The Fellowship of His Sufferings

Tomorrow night, when we set down to observe the Passover service, we will be taking the symbols of Christ's blood and His broken body, commemorating His death on the annual occasion that we are told to do. And we will also be focusing that night, as well, along with the symbols upon the aspect of Christ and His suffering. And it is a night that is, as I was saying in my announcements, a very solemn night in our thinking and in our approach toward God and toward the sacrifice that Christ made for us.

If you will turn over to Philippians, chapter 3. The Apostle Paul makes a statement here that I hadn't noticed until preparing for this sermon. It's one of those phrases that I guess hadn't stopped to focus on as I've gone through Philippians many times over the years to stop and to think about it. But in Philippians, the third chapter, beginning in verse 7, Paul talks about what he had lost to follow Christ. Verse 7, he says, "...what things were gained to me, those I have counted loss for Christ." Speaking of his past life and what he had to walk away from as he turned on that Damascus road when he was struck blind to follow the one he had been persecuting.

Yet, indeed, I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ." So he, as you and I, looked at his life and came to a point where he counted it all loss and as rubbish and was willing to suffer that. And to be found in him not having my own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death.

Does that phrase, the fellowship of his sufferings, that caused me to stop and recognize that I had never really focused on that phrase before, the fellowship of his suffering. Every year on the Passover I always mention that we are there also that night to commemorate and to remember the suffering that Christ endured.

And that is a point that we all need to think about and to understand. And Paul uses this phrase of the fellowship of his suffering here, of his sufferings. A fellowship is a community in one sense. We talk about having a fellowship of people, of like-minded individuals within the church. A fellowship can be anyone tied together by a common cause, common mission, common purpose. A people male and female, maybe only male, maybe only female, depending upon the situation.

A group of people who band together in a common cause, common purpose, common mission. And they create a fellowship. The popular movie series and book, The Fellowship of the Ring, which most of us know about, talk about a group of people who banded together for a particular mission, and it's called a fellowship. But in this case, Paul talks about the fellowship of his sufferings, which means that we share in that. We must, if we're going to understand the sacrifice of Christ and understand the totality of his life and his death and his present purpose today as our high priest and his life within us, we must understand the full fellowship of his sufferings.

And so, if we're to join him in this, we must understand what it was that he experienced that evening. And the best way to do that is to go back and to look at the Scriptures once again and to think about those. And what better time to do it with right now is less than 36 hours from now.

We will, as members, be gathering to observe the death of Jesus Christ for us to go back and to look at that and to understand that. I'd like to take you through that primarily from the account that Matthew wrote in Matthew chapter 26 of that night. And let's look at what it was that Jesus endured and what he suffered that night so that we might understand what it is that we are to join him in and to have that like-minded fellowship, that common understanding, that common purpose in this particular way as we approach this as well.

And to pick this up, you know, in Matthew 26 and verse 30 is where we end the Passover service every year. By the singing of a hymn, we usually read this verse, and they went out to the Mount of Olives. And so that's where we end the Passover service, and it's to our part perhaps to pick up the story from their own. We don't go through these other scriptures there during the service, but they went out. And they crossed over the Kidron Valley and went over into the area at the foot of the Mount of Olives to the garden called Gethsemane.

Very interesting place, a place that you can go to today. If you ever go to Jerusalem, you can go there. And you will find that it is a rather interesting place. There are several large churches there. There's actually one very large, I believe it's a Russian Orthodox church, there at the, among the olive groves, but dotted alongside the hillside of that, that western side of the Mount of Olives are Jewish cemeteries, Jewish graves.

But still a number of olive trees and groves that, and you can walk from the Mount of Olives all the way down to the Kidron Valley or up and around there. And it's a very popular spot for tourists that go to Jerusalem. And if you were to find yourself slipping through the gate into a walled garden where there were olive trees, you would have to pay a guard to do that.

We did that the last time we were there. And the group that I was guiding through that trip, we went into this little enclosed area, and we had a Bible study from these verses for a few minutes. But we had to pay for entry because there was a guard in that particular area. And I suspect there was probably a guard or someone watching over the grove of olive trees to which Christ and the disciples went that night after this meal before he was arrested, because it was, as it is now, a place of olive trees.

