Punished for Me

Today on Senate life with Jeannie Greer what God did when Jesus died on the cross as he absorbed the pain of our injustice and said it will go no farther than you. I will not give you wrath and anger for what you have done. I will swallow. I will absorbed the effects of your sin and I will did you love and acceptance, even though you deserve a pastor there and your host Molly bit edge and we are so thankful to be jumping into God's word with you again today okay today.

We've reached the pinnacle of our teaching series called instead of me.

Pastor JD is going to walk us through some of the important moments before Jesus's crucifixion that we often tend to breeze through rather quickly. There are lessons to be learned and we don't want to miss them. As always, if you miss any of our programs or if you are in search of our featured monthly resource you can find it all online@jeanniegreer.com or by giving us a call at 866-3352 20 right now. Let's join Pastor JD for this challenging message that he titled punished for me.

Got your Bible this week yet. I would like to take it out that the 27th. Here is a question for you as you turn in your Bible about the 27.

Has there ever been a significant event in your life that you and somebody else interpreted very very differently number hearing the story for people who were sitting across from each other in the stall of a train as it was fairly along the tracks. It was because it was a basketball player college best ballplayer. His coach and across from them was a beautiful young college-age girls sitting next to her grandmother and so you can tell that the college basketball players college girl looking to hit it off of the remake exchange importation glances when the train is through a tunnel. I sure tunnel and for 10 or 15 seconds. It was total darkness on the train and during that 10 or 15 seconds of total darkness. Two distinct sounds were one was the smack of a kiss and the other was the slap of face. Well, when they come through the tunnel and the lights are back on their the girl thinks the college-age girl thinks you know I sure am glad that he kiss me but I wish my grandmother had slapped him. Grandmother thinks I can't believe that he had the audacity to kiss her, and I'm glad she slapped him the coach he was, rubbing his face was thinking, I can certainly understand why he kissed her, but I think that girl smack the wrong guy in the basketball player was thinking awesome I got to kiss the girl and slapped my coat to the same drive so you probably have not had that exact same but you probably have some experience that you and somebody else in your life interpreted in very different ways. But today we are going to talk about the event. The event in history that is been interpreted in more divergent ways than any other event in history. Very few people. Of course, debate whether Jesus died.

You might find a person or two out there this is you never even existed, but their boxcars on the outside. The diversions comes in. Why Jesus died. That's what causes the debate Gondi. For example, wrote in his autobiography in 1894 he said I can accept Jesus as a martyr and his death on the cross was certainly a good example of sacrificing yourself or others, but that there was anything else to his suffering that was mystical or mysterious like dying as a substitute for sinners. This, my heart can never and will never accept Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist in our culture wrote the book God delusion he calls the Christian understanding of the death of Jesus because it divine child abuse and says it's absolute foolishness. I've been an audience where I heard the famous skeptic Bart Hermon over at UNC Chapel Hill where he was asked the question of what it would take to get him to believe in Jesus that he simply simply say that Jesus fulfilled his promise to bring peace on earth. He made this promising human praise are the many died. Basically what he saying is that Jesus death was essentially the failure of his mission. Now I realize of course that not many people are least, maybe many viewer may not be that openly hostile to the gospel, but I've heard a number of people say things to me like he okay.I understand that he forgot understand why you would I be God in my life but I just don't get the big deal that you Christians make about Jesus was that sold in the press into today to do that by walking through the actual moments of the crucifixion and want to try to show you some clues that one of Jesus disciples Matthew who wrote the gospel of Matthew clues that he put in the narrative to help you interpret why it happened and then again what to do.

What we have done on all the previous weeks of the series want to try to show you how the responses of the characters that Matthew puts around cross are there to give you pictures of yourself. Like I told you you're the one that's been examined here. You're the one that's on trial and these responses that people give to what is happening.

You should see yourself and see potential ways that you can respond to the cross of Jesus Christ my dental related chapter 27 were to give my number 26, and a copy of that verse because it says after ordering Jesus to be flawed. Pilot handed Jesus over to be crucified, and the governor soldiers took Jesus into the governor's residence at gather the whole company around him and make strip them and dress them in the Scarlet Road.

The twisted together a crown of thorns may place it on his head in a place a staff in his right hand representing a scepter like a king would use to rule and they knelt down before him and not demo, hell, king of the Jews in the night, spit on him and he took the staff out of his hand and they get hitting him on the head. You only talk about the crucifixion. We tend a breeze right through this moment and focus only on the actual crucifixion itself or they nailed him to the cross, but you have to understand that this car was equally cruel and in and just as terrifying.

