His Body Broken

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The Real Problem

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The Real Problem

Jesus spent a lot of time walking around on earth and doing things.

But when it came to the end, they hung him on a cross, and they insulted him.

Matthew 27:39–43 NIV

Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ”

The problem was, people were coming at him and saying , ‘Hey, if you really were the messiah, you could get yourself down. You could ask God, and He would move you.’

The problem was that the cross wasn’t the problem. Death and sin were.

See, the cross seems cruel. It seems violent and unnecessary. Because someone shouldn’t have to suffer like that.

But the things is, we all have sinned. We all have fallen short of being perfect - to being directly connected to God at all times. And the real, real problem here, is that that disconnect causes death in us - both permanently (in this world) and eternally

And it’s a death that’s baked permanently into our nature, thanks to sin. It’s something that none of us can avoid. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we do recognize that problems, bad things, they have a consequence attached.

But we were all built to have a direct relationship with God, but God is completely pure, completely holy, and as long as we are not - we couldn’t have that direct connection. The bible literally says, being exposed to God in our sinful state, we’d die.

So there’s something in each one of us, something that disconnects us from God, and that disconnection brings eternal death.

The cross was nothing to Jesus compared to us being disconnected from Him forever.

We’re not comfortable with this idea with ourselves. We’re not comfortable with the idea that our brokenness, what we call our human nature, is actually not a good thing, and that it can bring a real and eternal death for us.

But it’s still true. They say that imperfection, that the fact that we don’t always make the right choice, that we’re both darkness and light, that this is evidence that we are human. I say, it’s evidence that we are broken, that there’s something in us that doesn’t belong, and that something is missing.

We were built to be sustained directly by God, to walk around with Him and to know Him every day. Not having that, we stumble around, half complete.

The Real Solution

So, Jesus hung on the cross, and people hurled insults at Him. They said, ‘why can’t you fix this? Why not just pull yourself down so that you won’t die? If you’re the son of God, surely you could do that!’ And they were mocking Him, they didn’t really expect Him to be able to do it.

And they were doing stuff like that to Jesus his entire ministry. JEWS AND A KING TO OVERTHROW THE ROMANS

But Jesus was going to settle for something that was less than a victory. He wasn’t going to settle for comfort, or making people temporarily happy. Because He knew that there was this big, big problem.

And that problem was the consequence of our brokenness. The consequence of the sin inside of us - and that consequence is death. Eternal separation from God. So even as people spit on him, even as they forced a crown of thorns on his head, and mocked him on the cross - He knew what the ultimate problem was. And he knew what the ultimate solution was.

Jesus was the perfect sacrifice to save a broken humanity. His death was needed as a ‘trade’ for our own.

This is what’s so great about the cross. Because Jesus didn’t die to conquer the Romans. He didn’t die to become a big leader, or to make people comfortable again in their everyday lives. He died to disarm the real, real problem humanity was facing - death. It was our sin, it was our brokenness that demanded death, but it was His death that happened instead.

And we’re going to talk about this a lot more on Sunday, but this isn’t the whole thing. The price for our sins has been paid - but we are still spiritually dead. We are still disconnected from God. Because Jesus didn’t just come to beat death - he came to bring life, and life eternal.

And that life eternal is a choice, because God

God offers us an eternal relationship with Him as a choice, because if it’s not a choice, it’s not a relationship.

God built us to have this relationship with Him, and we need to choose it. We need to say, ‘God, I want this eternal life. I want this freedom from death. I know that you died on the cross for the sin inside of me, that you paid the price I owed. And I want to live this life for you’.

So that’s where we’ll end. On a friday a few thousand years ago, Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. But that’s not the end of the story.