Now, it's more of a tourist spot now and revered in that sense. But at that time, in Christ's day, it was a spot filled again with trees. And there was an olive press there. There's been archaeological evidence of probably of a cave in that area that probably was used as a place where olives were pressed to extract the oil during that time. And you might well imagine that this may have been the spot to which Christ and the disciples retired on this occasion and where they went. If there was a cave there, it would have been a place that provided a bit of shelter, and maybe it was a place that they knew about.

And it was a spot that they could go for a little bit of privacy after dark in this very ancient place. Some try to speculate that some of the olive trees that are there today in that area may have been there during the time of Christ. That's hard to determine. Although the unique nature of olive trees is that they do put out other shoots through their roots as they are dying and other trees grow sprout from that. So it may be a reasonable assumption that some of the trees there are at least descended from trees that were there during the time of Christ and the disciples.

Nonetheless, you can still get a bit of a sense of the area in that night in terms of at least the setting with just a fleeting glimpse of it. Even today, as you go to that area at the foot of the Mount of Olives and in what would have been the general vicinity of the garden called Gethsemane during this time of Christ and his time with the disciples.

Down in verse 31, he said to them, All will be made to stumble because of me this night, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.

And Peter answered, and he said, Even if we are all made to stumble because of you, I will never stumble. And then Christ told him, Well, you will deny me three times.

And Peter vehemently denied it. And they went on. In verse 36, he said to them, Sit here while I go and pray over there. And so he left them from himself for a short period of time.

And he went there on this night to begin to pray.

And he labored very strong and very hard in prayer for this period of time.

Verse 37 tells us that he took with him Peter, and the two sons of Zebedee, which would have been James and John, and he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. So notice his state of mind at this point. He was under a great deal of stress, a great deal.

Mental turmoil racked his body and his mind with what he knew that he was humanly going to have to endure in the coming hours. And he needed the strength to do it.

Verse 38, he said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death.

And perhaps he had to battle the thoughts that he wished. Perhaps he could just die right then, get it over with without having to go through the suffering that he knew would be awaiting for him in the coming hours. But he also knew that he couldn't do that. So he said, Stay here and watch with me. He went a little farther, fell on his face, and he prayed, say, O my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. So he's praying on his knees. And he says, Let this cup pass. What is it that he's talking about? Well, this cup was the whole embodiment of his sacrifice, symbolized by the very cup that he'd shared with his disciples just a short period before this, which he said was his body and his blood, and what would then pour forth and what would come from that. And so that was all that was there to be a part of what he said here was this cup. And he had that thought that he would hope that it could pass, but it couldn't. Verse 40 says, He came to the disciples and He found them asleep. And He said to Peter, Could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again, a second time, he went away and he prayed. He said, Oh, my Father, if this cup cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, your will be done. And he came and he found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. So he left them, went away again, and he prayed the third time, saying the same words.

Luke tells us that he even had strength, received strength from the visitation of an angel during that period of time. Matthew's account doesn't record that. And that he prayed so hard that the sweat was that of blood. It's hard for us to even contemplate how that could be. But that's what it says. What Christ was going through at this moment was a plain, pure, raw dread of what he was going to have to face in the coming hours. And the agony that he had was a fear, a fear of death.

Humanly, he didn't want to die. It's important we always keep in mind that as Christ was God in the flesh, and that he learned so much by being in the flesh through his experience in life up to this point, and now concentrated in these last few hours before his actual death would be a learning experience that would cap off his entire sojourn among men as the word, becoming flesh as the Son of God. And dread and fear was all part of what he had to deal with to pay for the penalty of sins.

His death was only really the final act of the events that would play out that day.

The words are there for us to read, and sometimes as you and I prepare ourselves for the Passover service, it's important that we perhaps just pause over those words and think about them, ask God for insight so that we really understand what they mean. That sacrifice will become much more important when we do that, because otherwise it's very easy for the sacrifice of Christ and all of these events to become an intellectual exercise. You know, there's a multi-dimensional study to the life of Christ and to his death and his resurrection and all.

