SPEAKER_01: So when we gather as a church to celebrate the Lord's Supper, it has been our custom to take a passage of Scripture and to open it up, and it's a passage that usually speaks about the sacrifice of Jesus upon our uh for our behalf.
SPEAKER_01: We might look at one of the gospel accounts that give details as to Jesus inaugurating the event of Passover before of this Passover feast that he converted to the Lord's Supper before his death.
SPEAKER_01: Or we might look at the instructions that the Apostle Paul gave to the Corinthian church.
SPEAKER_01: It begins with that familiar phrase, for I received from the Lord which I also delivered to you.
SPEAKER_01: Or we might take an Old Testament perspective and take a look at it.
SPEAKER_01: A familiar passage, perhaps Isaiah 53, the passage that Isaiah wrote that refers to the aspects of the suffering and uh and truly understanding that Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
SPEAKER_01: But tonight we'll be uh moving at a rather brisk pace to look into Psalm 22.
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's right next door to that wonderful Psalm, the pleasant psalm, Psalm 23, uh, which uh kind of begs the question uh how can you have such a difficult psalm, and then right after that one of the most blissful, but they I think they're contained in that section of the Psalms because one Psalm is the suffering Savior, uh, the the next Psalm is the shepherding savior, and then the 24th Psalm goes into uh the him being the reigning uh savior, and so it's there they're all three together there.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh I've always often thought of Psalm 23 as that lyrical beauty.
SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's probably if you were uh born in a Christian family, it was probably the first psalm that you memorized.
SPEAKER_01: And uh I just uh uh it it people just love that psalm, but for Psalm 22, it's so violent and so uh it speaks of the wretched heart of sinful man as he exercises beastly brutality upon the innocent son of God.
SPEAKER_01: Beyond the dreadfulness that's described in the early stanzas of Psalm 22 is the amazing fact that the descriptions were placed in the heart of David by inspiration of the Holy Spirit a thousand years before they became a reality at Golgotha, outside of the walls of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: And if that fact doesn't stun you, the descriptions of what transpire within the Psalm by means of crucifixion that David places in Psalm 22 predate the inception of perhaps the most brutal means of execution that was invented by the Persians six to seven hundred years prior to being played out at Calvary.
SPEAKER_01: And understand, if we don't allow the horror and the violence to obscure the underlying message of Psalm 22, we can see it as a classic example of how believers can still worship God while struggling desperately as they face dire situations and even life-threatening circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: If you struggle with fill in the blank, you can still worship God.
SPEAKER_01: If it's sickness, if it's uh a cancer, if it's being in old age and infirmity, if it's uh marriage struggles, if it's parenting problems, if it's uh challenges in the workplace, if it's family difficulties, if it's the IRS, or perhaps your sports team is doing lousy, you can still worship God.
SPEAKER_01: You can still extol Him and exalt Him and give Him praise.
SPEAKER_01: Life can come with many joyful and cheerful moments that give thrill to our hearts, it causes us to be happy to be alive.
SPEAKER_01: And conversely, life can come at you like a runaway freight train careening down a track, it's out of control, it's imminently ready to be derailed, resulting in all kinds of havoc and destruction, bringing sorrow and misery and despair to our spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Much like we see in Psalm 22.
SPEAKER_01: Yet, in the despondency that exists with it, is the joy of knowing that God is on his throne and he is in control and he has purpose and plan for all of this.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what Jesus was meditating on as he hung on the cross on our behalf.
SPEAKER_01: Having been arrested and accused by false witnesses and paraded through four hearings, first to the illegal late-night Sanhedrin hearing, then brought before the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, who hears his case.
SPEAKER_01: Then Pilate realizes the accusations have no founding.
SPEAKER_01: There's no capital offense here.
SPEAKER_01: He sends him off to Herod.
SPEAKER_01: Herod attempts to amuse himself with Jesus by requesting a miracle, but in disappointment sends Jesus back to Pilate, whereupon the by now irritated Roman governor who had previously been advised by his wife, have nothing to do with this prophet.
