For Us | Suffered For Us (April 9 2017) - Mike Armstrong

Well hey, why don't you grab your Bibles right now and uh get them open to the Gospel of Luke.

The Gospel of Luke.

We're gonna be in uh in chapter 23 and uh 24 uh over the next uh couple of services.

Uh so we're putting a bit of a halt here on our uh God in the mess Joseph series, and we'll get back to the very last and final message uh after Easter.

Um but hey, uh I got a question for the guys here.

Guys, have you uh have you been struck this winter with the dreaded man cold?

Anyone been struck with that?

Anyone been hit with that?

I'll be honest with you.

Uh personally, I'd rather have the flu, right?

Like I I hate colds, right?

I hate them.

I I would rather just be like really, really sick for a short amount of time.

Like, you know, you have the flu for like 24 hours, maybe 48 hours, something like that, and then you recover and you're you're pretty much good.

But but the cold, right, you've got that, it feels like it drags on forever.

Some people have you know cold for weeks and weeks and weeks, and then it goes away, and then like three days later, you know, you've you've got it back again, and and uh it's it's it's brutal.

Right?

I can't stand having a cold for sure.

Now, it's funny, right?

Because guys act like there is no suffering worse than getting a cold.

Right?

Guys, guys act that way for sure, and all the wives are kind of laughing and uh rolling all uh rolling their eyes.

Okay, now you know, wives, I think, our wives on one hand, they would agree with us uh that it is suffering for them, right?

And our wives, you know, our wives are like, you know, why don't you yeah, just take four days off of work, you know, just curl up in bed and and uh you know, I'll take care of the kids, I'll do everything, I'll be the breadwinner while you recoup and recover.

You know, go ahead, spend that mortgage payment on cold medicine, right?

And this is this is how we act.

And it's uh you know, it's kind of ridiculous because obviously, obviously, there are far worse ways uh that we can suffer in this life, right?

There are far worse ways for sure.

Well, today, okay, we're beginning our our Easter series.

We're gonna begin our Easter series, which runs through, basically it's kind of a mini-series.

It's running from now till kind of the end of next weekend, right?

So Good Friday, which is coming up, of course, uh towards the end of this week, and then uh Easter Sunday uh as well.

And so this series is simply called For Us.

Okay, for us, where we'll be focusing on what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross uh through his death and then his resurrection uh three days later.

Now, this morning what we're gonna be doing is sort of like preparing our hearts for what we will be focusing on next week.

Right?

So we're kind of like priming the pump, uh, so to speak, and uh and looking at uh what Jesus has done.

Now, what did what did he do?

What are we gonna look at today?

Well, we're gonna be looking at how Jesus suffered.

Right?

We're we're kind of joking about suffering, the man cold and all of that, and I think we probably hopefully we understand that you know we're not all that serious about that.

Uh, but Jesus very much did uh suffer uh and it was awful.

So we're gonna be looking at the moments kind of leading up to his his death.

All right, we're gonna be looking at the crucifixion and focusing in on that and and looking at that and what it means for you and I, for us.

All right, so let's read this.

Hopefully you're there.

Uh Luke chapter 23.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

We're gonna be starting in verse 26.

All right, so get over to that, flip the page if you need to.

All right, here we go.

It says, And as they led him away, talking about Jesus, as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus.

And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who are mourning and lamenting for him.

But turning to them, Jesus said, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

For behold, the days are coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore, and the breast that never nursed.

Then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, cover us.

For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?

Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him.

And when they came to the place that is called the skull, there they were cruci they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on his left.

And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

And they cast lots to divide his garments, and the people stood by watching, but the ruler scoffed at him, saying, He saved others.

Let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the chosen one.

The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

There's also an inscription over him.

This is the king of the Jews.

One of the criminals who was hanged railed at him, saying, Are you not the Christ?

Save yourself and us.

But the other rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God since you were under the same sentence of condemnation?

And we indeed justly, for we are receiving due reward for our deeds.

But this man has done nothing wrong.

And he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

And he said to him, Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Let's pray.

Lord, it is a joy to be able to gather and to focus on the greatest story in human history, that is the cross.

And we know that we will get to all the good stuff next Sunday and we will celebrate and we will rejoice and we will sing.

But Lord, in order for that to have an impact, Lord, in order for us to appreciate all of that, we need to see what led up to that.

