From Ivory Palaces to an Old Rugged Cross

Chunilal Pema shares a powerful message on the incredible sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He shares on what Jesus willingly left behind in heaven to bring salvation to the world. This message reveals the depth of God's love, the price of our redemption, and the eternal hope found through Christ.

Our heart at Celebration Church Rarotonga is that this message will greatly bless your walk with Jesus and help bring you closer to Him. We pray that you would be stirred to live a life that is passionate about loving Jesus!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to this week's podcast by Celebration Church Lot of Toma. We believe this message will empower and equip you to live a life of breakthrough. Thanks for joining us.

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Turn in your Bibles, please, to Isaiah chapter 53. We're beginning in verse 2. Isaiah chapter 53. Beginning in verse 2, we'll read to verse 7. And these are Old Testament pictures of the Lord Jesus. Verse 2, for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness. And when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by man, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And we heard, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. We've turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted. Yet he opened not his mouth. So he opened not his mouth. I wonder this morning, as we've been going over these verses together, I wonder if we've missed something. A wonderful facet of who Jesus is. Yes, we see the bleeding, broken, burden-bearing Savior on the cross, but we're missing something, something that makes what we have just read uh a million times more powerful and more precious. That makes every drop of the blood of Christ more wonderful. Now please don't get me wrong, and don't worry, I'm a preacher of the cross. My life's motto is make much of the blood of Jesus. I believe that God's called me to mention his son's precious blood every opportunity I can. Like the Apostle Paul, I preach Christ and Him crucified. I believe there's power in the blood of the Lamb, that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God slain from the foundations of the world. He is God's ultimate sacrifice for sin. But we've missed something, some of us, along the way. Something so important and so intimately close to the very heart of God, the Father, that only that the only facet we see of Jesus is his earthly birth and burial, his sacrifice and death on the cross. Turn with me to Psalm 45 and verse 8. All your garments are scented with myrrh, alos, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces by which they have made you glad. Then Isaiah chapter 6, verse 1 to 3. A vision of the prophet Isaiah. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above it stood Seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried out to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The prophet Isaiah saw a vision of the presence of God, filled with wonderful sounds and creatures, angelic beings, amazing creatures, powerful, mighty, strong, winged creatures, full of the glow of God's glory. That they experienced from the very presence of God, the Father. And when you put these two thoughts together, then you get from palace and perfumes to the stench and the smell of the blood of the cross. This is Jesus. This is our Savior. The old songwriter penned, he left his splendor of heaven, knowing his destiny. Twas the lonely hill of Golgotha. There he laid down his life for me. What I want to do this morning is to help you understand the enormous sacrifice Jesus made for us, not just on the cross, but in leaving perfect heaven to enter an imperfect world as a man. Leaving the adoration and the praise of angelic beings, millions and millions and millions of them. And coming down to the mockery and the spittle of a lost world. It is something right from the very beginning. The Bible says that Jesus is the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world. Long before we were even thought of, long before the world existed, God had a plan. Jesus knew he was going to come and die for people just like you and I. He knew the cost of doing it. Song of Solomon, chapter 1, verse 3. It says, Because of the fragrance of your good ointments, your name is Ointment Poured Forth. I wonder whether there's anyone here who remembers that lovely chorus. Anyone know that song? Hands up. Good, because I'm going to get you to ask to join me in the song. And we're going to sing that. If you know it, sing with me. If you don't know it, listen. Listen to the words. See what the words say. His name is his ointment portfolio. Jesus. Jesus. His name is ointment. His name is ointment. You know, Matthew chapter two when the Magi when the Magi, these were the wise men who had understanding in many things, and wisdom and astronomy and finances. And they were often called upon by the kings and the queens of those nations to be their wise people, their leaders of wisdom. When they came and they brought their gifts to the Lord Jesus, among the precious items were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And these were the most expensive of fragrances, oils and perfumes used often in the soaking of the funerary garments, getting ready for burial. And such pictures that we see of these ointments and these fragrances, they all speak of what Jesus came to do. They all speak of his birth, his sacrifice on the cross, and his