SPEAKER_01: He submits to the clamoring wishes of the bloodthirsty mob.
SPEAKER_01: He washes his hands in water and condemns him to death.
SPEAKER_01: Before his execution, Jesus is brutally beaten by scourging.
SPEAKER_01: The furrows were made upon his back, as recorded in Isaiah.
SPEAKER_01: He is then ushered to a place of execution, an outcropping of rocks outside the western city walls of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: Barry is stripped of his clothing, his arms and legs stretched out, and he is physically nailed to a cross.
SPEAKER_01: The cross is then raised and dropped into the hole that supports it, allowing it to stand upright and remain in that position until the death of the guilty offender has transpired.
SPEAKER_01: And above Jesus' head is attached to the upright beam, a placard written in Aramaic and Latin and Greek, reading his offense.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
SPEAKER_01: And so by 9 a.m.
SPEAKER_01: on that first Good Friday, Jesus' execution had begun.
SPEAKER_01: And for the first three hours of that time, the scripture records that he made three statements, each of which would be called others-centered.
SPEAKER_01: The first was that of an intercessor speaking to his father on behalf of those gathered who, as active participants, were participating in a murder.
SPEAKER_01: Luke 23, 34 records his tender-hearted, empathetic words, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they do.
SPEAKER_01: In most cases, the one being crucified is railing curses upon those present, curses upon them and their family.
SPEAKER_01: But our Lord is extending forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: The second statement that he made was that of a comforter to the penitent thief, who clearly recognized his sin and his guilt and his worthiness of punishment, for which he was condemned.
SPEAKER_01: But also recognized Christ as innocent and acknowledged Christ as Lord, and asked that he be remembered in Christ's kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: And Luke's gospel, chapter 23, verse 43, tells us that Jesus said to him, Truly I say to you, today, you will be with me in paradise.
SPEAKER_01: One of Jesus' last acts was to pardon the guilty.
SPEAKER_01: And finally, to his own mother, Mary, who was with him from the beginning, who carried him and bore him at Bethlehem, being the human means by which Dee Dee would become flesh and dwell among us.
SPEAKER_01: Joseph now being dead, her husband, she's accompanied to the foot of the cross by his beloved disciple John, who records our Lord's words to her in his gospel.
SPEAKER_01: They are together for the last time, Jesus provides for her care and her well-being when he says to her, Woman, behold your son.
SPEAKER_01: Then looking at John, he said, Son, behold your mother.
SPEAKER_01: The reason for that was that Jesus' family were not believers at the time he was on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Later they would believe, James and Jude would believe, but Jesus cared for his mother.
SPEAKER_01: He loved her.
SPEAKER_01: And rather than place her in the care of an unbelieving family, and being the eldest of the family, he makes provision for her while suffering on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: But then the scene drastically changes.
SPEAKER_01: Having cared for the immediate needs of the people present, the thief next to him, and his mother before him, it says that from the sixth hour, which we describe as twelve noon, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.
SPEAKER_01: For three of those literally darkened hours, the condemned Messiah is silently suffering, and he says nothing.
SPEAKER_01: As the execution scene dramatically shifts from the light of a normal spring day in first century Palestine to a haunting and heavily darkened area, the land is enveloped in total darkness.
SPEAKER_01: And we read about darkness like this in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: You remember in Exodus how the Egyptians, in the tenth chapter of Exodus, saw a darkened land at the hand of Moses brought by a plague, where the darkness was exclusive to the Egyptians' land, but where the Jews lived, there remained light.
SPEAKER_01: Moses in Deuteronomy describes the scene at Mount Sinai where he received the law in God's presence as the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah prophesies of the coming Messiah with familiar words we often hear at the celebration of Christmas.
SPEAKER_01: He speaks of a symbolic darkness.
SPEAKER_01: He says, The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.
SPEAKER_01: Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them the light has shone.
SPEAKER_01: But here, at this scene, in Jerusalem, a darkness of judgment and doom descends as the life and light of the world was in the process of being physically extinguished.
