Sacrifice

Tomorrow night we will gather in this room. God's people will be gathering in many rooms to observe the Passover service. We will take the bread and the wine, and we will wash one another's feet. We will commemorate the death of Jesus Christ. And the examination, the preparation that we have all too far to have done, will be in a sense finished, at least for that service. And by the time that we come, as we prepare our hearts and our minds to take part in that very solemn service, one of the things that the Passover service commemorates that we don't always focus on that night so much, but we certainly reference it. And we think about it to one degree or the other, but this year I'd like for us to focus on a bit more as we prepare ourselves to take the Passover service. And that is the fact that it is not only the death of Christ that we are there to remember, but also His suffering.

And what led up to that moment when the spear went through His side, piercing it, causing His death. There were several hours, no doubt even days, but certainly several hours prior to that of intense suffering that Jesus Christ went through. And that is as much a part of the Passover service as anything else that we should understand because of what it teaches us about Jesus Christ and our life and some very important matters regarding our spiritual relationship with God, the Father, and with Jesus Christ. I'd like for you to turn over to Philippians chapter 3. I ran across this and preparing for this sermon. I knew what I wanted to talk about in this sermon. And as I was preparing, I looked at this verse and noticed something I hadn't seen before. Oh, I guess I'd seen it, went right over it, and didn't really focus on it. Philippians chapter 3, beginning in verse 7, that is important to this. Paul was talking about the things that he had turned his back on, his heritage as a Pharisee, as a member of the tribe of Judah, and all that he had had in verse 6, the zeal and everything. He said in verse 7, those things which were gained to me, those I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed, I also count all things loss 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, and 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 suffering being conformed to his death.

That phrase, the fellowship of his suffering, that struck me and caught my attention this year as I prepared this sermon and began thinking about the very all-important Passover service that we will be observing here tomorrow evening, the fellowship of his suffering. You know, a fellowship is something we refer to. We have our fellowship as a church here.

It's used in a collective sense to describe a body of people, certainly in a spiritual sense connected to a spiritual mission. It's also used to describe, perjully, any group of people who are brought together by a common mission, a common purpose. They are bound together and that unanimity is called a fellowship as they move toward their goal or toward accomplishing their purpose. And then we certainly use fellowship in a verbal sense or as a verb to describe our conversations and talk with one another before church and after church and at other times when we fellowship among ourselves. But here Paul uses this term, the fellowship of his suffering, meaning that we share that suffering with Jesus Christ. And what is that?

Well there's no more important time than this time of the year when we gather on the Passover service to thoroughly understand the suffering that Christ endured prior to his death because there are many facets to it. It's a multi-dimensional subject that Jesus himself had to deal with as he observed those hours before his death. On the Passover service, we end the service with a hymn and we usually read this verse back in Matthew chapter 26. Verse 30, where it says, when they had sung a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives. We'll sing a hymn tomorrow night and then we will go out, not to the Mount of Olives, but we'll go to our homes. But it's what happened then after in this account in the Gospels, and I'm going to focus basically on Matthew's account here this afternoon to describe this. It is in this account or in this period following that we find what Jesus had to suffer prior to his death and the hours leading up to his arrest, his beating, and then being taken to Golgotha and put on a stake across whatever that configuration was and hung there to die by three o'clock the next afternoon when he did. But it was that period in between that these scriptures talk about to a large extent. It says that they went out to the Mount of Olives. They were somewhere in Jerusalem in a room that they had rented for the night, for the evening, that meal. And they went out from there. They would have gone down and through the Kidron Valley or perhaps across a bridge that archaeologists think spanned the Kidron Valley from the area of Jerusalem proper over to the Mount of Olives and would have wound themselves down to this area of a Gethsemane that is described here in this garden, verse 36, a place that is called Gethsemane. And there these events began to turn and take place. That is an area, even now as it was then, where there were olive trees.

The name Gethsemane refers to a place of an olive press. And they've even found in the hillside there on the western slope of the Mount of Olives a cave area where there was a wine or not a wine, but an olive press in ancient times to press the olives that were harvested off of the trees for to obtain the oil.

And perhaps it was to that very cave or that area that Christ and his apostles went, or at least angled toward. Certainly there were many groves of olive trees that were there, as there aren't that many today, but there are still olive trees there at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

And you can go there and you can get a bit of a feel for what that might have been like. They try to tell you, and some say that the trees that are there now may date back to 2000 years to the time of Jesus Christ. That's doubtful, but they may go back to about 70 AD, which would have been a few decades after the time of Christ, because when the Jerusalem was surrounded by the Roman armies in 68-69 AD, the Roman armies basically cut down all the trees all around Jerusalem to build their bulwarks and their fortifications and all that they did used in attacking Jerusalem during the siege.