resurrection. And heaven, think about it, heaven is filled with it. These fragrances. All heaven is filled with Jesus. The beauty and the wonder of Jesus. The ivory palaces that speaks of majestic grandeur, images of magnificent architecture, of kingly royal accommodation. The ivory palaces shine with eternity in the glory of the presence of God the Father in the face of Jesus Christ, God the Son. See, what I'm trying to show you is that Jesus left all of that, all of that wonder, all of that praise, all of that wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, marvelous, angelic, majestic heaven to come here for you and I. The ivory speaks of strength and purity. Myrce speaks of the sweet and precious graces of Christ's character. Alo speaks of the bitter sorrows and the agony of the cross. Cassia speaks of the healing touch of the Savior who rescues us from the grip of sin. Palaces speak about, in fact, there were multiple palaces. He didn't just come from one palace, from multiple palaces. All magnificent, all glorious. The uses for myrrh, alos, and the cassia. They were precious, they were highly sought-after perfumes. They were holy perfumes. They were important for holy anointed oil. They were perfumes that filled the whole of heaven. As a missionary to India, I visited the Taj Mahal three, maybe four times. Three that I can remember. As a Kiwi there, of course, you get family and friends coming to visit you on the mission field. And one of the things they want to do is they all want to go and see the Taj Mahal. I guess I visited three, maybe four times. But this was known as a jewel of Persian architecture, one of the world's most famous of buildings. Constructed in 1632, it took 22 years to complete. I remember some of the guides telling us that when I said, How do they get the stones? The mighty big stones, these beautiful, magnificent marble stones. How do they get them there? Often they were they were bought hundreds and hundreds of miles from somewhere else in India by elephant tray. So they used the elephants. A masterpiece of engineering and unbelievable beauty for the dead, not for the living. And I said, What's all these buildings? They say that's where the workers lived. In fact, the the architects and the people who who put the plants together for this tremendous building, when they had finished putting everything together, they had their eyes taken out so that they could never copy or repeat ever again such a magnificent building as this. Certainly scared us. But where Jesus left, the ivory palaces in the very presence of God in heaven, full of the radiance, full of the purity of eternity. That was for the living, not for the dead. Heaven is not for the dead. Heaven is not where you get buried. It's for the living. Verse 5 to verse 11, we'll read. Philippians chapter 2, verse 5 to 11. The apostle Paul writing to the church at Philippi says, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearances of man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord through the glory of God the Father. He came being in the form of God with all the magnificence and all the splendor of heaven's glory, with all the wonder of eternity with his father, smelling of the good thing of holiness and purity and eternity. He did not come as a bleeding, broken servant. He came down to take on the position of a lowly, broken, bleeding man on the cross. He left heaven as the King of kings and the Lord of Lords. He left the very presence of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, the intimate presence of holiness and the eternal glory of God's love. He left all of that behind and he came down to this cruel, rugged old earth. The Bible says he humbled himself. He made himself of no reputation, taken on the form of a servant, a human being, a form of a created being in the likeness of a man, not just a servant, but a bond servant, the Bible says. This is something he was he was bonded to, committed to do. He spent his whole earthy life preparing for. People say, was he was he taken by surprise when they arrested him? No, he wasn't. Was he taken by surprise when he died when they they nailed him to the cross? No, he wasn't. Every day he's breathed the the earth, he breathed the air of the earth as a man, he was preparing every moment for this day when he would die on the cross for you and I. Where his own blood would be shed for us. But to do all of this, to go to the cross, to put on the garments of brokenness and pain and death. He had to leave heaven. Every moment in heaven, he experienced the majesty and the wonder of his father's presence, God's presence that filled heaven with holiness and glory and power. God the Father's presence that glowed with the purest of light and warmth with beauty and luster. Never was there a moment when Jesus did not experience and enjoy the Father's presence, but in the fullness of time, there came a separation between Jesus, God the Son, and his heavenly Father God. A separation not because of anything he had committed in terms of wrongdoing, but because of what we had done. Because of our sins, because of our ruination of our lives, he came down and our sin placed upon him made a separation between him and his father. Matthew 27, verse 46. On the cross he cries out, Eli, Eli, Halama, Sabakhthana. That is to say, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Some of the most painful words that you could ever read in the Word of God. Oh, why, Father? We've known, I've known your presence every minute of every