SPEAKER_01: Those gathered there must have wondered what was causing this strange event.
SPEAKER_01: The Jewish leaders, the chief priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, they knew the word.
SPEAKER_01: But earlier in that day they clamored for his death, standing in stunned silence, now unable to see with clarity the scene that had preoccupied them with great delight hours earlier.
SPEAKER_01: The Roman soldiers, having drawn the less than desirable duty of executing criminals, perhaps in their mind the notion that for sure those thieves had it coming.
SPEAKER_01: They deserved to die.
SPEAKER_01: But that Nazarene prophet, he could preach.
SPEAKER_01: He could open our minds up with these parables and help us to understand.
SPEAKER_01: And he could do miraculous works.
SPEAKER_01: He even healed a blind man and he healed the servant of a centurion.
SPEAKER_01: Why are we doing this?
SPEAKER_01: And then there are the muffled sobs of those who knew Jesus, those who followed Jesus, of those who cried out for his release but are drowned out by the bloodthirsty mob, their hearts broken, now standing silently at the foot of their Messiah's cross.
SPEAKER_01: He was being executed in broad daylight, but the day had turned dark.
SPEAKER_01: Three hours later, in this miraculously heavy, deathly darkness, came the voice of one occupying the center cross.
SPEAKER_01: As it penetrates the murky silence, as the Son of David utters forth familiar words of a psalm of David, he cries out in his native tongue with a loud voice, Eloy, Eloy, Lamak Sabatani, which translated means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_01: Those astute listeners there who heard him, those who were knowledgeable in the scriptures, would know that he was quoting the first line of a psalm of David.
SPEAKER_01: Because Psalms are usually identified back then.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't have numbers, but they were identified as or referenced by the first line.
SPEAKER_01: Others there at Calvary thought that perhaps he was calling out to the prophet Elijah, and so they added their ongoing mockery, saying, Let's see whether Elijah will come and save him.
SPEAKER_01: But this evening, if we walk through the door that Jesus has opened because of his use of this psalm, we uncover a treasure of precisely why he placed his mind and why in this terrible moment of suffering he meditated on this holy word of God while paying the ransom for our sin.
SPEAKER_01: It is as if he was in his suffering pointing all of us, all of mankind, to this psalm, so that we might see that its fulfillment is in him.
SPEAKER_01: So let's look at it.
SPEAKER_01: The cry to his father continues in Psalm 22 and verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning?
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.
SPEAKER_01: This is a cry of isolation, of rejection.
SPEAKER_01: Christ's agony is multiplied and magnified because as Paul wrote to the Corinthian church in his second letter, for our sake he, referring to God the Father, made him, Jesus, to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_01: The emotion that Jesus expresses here is powerful.
SPEAKER_01: It's evidence of both his humanity and his deity.
SPEAKER_01: He's cast in a shroud of physical darkness, and Jesus is expressing not only the agony that he feels in his physical suffering, but also the agony within the shroud that exists of spiritual darkness that has enveloped the whole world.
SPEAKER_01: For this three-hour period of time, there existed an interruption of the spiritual communion with his father.
SPEAKER_01: Before he left for Australia, I asked Jesse, okay, how do you describe this?
SPEAKER_01: Oh great Trinitarian scholar.
SPEAKER_01: And we we went over various words that would talk about it.
SPEAKER_01: If we said it was a separation, that would mean the lines would be cut.
SPEAKER_01: But if we said there is this uh there is this interruption, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: That seems to make sense.
SPEAKER_01: It would be like you have a phone call and you put a person on hold.
SPEAKER_01: They're still on the line, but they're on hold and there's not a communication going on.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if the other person, if the person on the other end hangs up, it's all over.
SPEAKER_01: But neither one of them, God the Father, nor Jesus the Son, was hanging up.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was calling out to the Father, and the Father was watching as his son was doing his will.
SPEAKER_01: And so I find that that that to be rather comforting.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, folks, the Trinity is still intact, and you need not worry.
