd that includes both Jews and Gentiles.

It specifically says the Pharisees, the scribes, the chief priests, they were all out there mocking him, saying, hey, get down from the cross if you really are the Savior.

I mean, their conscience is convicting them for the night before.

Three different trials before the Jews.

All three of them were total scams.

They knew that.

Now the very people who voted to condemn him are out there saying, If you really are the savior, now's your chance.

Get on down.

The thieves next to him mocking him in the same way.

Take yourself off the cross, Jesus.

The crowd wagging their tongues at them is the language used, a reference to Psalm 23, or Psalm 22, wagging their tongues at him, mocking him.

After all that, at noon it becomes dark.

The sun hides its face, turns its face away, as if it can't bear to watch the injustice that's taking place.

The graves open, there's resurrections take place.

The veil in the temple is torn, the crowd scatters.

You've never seen anything like this before.

The mockers are gone.

At the end of which, three o'clock, he calls out Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sawatani, my God, my God, why for your sake me?

Remember what the crowd thought?

They were expecting the Messiah not to be like this.

They were expecting Elijah.

They thought he was calling for Elijah.

Someone gives him sour wine, and then he gives up his breath, breathes his last, dies.

That's a death in the flesh.

That's what that means.

The Roman guards come out.

After that, probably 5 p.m.

or so.

They want his body down before the Passover begins, before the Sabbath begins.

They're going to break his legs so that he can no longer breathe.

They have to do that to the two thieves.

They find that his legs don't need to be broken.

He's already dead.

They can't believe it.

They pierce his side with a spear.

Blood comes out, water comes out, showing you that he had died of death of his asphyxiation.

His lungs had filled with fluid as he was no longer able to breathe.

Water, of course, forming around the heart as it's unable to provide the blood flow necessary for life.

So his chest cavity and his heart, his lungs fill with water.

They pour out the blood that is pooling in his dead body now, pours out.

I mean, this is demonstrating he really did die a death.

This is not figurative, it's not metaphorical, it's not he kind of died.

No, he died a death.

Blood and water pour out of him at the cross.

That's what it means he died in the flesh.

The whole time, by the way, he was silent.

He never complains.

We howl at the slightest injustice, don't we, in our life?

We get a photo ticket that we deserve, and we cry and whine.

Our neighbors lie about us, we complain.

Our kids don't treat us like we deserve, we complain.

Our parents don't treat us like we deserve, we complain.

Injustice everywhere in this world.

And we complain about all of it.

The most remarkable thing about Jesus' death from Pilate's perspective was that he was silent the whole time.

You remember Mark even brings out in Mark 15 that Pilate was watching Jesus and do all this, and it says Jesus didn't open his mouth, and Pilate was amazed at that fact.

He's never seen somebody suffer to that extreme.

Pilate knew it was injust too.

Remember, twice before Pilate, Pilate declared him innocent and then let someone suffer like this.

Pilate knows he's innocent and cannot understand how somebody could suffer silently like that.

It's the prophecy from Isaiah, like a lamb led to the slaughter is silent.

Jesus understood what was happening.

It was his divine justice.

There was no spot or blemish in him, but it pleased the Father to crush him because the Father had placed on him the sins of all who would ever believe.

And so he suffers for all of our sins.

Every sin that you would ever commit.

If you come to faith in Christ, listen, every sin you have ever committed or will ever commit was already paid for by Jesus.

And he did so knowingly.

Many years ago, my wife and I went to a restaurant for date night, and this couple that had made the reservation for us.

We'd never heard of the place.

We went there in an after dinner, they bring us the check and they say, Oh, don't worry, the person who made the reservation for you already paid for the meal.

And we're like, whoa.

Could have ordered differently.

Do you understand that Jesus, when he died, didn't do so in ignorance to what you would do?

Like he didn't pay for your sins not knowing what they would be.

And then he gets to check in his surprise, like, oh, this person sinned in that way?

I cannot believe it.

He knew before you were born, he knew all of your sins.

Including the sins of unbelief, by the way.

The years you spent running away from Christ, the years you spent in vanity and pride running from him, that sin was paid for at the cross.

