Suffering Servant (Part 2 of 2)

There are so many characteristics of Jesus that we can admire things we strive to imitate things like his compassion, his grace and humility.

But today I'm Truth for Life.

Alistair Begg reveals another trait of Christ personality something we might not be immediately drawn to Jesus was a suffering servant, Alister is teaching today from Mark chapter 14, Jesus, you will remember when he was asked concerning prayer had given up prayer to those who were his listeners and his followers, and in the course of that prayer is common for us to pray, and you will be done on our as it is in heaven. And what Jesus encouraged his followers to pray. We now discover him putting into practice and in this little scenario here. That is, for as in Mark and again as I said you and Luke. I want us to try and navigate our way through it by employing three simple firms the importance of looking at listening and learning over some of the look we have these passages in the Bible in order that in the reading of them.

We may conjure up in our minds some sense of what is taking place. It is therefore as we might do so. So that is then look at what we are told, I want to suggest that we look carefully at what we are told, for this is a picture of a distressed Christ. This is a picture of a distressed Christ. What now is happening to Jesus that he is so deeply distressed. Well, he says, and explains to them in verse 34. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, all of the pent-up emotion that presumably is represented in his life as he hasn't been moving out over a period of weeks steadfastly towards the cross.

What you have here is the innocent about to suffer at the hands of God. What you have here is the sinless about to bear the wrath of God in himself for sin. What you have here is the prospect of the perfect one being nailed on a cross on a garbage heap outside Jerusalem between two thieves abused and disabused and why Paul tells us God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in the atonement, the death of Jesus on the cross for sinners is not a feeling it's not a mathematical equation.

It's a flesh and blood reality. And there was nothing there was nothing in Christ's humanity to blunt his emotions or to anesthetize his sensitivity did you hear that there was nothing in Christ's humanity to blunt his emotions or anesthetize his sensitivity ever pondered what was going on when they offered him a branch with a sponge on the end of it and it was wine mingled with gall.

It was an anesthetic ocean and it says in the Scriptures, and he offered him wine mingled with gall, but he refused to drink it.

He refused to drink it. Why, in order that he might experience suffering in all of its unmitigated die mentions he suffered at a level that no one has ever suffered. He endured everything for the sake of his on what an amazing thing it is, and what a stupidity it is the 21st-century Western Christianity offers itself to the world as a panacea for all ills. We are the people who got it all together. You see, why not come and join us and then these interested agnostics begin to read their Bibles and say how did you get here from here.

What is this fellowship of suffering that the apostle Paul was what was he talking about when he said I want to know Christ. We stop I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. That'll be enough for us to finish a verse right there. There is no power of his resurrection, except as it exists, is it expedient in the fellowship of his sufferings. It is only through his sufferings in Calvary that there is the reality of the resurrection and the same. My friends is true for you and me and where every attempt to deny that is known by our own hearts as fraudulent is condemned by the Scriptures clearly had every well thinking, cynical, agnostic friend that I have said you're full of absolute bunk and you know what if I were to suggest that that was the essence of Christianity, they would be absolutely right. Some of you are stumbling over my words and I know why it is because you like me are very concerned to safeguard the divinity of Christ and any notion of a weakening divinity is important to us because we know that it is contrary to the Bible, right, and liberal theology throughout the ages has always been weak on the divinity of Jesus.

Fundamentalism, conservatism, evangelical is him distance itself from the danger, but I want to suggest to you, flirts with the opposite danger not know of a diminished diminished divinity, but a diminished humanity. So now we have a less than human. Jesus because we are so concerned to make sure that we are absolutely divining Jesus.

Now we are not to be surprised by that because the early centuries fought through all these issues and lead in the fourth and fifth century the church had to deal with a man called appalling areas.

You can Google him but I don't know what Apollinaire is with think about it but anyway if you Google him you will find out that Apollinaire is was a problem in the late fourth and fifth century because he was diminishing the humanity of Jesus. And so the councils got together and affirmed just as in Christ, there was complete and perfect Godhead, so there was complete and perfect manhood. Nothing that was necessary to humanness was lacking in him. Luke for yourselves. Luke secondly, listen, listen, my soul is overwhelmed to the sorrow to the point of death, he said I'm going a little further, he fell to the ground.

He fell to the ground all our pictures all those Christian pictures. I figure they'll be taken out and thrown away the most of them because we have all these pictures of Jesus, is it where you will be before the cross is just just so you know yes oh yes no no no no you can't have deeply distressed. You can have troubled you can have overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, and then know you've got everything is everything is everywhere if you don't listen to his words the intimacy father father, everything is possible for you sovereignty if you willing to look now inquiry.

Take this cup from me could see that is the intensity of his expression he could actually say that is the integrity of his expression, I have to be honest. Father says right now where I am here.

I wish you would take this cup from me you're not what I will but what you will know that point. Luke tells us that an angel was dispatched. Angels are fascinating and with no time to think about, but I have this picture of a lie, if you play golf a lot and you played nice golf courses.

There was a good caddies for you and and Leah and there's a place is a wall where the caddies lean at least in slanders of the old coursework there's a little box in which they stay out of the rain little shack in their all their wait until the Caddy master calls and update billing back for you and awfully, the coffee, the Scottish one big red noses like this because of what they spend their money on.

After they finished the glow-in-the-dark you see them through the mist anyway and and and and Billy comes out and and somehow or another in the angelic host as the be like that you know I like that the chairman of the angelic bands essay your guy I needed to go somewhere for me. I know you went to Bethlehem sure you remember that well if you remember that I want you to go now down to Gethsemane and an angel came an angel came to strengthen him. We may have assumed that the angel would affix things. All angelic visitations kind of a new age ideas that you know big angel came. Everything was nice after that.

Angel comes and then it says being in anguish. He prayed more earnestly so, and angelic visitation never took care of the thing for and as he prays to his father he prays is an expression of his humility. He borrows beneath the father's will, because he recognizes that father knows best and you will notice that it is not that he is somehow or another relying on prayer here the misunderstanding. When I say this, but there is no power in prayer. All of the power is in God is not trying to employ the power of prayer in order to rectify a situation he is borrowing before his father and he is acknowledging as he speaks to him in prayer. Father, you have power over all of heaven and all of the your you can you can do anything you choose from eternity.

We determined together with the Holy Spirit that this was the plan you plan that I would procure it. The Holy Spirit will come behind me and apply it off. Father, because you see Jesus knows that he is about to enter the one experience in life that for which he has no preparation.

When the father turns his face away. He has never lived absent the communion that he enjoys within the Trinity, father, son and Holy Spirit coming up if you like in the wonder of the wisdom with his great plan of redemption and now at the point it is gaunt, who works in response to prayer. It is not prayer that works in this incidentally and parenthetically, is the answer to all the prayer stuff that you can read in Newsweek magazine never held the Cleveland clinic and new MIT in Boston hospitals and UCLA and run out all very interested enough.

Let's get all in and talk about the healing powers of prayer tell another is no healing power in prayer.

The only person who can heal is God Almighty.

So were no we don't want that. That's on the program were looking for. It was the only person to get here is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ would love to come and tell the whole Cleveland clinic about how they can come to know the living God through Jesus.

No get out of here. That's not what were talking about we talk about the power of prayer. There is no part Luke listen, learn, time is gone and so I will only make one point of application and that is not in terms of prayer itself, but in terms of Christ's humanity and his passion. The word remember were told became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus comes into humanity.

He is not detached. He was in touch with the religious establishment and find he was opposed by the religious establishment when he added Matthew to his disciple band and they had the big party at the house of Levi. Nobody was more annoyed about it than the religious folks of his day. Apparently he's going to eat with sinners and to attend a party with Jesus came out and said yeah that's exactly right. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Jesus in his humanity lived among sin. He lived where he could hear swearing where he heard blasphemy where he observed and confronted disease and mortality and sadness and squalor. That's where Christ live. That's the nature of the incarnation, he did not calm into our time, space capsule and live at the top of a high hill in a large palace behind dates inured from the experiences of the common person. This is not the Buddha. This is not somebody who is in a rarefied environment.

This is someone who is down now. He says boxes of holes and birds of next. But the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head and in the midst of all of that he finds himself only to save you. I am so challenged by this. The challenge is obvious how can we effectively impact the world were not in how many non-Christian friends do you have how many non-Christian friends have you cultivated having and when you go with them. I hope that we don't just give them a bunch of sanctimonious cliché ridden stuff. Nice is good to understand that there is something attractive about the gospel that, in Greek, there is a force which is intrinsically good.