And so, God, I pray that we would come away with a very real understanding of what you went through to pay the price for our sins.

Lord, it was horrific.

It was awful.

Lord, we want to thank you.

We want to praise you.

Lord, we we know that our words fall so short of all that, the sacrifice of your son on the cross for us.

And so, God, as we look at this, stir up in us, Lord, where we have been stale, where we have not cared about you and your ways.

Lord, give us new joy, reorient our minds, our thinking, our hearts, our actions, our attitudes, all of it.

Lord, would we be quick to repent and confess our sin, Lord, and invite you to continue to work in us, Lord.

Would you do this?

Lord, I pray for salvation today.

Lord, I pray that those who do not know Jesus personally would turn from their sin, from the rebellion, see it clearly, see the love of Jesus towards them.

Lord, do that today, we pray.

Lord, we thank you for your word, how it is clear, how it guides us, how it changes us.

Lord, do that today, we pray.

We recognize we can't do anything on our own at the end of the day to change our hearts, or that is you that does it.

Lord, we invite you here into this place.

Move powerfully, we pray.

In Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right.

Now, you know, as we kind of join this story here, we have to understand uh that we are really kind of dropping into the middle of a pretty intense situation.

Right?

It was intense.

It was an intense religious and uh political um, again, situation, I think, really describes it best here.

All right, well, first of all, you need to know this.

You know that Jesus, his life and his ministry, if you're not aware of this, it caused quite a stir.

Right?

Do you know that?

Do you know that?

It caused caused quite a stir.

First of all, there were a ton of people that loved Jesus.

Right?

They loved him.

They thought he was the greatest thing ever.

They loved and adored him because you know he performed miracles, right?

He healed the sick, he raised the dead.

He did amazing things uh in the lives of people.

They loved him because he was an incredible teacher.

And he taught them with such clarity, so so full of the spirit, helping them understand things about God that they had never considered before and never understood uh properly.

Right?

Jesus loved people.

He loved the marginalized, he loved the outcast of society, and that those were the people who were kind of lowly in spirit and humble, who were who came to him and loved him deeply.

And we have to understand this that ultimately, through all of this, through his earthly ministry, he claimed very explicitly that he was God's son.

He was the son of God, he was the Messiah.

All right, so some people loved him, many did, but as much as some did, uh, even more hated him.

Even more hated Jesus.

Right?

His ministry made him uh some very powerful enemies, at least powerful in kind of like the earthly sense, not powerful uh in terms of comparing it to God or anything like that.

Um, but they made him made him some powerful enemies among the religious elite of his day.

All right, so the Jewish uh religious leaders, kind of the the religious leaders of Israel who were God's people, all right, they despised him.

They despised him because he threatened them, right?

He threatened their power by constantly, you know, pointing out their their hypocrisy.

He was pointing out their their legalism, their cold hearts.

He was pointing out their corruption.

He did this over and over again.

So they listen, they wanted him gone, they wanted him out.

And so what did they do?

They organized this plot, right?

They organized this plot to have him arrested and have him killed.

And so you might remember the gospel story.

Some of you are very familiar with it, and you know that uh that these these religious leaders used one of Jesus' own.

They used Judas, right?

Judas to betray Jesus and to hand him over to the uh religious authorities.

And so he was he was taken captive, he was beaten miserably.

We're gonna talk about that in a second.

He was mocked, he was put through a sham of a trial, right?

None of that was fair uh whatsoever.

And ultimately all of it led to his arrest warrant or his death warrant, I should say, even though no one, listen, no one could find a legitimate reason to actually put him to death.

And so in the end, his his death sentence, it was really a political move by the Roman authorities to appease the Jewish leaders' kind of angry mob tactics.

And so they were like, you know, we don't want to, you know, we don't want an uprising, we don't want a revolt of the Jews that are in this city.

And so at the end of the day, after much discussion, they were just like, all right, fine, you can have Jesus and do whatever you want with him.

And so, because of this horrific, horrific treatment, Jesus suffered greatly.

He suffered greatly.

And what he went through should really, if you think about it, cut us to the core.

It really should.

And that's the first thing here this morning, if you see that in your notes.

All right, so let's look at this here uh from God's word.

Take a look at verse 26 as we kind of unpack this and go through it.