But there was an interesting thing about olive trees. When they died, they put out shoots that spring forth to new life and new trees. So it's conceivable you could say that the olive trees that you may see there on the Mount of Olives and at the foot of the Mount of Olives today are at least descendants from those trees, at least from that century and from that time.

That could very likely be. Olive trees live to a ripe old age and producing their fruit. They are not the most beautiful tree. In fact, the older they get, the uglier they look. They get kind of gnarly and twisted as they produce the fruit and as they're pruned and worked with over decades of the life of a tree.

The ones you would see in the area there today are rather gnarled and old and you would get a view of that. In fact, I was last there with a group from the church leading that tour.

We walked down from the top of the Mount of Olives down to an area where we walked into a garden area. It was kind of walled off and there were a number of olive trees in there. We had a short Bible study. We had to pay the gatekeeper to let us in. As you do in many areas, the Middle East and Jerusalem, there were supposedly holy spots today because there's always somebody kind of guarding the way in. As we wanted a little bit of a privacy, and this was a walled-in garden and it was private property for somebody, we slipped him a few dollars and he let us in.

We had probably 20-30 minutes to ourselves in this area. Again, you can begin to get a feel of the olive trees at the foot of the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem in a time like that as it must have begun to get a bit of a feel for what this was pictured, what it was like on this night as they began to walk through and certainly Christ began to walk through the events of this very important and momentous evening.

Here in Matthew 26, we're not going to go through every verse of this. I want to hit some of the highlights, but I do want to focus on the agony and all that He had to endure and deal with as He was going through this particular moment in time. They sung of Him in verse 31, Jesus said to them, All of you 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.

Peter answered and said, Even if you're made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble. To which Jesus said, Assuredly I say to you that this night before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times. Even if I die, He said, I will not deny you. So said all the disciples. In a sense, Peter was pledging his loyalty to Christ, and they all did.

Even Peter's denials have to be put in a proper context. I'm not going to go through all of that particular episode here, but he did deny Christ three times and he was broken up with guilt over what he did. But that story should be put in a context, perhaps, of where Peter was. You have to understand when you read the accounts, Peter was actually within the courtyard of the High Priest's area in the home there.

He did follow that far, which in itself took great courage to do. He was among them. When it came down to that moment where he confessed, he did deny. But he had gone quite a ways, even after all the others had fled from the scene, as we'll see. But Peter, his story is for another time interesting as it is.

So in verse 36, Jesus came with him to a place called Gethsemane. He said, Sit here while I go and pray over there. So he removed himself from the now eleven disciples and began to pray. And began to pray very strongly and very fervently. In verse 37, He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.

So notice his state of mind. He was under a great deal of stress. In other words, there was just pure mental anguish that he was dealing with, knowing what was coming and the pressure that was bearing down at this moment in time, heavier and heavier upon him. He had known for virtually all of his life how he would die, how it would end. But now it came down to the moment. And he knew that it would not be easy. Keep in mind that Christ was flesh.

He was God in the flesh. He bled. He felt. He had emotions. He had feelings, just as every human does. He was tempted in everything, like as we are. And he had to wrestle with those. He had to deal with those challenges. And so all of that was now bearing upon him.

He was very, very distressed. And he said to them in verse 38, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death. Stay here and watch with me. And he went a little farther and he fell on his face and he prayed saying, O my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. He was probably just flat out on his whole body, just totally prostrate on the ground at this moment with his face there.

And this idea of this cup that he was talking about, he had remembered in the meal, he had given them a cup of wine and he said, Take and drink, this is my blood, shed for the remission of sins. And that cup represented certainly his shed blood, but it also represented that blood being poured out as a sacrifice. We'll come back to more about that later. But it represented this entire agonizing, anguished suffering period that he was going through.

And so symbolized that as well. In a sense, he was saying, If it could pass, if it were possible, let it pass. Christ was coming to a moment, we could say hours in one sense, and the event was the culminating event of his life. But when you look at what he was dealing with here, there were, here was a moment where he verbally expressed, If it's possible, Father, let this pass. Why do I have to go through this? But nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. So he was totally committed to the will of the Father.

In other places where you read in John where Christ said, If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. To have seen Christ in the flesh was to see God. How he was acted, walked in that sense, characterized that he embodied God in the flesh for mankind for the first time, and we have that record of that.