First, when it says the whole company. It met met 20 or 30 Roman soldiers that encircled him and begun to kick him and punch him and mocked him like like a mob like the coolest bully surrounding a helpless child on the schoolyard or think again fight, delighting in his pain beating him until he was barely conscious. You see, when they were finished. Jesus would've been barely able to stand up.

He would've been covered instead humiliated and quivering in pain. Then at some point in this process, they flogged him the whole process of crucifixion had been designed to be able to put someone to the worst kinds of pain without first of all, killing them.

Second of all, without making them go unconscious because what good is inflicting pain on somebody up there not conscious to be able to to him, suffer from it and so the Persians had invented a process of crucifixion. If it wasn't simply mailing somebody up to across on baby admitted this is a way of keeping people conscious and alive for a long period of time. The Romans had borrowed this from the Persians and they had perfected it over nearly a century, I found an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that describes the process of flogging, crucifixion, and explains why it worked like it did not reference it for several minutes here number, the next a little bit. They use a short with to give the flogging caught up flawed grammar. We some limos refer to it as a cat of nine tails visit had nine braided leather thongs that had small iron balls and sharp splinters of sheep bone nodded into the thongs at various intervals. The victim was stripped of his clothing is hands were tied up high above his head to oppose the idea being that the flesh on his body would be pulled very tightly so that it would tear easily into Roman soldiers, one on each side would with alternating strokes deliver the beating. Their goal was to weaken the victim to a state just sort of death or unconsciousness.

This article says and I quote as the Roman soldiers repeatedly struck the victim's back with the full force of the iron balls they would cause the contusions and the cheekbones would cut into the skin and the subcutaneous tissues of the victim. Eventually the lacerations of the whip would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh pain and blood loss generally set the stage for circulatory shock after they had given him this flogging day they after they mocked him, they stripped him of the road that they put on them and they put his own close by Kahneman's as they led him away to crucify the crossbeam that they would've forced him to carry would've weighed about 200 pounds. It would've been placed across his back with a placard hung around his neck that stated his crime in a sentence the crossbeam itself would've been recycled.

Let's say that I because it was used with previous crucifixion victims which means that it would've still reached with the board of previous victims roughhewn and full of jagged edges and splinters. Jesus was then prorated to the streets before cheering crowds with two Roman soldiers in front of him and sue behind.

Often they say people to crowd with breakthrough would come in and punch the victim or spit on them as they walked by. Verse 32 and as they were going out.

They found a subterranean Manning Simon. They forced him to carry the cross, he evidently Jesus so we can from the flogging that eventually collapses and is unable to carry anymore. This this crossbeam and so they pull ran the man from the crowd may force this man to carry the cross out the question you need to ask yourself is your reading American like this. The question is why would Matthew go to the trouble of including his name. Why would why would Matthew named this man was, he names in the Gospels function like first century footnotes.

This was a guy who at the time of the writing would've still been alive and what Matthew was doing as he is giving you an eyewitness who was there and basically saving got questions about this.

Just go as that guy the gospel of Mark is gonna take a step farther and indicate that Simon was the father of a man named Rufus, not why we give us details about his family. Evidently, Rufus was somebody that was commonly known, especially to the readers of the gospel of Mark we know by the way Mark was got in trouble with Peter. The records ended up in Rome and when Paul writes his book to the Romans, the Greeks by name in Romans 1613 I guy named Rufus and scholars tell us that this is most likely the same person. And the reason that Mark puts the name Rufus in the narrative uses like you know Rufus is dad got questions about all this went down to as Rufus is that, in other words, this is not a made up legend. This is an eyewitness account that is putting a footnote in their save this guy still alive go talk to him if you got questions about them might in message title punished for me will be right back with more teaching in just a moment. I wanted to remind you about a great resource if not attend a devotional study guide called listener to devotions from the parables of Jesus dig deeper into the infant Jesus has for this resource will bring comfort and understanding to some of his harder to understand parables and given action stamps out of escrow interface to give us a call today fixing 35 5220 or go online to Jeannie cleared.com to reserve your copy now let's get back to our teaching here is Pastor Jane verse 33 when they came to a place called Golgotha, which in Hebrew means place of the skull.

The Latin word by the way for place of the skull is called aliyah, which we then used to say Calvary is the place where Jesus died verse 34.

They gave him why mixed with gall to drink but we tasted it. He refused to drink it. Wine mixed with gall was a very popular narcotic of the day of functioning like a painkiller. The question you have to ask is why Jesus refused a painkiller. Why was it the Jesus you would not take that well it's not that he was against painkillers.