There are times that you must look at this from perhaps an intellectual point of view to study the texts and the scriptures to really combat a lot of ideas in our modern world, but they're ancient ideas, but they have modern casts that deny the Bible, that deny that Christ was the Son of God, that deny the events of this period of time. And there's a study that is called apologetics where you read these texts, these books, and you figure them out as, indeed, eyewitness accounts, and you read them to prove them historically to be true. And that is an area of study, and there's a time and a place for that. When we come to the Passover, we come to the most important approach to the scriptures and to the story, and that is the spiritual dimension and what it means for us in our relationship with God and for the process of salvation that God is bringing us to. That's when we put aside all the arguments, that's when we put aside all of the debate, that's when we put aside all of the heresy, and we don't deal with that during this period of time. That's for another time. During this period of time, you and I are to look at these scriptures and apply them internally and understand them with the help of God's Spirit and to focus there in that request to truly understand what the Son of God went through that night so that we are a part of His fellowship of suffering. If Jesus's death was all that was needed, why couldn't He have died more simply or quickly? That's perhaps behind what He was saying. Let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, what your will be done. If it was just His death that was necessary, then why couldn't He have just died? You know, been arrested, someone run a spear through Him right there on the spot, and it was all over with. Because there was more to it. There was more to it as part of the prophesied plan of God. The sacrifice by itself was important, but there was more that had to be accomplished. There's a great deal more to what that sacrifice needed to say for all eternity and for all mankind than just the instantaneous death or the moment of death of the Messiah. Because He was dying for the sins of the world. And sin, as I was explaining in a sermon two weeks ago, is that great event, those problems that separate us from God, and separate mankind from God, and create this vast gulf that has to be bridged in some way.

Sin does that. That's the bottom line. Because sin entered the world.

There had to be a payment for that. And the payment was so great, the death of God Himself, that it would take more than just the death for that to resonate for the followers of God throughout the ages. The penalty of that sin is hurt, pain, and a misery for mankind from the very beginning, from the time of Adam, and agony. That suffering of human beings as a result of sin has been a part of the entire human experience. And the lesson of suffering that Christ Himself went through ties in with that, and helps us to understand why He had to go through that suffering, because of the suffering that comes from sin, and why we, in a sense, join Him in that fellowship of His suffering. You know, it's hard to get through a lifetime without being betrayed. Christ was betrayed this night. It's hard for you and I to get through a lifetime without ever being betrayed by somebody in some type of situation, in any type of human relationship. It's the nature of you and I, as humans, to trust and to be involved in trusting relationships, to know people, and to rely on them, whether all the way to the point of marriage, and the deepest bond of trust that we might build, or friendship, or even a fellowship. There are different levels of trust that we must have to operate on. We need to know people, and to be with people, live with people, fellowship with people whom we can trust. And yet, people betray us. Relationships get betrayed, and that causes problems. Christ was betrayed of this night by those that were close to Him, by those with whom He had put trust, His closest trust. And that was a result of sin. That came as a result of sin. And so He had to go through it and feel the dread and the fear because of the penalty of sin that He was going to have to experience. He had to have been afraid. He had to experience that dread. There was no other way because how would He understand otherwise? How could He be a faithful High Priest? Excuse me, for you and I, if He had not experienced it in this particular way? How could He intercede with God for us when we're afraid if He had not understood what it was like?

What it smelled like? What it tasted like and felt like in these moments that He experienced?

Right down to the most innermost part of His life, to feel that fear and that agony and that dread.

If you ever fear something because of a relationship that's gone bad, because of a problem that we're facing, because of an illness that we might endure, then we know that feeling, the knot that comes in our stomach, a sweat that might break out for us.

We experience that. Christ experienced that in these moments here because of what would lie ahead.

And He needed the strength. And He got the strength. That's why He was praying so hard and was so involved in this at this particular point in His life. And as a result of Him learning that through this experience, He knows what we go through when we go through it on our level.

And none of us, in most cases, have had that feeling that He experienced because of the circumstances of an impending death, necessarily, as He had there. But we experience it in other ways, as it comes to us through the circumstances and the events of our life.

And Christ had to deal with that in these moments, in this time, in Gethsemane, before His arrest.

Now, let's jump down to verse 55.

This takes us after the appearance of Judas and the soldiers and his arrest. It says, In that hour Jesus said to the multitudes, Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and you did not seize me.

But all this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.

Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled. All the disciples, all eleven of them at this point in time, forsook Him and He fled. He was alone. And He was left with the soldiers and the mob and those hangers on that had been there. He had to face then what was coming, all by Himself.