It says this, as they led him astray, so they're leading Jesus astray, well, astray from from where?

Right again, we're dropping into the middle of a story here.

Well, they're leading him away, okay, from not astray, away from uh from his sham trial, from from Pilate and Herod, and they were going back and forth, and what do you think we should do with him?

Well, I can't see any reason why he should be convicted, so back to Pilate he goes, and Pilate's like, I want to wash my you know hands of the whole situation, so finally, you know, I'll give you over and you can do whatever you want with him.

That's what they said to the Jewish leaders.

So they're leading him away from Pilate now, and now they're just like, we get to do whatever we want now with him.

And so he's he's leaving that trial, and it says here that they they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus.

Okay, so listen, he'd been flogged.

Looks one pack that in a second.

He had been he had been beaten so badly already that he he literally did not have the strength anymore physically to carry this plank of wood that they had put on him that he would ultimately carry up to the place where they would hang him on it.

He didn't he didn't have any more strength, he had no more energy, he'd gone through so much, it's like all through the middle of the night, too.

He didn't have any sleep through any of this.

And so they like, they grabbed this Simon guy, right?

Just out of the crowd, they're like, you, right, you look good.

You come come, grab this cross, carry this up, and uh, and we're gonna crucify him.

Okay, take a look at verse 27.

And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who were mourning and lamenting for him.

And so what you have here is you have this crowd of people, you know, these, you know, in many ways, Jews, right?

A lot of them who were just kind of like, you know, there's this mob that wanted to make sure that this was all carried out.

Some of them, I'm sure, just wanted to see what would happen and observe this, right?

So you've got this mob, and then of course you have a group of women here, these women who obviously knew Jesus personally, and some of the other gospels tell us that uh his own mother was there, right, and Mary Magdalene was there, right?

And you've got these women, they were, I mean, what was their reaction?

Distress! They were distressed over you know what they were witnessing and the treatment that Jesus was suffering.

Now, I'm not sure if you're aware of the horrors of crucifixion, right?

Has anyone ever explained that to you?

Have you ever looked into uh just how awful uh it really is?

But um, being crucified, it was considered back in this day the worst way to die.

Okay, the worst way to die.

So painful, so long and drawn out it was, and it was a death reserved really only for the worst criminals.

Right?

So there was nothing merciful about any of this.

They wanted Jesus to go through the ringer here, and they wanted it to be severe, and it was.

And so what it often started with, and this was absolutely true for Jesus, this is what happened to him.

They actually spent some time flogging him first.

Okay, so they would have had his hands tied around a post, most likely, and they would have whipped him.

But more than just like sometimes what we think is like the Indiana Jones whip, it's like a leather whip.

Well, no, this was a lot more severe, a lot more intense than that.

And they would actually tie like bone fragments and metal and glass to the multiple ends of this whip, and what they would do is they would beat him over and over again, and that whip would actually wrap around his torso, and they would pull out, and it would actually rip chunks of flesh out, it was awful, and it would often leave organs exposed.

And so many times people actually die from this, they wouldn't even get to the crucifixion part.

And so just imagine Jesus is going through this.

We know from other accounts of the gospel that they have that like this crown of thorns that they jammed down uh into his skull, and so he was being flogged, he was being mocked, right?

They were hurling insults at him constantly, just verbal abuse, and just ripping into him and mocking him.

We're gonna see more of that, right?

We also know that in many cases they were stripped of all of their clothing, and so this was happening.

They were they were naked, and and this would have been the case for him.

And so, what are they trying to do?

They're trying to strip him of all dignity.

And this is such a public spectacle, and everyone is watching and jeering and laughing and mocking and and awful.

And so, if they made it that far, past the flogging, they would lead them to the place where they would put them up on the cross.

And of course, we know that he had nails driven through his hands, or in some cases they would drive it through the wrists, nails driven through the feet to hold them on the cross.

They would be hoisted up on that.

And it was, again, painful, painful, painful.

And you might be wondering, well, how how exactly do you die in that sense?

Well, it could happen kind of one, mainly one of three ways.

Sometimes, if it was a really hot day, so just imagine baking in the sun through all of that, and you would be so uh dehydrated with the loss of sweat and the loss of blood from the flogging and all of that, sometimes they would just get dehydrated and die that way.