And he was completely in tune with the will of the Father and what had been purposed from before the foundation of the world. But he still had a thought, if it were possible. Again, just the struggle, the struggle that was going on in his mind regarding this. In verse 40, 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.

He went away a second time and he prayed and he said, Oh, my Father, if this cup cannot pass from me unless I drank it, your will be done. And he came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. And so he left them, went away again, and prayed the third time saying the same words. And so he needed that prayer to fortify and strengthen his resolve for what was lying ahead.

He was so distressed, the Gospel of Luke tells us that he was sweating great drops of blood. That is something you and I just can't identify with and understand, but that's what the account says. He pleads with God, Do I have to go through this in one sense? And you have to put yourself in this place if we're to have a fellowship of his suffering and ask ourselves, What would you be thinking?

What would be going through our minds at a moment such as this? Knowing what was to come, the beating and the excruciating form of death. I think a lot of what Christ was dealing with was just a plain, pure dread, raw fear of what he was going to have to deal with and to face in the hours ahead of him. With no sleep, nobody around, and he had to go through it all by himself.

We know that intellectually Jesus Christ's sacrifice was his death, paying the penalty for our sins. But his death was only the final act of the events that would play out that day. We know the words, but do we know the emotion? Do we know the feeling of what it is for someone to die for us? Do we fully, completely understand what that means?

As we approach the sacrifice of Christ in these scriptures for the Passover, you and I approach them spiritually, emotionally, as believers. And that's as it should be, as we prepare ourselves for the Passover and understand this event, these verses, and apply it to ourselves personally. There is another way to study this story for another time and place. People try to tear this apart from a critical point of view to disprove Christ, to even disprove that Christ was the Son of God, to try to put Christ only as a human being, misguided, foolish as he was, who got himself killed. That's the world's view. That's a more critical approach. And there's an approach to study these scriptures to disprove that, which you can. It's called apologetics, a whole field of study to prove the Bible to be the Word of God, to prove that the events took place, archaeologically and historically. You can do a great deal of that when it comes to Jesus himself, who he was, what he did, and believing that indeed he lived. That's historically proven. Believing that he died and that he rose again, that too can be historically proven from the gospel accounts that we have. Certainly, there's an element of faith there as well. And that's where we begin to diverge with, let's say, an unbelieving mind or a critical mind that looks only at what they can feel, see, hear, or touch. But that's not the approach that we take as we approach the Passover. That's for another time, and that in itself as a study can prove the resurrection and prove the accounts that we have from all four of the gospels to be valid historical accounts that we can base our faith and our life upon. And you can do that. There is a whole field of study to do that, and it's quite sophisticated, and it's quite appropriate, historical, and it does prove God's Word. It does prove the Bible to be the Word of God, and it does lend to that proof and will to the actual fact of Christ's resurrection. Because without that resurrection, keep in mind, we don't have a Savior. And as Paul said, our faith would be in vain. But you can prove that. That's again another study and another approach. Again, as we come to the Passover service, we want to look at these verses, this account, to internalize it, to take it very personally for each one of us as we prepare and come before God on the night of the Passover and making sure that we understand fully what it is that is the fellowship of His sufferings and that we share in that. And that we can only share it by trying as best we can to put ourselves there in that place and to understand that and remove the intellectual discussion from it with the help of God's Spirit and prayer and our study and our thought to look at this and to picture ourselves with Him and what He did for us and share in His suffering in that way. You know, suffering, what He went through, was a very important element of it. Again, He died and we know that He had to do that to fulfill the prophecies and the purpose of God. But the suffering, why that? And in that, sometimes we might rather find an answer to our own personal questions of why suffering, why we suffer, why someone else must suffer, why suffering is a part of human life.

It would have for Christ, the question could be asked if He had to die and He did. Why could He just have been arrested right here in the garden and an errant Roman soldier come forward and thrust a spear right through his side right there? And all the other beating and suffering, He wouldn't have had to endure. He could have died. He would have been a sacrifice. Why not?

Well, the simple answer is that He had to, He did have to suffer.

That was part of the plan. That was part of the process as well. There was more to it because of the entire nature, the entire institution, if you will, of sin. And that's the key. See, there's a great deal more here and in our lives that we're dealing with. Christ had to die to pay the penalty for sin. We keep the days of in love and bread to picture sin being put from our life and to picture a life without sin, to focus in a sense on that in Christ's life within us.