At least for these moments, they were there. Now, we know from the account that John and his mother and some of the other women went with Him all the way to His death on Calvary.

And we know that Peter was at least in the courtyard outside the high priest's home and when he denied Him three times. So he lingered around for a little bit of time. But essentially, his closest friends fled Him, fled at this moment, and He was there and He was all alone. And their sin impacted Him at that level again. Because not only was He afraid, He was afraid by Himself.

One of the things that a person who's very sick in a hospital always wants is someone, their closest mate or friend, to be there. People don't want to be alone when facing sickness and the impending death. Jesus had to be. He was left by Himself. You know, you and I, as we prepare ourselves for Passover, should understand that Passover is a very, very intensely personal matter for us. Passover is not group therapy, nor is Passover a breakout session.

Christ had to prepare to be the Lamb of God by Himself. The best form of preparation that you and I can make to be prepared for the Passover service is alone with our own thoughts before God. That's where the preparation takes place, because that's where it all comes down to.

I've never had to prepare for Passover with anybody else when it comes right down to it.

Passover is personal. Passover is between us and God. At this moment in time, Christ was all by Himself, and He had to deal with it alone. The betrayal of Judas was a part of the sacrifice and suffering because he had to, again, endure the sin of that betrayal, which teaches us something about sin. Sin affects the lives of other people. Betrayal is very, very intense and very, very personal. Probably one of the greatest acts of betrayal a man or a woman could commit would be to betray their mate and children in the marriage relationship through adultery. A person who commits that adultery betrays their mate. The closest relationship that's ever been ever possible betrays the children. You can set the stage for a lifetime of conflict and suffering in some cases for people who are, in a sense, innocent, but yet they're impacted by that sin.

And that's one of the lessons, big lessons, that is important for us to understand about sin, is that innocent people suffer as a result of that.

People are abandoned at times because of certain sins. Christ was abandoned here. He had been charged unnecessarily. He had been lied about. Have you ever been lied about?

Had someone lie about you? Did you find out about it? And you have to deal with its consequences?

How did it make you feel? Probably you felt disgusted, maybe even a bit dirty, maybe sick to the stomach, like you've been violated. Certainly a trust has been violated in some way.

No doubt Jesus felt the same way when this happened to him, because his arrest and this moment of abandonment came about as a result of lies. And when you come to that point, all you have is your personal integrity. All you have is what you know and what you know God knows about your motive, your actions, your intent, what happened, you.

Me. And again, we find ourselves back with God in a personal relationship that is right there.

And God knows your heart, my heart, better than we do. I always tell people at times, with counseling for baptism, sometimes even counseling for marriage or in other affairs, that you can fool yourself. You can fool another person. You can fool yourself that you're ready to get married. You can fool yourself that this is the person you should marry. You can fool yourself that you're ready to be baptized. You can fool, you know, a second or third party. You can fool a minister. I've been fooled by people who said they were ready to be baptized or repentant. And I can't read hearts. Only God can do that. I have to basically go by words, actions, and hopefully the gift of discernment. So I always emphasize to people, you can fool me, and you can fool yourself. You can fool your parents or your friends or your friends. You can fool your parents or your friends or whatever, but you can't fool God. God knows.

Because that's where the ultimate relationship is. It is with God. And that, again, brings us back to the fellowship of His sufferings and the Passover service. Let's go down to verse 67. Here in verse 67, as they had Him before the religious court of the Sanhedrin, it says, they spat in His face, they beat Him, and others struck Him with the palms of their hands, saying, prophesy to us, Christ, who is the one who struck you? In Mark's gospel, they add the information that He had been blindfolded, is why they ask Him this question. So here's the highest religious court among the Jews at this time, and they're acting like a pack of wolves, spitting on His face, He an innocent man, slapping Him around, and He chooses not to defend Himself. And this is a court of religious leaders, the highest religious court in Judea, in the nation of Israel at this time.

People who, with their vestments on, with their positions, should be the most spiritual, the most ethical, the most upright in their actions, and they're acting like a pack of wolves here with Jesus Christ. This is the kind of suffering that sin brings, and Jesus had to feel that humiliation, because He was humiliated there. He was humiliated in front of these people.

Sin brings humiliation. It leads to bruising and to pain.

It hurts people. It hurts you. It hurts me. It hurts people who are total strangers.