SPEAKER_01: But for sure, there was this, there was this period of time, this interruption of spiritual communion with his father.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus becomes the bearer of sin and the hell that we deserve, his father turns and allows the holiness of his son to become a horror and a sin offering.
SPEAKER_01: And it's for a brief time.
SPEAKER_01: And yet it is this sacrificial offering that for us has become a thing of beauty, because if we believe by faith in him alone and we find cleansing, and we are made righteous, and share communion with Christ, being indwelt by his spirit, and will be provided, we will be provided an eternal home in heaven with his Father.
SPEAKER_01: Christ's death gives us life.
SPEAKER_01: Here on the cross, Jesus describes his condition.
SPEAKER_01: It is abject misery, it is groaning and pain and desolation, to the extent that even God, his father, is not answering his cries.
SPEAKER_01: He lays his complaint before his father, but is as though his father has put him on hold.
SPEAKER_01: And you would think that because of this breach of communication and the pervasive silence that he was enduring, that Jesus might become embittered by the neglect.
SPEAKER_01: But as we look further in this Psalm, we see a pattern of what he does to adjust his thinking, and he converts it all into a pattern of worship.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, there is difficulty and struggle and misery, and then there is worship and joy and exaltation.
SPEAKER_01: He sets his focus first on God's holiness, on God's character.
SPEAKER_01: Let's look at verses 3 through 5 of Psalm 22.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: In you our fathers trusted.
SPEAKER_01: They trusted and you delivered them.
SPEAKER_01: To you they cried and were rescued.
SPEAKER_01: In you they trusted and were not put to shame.
SPEAKER_01: God has an extensive resume of why we should trust Him.
SPEAKER_01: Adam and Eve, in a state of eternal corruption, were promised a deliverer by God.
SPEAKER_01: God also placed an angelic guard with a flaming sword in front of the tree of life to prevent a calamity of a perpetual state of eternal damnation to those who might partake of it.
SPEAKER_01: God protected Noah and his family in the ark from the worldwide deluge that would destroy the ancient and wicked world that was described as continually evil always.
SPEAKER_01: He protected Abraham from the nefarious intentions of the Egyptians.
SPEAKER_01: He rescued Lot from the marauding kings that afflicted Cana.
SPEAKER_01: He sent an angel to comfort Hagar and bade her return to her mistress Sarah.
SPEAKER_01: He protected Lot and his daughters from the destruction of Sodom.
SPEAKER_01: He protected Abraham from Abimelech.
SPEAKER_01: In proving absolute obedience to God, God provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in place of his beloved son Isaac.
SPEAKER_01: God provided salvation and rescue for Jacob and Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: God delivered the children of Israel in Egypt as he rescued them from the slavery that they endured for over 400 years through Moses.
SPEAKER_01: God used that man to guide them out of bondage to the promised land and through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: And it was God who supplied the miraculous man of food and water where there was none.
SPEAKER_01: God provided Joshua to lead his people in the conquest of Cana.
SPEAKER_01: Throughout the period of the judges, for 300 years, when Israel would fall away from God into idolatry and be overcome and enslaved by their enemies, and would cry out to God, he would hear them and raise up a judge who to deliver them and bring peace to their land.
SPEAKER_01: And at this moment, in the last hours of Jesus' life, in the darkness of Golgotha, in his agony of isolation.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus cries out to God and reminds his father of his fatherly character, his father's ability to save.
SPEAKER_01: And then bearing evidence once again of his humanity, the transcript changes in the next verses of Psalm 22.
SPEAKER_01: Son of David returns to the tribulation of his immediate circumstances and his adversaries that contribute mightily to his suffering.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 6 through 8.
SPEAKER_01: He says, But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind, despised by the people, all who see me mock me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads.
SPEAKER_01: He trusts in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him.
SPEAKER_01: In the early 1700s, a young musician, Isaac Watts, was in a furious discussion with his father about the heartless and uninspiring psalm singing that was taking place in churches all over England.