day, of every eternity. And now where is it? Why have you forsaken me? God could not look upon sin. God's presence was taken away off Jesus. Why? Because sin was not upon his life. God cannot look upon sin. And remember, when Jesus hung on the cross, he wasn't just bearing one man's sin or one lady's sin or one child's sin. He was bearing the sin of every person, of every time, of every nationality that ever was to be born, but that was ever born and had died of all every sin he bore upon himself. And God had to turn his face away from it. In that moment on the cross, with his blood running down the wood, with the unutterable agony of the nails in his hands and feet, with literally every demonic entity laughing and jeering at him because they figured that their boss, Lucifer, had won the day. Jesus was made the darkest, the ugliest, the most despised, the most rejected of anything that could ever be in the universe. And because of that, God the Father had to turn his head away. He could not look upon sin. Jesus, God's Son, left the majesty of the ivory palaces of heaven, and now the very presence of his father is no longer recognizable to him. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the might of his betrayal, the night of his betrayal by Judas Iscariot, as Jesus. Prayed in the garden. The enormity and the taste of what he was to endure in just a short few hours was so heavy and so mind-bending, so horrible and so torturous. The scriptures tell us that he began to sweat great droplets of blood. The agony was so great, the pain, the pain, the pressure upon his heart, upon his body, upon every part of the system of the man. It was so great that he sweat droplets of blood. Almost killed him. And with the weight of sin bearing down upon his most holy heart and the full impact of his father's anger and wrath over sin, with his father turning away his face from his only son there in the garden with utter pain and agony of soul. He cries out, Oh Father, if this cup cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, your will be done. And we get scholars who will say that at that moment Jesus sought to find another way out. There must be another way. He was at the very brink of death, exhausted and emotionally drained at the prospect of what was about to take place. His plea to his father was not make another way, Father, but rather, Father, do not let me die here in the garden. It must be at the cross that I die. I cannot die here. If I die here, my blood will not be shed. I have to shed my blood. My blood has to go from me onto the ground, into the cross, into the lives of the people. It must be shed. I must fulfill every promise, every sacrifice throughout all of Israel's history, every sacrifice of every animal that was brought to the temple to cleanse someone, to cleanse a group, to cleanse a person, to cleanse a nation, to cleanse a city from sin. Every sacrifice pointed to this one sacrifice on the cross, Jesus Christ. He was to be God's final sacrifice for sin. The last one. But he must not die here in the garden. Bible says angels came and gave him strength. That was the first time he ever experienced the Father's presence being removed from him. But now on the cross, bearing the full weight of humankind's sin, he totally was devoid of his father's presence. Can you understand it? Does it sink into our minds? Are we, and can I say this respectfully? Are we too thick to realize just what he has done for us? Don't we realize what he gave up in heaven and the glory and the wonder out of the ivory palaces, smelling of the wonderful, the wonderful flavors and scent of heaven? He gave all that up and he came down to smell of the terrible taste of congealed blood and spit and sweat and dirt and rubbish. God could not look upon that bleeding form on the cross, his only son's life. His only son's lifeblood oozing from his body. Scarred, beaten, torn to shreds, ripped to pieces, spat upon every part of him, crying out with agony. Yet the Bible says that he was silent. We read it ourselves, he was silent as a lamb to the slaughter. Not like the other guys who were crucified that same day, they swore, they blasphemed, they mocked, they probably spat at the people spitting at them, but not a sound of hatred or anger or bitterness. He was an innocent lamb about to be slaughtered. But you know, there's another reason why today I wanted us to look at these, the fact of what Jesus had done in coming down from heaven, smelling of myrrh and alos and cassia, from the ivory palaces in glory. It's because every born-again believer, we're gonna see that one day. We're gonna be there. That's our home where Jesus came from. That's where we are going. He came down from heaven to die for us on the cross, to take us with him back to his home. The magnificence and the eternal wonders of God's presence is for each one of us who are in Christ. He lay aside his heavenly crown to bear the disgrace and the torture of the crown of thorns, the great briar thorns of the desert, plunged into his scalp, and then beat into his skull by a Romish metal rod. From the moment he was arrested, there seemed to be a thirst for his blood. The multitudes, the Roman soldiers, the Jewish priests, the watching, jeering crowds, they all thirsted to see Jesus taste his own blood. Every demonic being watched with excitement at the unfolding panorama of blood and gore. The world did not understand or know that the shedding of his blood would be for the salvation and the redemption of all of us who will