If the weather was cold, it was freezing, and remember, they've got no clothes on as this is happening.

They would sometimes die of hypothermia.

But in many cases, and in a lot of instances, what would happen is they would die from asphyxiation.

Because what would happen as they were on the cross, they would slump down, which would put a lot of pressure and stress and weight on the diaphragm, and all the muscles around that would weaken, and so they would lose the ability to breathe, and so they would push themselves up on the nail just to catch a breath.

Can you imagine the agony of this?

And then they would go back down, and oftentimes they would just suffocate.

And sometimes to speed the process up, if they didn't want to drag it out over the course of however long they had, they would just, the soldiers would just break their legs that they could not push up again.

Right?

So this should be, you know, painting for us a picture of the misery of the of the suffering that Jesus went through here, right?

Awful and terrible.

It was a long and painful death, sometimes lasting up to days.

Just days on the cross, going on and on and on.

It wasn't like 10 minutes, it wasn't 15 minutes.

Okay, in fact, it's you know, we get the word excruciating from the word crucifixion.

So that kind of tells it, tells it all right there.

Now, we're gonna focus more on his actual death on Good Friday, of course.

Okay, but when you, you know, you kind of put yourself at the scene, I would encourage you to even close your eyes right here in this minute and just try to imagine just kind of the sights and and the sounds and the kind of the heaviness of that moment, the intensity of all of that and and and seeing everything that was happening.

I mean, it's not too hard when you really think about it to imagine and and have the same response and reaction as these women.

Right?

All of it, when we think about it, should cut us to the core absolutely.

And not just because it was so horrific, but because what he went through was for us.

Right?

He went through that for you.

He did it in your place.

He suffered what you and I deserved to suffer.

And we deserved it because of our sin.

Now, the Easter season is so good for us, not just because we get to celebrate and sing passionate and joyful songs, which is awesome.

I can't wait for that.

That's happening a week from today.

Okay, but it's also good because it gives us the chance now to give just a really hard look at the text here and really immerse ourselves in it and understand everything that Jesus went through on our behalf.

Right?

Not just giving it a you know a passing glance with without feeling the weight of it.

Okay, not that, not just a you know, a surfacey description of the crucifixion that you know that lacks punch and and and is easy on the emotions and all of that.

No.

No, facing the facts that our sin put him there.

Our sin caused his torture and his suffering.

The raw, uncut misery of our Savior, what he went through, that was that's on us.

You know, and oh that our that our reaction would be would be, Lord, Lord, allow me to feel the immensity of this.

Allow me to absorb this and and be moved in a way where where I can worship you and I can praise you and just and just thank you for the sacrifice of your son.

That we would be emotionally stirred.

Not emotionalism, right?

Not just a bunch of feelings for the sake of feelings, not not fake, not overly dramatic, not that kind of things, but but hearts, again, legitimately stirred up by this, by the impact of what Christ suffered.

And listen, as I've said before, today is kind of a primer, right?

We're priming the pump to get ourselves ready for next weekend, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

And I would really challenge you and encourage you this week, I'm not sure what your personal time with the Lord looks like.

Maybe you're you know reading through a book, or maybe it's been a while and you haven't read much of anything.

You haven't spent time with the Lord.

I would encourage you to spend time in the Gospels this week going over the Easter story and praying, Lord, Lord, fire my heart up again about what you have accomplished and what you have done for me.

Lord, allow me to feel a sense of this.

I would encourage you to do that as you study through these chapters.

Okay, second thing.

Jesus suffered for us and warns us that we'll be held accountable for what we've done.

We'll be held accountable for what we've done.

Verse 28, take a look.

He says, But turning to them, Jesus said, Okay, so he's talking to the women now, he says, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

For behold, the days are coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.

Then they will say they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, cover us.

For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?

Now, first of all, what you might notice.

Here is there's like zero self-pity in Jesus whatsoever.

Right?

He's not like, yeah, you're right, you should be mourning for me and all of that.

No, he he's like, he's like, you should you should think about yourselves and and what you are gonna be going through here if if you're not careful.

He's like, don't weep for me, weep for yourselves and for your children.

And when he talks to you know the daughters of Jerusalem there, yeah, he's talking specifically to these women who are coming and lamenting and mourning and all of that.

