Why Jesus Had to Suffer (and what it means for you)

What does the cross actually mean for your pain?

In the final week of Built Different, we look at Jesus—the ultimate example of spiritual resilience—and walk through the darkest road he ever traveled. From Luke 4 to Isaiah 53 to the crucifixion story, this message explores why Jesus came, what he endured, and how his suffering brings healing, freedom, and life to the full.

If you’ve ever wrestled with pain, exhaustion, grief, shame, or inner turmoil, this message is an invitation to bring all of it to Jesus. He understands suffering, he carried our pain, and by his wounds we are healed.

We would love for you to join us in person next weekend at any of our seven locations nearest you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We are in our final week of this preaching series, we're calling Built Different, where we've been walking through this kind of concept of mental health, but from the lens of how do we develop spiritual resilience. For those of you in the room and for those of you watching in Semagman Remo, thank you for joining us. If you're watching online, heads up at the end, we're gonna kind of have uh, I don't know how to say this, an elevated communion moment. So if if if you right now is the best time to pause the stream and go get the elements if you'd like to participate at home. Uh each each week of this series, we've been we've been really zeroing in on the the story of one person in scripture each week. Um, and we've been looking at the practices and the postures and the rhythms of their life that helped them build resilience and help them be built, sort of kind of seems a little different. Today, we are going to focus on the story of Jesus because really what we're gonna see is that the resilience that he had in the really the darkest hour of his life is is really the best example of the sort of resilience we've been talking about all series long. So we're gonna walk with Jesus on that journey, the darkest road he traveled, but we're gonna do that in just a minute. Before we get there, I wanna remind us of why Jesus claimed he came to earth. This has been the refrain all series long, that Jesus said that he came so that we might have life and have it to the full. That's the vision, that's the purpose of Jesus' life. The question that you may have is okay, well, what is what does life to the full mean? Or what does Jesus mean when he says life to the full? Well, one of the clearest pictures we get from Jesus himself actually comes in Luke chapter 4. This is one of my favorite Jesus moments in Scripture. Um, this is early on in his ministry. He's in his hometown. On the Sabbath day, Jesus went to the synagogue. Many people had gathered there, and this is what Luke tells us. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him to Jesus. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written the Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And then here's this part is so good. Here's what happens next. Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began saying to them, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. This mic drop moment. This would have been like the most provocative thing anyone in that room had ever heard said in a synagogue. Because in this moment, Jesus is saying, Isaiah is talking about me. The Spirit of God is on me. God has anointed me to proclaim good news, to bring healing, to bring freedom, to bring sight to the blind. God has given me the authority to show you the way of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is saying, if you want the good life, if you want the life to the full, if you want the abundant life, I've got it. And later his invitation would be if you want to experience it, follow me. Follow me. That was the purpose of Jesus coming to earth. That freedom, that restoration, that healing, that that is the good news of the kingdom of God. And there was something else written in the scroll of Isaiah that Jesus didn't read that day. Many of his audience would have known this was in there. And what was also in the scroll of Isaiah, a little earlier than what we read, was that for that freedom to come about, the one who would bring that freedom would also have to suffer. Hundreds of years before Jesus came to earth, here's what the prophet Isaiah said about the Messiah. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him with low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. Meaning for Jesus to accomplish his purpose, why he came to earth, he would need to do more than just be a great teacher or a great role model. He would need to be despised and rejected. And just for everyone here in the room, for our friends in Saginaw and Monroe, if you're watching online, I just, in these next moments, I want you to lean into what we're gonna read. And I want you to imagine yourself there with Jesus. And I want you to imagine what it would have felt like to be with him in these hours. A few years after Jesus stood up in that synagogue and claimed that Isaiah was speaking of him, Luke tells us another story about Jesus. He actually tells us about him praying in a garden. Jesus in the garden was surrounded by his disciples, but they didn't really understand the urgency of the moment, so every time they closed their eyes to pray, they kept falling asleep. Jesus, though, was fully aware that the hour had come for him to endure the suffering that had been foretold. Here's what Luke says. The angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. Okay, just here's how intense this moment was. That the Son of God needed an angel to come and bring him comfort. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. I can't even imagine anguish coming anywhere near that. Moments after this, while Jesus is still praying in that garden, one of his closest friends, a guy named Judas, who had decided that he was gonna betray his friend and teacher, showed up in that garden with a band of religious guards. I guess it's the best way to describe them. They arrested Jesus and took him into custody. They took him before a religious court in the middle of the night, in the dark of the night, he was tried in a trial where the outcome was already determined. Everyone there already had determined he was guilty. Then we read this that the men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him, demanded, prophesy, who hit you. And they said many other insulting things to him. Then just as the sun was rising, just as it was the sun was peeking over the horizon, they took Jesus to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, to sit through another trial. Because while the religious courts had some authority to punish people, they did not have the authority to sentence anyone to death. Now, before I go on, um, what happens next in the story is difficult to talk about, it's difficult to hear, it's difficult to read. It is almost impossible to sanitize what happens next in the story. Now we try our best to sanitize it because we tell this story to children. But if you've only ever heard the cartoon version or the PG-13 version, you miss out on the extent to which Jesus went to demonstrate his love for you and for me. The truth is, what we're gonna journey through next, if any of us were there, we would have hid our faces. Before Pilate, John tells us that Jesus refused to defend himself. So Pilate makes this decision to have Jesus flogged. John's audience wouldn't have needed any other description. In a flogging, what they would do is they would take uh almost like a leather whip, had all these cords of leather at the end, and they would tie little pieces of metal and bone to the end. And then they would stand behind the criminal who had been stripped naked and tied to a pole, and they would repeatedly thrash that whip at their back. The pieces of metal and bone would rip layers of skin off the back. Some of the strips would wrap around to the stomach and rip layers of uh of skin off the stomach as well. Oftentimes, in a flogging, the person would be left unrecognizable. Many, many people died from the blood loss and infection from a flogging alone. After Jesus was flogged, they put a crown of thorns on his head. And they put a robe around his bloodied body, and they made jokes about him being a king. They spit in his face, and they slapped him in that face that had been bruised from the beatings just hours earlier. And then they escorted him back to Pilate. Pilate didn't really understand what he had done wrong. So he took him in that condition, out before his accusers, and said, Look at this man. Isn't this enough? But the crowd started chanting, crucify him, crucify him, crucify him. They took Jesus back to Pilate. Pilate keeps asking him questions. Jesus refuses to defend himself. So scripture tells us that Pilate did everything in his power to have Jesus released, but the crowds were incessant. They wanted him killed that morning. So Pilate washed his hands of the decision and ordered his guards to crucify Jesus. Two beams of wood fashioned like a cross were placed on his back. And Jesus was forced to carry his cross about 600 meters, a little more than a third of a mile, up a hill called Golgotha. This journey has become known. Jesus was too weak to carry the cross by himself, so they grabbed the bystander and said, Hey, you need to help him. And when they got to the place where Jesus would be killed, they would have laid him down on the cross. And they would have nailed his hands and his feet to those beams with nails that kind of look like this. One for each wrist, another for the for the two feet together. If they couldn't get both feet with one, sometimes they'd use a fourth. Most people would have looked away as they heard the pounding, pounding, pounding of the nails into the cross. Once the body was secured, they would have hoisted the cross up with ropes till it fit into its place. The creator of heaven and earth was crucified. Crucifixion was invented by the Greeks. The Romans mastered it. It was a death sentence that was meant to deliver the maximum amount of pain and humiliation. It was designed to strip its victim of any sort of dignity before their death. In a crucifixion, the bodies were hung publicly to deter anyone from committing a similar crime. A man in good health could survive days on a cross before they succumbed to suffocation or shock or exposure. So brutal. Anyone depicting in art a picture of the cross. It was just too brutal. No one would do it until after the fourth century when crucifixion was outlawed. Because you cannot romanticize this. No one who ever saw crucifixion happen would have ever worn the cross as a piece of jewelry. It was just far too horrible. And it was a death that was given and forced on many, many people. But only one man ever chose it. And the reason why Jesus chose it was his love for you. And the reason why we're lingering here on the cross, the series on you know being built different is because it is only through a relationship with Jesus, who was crucified. It's only by coming face to face with the lengths he was going to demonstrate his love for you that we even begin to understand what it means to have the sort of resilience we need to endure and make it through this life that we have, that we're called to live and remain faithful. It's only through a relationship with Jesus that we can start to understand what it means and how important it is that we step into life and life to the full. See, Isaiah had told us that he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. And the punishment that brought us peace, and we're talking about inward peace here. We're talking about peace between us and a neighbor. We're talking about peace between anyone we may have conflict with. The punishment that brings us peace was put on Jesus, and it's by his wounds that we are healed. Because we all, me too, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Do you get what Isaiah is getting at here? You may think, okay, well, he's Jesus, right? Alright, okay. He's kind of like God in the body. He probably turned off the pain sensors. Mid-cross, he's not feeling anything. How could he possibly know what I'm going through? It's just not true. Hebrews 2 tells us he was made human in every way. So that he could understand our pain. So that he could understand our suffering. So that he could understand our temptations. He was made human in every way. Jesus knew anger. He knew all the emotions we feel. He knew abandonment. He knew betrayal. He knew pain. He knew loss. He knew frustration with the world. I mean, in his prayer the night before, he threw his hands up to God. Where are you? Like he knew it. It's actually, but Isaiah said he