But for each of us, there is a little bit of a pain. In some cases, there's a lot more from the impact and the result of sin. You see, the penalty of sin is not just dying. There's more to it than that. In a sense, that's the easy part. A lot of the penalty for sin in the world and in your life and mine is the hurt and the pain, the misery, and the agony that comes along with sin. That is a part of the lesson of suffering that Christ went through before his death. Sin can be forgiven, but the consequences remain. Sometimes those are lifelong consequences that create challenges, sometimes pain, and go beyond the moment. And we have to deal with all of that. Yes, the penalty for that sin can be forgiven upon repentance almost instantaneously if you want to look at it that way. But the consequence of sin in life can go on. That's part of God's design as well. That is why Jesus had to suffer and why it's important that we focus on that and understand it as part of the Passover service. Look at this. You know, Christ is being betrayed. He is about to be betrayed by Judas.

It's hard for you and I to get through a lifetime without somewhere along the line being betrayed by another human being. It's just part of life. Somebody will betray our trust. Someone will betray our relationship. Someone will commit adultery in a marriage. And a betrayal takes place there that breaks the confidence there.

Betrayal takes many different forms. And we won't go very long without having some part of that. And it's hard for us to deal with because we trust. We engage in trusting relationships, whether it's marriage, friendship, the church fellowship that we have. Life works better, and life works at its highest when there's trust working among people. And if that is ever betrayed, then you have some major problems. We want to be with, we want to know people with whom we can trust. But it's inevitable as part of life that we have problems that create times when there are our betrayal. And that helps us in one sense to at least understand what Christ went through because at the beginning of Jesus' suffering came betrayal. And the betrayal then, as it is so often in our life, as we may experience it, is because of sin. As a result, those sins were placed upon Him. And it was necessary that He suffer that betrayal and understand to be tempted in that way by what that brought about. And that again, that brought about, no doubt, a great deal of fear in Him as to what was going to ensue as a result of that sin, of betrayal that was going to come. That's why He was praying as hard as He was to the point of sweating blood because He knew what was going to come. And it's very easy to realize that He was afraid. He knew the penalty for sin and that He was going to have to experience that. And He might have had to have been afraid and He had to have experienced that dread.

That's how He became our High Priest. How could He possibly intercede for you and I when we have such fear and moments of anguish when we are afraid if He doesn't know what fear smells like, tastes like, feels like, the knot in the stomach?

Whatever comes across our life at times where we get into a very, very stressful period of time and because of sin in whatever form it may take and we have to deal with that.

When you've been there, we all have. We know the sleepless nights. We know the knot in the stomach.

We know the fear and it can go on for days. It can go on for weeks, months even, and have its impact.

It would be easier to have somebody come along and just kind of take a whack across your arm or finger or whatever and draw a little blood and punish you there. Then you can bind it up and get on and move on. I've been at moments with those strong feelings where I'd say, I wish, man, I'd take anything else besides having another, have to wake up to another day with this facing this situation. But that's part of our human condition.

It would have been easy for Christ in one sense to just die quickly, but it didn't happen that way. He had to move through and experience that fear, and he was able to do so. That's why he said, be not afraid on that evening as well. But he felt it, and he had to deal with it.

Even at one point in Luke's account, God, knowing that, sent an angel to strengthen him. He needed that extra help. Who knows that we don't have sometimes an angel strengthening us or being with us in some way, and an angel unawares that Hebrews talks about to help us at times that we don't even know about. It's a comforting thought. As Christ had an angel sent there in that sense to help him. Down to verse 55. We'll skip through the betrayal and the arrest. In that hour, it says, 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. He had to face it all alone.

As I said, Peter followed along to the high priest's house.

John, we know, was also at the foot of the cross and was there when he died and witnessed that along with the women, Mary, his mother Mary, and others. But at this moment, they all scattered. And at least as he faced the arrest, the soldiers, the religious leaders, and then later Pilate, the beating and the surging, through that he essentially was alone. And he had to face what was coming before him, again, all alone. Which to me symbolizes the fact that it teaches us that Passover is a very, very personal experience. The most personal experience, just like baptism. Nobody can be baptized for us. Nobody can take the Passover for us. Nobody can prepare the Passover for us. We can't prepare for the Passover except by our relationship with God. Passover is not a group therapy. Passover is not a breakout session. Passover is a one-on-one. Just as Christ had to deal with it and face the suffering on his own and come to himself in his relationship with God. Which in the end is what helped him to get through. It's what will help you and I ultimately get through. Because in time, the decisions we make about faith, we will make right up between these two ears. Or down here in our heart, however you want to look at it. The decisions you and I make regarding those most critically important matters of our spiritual life, faith, will be made by us, not by anyone else. The relationships have a part, but they can only take us so far.