And so to deal with that, Christ had to suffer humiliation and the beating, which was due to Him, or due to us, and due to the sins of the world. And so the suffering that He endured was both physical, being kicked, hit, spat upon. But if any of us have ever been humiliated, you are lied about, or betrayed, or experiencing fear, you understand and should understand that that type of suffering, which is mental and inner, is far more excruciating, far more difficult to deal with than sticks and stones, as we say. I mean, I've endured moments of fear, and I'd much rather take a spanking, or cut my finger, I guess, to draw in a little bit of blood by whatever, because slap some alcohol on it, rub a little dirt on it, go on. But the dread that you have to live with inside, because of fear, or because of a period of humiliation because of whatever may have been working, that creates inner turmoil for an extended period of time. You lose weight, you lose sleep, you can't focus, you can't read a book. Oh, you can read a book, but then after 15 pages, you don't even know what you've read, because you've just turned. You ever done that before?

You ever set out even to watch your most, your favorite program, 30 minutes go by and you don't even know the plot, because you're worried, or you're thinking, you're obsessed about whatever it is that is going on in life and creating that inner turmoil.

That's suffering. And sometimes just because of our mistakes, sometimes it's because of circumstances beyond our control. But it's suffering. And multiply that by how many times to understand what Christ was dealing with here at this particular moment, as He had to deal with all of that. And then understand that that's because of sin, and it hurts, and Christ endured it. He endured it for all of us.

In Matthew 27, verse 1, it says, When morning came the chief priests and the elders plotted against Jesus to put him to death.

And when they had bound him, they led him away, delivered him to Pontius Pilate, the governor.

And Judas' betrayer, seeing that he'd been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the high priest and the elder, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.

What was he thinking at that moment? Judas. He had second thoughts in the light of day.

He goes back and he says, this is a terrible mistake. Let him go. Let's rewind this event.

And essentially they say, no, that's your problem. You see to it. What's that to us?

And he threw down the pieces of silver and the temple departed, and he went and hung himself.

It's a tragic story, that of Judas. But the lesson is that the consequences of sin can't be undone. You can't undo it. Once it's done, it's done.

And remorse by itself is not enough. Being sorry is not enough. Blood has to be shed.

Pain has to be felt. What happens with sin is not necessarily punishment, but consequences.

There may be punishment. There may be a penalty exacted for an infraction that lasts for some time. But ultimately there are consequences, and that's long-term. And there's a difference.

There is a difference. Most of what happens with sin is the natural consequences that follows on its heels. It just can't be instantly undone. And the only way that we can be delivered from the consequences of sin is by the suffering, the shame, and the blood of Jesus Christ.

Down in verse 29, it says, When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on his head, and a reed in his right hand. And they bowed the knee before him, and they mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. And they spat on him, and they took the reed, and they struck him on the head. So another round of humiliation and shame and suffering took place. All of it necessary.

Here are the elements of the Passover that come in. We know about the wine, which is his blood.

But there's also the bread, which symbolizes his bruised, battered, and bleeding body.

When we read what Paul wrote in Corinthians, Christ said, Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you. And so here we see that as he was struck, and as he was beaten, his body began to be broken, torn apart. With the scourging that took place, that ripped his flesh. Some say it would have ripped his flesh to the point of even exposing the bone. And it's hard again for us to imagine that. The Roman method of crucifixion was a particularly hideous method of death. In our modern world, we would not put up with that, at least in the civilized modern world. There are parts of the world where some pretty bad things are done. But people get upset if a convicted criminal is injected with lethal chemicals as a means of putting them to death today. I was reading recently where some supplier of the particular chemicals states used to exact the death penalty have begun to withhold from those states that still have that as their penalty, that particular chemical, because they have a conscience problem and don't want it used to execute people within the death penalty.

But if you've ever read about some of those accounts as to how that is done, they have quite a potent concoction of chemicals that once the minute comes when that decision is made, the warden says, do it, they all flow together through the tubes into the vein of the convicted and death, you know, then they die. It's a well thought out chemistry that leads to death by that type of execution today. And yet we have problems with that.

What Christ went through, the Roman method of execution was unbelievable. And it was saved only for the harshest of criminals in that day. And it was done out in public on a public road so that people would see it. It wasn't done in a chamber locked away from everybody else.