But the original hearers, when they would have, when they would have passed this story around, the early church, the hearers would have understood that Jesus is addressing the nation of Israel as a whole through this.

So he's addressing his people.

Okay, and then there's the wishing that you never had children and wanting the mountains to fall on them.

Hey, what's that about?

Well, he's pointing to hard days ahead.

It's like hard days are coming.

You know, and we know, if you know your church history, we know that ultimately at AD 70, so in the year 70, Jerusalem would fall and the temple would fall.

And so he's pointing, I'm sure, to some of that.

It would be the judgment of the Lord on the Israelite nation.

And so he's getting them to look ahead to that.

And ultimately he's trying to try to stir their hearts up to repentance.

But then what is he talking about?

He all of a sudden kind of talks about green wood and drywood, doesn't he?

Again, what's what's all that?

Well, what he's doing is he's comparing himself to the green wood, a living tree, and his executioners are the drywood.

And again, he's talking about he's talking about Israel.

He's like, if this is what happens to a green tree, a living tree, the savior who has done nothing wrong, who is sinless and blameless, imagine what is going to happen to the dead tree.

Imagine what's gonna happen to those who actually deserve judgment.

I mean, pretty, pretty solemn his words here.

What he's saying here is that at the end of the day, Israel, listen, you're gonna be held accountable for everything that's happening here.

You're gonna be held accountable for it.

Now, make no mistake for us here.

We're all gonna be held accountable.

We're all gonna be held accountable for for what we have done in this life.

All of the sin, all of the rebellion, all of that, at some point we will have to answer for.

We will have to stand before God and give an account for how we lived our lives and all the sin.

Now, and you need to listen to this.

The glorious news of the gospel for those who have put their faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, those who are trusting in Him for salvation, is that you can rest assured.

Why?

You can rest assured and secure because you can know that Christ suffered this judgment in your place.

He suffered it for you.

That deserves an amen.

Right?

That that should fire us up, that should get us excited.

We should be so deeply thankful.

The fact that that all of that judgment that Jesus is talking about here for Christ followers, we won't have to face it.

Because what's gonna happen is we are going to, at the end of our life, we are gonna stand before God.

After our final breath here, we're gonna stand before him, and he's gonna say, Why should I let you into heaven?

And what are we gonna do as Christ followers?

We're gonna point to Christ.

We're gonna say, Because I have trusted in his work, I have trusted in what he has done.

He suffered your wrath, your judgment, so that I don't have to.

And then we're gonna be let in, and it's gonna be amazing.

Okay, but listen, listen, if you don't know Jesus Christ as Lord, let me warn you, as Jesus is doing here with his people, that it will be nothing but judgment.

It will be nothing but but judgment, wrath and fury to the highest degree.

That's what awaits those who do not know Christ, those who are still responsible for their sins.

Why?

Because you can't pay for your sins.

Do you really want to stand before God and say, well, well, Lord, I also did some good things, and I think that my good deeds have kind of outweighed my bad deeds.

Let me say this very clearly to you.

That is not how it works.

It's not.

Our sin thoroughly corrupts us.

Even if somehow you manage to live your life doing one, the way we would call it, teeny tiny like white lie or something, that would be enough to thoroughly destroy you spiritually.

Right?

And you are you are now accountable for all of your sin, and you can't pay for it.

You've got you've got nothing to offer.

And the Bible makes it really clear that the judgment that will be coming at you in that day is a place called hell.

It's a place called hell.

It's eternal destruction, it's eternal suffering, it's eternal separation from the God that loves you forever.

Now, there is good news coming.

Okay, I'm not gonna leave you hanging there, right?

All of that is happening.

We're gonna get to it.

But listen, we need to feel the weight of that.

Right?

The church these days doesn't like talking about this, right?

And we would rather just kind of minimize sin and just talk about what Jesus Christ did, and you know, we don't feel the weight of it, and then what it translates into is very shallow Christianity.

And we so we need to be very careful to look at this and again absorb the weight of everything that Christ has done.

We're gonna be held accountable.

So are you gonna stand before God and and and basically say, All right, well, you know, I guess I'll answer for my sin.

Are you gonna allow Jesus to do that?

Okay, it's because he has done it on the cross for you.

Okay, third thing.

Jesus suffered for us, and despite our ignorance and disdain, he forgives us.