receive him. Every single animal that had been sacrificed was a signpost to this sacrifice on the cross. And now, smelling of this congeal blood of sweat and human spittle and death, he is God's final hope for a lost world. He is the Lamb of God that would take away the sin of the world. He shed his blood, his death on the cross would be the price paid to take you to heaven. He left everything, he left the wonders of glory so that you and I might have eternal life with him in heaven. One day we will see those mansions of glory. One day we will smell the myrrh and the alos and the cassia from heaven. He did not die on the cross so that we might live forever here on earth, but that we might go to a place prepared for us by its Father. He did not die on the cross so that we would do what we've always done. But he died on the cross so that we would be a new creation, we would have a new life, we would have God's forgiveness from our past, we would have hope, we would have life, we would have an eternity with him forever. The scriptures tell us who for the joy that was set before him and Jew of the cross, the joy that was set before him, was it you and I and every born-again believer, everyone who's received Christ as their personal savior, every man, woman, and child that has invited Christ into their lives and said, Jesus, save me a sinner, every one of us would be with him in heaven. That was the joy that was before him. That's what Jesus saw as the joy you and I spent in eternity with him. It wasn't enough that he would leave heaven's glory and come down. It wasn't enough that he would come in the likeness of mankind. It wasn't enough that he would be despised and hated. It wasn't enough that he would face the silence of heaven because of our sin upon him. Only one thing would ever be enough. He must die as a sacrifice, as our sacrifice. We see the picture of the giver of life putting on the clothing of death. He laid aside his own glory, his garments, to clothe himself with the garments of our humanity, our sin, and our death. Made popular by the great Billy Graham Evangelistic Society revival crusades around the world. Sung by a dear, dear brother in Christ called George Beverly Shea. And God uses him to reach millions of people around the world. And I think it's up there now. My Lord has garments so wondrous fine, and myrrh their texture fills. His fragrance reached to this heart of mine. With joy, my being thrills. And when I think of the cross he bore, my eyes with teardrops start. His garments, too, were in cassia dipped with healing inner touch. Each time my feet in some sin had slipped, he took me from its clutch. And garments glorious, he will come to open wide the door, and I shall enter my heavenly home to dwell forevermore. Out of the ivory palaces into a world of woe. Only his great eternal love made my savior go. Out of the ivory palaces into a world of woe. Only his great eternal love made my savior go. This morning I wonder. What he did on the cross, what he did in leaving the glories and the wonder and the majesty and the wonderful, wonderful things of heaven. Does that speak to you? Does that touch your heart? Does that give you a heart of thankfulness for what he has done for you and I on the cross? Because he left so much to go to Calvary, to go to the cross, and makes everything that he did on Calvary so much more important, so much more powerful, so much more wonderful. Knowing that he gave up so much in heaven for you and I. You know about the cross, you know what he's done for you, you know that he went there for you, but you've not really thought about it. What he gave up in heaven. I want you to come forward this morning if you know the Lord and give him thanks. You're not coming to me. You're not thanking me. I want you to come and in your heart of hearts surrender and say, Lord, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe this morning you do not know Christ as your Savior. Some of the things I've spoken about, you don't understand what I'm saying. Because you have never in your heart of heart said, Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. Please forgive me. Come into my heart and save me. What you did on the cross, what you did in coming down from heaven's glory, you did for me. He did for you. What does a man need to do to go to heaven? Someone said to a young preacher, which way is it to heaven? The old preacher said to him, Turn right and go straight ahead. You need to turn your heart right. Give your heart to Christ. You need to invite Jesus to come into your life, to save you, to forgive you, to cleanse you, to wash you, to transform you, to make you a brand new person. If you do not know Jesus as your Savior, then you are lost. And everything we've talked about in heaven will not be yours. This is serious. Do you think Jesus would leave all of that? All of that? Just so that we hang on to our sin? Just so that we live our lives like we've always lived it, and then go to heaven as well. Doesn't work like that. So if this morning you have never invited Jesus Christ to come into your life, why don't you just come forward? When the others may come forward, you come forward with them. Invite Jesus. What did I do? I gave my heart to Christ as a 16-year-old young man, and I said, Lord Jesus, forgive me for my sin. Come into my life and save me right now. I believe you died for me on the cross. Amen. And I rose from that prayer, a new creation in Jesus Christ.

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