When it comes to God and what we know of Him and how we interact with Him and what takes place through the power of that Spirit within us, that's us. That's our responsibility. It's not anybody else's. It may take you a long time to learn that. It may take you a long time to learn that.

That's why I say it's not group therapy and it's not a breakout session. It's intense, it's personal, it's real. It's the most important thing any of us will individually do. Nobody lifts that vial of wine up to your lips on Pass overnight and helps you take it. You and I take it ourselves.

We take that little piece of bread all alone, as we should. As we should. That's what Christ had to do.

The sooner we learn that, the stronger we will be collectively.

The betrayal of Judas was a part of the sacrifice and betrayal. It had a tremendous impact. He had to engineer that. The betrayal of one man that he had chosen as a disciple to be among the most intimate of the followers, the 12, again had its own impact.

And came about here to create this suffering. When he had to confront that close on, Judas had to lie about him and engineer this deceit in order to turn him in. Have you ever been lied about? Have you ever had someone tell a lie about you?

It's pretty cheap. It's pretty degrading. You feel violated when you find out that you have been lied about. Again, that's part of what Christ himself must have had to deal with. He lived a perfect life unlike any of us. And yet, they lied about him. And he had to deal with it.

All of these things are part of the concept of betrayal in a relationship that is very, very challenging to deal with in our human relationships. Let's go down to verse 67.

As he faced the religious leaders, the Sanhedrin, that's where he was brought first before Caiaphas, the high priest, as they were assembled and ready after having bribed Judas to turn him in and to bring him there, they brought him before these religious leaders who were pious men.

You can imagine they had their particular vestments on that symbolized their office, at least in this late night setting. They were prepared for it. And these were the men that were the highest religious leaders within the community. And they were setting in judgment of Christ. And as things got out of control there, the anger and the frustration built up, they began to spit on him, verse 67, and beat him. And others struck him with the palms of their hands, saying, prophesy to us, Christ, who's the one who struck you? It's Mark's gospel that tells us that they blindfolded him is why they ask him the question. Tell us who am I, you know, as they were probably circling around, punching him, hitting him, spitting on him. He couldn't even see his tormentors at this moment. This is supposed to be a court of law, at least a religious court of law, the highest in the land. And they're acting like a pack of wolves, spitting on the face of an innocent man, slapping him around, punching him, and he chose not to defend himself. Flies against the grain of human nature. I mean, we would want to, you know, lash back, or at least, you know, hits, you know, there would be the just the normal reflexive action for a man to try to defend himself in that way. But that's the kind of suffering he had to endure.

And that's the kind of suffering that sin brings. When anger rises to a fever pitch, even within a group, to where lies are told, betrayals are committed, and in this situation here with Jesus, coming to the point of even beating him, even beating him, and having a mob mentality.

You can, you know, we can see a lot of that take place at various times. Some of the recent riots in the Middle East, Egypt in particular, had some very gruesome mob beatings in the streets of people. Some of them were journalists. One female Western journalist was even attacked and raped by the mob. Mobs get out of control, whether they're in the streets of Cairo, by the hundreds or thousands, or several dozen as in the time of this court in the Sanhedrin, a different spirit takes over among people. And this is obviously an extreme reaction for supposedly cultivated, dignified men to take, but it shows you again the consequences of sin. Building up over a period of time, and in this case with Christ, these lies, the plotting, the betrayal, and all that led up to this had been going on for several months as they had sought to take him on other occasions, didn't do it, the moment wasn't right, God's plan wasn't right, and then it came together on this occasion and all this pent up sin, just what it is. Sometimes it's a pent up emotion, no, it's sin.

It's sin led otherwise dignified men to act like a pack of wolves with Christ on this evening, and that is the result of sin. That's a consequence of sin. And it can lead to humiliation, this type of suffering. Can you imagine a man having to be dealt with in this way? It's humiliating. The gospels are very, very... the whole Bible is very, very plain and direct, and the gospels are direct in regard to what happened with Christ this evening, and the bruising pain that took place. Sin by its very nature hurts people, hurts you, hurts me. It hurts people that we know, love, and care about.

Sin even hurts total strangers that you don't even know. Christ had to suffer humiliation and beating, which was, in a sense, due to us, because He paid the penalty for our sins as well.

