Sermon Tone Analysis

The 7 Things Jesus Said from the Cross

Then Jesus said....

Now, let’s press the pause button and let’s review what led Jesus to this point.

If you remember, the Bible says this clearly, that God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, Jesus, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but would inherit eternal life.

God gave us His Son, Jesus, who was born of a virgin, Mary, without the sin nature.

And what did Jesus do?

Well, Jesus lived the perfect sin-less life, and He completely fulfilled the will of God for His life.

When you study His life stories, completely amazing.

The guy never did anything wrong.

He loved everyone.

He loved with an unconditional kind of love.

He loved the ones that society rejected, and He came with this revolutionary, against-the-grain message.

He talked to the religious folks and He said, “You guys don’t get it.

You’re the hypocrites.

You’re the one with the plank in your own eye.

You’re the one that preached religion, but don’t know God personally.”

He said, “I didn’t come just to preach the law, but instead, to fulfill the law,” and Jesus did miracle after miracle.

His teaching changed lives.

He would touch people with blind eyes, and their eyes would be opened.

They would see.

He touched deaf ears, and they would hear.

He had the ability to speak to those who had died, and they would come back to life.

He loved anyone and everyone that He came in contact with and preached the message of God’s kind of life in an awesome way.

Even though He did everything just right, living to fulfill the will of God, He was betrayed by one of His own.

He was taken before a mock trial, and even though He had done nothing wrong, and even Pilate acknowledged the fact that this man, “I find no fault in Him,” He was falsely accused, tried, condemned, even though He was an innocent man, and the creation mocked the Creator, God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, and tortured Him.

And that’s what they did.

They took His clothes, stripped them off, and beat Him over and over and over again with a whip with metal balls and sharp rocks and glass that would rip His back completely open.

He, the internal organs would often be exposed when a person was beaten this way.

They took a crown of thorns in a mocking way and placed it upon His brow and drove it down over His head, so his beaten and bruised face became so bloody.

In the Old Testament, it was prophesied of Him that you couldn’t even recognize Him as a man, so maybe He looked more like an animal, a wounded animal, than a man.

They took a scepter, kind of like a king stick, and gave it to Him as a mockery and they beat Him in the head with it.

They took Jesus, God’s Son.

They blindfolded Him, and then the Roman soldiers, who were known for wearing these great big rings, pounded Him in the face and said, “Prophesy.

Tell us who hit You.”

They spit on Him.

They mocked Him.

They said, “Hail, King of the Jews”.

Then they forced this guy, who was Jesus, fighting to remain conscious, to carry the cross to the point of execution, and it was there that they drove the spikes through His flesh in His wrists and in His feet, lifted him off of earth, and Jesus, suspended between Heaven and earth, was in complete control the whole time.

Never retaliated, never spoke a word of evil against those who were torturing Him, didn’t even speak up to this point, according to the Gospels.

We have no record of it, and hanging there on the cross, suffering for our sins, Jesus’ lips started to move.

Now, had I been there, I’d be leaning in.

I’d want to know what is it that this man is about to say?

Is He going to curse those who were abusing Him?

Is He going to pray to God for relief from His physical pain?

Jesus did nothing like that.

Jesus uttered the first of His famous last words, when He said this.

Verse 34, He prayed to His Heavenly Father.

I think often we might pray about those who have hurt us like David prayed about his enemies...

But that’s not what Jesus did.

He Fulfilled a 700 Hundred Year Old Prophecy

But why?

Why did He pray THAT prayer?

1) It is mankind’s greatest need.

a) People need to receive forgiveness.

b) People need to grant forgiveness.

One guy got bitten by a rabid dog and he could have been treated by his doctor and been completely healed, but he didn’t.

And he waited too long, and he went in before his doctor and his doctor said, “Man, I’m sorry.

If you’d been here earlier, you’d been fine, but you’re not going to be fine.

It’s way too late.

You’re going to die.”

The guy freaked out, and after a while, he kind of worked through the emotion and kind of sobered up, and he started to make a list of people, writing names down on a piece of paper and the doctor said, “What are you doing?” Are these people to contact, or people to give your possessions to?

He said, “No, no, no.

These are people I hate.

I’ve got rabies.

This a list of the people I am going to bite.”

And that’s the way a lot of people live today.

Wounded, angry, bitter, full of unforgiveness as our heart grows harder and harder.

Think about the context in which Jesus was raised.

Jesus was a Jew.

He was born in a system that was known as being under the law.

Now, He came and fulfilled the law, but according to the law in that which Jesus was raised, they lived by a pretty fair system.

If someone plucks out your eye, an eye for an eye.

You pluck theirs out.

If someone knocks out your tooth, there were no dentists, so you would not have a tooth.

Tell them to smile, and you’re popping their tooth out.

It was pretty simple.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

He also lived very near a Roman grecco world, where the Romans worshipped a false god known as revenge, and the Romans were famous for it.

If someone wronged the Romans, they were going to take it out on you ten times what you did to them.

Now, notice this.

Jesus, born in an environment known as and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, knew a society of revenge.

Yet, the whole time, He was in control and never once did He speak a word of retaliation.

Never once did He act in a way to get them back.

Instead, what did He do?

The same thing that God wants us to do … to pray.

To pray, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t even know what they’re doing.”

2) It’s what Jesus modeled.

3) It’s what Jesus commands.

4) It’s What Jesus Offers

Remember that 700-year-old prophecy: