June 24, 2018 Jesus Sorrow by Pastor Josh Sheldon

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June 24, 2018 AM: Jesus’ Sorrow Matt. 26:36-37 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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So, we gather around the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, Sunday in and Sunday out.
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We gather to extol His name and we glory in this
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Gospel that He, the Lord God, as a gift to us, giving us faith, has opened our eyes to, knowing that by this
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Gospel we are saved. We have salvation. We have this
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Gospel presented to us that has been in the Scriptures since the very beginning.
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It can go back to Genesis 3 .15, the Proto -Evangelium, as we call it, the first Gospel, the first hint, if you will, of that Gospel.
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And continually and progressively and more and more revealed until finally
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God sends His Son. The Word become flesh as the ultimate summary and completion of this
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Gospel. And this Gospel can occupy us for lifetimes and 10 ,000 upon 10 ,000 lifetimes of study.
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My study, right here behind us here, is filled with books, but it's only a portion of what you might find in a reasonably large library.
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And yet there are libraries upon libraries upon libraries written about this Gospel and taking it apart for us and parsing it out.
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And this is a good exercise, but let us remember this morning the simplicity of the
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Gospel, the beauty of the fact that Jesus Christ came to save sinners of whom I am the chief.
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Dale Redfield from Isaiah 53, and do you notice how many times it says He, He bore our iniquities,
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He suffered for us, He took our sorrows upon Himself, He, He, He.
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All of Him. For by grace you have been saved through faith and it is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so no one should boast.
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This Gospel this morning, I want us simply to remember that the man Jesus Christ, the real, literal, flesh and blood man,
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God in the flesh, really and truly suffered on our behalf. Most of us know this.
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And yet Paul, in his letter to Timothy, tells them of these things that are so basic. I know you know them,
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I know the people you're preaching to know them, and what does Paul say? Remind them of these things. Remind them of what
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I've been teaching you. Remind them of what you learned from me. Remind them of these basics.
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Jesus Christ came in the flesh and truly suffered God's wrath, which was due us.
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He came to save sinners, of whom I am the chief. At Gethsemane, we find him here, what
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Dale just read to you, Jesus went to this place, Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray and take with him
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Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, of course that's John and James, the fishermen. He began to be sorrowful and troubled.
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And we find at this garden, at this second garden where the second Adam cured what happened in the first garden with the first Adam, the first Adam having transgressed the law and brought sin and death into the world, the second
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Adam at this second garden is going to make amends for that. All the gospels slow down here.
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The Lord's passion looms close at hand and all the gospel writers, all the evangelists take pains to make sure that we understand the real meaning of the next day's proceedings.
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We're not going to go there this morning. We're going to stay here at Gethsemane with our Lord in his sorrowful state.
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But we have Christ, the Lord of glory, the one who came not to be served but to serve, and he's going to render this service that he ultimately came for at the cross the very next day.
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The gospels are good news. That's what the word means. Gospel means good news that Christ Jesus came to save sinners and here at Gethsemane Christ Jesus took upon himself our sorrows.
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This is great news. This is unbelievable news that a holy and a perfect and a righteous God, a
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God of all justice, a God who can only do what is right, could take into his presence, to have in his company, to have standing before him me or you.
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That's not just good news. I can't think of the word to describe it. And for all of us who have been
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Christians for a long time, for decades, who studied the great works of the great writers that God has gifted the church with and we understand these things at a deep and even an intricate level, praise
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God, we should study the gospel to all the effort that we can put into it. And let's remember also that it's beautiful in simplicity as well.
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Let's remember the basics of it. That this gospel is something that actually was completed, that Jesus Christ at Gethsemane sorrowful and troubled, as Luke says, he was sweating blood.
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This Jesus finished it. We won't go to the cross this morning, but we all know that at the cross
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Jesus says it is finished and it was finished indeed, all God's wrath poured out on him.
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He completed it. You know, anything less would be like a great epic movie.
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I love epic movies. I love the great, the visual impact of, for example, everybody knows
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I love Lord of the Rings. It's because of the visual, the epic impact that it has. But think of the epic movies that don't get finished.
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Do you remember Braveheart where Mel Gibson plays William Wallace and he goes and he finds the
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Scots facing the English at Stirling and they're going to walk away. The Scots are going to just leave the battlefield and he rallies them with this great speech.
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It would be as if he said, well, you know, those English look pretty tough and maybe freedom's not all it's cracked up to be.