Like a good Apple and it is callous, which is the 1st+ attractively good, intrinsically and attractively good is not enough for us to be intrinsically righteous. We are supposed to be attractively righteous and our attraction does not live in our willingness to play the game of those who don't agree with us to join in their jokes to affirm their nonsense, but is just to be like Jesus.

Three imperatives were done. Be real, be real being real. Everybody's asking about everybody the same question, is this guy out, phony, and every time you stand up and preached. I guarantee Randall as ones that I don't know about him will get him there were the same jacket every day.

Filthy character voices probably is is you know closer somehow was wrong with the guy know I will check it. It is my favorite Jack. My son bought it for me for my birthday and I feel close to him as Jack. The real be done be done with what with superficial triumphalism is not true. The human experience is not true to the Bible and it only attracts silly people and it does not answer to the cries of the sick and to set the real be done and be sure that Christ stands beside us when we are emotionally overwhelmed see this little section in Gethsemane gives police to the Christian experience of distress, of being overwhelmed and some of us with a significant does of the Pharisee and us who never really been distressed or overwhelmed. We have nothing to say to our Christian friends, brothers and sisters when the distress and overwhelmed and said we just all being distressing, overwhelmed, you're annoying me, or worse still, you know, if you are really a Christian. If you really had faith in the God, the risen Jesus Garcia be distressed I thought.

I don't understand why you would be overwhelmed when you meet your overwhelmed you want to curl up in a ball and pull the blankets over your head and stay there till a week from next Friday but this is fantastic as because now now now I found somebody who understands now I'm introducing the ultimate counselor nine introduced to the one who was overwhelmed to the point of overwhelmed the sort of the point of death. So in my distress and in my fearfulness I did my quiet desperation. Jesus knows all about my struggles socially and emotionally, physically. I can never go beyond his pain, my darkness, no matter how deep is never more intense than his. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our sufferings, no look, listen, learn your listing to the weekend edition of Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.

Please keep listening.

We have set aside time on today's program to conclude with prayer in recent weeks, Alister has guided us through a survey of Jesus many roles in the process, we've learned that Jesus is a humble servant, a compassionate Shepherd, a personal evangelist and today suffering servant.

These messages are part of a nine part series called to know Christ.

You're welcome to Dumbo the entire series from our website for free or you can purchase the CDs at our cost without any markup search for the title to know Christ. When you go online to Truth for Life.org or as an alternative, keep in mind you can listen to the entire archive of Alister's messages through our mobile app it's free when you downloaded from your app store. In addition to imitating Jesus.

God has given his people a great cloud of witnesses for us to follow as well. There are men and women of faith who focus their entire life on Christ, who were fully devoted to living for God's glory, Christians are indebted for instance to the Puritans who, through their writings and their sacrificial lives taught us how to remain faithful to God even when life was extremely difficult Truth for Life. We've come across a wonderful new documentary called Puritan all life to the glory of God. Maybe you wondered who the Puritans were and how their devotion to God set them apart. This film tells their story in a way that will captivate the entire family. It's on the set of two DVDs, one that contains the main documentary of the second DVD that offers special features.

There is even a link provided in the event that you prefer to stream the documentary. This is a beautiful film that includes sweeping views of Europe and it sheds new light on the legacy of the Puritans and their influence on Christianity today along the way the filmmakers speak with current scholars who add their insights as well. Bible teachers like Sinclair Ferguson like JI Packer and Dr. Elmore to find out how you can request your copy of this educational documentary on the Puritans go online to Truth for Life.org. Now here's Alister to lead us in prayer father write your word in our hearts. All that is helpful and true. Be stored up for the evil David as nausea, poorness, that which is unhelpful or untrue just to simply possible for my lips may be banished from our recollection. Rather, none of us may walk away without settling the issue of what it means to be in Christ. May none of us evade the challenge nor miss the immense privilege of becoming increasingly like Christ in his humility and his compassion and his zeal for the souls of others and yes even in his experience of suffering may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest and remain with all who believe. Now, until Jesus comes or calls us to himself and then forevermore on next weekend our attention turns from Jesus the suffering servant to Jesus our great high priest. We hope you'll join us for this joyful discovery of Christ's role in presenting us blameless before God the father, Bob Lapine, Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life Learning is for Living