The sins of rejecting Christ paid for at the cross.

So there's no wrath left for God to judge you.

Because it was all poured out on Christ.

That's what it means, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

I mean he died in the flesh.

He was made alive again, though, the verse ends, by the Spirit.

Of course, when he died, his spirit descends to Sheol, where the death, where the spirits of all the dead in the Old Testament age went.

This is described in verse 19.

He went down to Sheol, where he proclaimed to the spirits in prison.

But we're not even talking about that.

Forget that his spirit descended to Sheol and will rise again.

We're talking about the Holy Spirit bringing his physical body back to life in three days.

He did come down from the cross, amen.

He did come down from the cross and he did resurrect from the grave, giving life to all those who would believe.

That's what it means.

He was made alive in the Spirit.

Everybody wanted him off that cross.

Pilate tried to avoid it.

Herod said he didn't deserve it.

The devil tried to tempt him away from it.

Peter forbid it.

The crowd challenged him to get him off the cross.

The thief said, If you're the Savior, you get down off the cross.

The centurion wanted him off the cross.

Everybody wanted him off the cross.

That's the astonishing thing.

The whole narrative of the Bible is one prophecy after another about the cross.

And when it comes time for it, everybody's trying to stop it.

But Jesus didn't listen to any of them.

He stayed on the cross until he could declare it is finished.

Baffling the Jews.

They wanted a conquering king.

Baffling Peter.

Of course, Pilate not knowing what's happening.

So the question comes to what about you?

When you look at Christ in the cross, I mean what what are you expecting to see there?

Who died on the cross?

Some deluded false teacher, some Jew from backwater Galilee 2,000 years ago, an insignificant death, one of tens of thousands, if not hundred thousand people crucified by the Roman Empire, who cares?

Is that what you see at the cross?

Because if that's what you see, there is no way for you to get to God.

When you look at the cross, do you see the spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?

The glorious Son of heaven who came to earth, who led a completely righteous life, sinless in every way, innocent in every way, and yet made alive by the Holy Spirit.

I mean, why was this the plan of God?

The Bible lets you know, Philippians 3.10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and be conformed to him in his death.

That's Paul's prayer in Philippians 3.

I want to die like Jesus died, which is a horrible thing to say unless he was also resurrected.

You connect your life to Jesus' life, you connect your death to his death, and you connect your resurrection to his.

Romans 8, verse 11.

Romans 8:11

And the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you.

He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit that dwells in you.

I said this has been the theme of all of Scripture.

From Adam, when Adam sinned, God says, I'll provide a savior.

Abraham has a son bound with cords.

And his son says, Where's the ram?

And Abraham says, God will provide the ram.

Moses on the mountain leading the Israelites into the wilderness, the voice of God comes through Moses and says, There's going to be a prophet after Moses, greater than Moses.

Listen to him.

God did David, says one of your descendants will be the true Messiah, and yet he will be disciplined for his own sin, meaning he'll take our sin on himself.

Isaiah says that God himself will become a man, that he will not share his glory with another, that he will take our sins, and that he will be cursed for our afflictions.

He will be beat, and by his stripes we will be healed.

It pleased Yahweh to crush him.

This is the theme of Scripture, and this is what happens on that day, two thousand years ago, so that Peter can just simply say, Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God.

Jesus did come down from the cross, made alive in the Spirit, resurrected from the grave.

This is our only hope for salvation.

Lord, we're grateful for the message of the gospel that there is hope that we can stand before you because we stand in you.

That through our faith in Christ, we are brought to God with Him, by Him, in Him, through Him, we are connected to Him.

He is our righteousness.

His perfect life becomes ours.

His substitutionary death becomes our death.

Your wrath poured out on him is really wrath that was aimed for us.

We won't taste a drop of it because he drank it all.

Pray for anyone here today that has never put their faith in you.

I pray today they would look at the cross and see.

Not some random person crucified there, but today they would look at the cross and see their only hope for salvation.

The one who loved them enough to die for them.

The Son of Heaven, he is our hope.

We're grateful for that.

In the name of Christ we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.