Fifteen years after the event, once the decision was made, they were taken out and it was done speedily in front of everybody. That's why this took place rapidly as it moved along this day and was done out in the wide open. His body was broken and there was certainly the attempt to break his spirit and his life. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, take heat, this is my body, which is broken for you. Quoting Christ, you and I need to think about that. How many ways can a person be broken? Physically, certainly. A body can be broken down. Life can do that and take its toll upon us physically. A person can become bold. Age can slow the walk, create the pain, which is a form of suffering that we have to deal with as well.

A person can be broken spiritually as well through the stresses of life, the onslaught that comes from the world, from Satan, from sin. And we can be broken emotionally. We can be broken emotionally by life and by events to where we just want to give up, not trust people, not trust God, not trust religion. We can be broken emotionally if we let it go that far.

Christ's body was broken for us physically and emotionally as He had to deal with all of those thoughts and feelings. And it was spiritually battered as well. He didn't give up, but He had to endure it and He had to deal with it. That was all part of the suffering that He had to deal with as part of the sacrifice. Verse 31 says that they mocked Him. They took His robe off, put other clothes on Him, and led Him away to be crucified. Verse 32 says, As they came out, they found a man of sirens, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear his cross.

An innocent bystander had to take part in this event. When you sin, people who had nothing to do with you can suffer from your sins. Even total strangers. Sin hurts everyone, not just the sinner.

When they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of the skull, they gave Him sour wine mingled with gall to drink, and when He had tasted it, He would not drink.

So they were trying to give Him something there, perhaps as a mild anesthetic, and they crucified Him.

They put Him up on that stake, on that wooden beam, whatever it was. Well, there was an upright stake with a crossbar across the top of it, which some scholars feel it was, not the traditional form that you see, but that what He actually carried was just the crossbar that was the stake was already in the ground. He carried a crossbar, and that was put up on top, kind of like a capital T, and He hung from there. Normally, a person would have hung for upwards of several days before they died, but there were other circumstances working here, one being the Sabbath that was coming on, as well as the prophetic fulfillment of Christ's life and His death at this particular point, and so the death was speeded up. But they continued to mock Him. They had to deal with the robbers who were reviling Him there, and all of that was going on at that particular time as they mocked Him there, even as He hung. The humiliation did not end.

The suffering endured all the way to the final moments of His life.

When they finally put that spear through His side, the blood and the water came out.

And indicating that He was still alive, because a dead body doesn't bleed. In the body, the blood is pressurized, and for that to have come out meant that the heart was still pumping, and so that spear that was put through His side was an indicator that He was still alive, and that was the method and the moment in which He died. Christ basically bled to death.

It's important to understand that, because that's the way all sacrifices died.

They died when the animal's throat was slit and the blood poured out, and it was caught in a basin. You read that back in the Old Testament as to how those sacrifices were done, the blood was caught. Again, that's how He had to die in the same particular way, by the shedding of blood.

And that was an extremely important part of the entire process, the entire area of suffering that Christ had to go through. In Isaiah chapter 53, there is a corollary passage that we often read as well that does focus on the suffering.

This is a prophecy well understood to apply to the Messiah and to Christ, and gives us a perspective from the prophet's point of view, and certainly from that of a prophetic approach of the Messiah, and helps us to even bring it down to more of an individual, unique relationship, unique perspective for us as well. It says in verse 1, Who has believed our report, to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 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 men. Again, the gospel accounts show that Christ was despised. He was arrested by the priests, the officers, the guards, treated in a humiliating fashion by the mob, that wanted His blood.

The people were worked up in such a frenzy at that moment. They were going to settle for nothing less than the blood of this man, Jesus Christ, who had incurred the wrath of a core of people who could not abide His message and the threat that His message brought to them.

And so He was accused falsely in the account. They had problem even bringing the verdict of guilty, because it took them a while to get two witnesses to agree with the same story. They brought false witnesses forward, but everybody had a different story.

And it took a while until they could get two that matched. Then they had Him there.

And then they had to get one other piece of evidence there. So He was acquainted with all of that. He was that rejection, being despised.

He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Verse 3 says, We hid as it were our faces from Him, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely His born our griefs, carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. And so He was, and He suffered.