It's not that this was his first just say no to drugs campaigner. I wasn't a teetotaler and I can't touch my the reason that he would not touch this is a few weeks ago when we walked in the garden Gethsemane. I showed you where in a while asking the question, why would God give Jesus a glimpse of what he was about to encounter on the cross before he experience it. Why give him this advanced view and member the answer I gave you is from Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Edwards. He said he said well that the reason that God gives Jesus advanced view of the pain of crucifixion before he undergoes it is he wanted us to see Jesus go to the cross voluntarily so that the depth of his love for us would be put on display even more clearly because you understand the value of something to someone when you see what they're willing to give up in order to purchase it and the whole cross was God's demonstration of his love for us and Jesus had told the pain. His love for us would not be as clearly on display as it is always demonstrating to us the depth of his love in Jesus that I will take anything that is going to take away from the display phenomena go through to purchase you from your sin, so he refused narcotic verse 35 then they crucified him. One scholar explains yours, all the crucifixion work.

It was designed to keep the victim alive for as long as possible and keep them from unconsciousness and it did this by putting you through cycles of dizziness, cramps their sleeplessness, hunger, dramatic fever, of course, the humiliation and shame the piercing wounds that felt like they were on fire ripped tendons, and joints out of socket.

The way that they kept conscious was by keeping you cycling through these elements of pain and when one of those particular elements was about to drive you to pass out the way, the crucifixion was set up, you would kind of switch to another type of pain that would keep you conscious and you just go back and forth and that's how they catch you in a state of consciousness. There's artwork when you are on the cross crucified there with your nails in your hands and your feet you were hanging down obviously suspended by only your arms, your fever really no good to you because they had a nail for them so you couldn't put any weight on them and as you hung there very quickly.

They say your shoulders and elbows would pop out of joint. The blood vessels from hanging down around her stomach would become swollen and gorged with surcharge blood.

As you were hanging down couldn't believe so you would start to suffocate that that feeling that you have when you are drowning that kind of I have no Aaron so you would hoist yourself up by your arms in order to be able to take a breath, which immediately pulled on these nails that were through your hands and saw your your joints being out of socket caused excruciating pain. Then they say that your muscles because of that, though the way you were hanging would immediately begin to cramp and so you could only manage the hoist yourself up for a second or two when you would have to drop and go back down and from that hanging position there, you would be able to take small breasts and but never exhale so you would get quickly that point we thought you couldn't breathe any longer and so with the panic of supplication.

You pull yourself up just a little bit it would take a breath and as soon as a gay man.

You have to let go and hang back down to for six hours. Jesus alternated between the searing burning pain of the nails in his hand to his feet and his bones being out of socket go-between out of this panic feeling of supplication and every time he pulls himself up or lets himself slide back down his back, which is lacerated by the whips down to the muscle and bone was further torn open by the splintered center beam of the cross. Eventually they say the victim would give up and just died of suffocation. This is what Jesus was pointing to. By the way, this is what he was 22 when he took the bread and the cup and held it up to his disciples and said this is my bike to be broken for you.

This is the blood that is poured out as the forgiveness for your sins. This was the cup of God's wrath in Jesus of voluntarily taken so that you and I could be safe. He was wounded for our transgressions, for my small acts of rebellion for the fact that I didn't want him to be in charge for those little white lies that I had told for for fervor for the places where I had rebelled against God's law for the fact that I didn't want God to be in charge. I wanted to be a chart. The fact that I didn't want him to get the glory. I wanted to steal the glory he was wounded. They are like this for those things, he was bruised for my iniquity. The chastisement of my peace was put upon him so that by the stripes in his back that were put there by that flog by Doug stripes. I would be healed was taking all this for me. He was taking it instead of me not be what are all business it well well that's really moving but his suffering or his suffering have to do with my sin that I once had a Muslim tell me when I was a missionary over in Southeast Asia without a Muslim tell me is a do not. I just don't understand why God needs somebody to die in order to forgive my sin be easily said you know if you sin against me and I wanted to forgive you. I would need to make you kill your dog or your cat or somebody. Why would God require some sacrifice to forgive is that in fact the most God is much more merciful than the Christian God because most of God's forgiveness. The Christian God requires this kind of sacrifice. I told him I certainly understood what he was saying, but it's a very superficial understanding of forgiveness you see any choice anyone real choice to forgive somebody of something significant means that you are agreeing to absorb the cost and vesting of the injustice of what they done it with a significant wrong with going to you. For example, I borrowed my car you stole my card and I didn't know you took it out, directed you come back to me and said JD I don't have insurance and I out on money to pay for this order.

My choices while I can make you pay for that particular court, you know, we could set up something when you piggyback over a period of time.