In Matthew 27 in verse 1, when morning came, the chief priests and the elders plotted against Jesus to put Him to death, and they bound Him, led Him away, and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate, the governor. And Judas's betrayer, seeing that he'd been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the priests and elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. Bizarre scene. What was Judas thinking about?

It wasn't until he saw Christ condemned that he realized what he had done.

It's as if, up to that point in time, he was caught up in his own inner turmoil, which led him to plot and betray. And he couldn't see what he was doing. So often, sin leads us to not be able to understand our own actions, our own thoughts.

But then, once the wave of emotion had passed with Judas, and he had seen what he had done, and perhaps it had gone too far, maybe he didn't think it would go that far, we don't know, he tried to reverse it. Take it back, as if this would end this moment, and Christ would be set free. And they said, it's over. They had what they wanted when they went back to him. Judas was sorry. He went out and it says that he hanged himself.

Verse 5, he threw down the pieces of silver, departed, went and hanged himself.

Sorry isn't good enough at times. It just isn't. Because consequences have to be borne out.

The consequence of sin sometimes can't be undone. Some sins can't be undone in this lifetime, and have to be lived with, dealt with. They can be, I mean, life will go on.

And then other decisions will have to be made.

But being sorry is not enough. Blood has to be shed. Christ had to die.

Sin has consequences. And those are things we should always think about.

There will be moments in our life that we will come to crossroads. We will have to make decisions.

And those decisions will impact us for a long, long time to come. Decades, maybe even an entire lifetime. And the decisions that we make will define us.

And they're not always the big ones that we think they will be. There are certain decisions that we make that lead to the bigger decisions. There are certain decisions that we make that if, that when we make them, all the other decisions are easy and flow naturally from that.

I'll talk a little bit more about that on Tuesday.

Judas made a decision here. And that decision had consequences. Just like sin has consequences.

Let's go down to verse 29.

This is after facing Pilate.

And that is sealed by that action.

They 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 mocked him saying, Hail, King of the Jews.

Then they spat on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. Now these are the soldiers, the Roman soldiers whose hands he now finds himself.

Another round of humiliation and shame. Mocked, slapped around. All of it part of the plan, all of it necessary. Because again, there's two elements in the Passover that we take. The wine, which is his blood, and the bread, which symbolizes his bruised, battered, and bleeding body.

Remember, and we will read this from Corinthians, where Paul quotes the Lord.

He said, the Lord said, Take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you. Broken for you. And we'll break that bread and it's broken for us.

And it is a broken body. And these scriptures tell us that. As he was beaten, mocked, spat upon, you can see how they are breaking his body outwardly, physically, and emotionally.

You and I can be broken. We can have our body broken even physically. You know, age takes enough toll on that for a lot of us. You see an older person at times and you see the effects of age. Body begins to... they say we shrink. Don't we? A little bit as we age, we get a little bit shorter. I've heard... I stopped measuring myself at certain point. But that's true. And certainly, as the years go on, you can see people get bowed by age in the years or we begin to limp because of arthritis or this pain or whatever. And the body begins to be broken. And it can be broken by severe trauma or crisis as well. We can also have our body broken spiritually by the incessant pounding that the world and Satan and this nature takes upon us spiritually.

And God knows there's enough of that. We all know that. That we have to guard against and war against. We can be broken emotionally. Events and people and, again, situations can break us emotionally. As they mocked Christ, that was an attempt to break him emotionally. To break him down to where he would call it off, deny who he was. And it didn't work. He was not broken emotionally. He experienced the fear and he was tempted to do whatever it would have taken to have ended the moment, cry uncle, and he didn't do it. So the broken body is a very important part of the whole process. Verse 31 says, when they had mocked him, they took the robe off and put his own clothes on him and led him away to be crucified.

Now as they came, they found a man of Sirene, Simon by name, and him they compelled to bear his cross.

Some commentators say that this was basically the cross beam. He wasn't the entire cross. And you see the depictions of the suffering, the passion of Christ carrying a full cross. He probably he likely didn't do that. They already had the stake in the ground on Golgotha, and what he was carrying was likely the cross piece that may have been put on the very top and supported his arms there. That's more likely what he was carrying rather than an entire apparatus there. But in this case, they put it off on someone else. Symbolic because it shows that we don't always bear our sin alone. And when we sin, other people are involved, impacted. Sometimes even total strangers. Sin hurts everyone around, not just the sinner only. When they came to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, the place of the skull, they gave him sour wine mingled with gall to drink. When he had tasted it, he would not drink. It could be that this was used as an anesthetic, but nothing was going to ease the pain of what was taking place in his mind and life and the consequences of sin. So he rejected it. And they crucified him, verse 35, divided his garments, casting lots that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophet. They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. So they stripped him, nailed him to the cross.