SPEAKER_01: Finally, having heard enough of the complaint, Isaac Watts' father said, Well, young man, why don't you give us something better to sing?
SPEAKER_01: And so, 750 hymns later, songs like When I Survey the Wondrous Cross and O God, our Help in Ages Past, and the one I always love to sing at Christmas, Joy to the World, were penned, and the contribution of Isaac Watts to our singing of praise and worship has for centuries been enormous and profound.
SPEAKER_01: But very sadly, in recent years, one of Watts' hymns has suffered what can only be described as an intrusion into soft editing.
SPEAKER_01: The original line of the first verse of At the Cross once read, Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my sovereign die?
SPEAKER_01: Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?
SPEAKER_01: We sang those words tonight because they're in the Emmanuel hymnal.
SPEAKER_01: But hymn books across the globe have removed the ending of that original lyric so that it now reads, For sinner such as I.
SPEAKER_01: Feels a little cleaner, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: There seems to be a tendency to want to shy away from how we describe our utter detestableness of our sin.
SPEAKER_01: Our sin has reduced us to the ugliest of garbage-eating, refuse-wallowing creatures.
SPEAKER_01: You have never met someone to invite you over to their house so that you can look at their worm collection.
SPEAKER_01: You've never been invited to a week-long worm race.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus sees himself reduced to the lowest of the low, an object of insignificant worthlessness.
SPEAKER_01: Back in 1976, I was a teacher at Lake Braddock.
SPEAKER_01: I was living in a house with three other guys in Arlington, and uh we kept it fairly tidy, if you can believe that.
SPEAKER_01: But one day I got home from work and walked into the kitchen, and it had an aroma as though something there had died.
SPEAKER_01: One of the other guys was there, and I said, What is that awful smell?
SPEAKER_01: And he says, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I tried to find out, but I can't figure out where it's coming from.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're both we're puzzled, we're befuddled, and we start checking out everything, everything in the house, basement to the top to the bottom, and we we check under the cabinets, we look under the stove, we look everywhere, and and and all over that kitchen.
SPEAKER_01: That awful smell just kept coming at us.
SPEAKER_01: And uh we came to, there was a stainless steel pot that was looked pristine, it was clean, it was sitting on top of the stove.
SPEAKER_01: And I went over and opened up the lid, and uh, you know, I had assumed it was empty, but I never assume anything when guys are living together.
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, uh went over to the pot, lifted the lid, I beheld a five-day-old cooked carcass of chicken that was totally engulfed in maggots feasting on the forgotten entree.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know, it's it's something that we probably shouldn't have brought up uh tonight.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, but it was definitely pulsating with life.
SPEAKER_01: And I so I grabbed the pan, I grabbed the pan and I took off out the back door of the kitchen and then fired that thing like a lacrosse uh you know player would, you know, and that that you can get some air under that chicken, it can fly.
SPEAKER_01: And it went all the way to the end of the uh backyard, and but it was detestable and it was awful, and it took a couple of days for the for the smell to go away.
SPEAKER_01: Uh I think the raccoons took it away uh uh that night, but it was it was hideous.
SPEAKER_01: From the cross, Jesus experienced the revulsion of those present.
SPEAKER_01: David's psalm describes the travesty that it has become in the eyes of those who see him.
SPEAKER_01: He's scorned, he's despised, he's mocked.
SPEAKER_01: Small wonder that the writers of the gospel account of the crucifixion of Jesus find these phrases in Psalm 22 to be exceptional descriptions, quoting them verbatim as they establish their prophetic fulfillment a thousand years after David first placed this psalm in his collection of writings.
SPEAKER_01: Both Matthew and Mark specifically use the phrase in verse 7, wagging their heads in describing the people that took aim with their arrows of scorn directed at Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew, in connecting Psalm 22 to Christ's crucifixion, recalls the words of the chief priests and scribes in chapter 27, 43, where they are quoted as saying, He trusts in God.
SPEAKER_01: Let him deliver him now if he desires him.
SPEAKER_01: He said he was the Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: Prove it.