All right, now we're getting into the good news.

All right, verse 32, what's it say?

It says, Two others who were criminals were led away to be put to death with him, and when they came to the place that is called the skull, there they crucified him.

And the criminals, one on his right and one on his left, were crucified.

And then listen to this.

Jesus says to them, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Wow.

Wow.

Now you might be thinking, well, well, hold on a second.

They didn't exactly get to the place that is called the skull by accident.

What do you mean that he didn't, they didn't know what they were doing?

Well, yeah, they they meant to kill him, but what this is saying here is that they didn't really realize at the end of the day that they were sacrificing, that they were killing and crucifying God.

They didn't really get it.

They didn't understand that they were actually playing into God's plan to have Jesus die for death once and for all, so that sin could be atoned for, so that God's wrath and his fury could be satisfied in what Jesus did on the cross instead of in us.

Right?

They didn't really get it.

And Jesus knows this and he sees their ignorance and he totally gets it because he is God.

And he says, Lord, Lord, Father, forgive them, forgive them.

They don't really know what they're doing.

Keep going.

It says, and they caught uh they cast lots to divide his garments, and the people stood by watching.

Okay, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, He saved others, let him save himself.

If he is the Christ of God, his chosen one.

You can kind of feel the venom on their lips there.

It's just dripping.

Right?

The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine.

Now, sometimes we kind of look at that and we're like, oh, they had mercy on him.

That's so kind of them.

They weren't.

They weren't having any mercy on him at all.

They wanted to prolong his death.

They didn't want him to get dehydrated.

And so they gave him kind of this cheap drink that they used to drink.

Right?

They offer him this wine.

What does it say?

It says if they're saying, if you if you were the king of the Jews, save yourself, ripping him.

Right?

There was also an inscription over him.

This is the king of the Jews.

Sarcasm, biting, it's awful.

One of the criminals who were who were hanging with him uh railed at him, so he joins in on it.

I mean, this guy who's suffering, he has the mindset and the wherewithal to take a strip off Jesus.

I mean, brutally.

Are you not the Christ?

Save yourself and us.

Listen, as awful as these actions by these people were, we have to understand this is essentially what we do.

This is what we have done.

It's exactly how we have treated Jesus when we sin.

Right?

It's it's again, it's it's our sin that made this entire episode, this entire event that very much happened, a necessity.

It's our sin that put Christ on the cross.

It's not just the sin of the Jews, it's not just the Roman soldiers, it's not just those people there, but it's all of creation's sin.

Okay, so listen, our sin is not no big deal.

You know, it's not it's not something that can just be swept under the rug and and not really addressed and you know, casually glanced over.

No, our sin is pure ignorance and disdain for God.

That is what our sin is.

It's it's rebellion, it's it's it's it's mutiny against the captain.

Right?

And God graciously gives life to all people, all of us here, and we just spit in his face.

That's what our sin does.

You know, we're just like the crowd.

We're just like this criminal.

We're just like these soldiers.

Okay, but again, what does Jesus do?

He forgives.

He forgives.

If you haven't trusted in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and it's it's wrath and fury and judgment, and that is your future, that is what's coming at you.

Okay, know that he offers you forgiveness.

It's a it's a gift of grace.

You need to trust that what Jesus did here in the cross, in his suffering and in his death, was for you, so that you could have your sins wiped clean.

Forgiveness is a powerful and amazing thing.

All right, now you need to understand what forgiveness is.

It's easy to kind of just say that and then kind of move on.

And, you know, some of us have an understanding of forgiveness, some of us maybe have a flawed understanding of forgiveness.

So, what does forgiveness really mean?

Okay, well, I've got five things for you.

They're gonna come up there for you on the screen.

You can jot these down if you like.

What does forgiveness really mean?

Well, first one, it means mercy, not punishment.

Mercy, not punishment.

Now, now sometimes we have we have mercy kind of kind of confused in our minds.

Sometimes we we treat mercy as though it's grace, but mercy and grace are two different things.

Okay, mercy is not getting the consequence that you do deserve.

Right?

We all deserve the consequence of our sin.

We've all made our bed and should lie in it.

But through forgiveness, God shows us mercy.

We don't have that anymore.

Hell is not our final destination.

Glory, eternity with Him is right, mercy.

We don't have punishment anymore.