was the man of sorrows. Suffering's not just something he experienced. He was familiar with suffering. It's precisely because he knew our pain. It's what makes his grace so amazing. And it's what makes his invitation so compelling. Because the invitation of Jesus is not get yourself ready and then, you know, get yourself all buttoned up, look good look better, clean up your life, and then come to me. He's like, come to me with all of it. Come to me as you are. And when you're weak, not if, but when you're weak, look to me for strength and resilience, not just so you can endure this life and make it to your last breath, but so that you can have life and life to the full. This was his purpose. And yet, Isaiah says, it was the Lord's will to crush him and to cause him to suffer. And though the Lord makes his life an offering for our sin, he will see his offspring. That's you and me and any who believe and prolong his days, because death isn't the end. The will of the Lord will prosper in his hand, for after he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied. Church. And he did so so that he could claim victory over all of them, so that he could give us a picture that there's actually another side to all this. Because on the other side of death is resurrection, not just for Jesus, but for all who believe. On the other side of pain is healing, on the other side of suffering is salvation. On the other side of whatever darkness seems to be hovering over your life or over our world, is the light of life. That's why Jesus endured what he endured. And the invitation of the cross is to come to him, just as you are, with all the stuff you're carrying, all the stuff that weighs you down, whatever pain, whatever suffering, whatever doubt, whatever exhaustion, whatever secret you refuse to tell anyone else. Jesus, like, bring it to me. Bring it to me, lay it at the cross and receive healing. Receive freedom. It's free. Come to me. Allow my wounds to bring the healing. Come to me. I have life for you. Follow my way, and it will build you different. That's the invitation of the cross. And for someone, your next step is to say yes to his way. Someone's been carrying around something you're sick of carrying and you need to stop. And today is the day that you need to bring that to the foot of the cross and be free. Be forgiven and receive life. For someone, maybe your next step is even to be baptized, to say yes in that way. When we're baptized, it's a symbolic thing where we're saying, I'm laying down my life, I'm receiving forgiveness of sin, and I'm gonna pick up a new life because now my life belongs to Jesus. And if that's the right step for you, if you're watching this, if that's the right step for you, we're gonna have a prayer team here around the room in just a moment. We'll have a prayer team in Saginaw Monroe. If you're watching online, if you'll drop something in the chat, we'll connect with you. If that's your step to say yes to Jesus, really the the the where to start is with a simple prayer where you just express that sentiment to God. It can be as simple as God, I'm laying my life down. I'm giving up my way so I can take up your way. And if you pray that prayer, you pray something similar. My only ask is that you'll tell someone. You can tell someone on the prayer team, you can tell someone who brought you to church today. Let someone know so we can help you keep taking next steps with God. So we can start that conversation about baptism with you if that's the right step. And if you prayed that prayer for the first time, or if you if you've been yet, there's a this is a thing that you've said yes to Jesus a thousand times. Here's what's true about all of us who've ever said yes to Jesus. We need to be reminded regularly of what it costs for him to make us new. And to be reminded that he's still making us new, he's still making me new. I don't know about you, I got a long way to go on this journey. I'm just getting started. God's just getting started with me. One way we practice remembering is through communion. We're gonna take communion in just a moment. If you're watching a line, you can take it right where you are. We have some elements in the room and Saginaw and Monroe in here. When we take communion, we are reminded that all this stuff we're carrying, we we were not meant to carry it alone. But he, Jesus, bore our pain. He took up our suffering. And he can handle whatever we have to bring to him. The reason why we take communion with bread and with wine, we use juice, really comes back to what Jesus taught his disciples. The night that he would be arrested, uh, the apostle Paul says this the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. And church, he's coming. So let us re-reminded that when we take communion, it's not just a ritual we do, it is an invitation to bring our full selves to the cross and be reminded of what it cost him for our sins to be forgiven, but also what it means for us: freedom, restoration, and healing. For it's by his wounds that we're healed. Let's pray. God, you are so awesome. And I am forever in debt, forever grateful that you chose to put the punishment that brings me peace on your son. God, I I can't imagine the anguish, but I feel the grace every time this story is read, every time I'm reminded of what it costs Jesus. It's like you're pulling a full measure of your grace out again. And God, may that grace, as it gets poured out on this room, on anyone who hears my words, God may it mend the broken hearts, may it fill the empty hearts, may it mobilize the hearts that are already on fire for you to go and share the good news with others. And God may you be honored and glorified by the fruit of your grace poured out in Jesus' name. Amen. So, what's your next step? If you're new to us, every every week at the end of the service, we we give you time to talk to God about that. During this time, if you're like, oh, I want to pray, I just don't know what to say. We got a prayer team, the Illuminated Lanyards, that's our prayer team. They would love to pray with you. If baptism's the right next step, just you can talk with one of them. We have communion around the room, and you can grab those elements. But but pause for a moment. In your heart, look upon the face of your Savior. Be reminded of what he did for you. And then wherever he leads you, that's where you should go.