SPEAKER_01: While abuse and mockery continue to be hurled upon him, he hangs on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: And in verses 9 and 10, the psalm transitions to the sweet relationship experienced between the Son and His Father.
SPEAKER_01: Yet you are He who took me from the womb.
SPEAKER_01: You made me trust you at my mother's breasts.
SPEAKER_01: On you I was cast from my birth and on my mother's and from my mother's womb.
SPEAKER_01: You have been my God.
SPEAKER_01: It is as if Jesus is saying to his father, we go way back, back to the very beginning, to when I was brought forth into this world as your only begotten son.
SPEAKER_01: You know, none of us can remember our own births, uh, and I believe that's probably a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: Um if we did, I doubt the narrative of the event would have anything to say about our fathers.
SPEAKER_01: Um I just I recall my when I was born, mom told me that dad went to a movie theater, which I don't know why they stopped doing that.
SPEAKER_01: That seemed to be a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: But when a newborn infant comes into the world, that newborn is a star of the show.
SPEAKER_01: The mother is the producer, director, and those attending provide much-needed assistance.
SPEAKER_01: But in Psalm 22, David, while referencing his mother's presence, an invaluable contribution to the process of bringing his life into the world, focuses his attention squarely on the ever-present trust that exists between the anointed Son of God and his father as he takes his first breath in this sin-filled cold earth.
SPEAKER_01: The same God who delivered and rescued his people is the same God who is fully capable of rescuing the one who is crying out from the cross upon which he viciously hangs.
SPEAKER_01: This cry for help that Jesus makes.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus understands a sovereign plan is at work.
SPEAKER_01: And for it to take place, there exists the hardship and suffering of the cross.
SPEAKER_01: The deliverance will come, but not before full payment of sacrifice has been completed.
SPEAKER_01: Having exalted his deliverer, the content next transitions to another set of misery.
SPEAKER_01: Verses 11 to 18.
SPEAKER_01: Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.
SPEAKER_01: Many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bishon surround me.
SPEAKER_01: They open wide their mouths at me like a ravening and roaring lion.
SPEAKER_01: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are all out of joints, my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast.
SPEAKER_01: My strength is dried up like a potured, my tongue sticks to my jaws, you lay me in the dust of death, for dogs encompass me.
SPEAKER_01: A company of evildoers encircles me, they have pierced my hands and feet.
SPEAKER_01: I can count all my bones, they stare and gloat over me.
SPEAKER_01: They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
SPEAKER_01: Strong bulls around him, like a ravening and roaring lion, encompassing dogs, the junkyard variety.
SPEAKER_01: Why did these people act like this?
SPEAKER_01: Why did they treat him this way?
SPEAKER_01: Was it the high claims that he made that made them resentful?
SPEAKER_01: Was it the popularity that the people bestowed upon him that drove them to jealousy and envy, or was it possibly the bloodlust of a murderous spectacle that provided them with such great delight?
SPEAKER_01: But certainly here, the intense suffering finds vivid description.
SPEAKER_01: He is poured out like wax, bones out of joint, heart melted within, drained and dried out, unimaginable and unquenchable thirsts, and they pierce his hands and his feet.
SPEAKER_01: These descriptions of physical suffering are vivid.
SPEAKER_01: This kind of death destroys the victim from the inside out.
SPEAKER_01: Physicians and medical examiners and coroners have examined the gospel narratives and give us a gory glimpse of what Jesus physically suffered on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Crucifixion creates in its victim an inability to breathe naturally, difficulty in exhaling, which expands the lungs in an effort to get air.
SPEAKER_01: With elbows in a flexed position, the victim can't adequately bear the weight of their body, creating severe pain in their arms.
SPEAKER_01: Because of the brutal scourging that Jesus received, his shredded back is continually scraping against the upright post of the cross as he attempts to lift himself to breathe, all of which creates continued, severe, ongoing pain.
SPEAKER_01: Dehydration sets in, causing his muscles to cramp and contract, creating painful spasms.