Forgiveness is awesome.

How about this one?

Forgiveness means clean, not dirty.

It means that we're clean.

Right?

We're clean.

You know, have you have you ever gone through periods of your life, and I'm sure you have, where you know, you've you've you've kind of slipped and you've stumbled in your relationship with the Lord and you've sinned and you've given in to bitterness or or outright rebellion over and over, and and what you start how you start to feel after a while is kind of just like it's kind of icky, and like you have this kind of film around your heart, and you feel kind of kind of dirty and gross, and you've got you know, guilt and shame kind of all stacking up and mounting up against you and and in you, and you're feeling all of that.

Well, forgiveness means all of that has been wiped away.

Right?

You are clean now, you are not dirty anymore.

And and it's sad because so many believers still live as though they are dirty.

They live as though you know they should be carrying this guilt.

And sometimes we bring it on ourselves, and I need to make myself feel terrible about my past.

And I and I need to continue to wallow in all of that and this icky grossness that I feel that I drag with me ultimately comes down to a lack of belief that God has forgiven you.

You are clean now, you're not dirty.

Third one means we're innocent, not guilty.

Innocent, not guilty.

Okay, do you know what innocence really means?

You know what innocence really means?

It means that God now treats you as though you never actually did any of those sins.

That's how God looks at you when you are forgiven.

You're innocent now.

He declares you innocent.

It's not like he just puts a band-aid over your mess, and really it's all still there, but it's kind of just like you threw a tarp over it or something like that.

And there's like that that mound of guilt in you that's still kind of there.

No, you're innocent, wiped clean.

He looks at you as though you are Jesus.

That's what he does when he forgives you.

You're not guilty anymore.

Don't carry that around with you.

Fourth one complete pardon, not partial.

Complete pardon.

This is pretty similar to number three for sure.

But do you realize that nothing is held against you anymore?

When you come to Jesus to Jesus Christ, when he becomes Lord of your life, you have confessed your sin to him, you have repented in a heartfelt way, you have turned away from your sin, and you're like, Lord, I want to follow you.

I want I want to follow you for the rest of the uh the rest of my life.

Do you realize that that God no longer holds anything against you?

And again, so many of us live as though he does.

Well, what about that one really bad thing?

What about that one summer that was a disaster in my life?

What about that that truly awful sin that I can't just I can't just talk about?

I can't share that thing that I'm that I'm hiding, that I've never told a soul ever?

Surely he's holding that against you, against me.

Nope.

He's not doing it.

Full pardon.

Full pardon, not partial.

Last one here, forgiveness means first class citizen, not second class.

Not second class.

What this is telling us here is that that we are all on the same page as Christ followers.

There's not this hierarchy that we like, we tend to look at people like that.

Right?

Oh, that person's at you know the top tier of Christianity.

Maybe it's because they've been a Christian for decades and decades, or maybe because it's they're very pious, and maybe they, you know, they seem to read a lot and they seem to have wisdom, and so we look at them as you know, they're up there, but I'm kind of down here because I'm a newbie and all of that.

Or, you know, we're on the other end of it and we see ourselves as kind of elite, and we look down at other people because they're new or they don't have as much wisdom as us, and they have not been as gifted by God as we are.

Right?

And so we have this kind of tiered system, this hierarchy, but there listen, there are no such thing as second-class citizens in God's kingdom.

That's what forgiveness means.

Right?

You were treated first class.

It's like sit at the front of the plane, given the glass of champagne, that's you.

Constantly.

You never lose that.

Okay, first class, you are not your past.

No matter how much others want to bring that up to you, no matter how much your your overbearing sense of guilt and shame brings that up to you, no matter how much the you know, the the enemy, Satan, wants to remind you of that constantly.

You're you're not that great, reminding you of your past and your sin.

No.

You gotta you gotta stand in the truth here.

Forgiveness means I'm first class now.

Not because I'm great, but because of what Jesus has done, he offers me through the cross.

Okay, despite our ignorance and our disdain, he forgives us.

He forgives us.

And listen, if you know Christ, let that reminder fill you with joy.

Let it fill you with joy again.

And listen, if you do not know him personally, let his kindness, the kindness that we see so clearly here in Jesus on the cross, as he was suffering horribly, let his kindness lead you towards repentance.

What do I mean by repentance?