Again, when we read these verses here in Isaiah 53, when we read one of the accounts from the Gospels, it's very important that we take the sacrifice of Christ from some intellectual level, or an abstract level, and bring it down to a personal level for us. In some way. And really the best way is to just, again, follow the Scriptures, understand the typology of what Christ was. He was a sacrifice. And a sacrifice in the Scriptures, in the Bible, had to deal with an animal who had to have his blood shed.

In the Old Testament sacrificial system, there were sacrifices of lambs, goats, bulls, and even birds at various ones. Sometimes certain offerings even had grain involved with them. That was the extent of the offering. It was the ones where the animal was involved that were a bit more complex, a bit more costly, and perhaps even a bit more poignant. I mean, think about being an Israelite, and at some point in your life engaging yourself in the sacrifice to the level that you would, to somehow seek forgiveness. By taking an animal, and imagine that animal being a lamb, to the priest. This wasn't done every day by the everyday Israelite. There were sacrifices that were for the nation, for the people given, and ostensibly the sins of the people were forgiven. So if you were John Q. Benjamin, living in the land of Benjamin, and you lost your temper one day, you didn't get on your donkey and drive up, or ride up, to Jerusalem by sundown to make an offer. You didn't do that. It just, that wasn't really the way it was translated into reality. The sacrifices were meant to take care of those sins that were given there by the priests on a daily basis.

But there were other times, there were times when you would have gone to the temple, and maybe it was only once in your life, or maybe it would have been maybe once a year if you could afford it, and you did it, or maybe once every five years during one of the pilgrimage festivals at the holy days, and you would go up, and you would buy a lamb, or maybe you would take one that you had raised yourself, or an animal, and you would take it in, and one of the priests would go through a sacrifice with you, and you might even eat part of it, which there were banquet facilities around the temple for all of that. But at some point, maybe only once or maybe once every five years, you would do that, and you would hold that animal, and the priest would take a knife and slit its throat, and you would see it die by its blood being poured out into a basin, and then it being cut up. And then you would know that there was a penalty for your sin. Something had to die. Blood had to be shed. And to whatever degree you were John Q. Benjamin, and that day and place, or Betty Manasseh, whatever male or female, you would somehow try to grasp what it was that all this was about. And maybe it'd go right over you, and then maybe when you were 55, if you lived that long in that day, one occasion would finally strike home, and you might begin to see and understand that there was something working here that was bigger than you. So think about that in reading these scriptures, and recognize that what had to be poured out, what had to be despised, what Christ had to go through, and recognize that that blood had to be shed for you. And you had to see it.

You had to take part in it because of your sins, and I have to because of mine, and recognize that Christ learned through that suffering. He learned what it is like to be human, to feel fear, to feel dread, to be lied about, to be humiliated, to be despised, to be rejected, to be alone. He learned all of that and more through his life, and especially in these hours leading up to his death. He learned from what he suffered, and as a result, he then can be a faithful high priest.

Because he ended it all by saying, as we remember, Father forgive them.

They don't know what they do. He was able to do that. Can you come to that point in any type of trial, especially the ones that may involve someone else, where you can say, God forgive them? They don't know what they're doing.

They don't know what they've done, and you can truly pray that. That is the one prayer that keeps you and I from turning bitter and hardening our heart, which is the most serious disease that any of us could have in human experience, and we don't want to go there. Christ avoided it because through all of his suffering, through all that he had to deal with, he came to the point where he could say, they don't know what they're doing. You do, Father, and I do.

We haven't talked much about it in this particular sermon, but there's a time and a place to consider where was the Father in all of this, and what was he thinking, and what was he seeing.

And since that was expressed by the darkness that came, the earthquake that rocked Jerusalem, and that three o'clock in the afternoon, the broad daylight, the sky becoming dark as night, that tells us in one sense where the Father was and what he was thinking at that moment in time.

But all through it all, Christ learned, and through that he can become a proper and appropriate high priest. We can have confidence that we can go to him and seek that forgiveness, and seek that intervention, and seek that understanding.

So when Paul writes that we are, we have this fellowship of his sufferings, that's a little bit of what it means to understand that and to approach that as we come into the Passover service. In the few hours before, between us now and tomorrow night, when we keep the Passover service, let's prepare our hearts and our minds to properly do that and to partake of the fellowship of his sufferings.