SPEAKER_01: He suffers from respiratory acidosis, a buildup of carbon dioxide in his lungs, which increases the heart and breathing rate in order to compensate for a loss of oxygen.
SPEAKER_01: Certainly, as all of this transpired, shock begins to set in.
SPEAKER_01: Loss of oxygen and rich blood flow to the brain causing some cognitive delirium.
SPEAKER_01: Combination of all these torturous elements brings about what cardiologists term a myocardial infarction.
SPEAKER_01: His heart and other vital organs are beginning to die.
SPEAKER_01: It's leading to cardiac arrhythmia.
SPEAKER_01: All of the above results in a buildup of fluid in the pericardial cavity surrounding his heart and the pleural cavity surrounding the lungs, which can result in a pulmonary edema and lead to cardiac rupture, resulting in death.
SPEAKER_01: One could accurately and safely say that Jesus died of a broken heart.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the suffering he endured for you and me.
SPEAKER_01: And with his death having transpired in six hours, the Roman soldiers did not need to break his legs to hasten his death, but they most certainly contributed to the absolute verification of his death when one of their own thrust a spear through Jesus' side, piercing his heart and lungs, and it resulted in a flow of blood and water, evidencing that without question, death had occurred.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we have a lot of skeptics that look at the life of Christ and they try to present false theories that perhaps Jesus really didn't die.
SPEAKER_01: And if he didn't really die, then he really wasn't raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: And one of my favorite stupid theories that they have is called the swoon theory, that Jesus was taken down from the cross and he was still still very much alive, just maybe not quite as good as you and I.
SPEAKER_01: And they took him to the to the grave, and there in the coolness of the of the tomb, he kind of revived himself and he got up and walked out.
SPEAKER_01: They have a hard time figuring out how to explain his departure in front of all the Roman soldiers who were placed there, but nonetheless, that's one of the stupid theories that is out there.
SPEAKER_01: Prior to all of this transpiring, each of the gospels records a game of chance taking place as the Roman soldiers parceled out Jesus' garments.
SPEAKER_01: They came upon a seamless one-piece tunic woven from top to bottom that would be something of a prize.
SPEAKER_01: Rather than tear it, they determined to cast lots for it.
SPEAKER_01: And in so doing, their actions bring to once again fulfillment of God's word, what was prophesied by David a millennium prior to it taking place.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew sees the connection in his gospel.
SPEAKER_01: John's Gospel says this was done that the scripture might be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: And in verses 19 and 21, here is where we begin to see a transition take place.
SPEAKER_01: Because if Jesus is meditating on this psalm in his suffering, these words begin to see a joy that comes out of this, a worship that comes out of this.
SPEAKER_01: But you, O Lord, do not be far off.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 19.
SPEAKER_01: Oh you, my help, come quickly to my aid.
SPEAKER_01: Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog.
SPEAKER_01: Save me from the mouth of the lion.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_01: You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen.
SPEAKER_01: Throughout this, Jesus continues to pray to his father.
SPEAKER_01: Come close.
SPEAKER_01: Help.
SPEAKER_01: Speed to my assistance.
SPEAKER_01: Deliver me from the oppressors.
SPEAKER_01: Deliver me from the powerful.
SPEAKER_01: Deliver me from those who are devouring me.
SPEAKER_01: But that last line in verse 21 is so beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: You have rescued me.
SPEAKER_01: It's as though while still on the cross, bearing our sin and our iniquities, the magnificent mind of Christ sees God's plan for man's salvation realized.
SPEAKER_01: Someone might say, Whoa, whoa, wait, just wait, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_01: Wait a minute, Jesus, you're dying.
SPEAKER_01: Look at your hands and your feet.
SPEAKER_01: You've been stripped of all clothing, you're nailed to a cross.
SPEAKER_01: Take a look at your body.
SPEAKER_01: Your back has been filleted with a scourge.
SPEAKER_01: You're losing blood.
SPEAKER_01: You're not long for this world.
SPEAKER_01: But in verse 21, Jesus sees the work accomplished, the victory complete.