I mean I mean a changing of your direction.

It's it's a heart thing, it's a mind thing, it's a volition thing, it's my it's my will.

I am now confessing my sin and my ways of doing things that was that was wrong, that was against the Lord.

Now, Lord, I want to follow you all the days of my life, I want to do things your way, I want to please you.

Right?

That is repentance.

Allow his kindness to you to lead you towards repentance.

Listen, we talked about wrath, we talked about fury, we talked about hell.

Do you realize that God wants to save you from all of it?

At the end of the day, Jesus is saving you from himself.

That's the love of God towards us.

His forgiveness is awesome.

Embrace it.

Embrace it.

Do it now.

Last thing.

Jesus suffered for us and makes it so that we can be done with suffering for good.

We can be done with suffering for good.

Verse 40, take a look.

It says, but the other, so this is the other criminal now hanging on the other side of him.

The other rebuked him.

Kind of the so he's rebuking the other criminal hanging on the other side.

He's saying, Do you not fear God?

Since you were under the same sentence of condemnation.

And we indeed justly, how interesting is that?

He admits it.

We indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward for our deeds.

But this man, Jesus, has done nothing wrong.

And he and he turns to Christ.

What an act of faith, right here.

He says, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

And he said to him, Jesus said to him, Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

You'll be with me in paradise.

Okay, so Jesus tells this humbled criminal, you know, the man who sees his sin so clearly, the man who admits his sin so freely that today, okay, today, meaning, meaning the moment that he dies, he will join Christ in paradise.

He will join Christ in heaven.

Now, any of you get the opportunity this winter to uh you know go down to somewhere warm for some vacation?

Right?

You get a chance to go do that and you know hang out on a beach where you know it's so nice and and so hot and so much better in terms of weather than it was here.

There's like no bitterness coming out of me at all uh about this.

But you know, when you were down there, okay, when you were down there, you know, and you are you know posting pictures to social media and rubbing our nose in it, you know, and and calling it, you know, paradise and thinking of that resort and that beach and the palm trees and the crystal clear blue water, you're thinking of it as paradise.

You know, why did you call it that?

Well, because it was amazing, right?

It was incredible, right?

It was the it was the complete absence of suffering.

There's none of it there, it's only joy and and goodness.

Okay, likewise, in heaven, okay, in eternity with God, we will suffer precisely zero.

Zero.

There will be no suffering whatsoever for those who know Christ.

All the suffering that Jesus is experiencing here is for us.

All the suffering, all of the judgment that he says is coming, all of it, okay, all of it, at the end of the day, you know, as as we breathe our last, he's doing it all for us so that we could experience paradise.

So that there would be no more suffering, no more pain, no more death, no more tears, weeping, none of it.

Can you can you imagine that?

That that's what he's accomplishing through what he is doing here in his suffering.

His suffering makes it so that we can be done with suffering for good.

Bring it on.

Bring it on, that's what I want.

But listen, there's a catch.

Right?

It shouldn't really be a surprise what that catch is because I've been going at it all morning already.

Right?

And the catch is that you have to know Jesus personally, you have to know him, you have to get saved, you have to lean into him as your savior.

Again, you can't cash that check that you owe at the end of your life to pay for your sin.

You can't do it.

Jesus paid for for it for you.

Would you trust that he did it?

Would you trust in him?

I love first John chapter 1, verse 9.

1 John 1:9

You know this verse, right?

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Would you do that today?

Would you do this?

Would you confess your sin?

Would you invite him into your life to be your Lord and Savior?

I love Easter because we get to spend time really, really kind of mining down into this and preparing ourselves and thinking about the most important thing ever, and that's what Christ has accomplished.

Right?

And I would challenge you and I would encourage you, embrace the reality that Christ suffered, but it was for you.

It was for you.

All of it, all of it was.

Now, again, for the rest of us who have done that, right?

You know, we know, we all know, that sometimes we can get, dare we say it, bored of this truth?

Right?

It becomes old hat.

It becomes too familiar.

It becomes empty words.

You know, it becomes we don't think deeply about all of these things.

I would encourage you to do that.

Don't just think about the people that need to hear the gospel when you invite them to church next weekend.

Think about yourself.

Think about the fact that Christ went through all of this awful, awful torture for you and I to pay the penalty for sin once and for all.