To this beam and to this stake, raised him up, suspended between heaven and earth to die.

Everything, the only thing that he had left basically at that time was his name, put on a piece of wood and nailed there as well, and a bit of his clothing.

The rest they stole, divided it up at the foot at his feet, and took it for themselves.

They kept watch over him. They put up over his head the accusation written against him, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and the other on the left. Those who passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads and saying, You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, if you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. Likewise, the priests, mocking with the scribes and the elders, said, He saved others. Himself, He cannot save. Which is an interesting admission, because they're admitting that He did save others, like a Lazarus, or other healings that He was involved with.

He saved others, but He can't save Himself. He trusted in God, let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him. For He said, I am the Son of God. And even the robbers reviled Him as well.

Normally, a convicted criminal crucified in the Roman fashion might hang there for several days before they died. But there are other factors working, including the coming of the Sabbath here, which was a holy day. And Christ was not going to hang there for a day or two and endure that agony. It was over by three o'clock in the afternoon. And they came and they saw that He was already dead. They didn't break His legs. And a soldier pierced His side with a spear, and out came blood and water. It shows that He wasn't dead, because the body is pressured. We all know that, blood pressure. And the fact that this gushed out shows that the heart was still beating, so He wasn't dead. He was at the point of death, but His heart was still beating. And that too fulfilled the part of the sacrifice and the prophecies. And He was pierced, and He died.

Now, you have to think a lot of things at a moment like this, and as we contemplate this.

The account says that He said it is finished. I believe that's John's account, where he cried that out. He also said, Father, forgive them, because they don't know what they do.

And, you know, in fact, it's among His last words, He said to forgive them. And that's the hardest part, because when you and I are suffering, we don't want to forgive. We want justice.

We want vengeance. Forgiveness is divine. Vengeance is human.

But He said, forgive them. They don't know what they do.

As I think about that, the only way I can see us coming to that same state of mind is to truly put our minds and hearts on this aspect of His suffering and what He went through with the betrayal and the lies, the accusations, the anguish and the fear and the dread that He dealt with, and to, with God's help by His Spirit, come to that at some point in our life, in our minds, to where we can say to God regarding any situation that we face, where we have been lied about, where we have been betrayed, where we have been violated, where we can then truly say, God forgive them. They don't know what they do.

You may not be there right now. I may not be there right now at various moments and times.

But it's where we all should be if we are going to partake properly of the symbols of this suffering and death. And God help us all get to that point where we can say, God forgive them.

Forgive Him, forgive her, forgive them, whoever them may be. They don't know what they do.

To where we can have that attitude. That is of God. That is of God. Don't ever think you will work that up yourself. Don't ever think someone will talk you into it. Only God's Spirit, in the mind of Christ in us, can bring us to that point. And I say that the way to that is along this way of the fellowship of His suffering for all of us.

The question might come up as we think of this scene. Where was the Father? What was the Father thinking? As He viewed all of this. What kept the Father from turning this entire earth into an incinerated, wandering hulk of former life in an instant?

What kept Him from doing that? Well, the love of the Father. For God so loved the world. That's what kept Him from doing it.

No doubt He was... Can I say that He was tempted to do it? He didn't do it. But the moment Christ died at about three o'clock that afternoon, there was an earthquake, ground shook, the sun turned dark, the veil of the temple, to separate the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple's interior, was rent in too. Some momentous things happened. Some tombs opened up and live people walked out.

So those who were there in Jerusalem knew something big had happened. Something dramatic had happened.

Omenous. And in that moment, perhaps, that's as far as the Father would go to express Himself at the events of that day. But as Christ said, it is finished.

Then it indeed was finished. It was all over. And the sacrifice made for, made and planned from the beginning of the world, before the foundation of the world, as we know it, was now in place. And it was a matter of just tidying up things, putting the body into the tomb for three days and three nights and waiting. And then the other events took place.

This is a very, very personal episode for all of us to think about.

Christ had to go through all of this for each one of us. And there's another section of Scripture that we will generally turn to at this time. And it's back in Isaiah, verse 53. This is a prophecy, a section, that foretells the suffering of the Messiah.

Who has believed our report, and 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 cuddliness. And when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not esteem him.