SPEAKER_01: Understand that when that happens, joy and ecstasy and delight is all over this.
SPEAKER_01: Deliverance has come.
SPEAKER_01: And because of that, then the worship increases.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verses 22 and forward.
SPEAKER_01: I will tell of your name to my brothers.
SPEAKER_01: In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you.
SPEAKER_01: You who fear the Lord, praise him, all of you, offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him.
SPEAKER_01: All you offspring of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard when he cried to him.
SPEAKER_01: In Matthew 28, 8, after the angels had announced the resurrection to the women and told them to tell his disciples, the women encountered Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says to them, Greetings.
SPEAKER_01: And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him.
SPEAKER_01: Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.
SPEAKER_01: This is the only time when Jesus called his disciples, my brothers.
SPEAKER_01: It took place after his resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: By virtue of Jesus' use of that specific phrase, the triumph of his resurrection goes forth to all who believe.
SPEAKER_01: This is a resurrection verse.
SPEAKER_01: The writer of Hebrews, in chapter 2, puts everything together in subjection to him.
SPEAKER_01: He leaves nothing outside of his control.
SPEAKER_01: And the writer says, At present we do not yet see everything in subjection to him, but we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
SPEAKER_01: And then the writer explains why.
SPEAKER_01: For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in him, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
SPEAKER_01: For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source.
SPEAKER_01: That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise.
SPEAKER_01: Here he quotes Psalm 22.
SPEAKER_01: And again, quoting Psalm 56, I will put my trust in him.
SPEAKER_01: And again, quoting Isaiah 8, Behold, I and the children of God who he has given to me.
SPEAKER_01: Since therefore children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all of those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.
SPEAKER_01: For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
SPEAKER_01: For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, we have a full service Savior.
SPEAKER_01: The Son of God came to this earth to seek and to save the lost and to redeem us.
SPEAKER_01: And he has brought us into his family, and we're no longer aliens, we're no longer strangers, we are by no means acquaintances, we are adopted into his family, and we are brothers with the risen Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus says in verses twenty-five through thirty-one From you comes my praise in the great congregation, my vows will perform before those who fear him.
SPEAKER_01: The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied, those who seek him shall be shall praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: May your hearts live forever.
SPEAKER_01: All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you, for kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.
SPEAKER_01: There is a fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise right here.
SPEAKER_01: All the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
SPEAKER_01: And then he goes on, David goes on in this Psalm.
SPEAKER_01: Prosterity shall serve him, it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation.
SPEAKER_01: They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.
SPEAKER_01: And the last words that Jesus say on the cross are, It is finished.
SPEAKER_01: Into thy hands I commit my spirit.
SPEAKER_01: It ends with, He has done it.
SPEAKER_01: And he did it for us.
SPEAKER_01: Paul said to the Romans, while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
SPEAKER_01: For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps a good person one would dare even to die.
SPEAKER_01: But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_01: So then, how should we live in light of this?
SPEAKER_01: I should submit to trust him who ordains suffering when it comes into my life.
SPEAKER_01: I should continue to trust in God even when my I feel like my prayers go unanswered.
SPEAKER_01: We should place the cross at the center of our walk with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It should be at the forefront of our thinking.
SPEAKER_01: We should put in our hearts God's passion for the lost.
SPEAKER_01: That we would focus on them and reach them with the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I don't know where you are in your life today, how whether it's difficulty or struggle or if it's joy and gladness, maybe the dogs of doubt cause you to struggle and they're nipping at your heels.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe your life has been turned upside down by circumstances that have come upon you and maybe they're crushing you, but we should remember that God sees.
SPEAKER_01: We should remember that God hears your prayers, your cries for help.
SPEAKER_01: We should remember that God is holy, that God is with us in our suffering, and that God is advancing his purposes and plans to make for himself a people that please him.
SPEAKER_01: People who are equipped to serve him now and to serve him in his eternal kingdom to come.
SPEAKER_01: And so tonight we celebrate him.
SPEAKER_01: We remember him.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.