The Love of a Suffering Savior

Introduction

Good morning! It has been an honor and a pleasure to be serving you this past month. Every week this month I believe the Lord has taken and used for His Glory. This morning I want to congratulate the graduates, and I want you to think about the world around us. Look at all the brokenness, around us. As we send out thes indivuals who are graduating we need to take into account the fact that the world is broken and in torment. People are suffering, nations are suffering. The world is groaning due to our sin. We are suffering because of sin. We are all bound for hell. We all deserve death, torment and punishment. But we don’t have to suffer. Because Christ already endured the ultimate suffering. The king of all creation came down to atone for sin through death, when He could have just rewritten history. If you would open your bibles to John 19:30 and when you have it please stand for the reading of the Holy Word of God.

John 19:30 CSB

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.

PRAY>

(Thank for military sacrifice)

The Suffering

I don’t think we always under stand just how much Jesus had to suffer. Not only physically but also psychologically. Being fully God and fully man, He understood what was going to happen, but Also had dread over what was about to happen. He knew the torment that his physical body was about to go through, but also all the pain and stress that he felt literally caused Him to sweat blood. He was in so much stress mentally that His physical body began groaning. The same is applying in the world today the earth and all of nature is groaning because of our sin. You know that feeling of stress and regret that you feel when you do something you know is wrong, or the feeling of anxiety when you know you re about to get a severe punishment? That’s what he was feeling but on such a great level that His body began to bleed. When His body began to bleed, He was praying in the garden. He prayed and prayed, he prayed so earnestly that the stress became physical. I believe that there are three levels of emotion, the knowledge of emotion, the feeling of emotion, and the physical emotion. there are times in life that we feel so strongly about something that we feel it on a physical level. Jesus felt his stress physically. Then later he was taken and he was beaten. John 19:1-4

John 19:1–4 CSB

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers also twisted together a crown of thorns, put it on his head, and clothed him in a purple robe. And they kept coming up to him and saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” and were slapping his face. Pilate went outside again and said to them, “Look, I’m bringing him out to you to let you know I find no grounds for charging him.”

Pilot, before he gave Jesus over to the Jews, he had him flogged. A lot of times the people being crusified wouldent even make it to the cross, many would die at the flogging. So he was already mentally and physically distressed, but then he was beaten, he had the skin torn from his back, his ribs were exposed, and he felt the sting of the dirt in the massive gashes in his back. imagine The feeling of sand or salt or even lemon juice in a paper cut. Then imagine your back being fully exposed and you feel the relief of the cool breeze but then a cloud of sand hits your open back. The absolute amount of pain that Jesus went through was so horrible that i get chills just thinking about it. But it gets even worse from there he was mocked by Roman guards. They wrapped him in a purple cloth and placed a crown of thorns on his head. already sweating, already covered in blood and they drove those thorns onto his head. Then they started to beat him up they put a blind fold on him and started beating and asked “ prophesy, and tell us who hit you that time” No one likes to be made fun of, and they were making fun of God. After that pilot brought him before the people and asked what to do and they all said crusify him. The People that sang Hosanna just days before, were now shouting for his death. Now he had to carry his own cross UPHILL!! Imagine carring a heavy load up hill after being beaten and flogged, the wood being forced down on his back so that he felt the paint of the wood on his open wounds. Then to be laid on his back to feel the weight of all the sin in the world and have nails driven into his hands, raised up and dropped into the hole that held the cross, he felt all the sins of the world he felt all the pain and torture ever. He took your sins and mine, he told the sins of the murdered and the rapist he took the pain that the sins caused to people he took the sins of the drunk and the sober. ALL MEANS ALL!! He took all the sins of the world and at that moment his father abandoned him. For the first and only time in history, he was alone. Totally and completely alone and abandoned. Folks he was in so much stress that he looked up to the sky and cried our “FATHER, FATHER, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?!?!” He was dying. And when all the scripture was fulfilled he looked up again and said it is finished. John 19:30

John 19:30 CSB

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.

With his arms spread wid on the cross he said it is finished and bowed his head to die. but the whole time, in suffering and in torment all he was thinking about was you.

The Love

YES YOU!!! How amazing is it that John 3:16

John 3:16 CSB

For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

and when he died on the cross all he was thinking about was you !!!

How great is the the fathers love for us.

Jesus loves us so much that…

Our Role

So our role as christians is to follow Christs example. Not to die directly, But to die to our self. Now ive said this before but it probably needs to be heard again.Matthew 16:24 says

Matthew 16:24 CSB

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

*When Jesus is referencing the cross and denying ones self in the same context, He is saying we need to die to ourself and follow Him.

*The crucifixion was the worst death anyone could die in that day in time. So He’s saying that if someone isn’t willing too die for Christ then he is not worthy to follow Christ.

*But the death here is more than physical. The death here is to self. If we can’t die to the flesh then we cannot follow the spirit.

*Likewise with the cross. God is using the cross in this passage as a figure of speech. The cross represents our witness as Christians.

* Going back to the death thing. Oswald Chambers once wrote, “Death means you stop being.” That hit home for me. To stop being. I don’t thing that many people if any can fathom that. That means its gone. When you die to self, the flesh stops being, and we let God have control over our lives.

following Christ’s example also includes carrying With you the full armor of God. We are called to Go out and serve. Christs sufferered and died for us so the least we can do is to give it all back to him.

Conclusion

So this morning I want to challenge you, while we are rembering the sacrificees made by those in service of our country I want you to keep in mind the sacrifice that Christ gave on mount calvary. My Question for you today is are you taking the sacriffice Christ gave and walking with it every day, or are you living every day.