You know, that phrase, we hid, as it were, our faces from him, it reminds you of what Adam and Eve did in the garden when they sinned, and they tried to hide from God in the evening. A ridiculously futile thing to try to do.

Sin separates us from God, and sin is so vast and so large, a separation between God and man.

That it took the death of God to begin to bridge it.

When we try to understand the big questions of life that confound people and turn people even away from God, as to why there is suffering, why people endure the suffering of this life.

Children suffer disease. Good people die young.

Why these things happen? It is plagued, these those questions have plagued people from the very beginning. And why suffer? Why evil? The whole question of evil, the suffering of mankind. And understanding that is a very much very involved issue, very important one. I'm convinced that most people even in the church have never really ever come to fully understand the answer to it, to the depth of our being. We can rattle off ideas and platitudes and things we've read. And yet the answer is right here in front of us, and it's right here in this holy day of the days of Unleavened and Bread that we're on the eve of.

It's right here in this question of sin and why sin is so bad. Sin creates that gulf between God and man. So much to the point because of again what it is and what God's plan is and that we can't, human beings can't even understand the things of God because of that. I may speak more on that next Sabbath or maybe on the last holy day, but that's what separates the holy from the profane.

God from mankind is sin, and the accumulated impact of sin throughout human history leads us to our day, and we still grapple with the questions, but the answer is right in front of us. With the Passover and the sacrifice of Christ for the force of the penalty of sin, the days of Unleavened and Bread then that point us to the substance of Christ in us as the answer to a life that can be lived in grace, free of the penalty of sin, the spiritual penalty of sin, and to the degree we overcome and grow spiritually, even the physical impact of sin as we mature and grow and keep and remove it and keep it away from us.

And as we do that, as we put out sin, we come closer to God and we begin to bridge that gulf because sin separates us. God said later on here in Isaiah, your sins have separated you from me. Your sins. So that when you come back to the example of Christ and the suffering and to understand why he had to deal with what he dealt with for his body to be broken, to get to that point where this blood was shed, we then can appreciate the impact of sin, the sacrifice of Christ to pay the penalty for it, and the appreciation of us removing it from our life diligently, diligently, as we prepare for the days, but most importantly in the spiritual preparation and spiritual aspect of our lives, because it took the death of Jesus Christ to accomplish that. You know, Isaiah here in chapter 53 talks about his soul being in verse 12, he poured out his soul unto death, was numbered with the transgressors and bore the sin of many, and he made intercession for the strangers, for the transgressors. He bore our sins and he poured out his soul unto death, poured out his life. If we were to ever go through an animal sacrifice in the way that they did in the Old Testament, it might bring it home a little closer to us. I'm not saying we will or should, but it does help to picture and understand what they did, because there were times under the Old Covenant administration when a man actually would go up to the temple and take an animal and have a priest cut his throat for sacrifice. They didn't do that for every day. They didn't do it every year. And there were sacrifices that basically were to take care of all of that, more than one sense, because John 2 Jew down in Bethlehem or up in some area or wherever he may have been, couldn't go down to the temple all the time.

Now, he may go there for the holy days, and he may only do that maybe every three years, maybe every five years. And there were sacrifices that essentially took care of all the sins of the people, but there were times when a man would take a sacrifice or he would make the pilgrimage to the temple and buy a goat if he hadn't raised one himself or a lamb and take it up into the temple precinct for the priest to kill. And he would hold that lamb and watch his throat being slit and the blood coming out. That's the way it was done, because they would catch the blood with the bowl. And then they had other things that they would do with that. You read about that in the scriptures. That's how it was done. To watch that being done with a lamb maybe that you've raised, or you'd spent your hard-earned money there to stall outside the temple and you bought, you took it up into the temple precinct and got a priest to do that for you, you saw something. You expended a bit of yourself, and you saw the cost of sin. And then you would understand what the verse like this would mean of one's soul being poured out unto death.

That was the animals. Christ wasn't an animal. Christ knew what he was facing. The lamb never did.

They had no conscious thought, but Christ did. And he fulfilled it in its perfection and in its entirety. And our sins replaced upon him, and he bore them willingly.

All of this is part of what it means. As Paul was saying here, let's go back to Philippians 3.

This is all that he was referring to and more here in Philippians.

When he said that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death, we have a fellowship of his sufferings. And we can know that. And to the degree we know that, when we come to keep the Passover service, we can know that we have fellowship with him and the Father, and we have examined ourselves in a proper way.