That's one choice, but if I look at you just got overwhelmed compassion in the moment and said you know what I forgive you for I forgive you.

Want to pay me back for writing and destroy my car not the mother was also my car but if I did that. If I did that when I agreed to do because I am on this affidavit is magically and fix itself. What I mean is, I'm absorbing the cost for your wrong Albert the cost of the wrong.

The injustice that you have done to my vehicle or switch a metaphor for minutes with the analogy, if you slander me. If you speak very cruelly and unfairly about me and ruin my reputation.

I and then I figured out what are my choices. How do I respond to you while I could respond humankind right. I could tell everybody that you gone I could slander you and I can speak with you to be gangly to you and you know what I feel better when I did it while it I feel better as I thought just being served the wrong that you did to me is, back to you whenever you pay. We pay somebody evil for evil, you feel good because it feels like justice. But if I look at you and said I forgive you what I'm I agreeing to do. I'm agreeing that all the problems all the pain that were caused by your slander of me.

I'm going to absorb them and myself, and I'm not going to respond with pain doctor you I want to give you love and acceptance were you deserve in anger.

You see what I'm saying to what have I done absorbed the pain of your sin. What God did when Jesus died on the cross as he absorbed the pain of our injustice and said it will go no farther than here.

I will not give you wrath and anger for what you have done. I will swallow. I will absorbed the effects of your sin and I will give you love and acceptance, even though you deserve anger.

You see, you gotta have a real understanding of forgiveness. If you understand what I just said it's because you've never had to forgive somebody of an actual wrong done to you how to me. Michael try forgiveness anyone real forgiveness. If you're going to forgive somebody it's going to cost you dearly. What you see. The cross is that God in his love absorbed the consequences of our said and gave us love and acceptance of the swallowed the wrath that belong to us right before Jesus died. Matthew tells us that Jesus utters a couple things from across that are going to give us clues as to what is happening. Verse 46 about three in the afternoon Jesus cries out with a loud voice Haylee LED landmass about dining that is my God, my God, why have you abandoned me. A quote from Psalm 22, indicating that Jesus is been abandoned by God the father is turned his face away. We saw begin in the garden of Gethsemane has now been brought to full fruition, God has turned his face away from his son because that is the ultimate penalty for arsenic you want to know what hell actually is hell is the total abandonment by God is you and I walking away from God and isolating ourselves and their on the cross, Jesus goes into total darkness. Total abandonment and all I can say is my God, my God, my mother, why have you forsaken me, and then verse 50. But Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and he gave up his spirit.

Luke tells the gospel tells us exactly what he said here when he did this worthily cried out is in English. Three words it is finished. In Greek the way that it's written. This is 140 cried out was to tell a sty presents a very common word in Greek. In fact, archaeologists say they found that very word to tell a sty that Jesus says lacrosse. They found it scribbled across tax receipts when somebody had paid their tax bill and essentially admit it's paid. Jesus chooses a very common term is one of his last words from the cross, when he says in a loud voice. It has been paid. You have no more debt that you owe every bit of it from the very beginning all the way to the end has been paid in full.

Your debt is clear I have paid it for you and suddenly verse 51 when Jesus says this, the curtain of the sanctuary was torn in two from the top of the bottom of the earthquake and the rocks were split. That curtain was a 4 inch thick curtain made up of 72 different cords that separated the people from the presence of God, the holy of holies the name of it was the parapet. It literally in Hebrew met shut off because that's what it did to people which shut them off in the presence of God, and they could not go behind that curtain into the presence of God and if they did they would immediately be put to death here.

Suddenly, as Jesus dies the lives of his voice says my God, why do you forsaken me, and then he says now it is today when he says that comes out of his mouth. Step 4 inch thick curtain the parent to split into showing that the one body of Jesus through the body of Jesus the presence of God is now open to all senior you're listening to Senate life with Jeannie Gray or if you'd like to listen again. You can always find a full program online@jdgreer.com. We have a wonderful offer available for arsenic my family today. You can be one of the first to get Pastor Janie's newest resource listing at 10 devotions from the parables of Jesus we are praying that this devotional book will help you feel more confident and more joyful in reading the Bible and applying it to your life right away when you get $35 or more today will send you a copy of listen up as our way of saying thanks for your generous support you can also request the study make your first donation as an gospel partner or partners commit to regular monthly giving real backbone of this ministry, you've been going through this program joined the special family today. Give us a call 866-335-5220. Remember to ask for the resource by Pastor Janie that number again eight 663-5220 we can get and request online Janie Greer.com hi Molly, bit of edge inviting you to join us again next time for the conclusion of today's teaching here on Senate life changing prayer ministry