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You're right. Why don't we just go on home? Wouldn't that be dissatisfying? But think of Jesus Christ, the one who for centuries had been prophesied, had been pictured, had been typified at this progressively more and more expletive level, explanative level
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I should say. More and more. And when he gets to that point, he would turn and say, well, that's all right, let's all just go home.
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We haven't a gospel like that. We haven't a God like that. We haven't a Savior like that. We have a
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God who sent his Son and a Son who delighted to do his Father's will, even if that will meant the shame of the cross.
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Isaiah 53, 3 and 4 calls Jesus this man of sorrows. This man of sorrows.
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In Matthew here, in Matthew 26, what was read to you before explains why.
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Why he became the man of sorrows and how it happened, and it happened there at Gethsemane.
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Here's a wonderful part of the gospel, a wonderful basic of the gospel we need to be reminded of over and over, that our
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Lord Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, our Lord in his humanity knew sorrow as do we all.
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He lived as we live, yet without sin. But living as we live means that he felt everything that we feel.
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He experienced all that we experience. The way I say it is in him, in Jesus Christ, God entered unreservedly, holding nothing back, unreservedly, he entered our human experience.
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Jesus wept at Lazarus' funeral. Many volumes again written on why did
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Jesus weep. And one of the ones that I really like, one of the ideas behind this that I really like is that Jesus, as God, was so angry at death, which came because of sin, as it is so disgusted with sin generally, that this sort of burst out of him.
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I love that picture that reminds us of the deity and the perfection and the holiness of Jesus Christ.
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I also appreciate that Jesus wept at Lazarus' funeral because in him,
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God entered our experience. And Jesus wept at Lazarus' funeral because that was the one whom he loved.
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He who you loved has fallen asleep. Jesus wept because like we would, when we lose someone close to us, we weep unreservedly, holding nothing back,
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God enters our experience in the Lord Jesus Christ. He wept at Lazarus' funeral.
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He was grieved over men's unbelief, despite what they'd seen and heard in him.
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He was grieved, as we would be, as we are now when we tell the gospel to our friends and our children and our parents and our spouse and whoever is around us and we tell them that Christ Jesus came to save sinners of whom
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I and possibly you are the chief. And they shrug their shoulders.
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I say, this doesn't work for me. This doesn't make me feel good or whatever the case is.
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Do we not come away grieved? Jesus Christ was grieved. He was sad when he watched the rich young ruler decline the life that he said he was seeking.
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He was angered over the misuse of his father's house. Yet Matthew says that here at Gethsemane, with the
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Father's will for him about to be fulfilled at Calvary the next day on the cross, with the joy of the cross overruling the shame of the cross, that's when he began to be sorrowful.
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Our language indicates a sudden, even this precipitous descent into this barren place. It's like Psalm chapter 42 and verse 7, which is much repeated by Jonah when he was in the belly of the fish.
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It says, deep calls to deep. All your breakers and your waves have gone over me. Remember, he had just had what we call the
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Last Supper. That final Passover, that final Passover with the 12 disciples there.
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We know one's going to betray, one's going to leave, but there's 12 there. The Last Supper and the
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Passover commemorating the deliverance of God's people Israel from bondage to the
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Egyptians, the Exodus. That's what was being celebrated. And of course,
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Jesus Christ is looking ahead and he knows that he is fulfilling all that the
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Passover ever meant to be. That he, as did God through Moses, is going to deliver a people from bondage, but not bondage to men in Egypt, bondage to sin and all the harm that it brings upon us.
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The final Passover, the Last Supper, and in all probability, he and the disciples sang what we call the
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Hallel during the Seder service, the Passover service. That's Psalms number 113 through 118, a song which is scripted by those psalms.
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Psalm 113 extols God for who he is. The fourth verse says,
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The Lord is high above all nations and his glory above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and on the earth?
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I think it's the New King James that says that God condescends to even notice what happens on earth.
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Imagine Jesus Christ, remembering he is God in the flesh, singing that psalm with the apostles and say, yes,
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God looks far down from the heavens because he is so apart, so holy compared to what he has created and the people who inhabit his creation.
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And God does condescend to even notice, and yet God does notice. And not just noticing the sparrow when he flies and decreeing when that sparrow should stop flying and so on, but to decree that he would come in the person of his son.
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Not just look down, but come down. Not just condescend to be with us, but to live as we live in his son
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Jesus Christ. Imagine being one of the disciples and singing this psalm with him and looking back after his resurrection and his ascension and the giving of the spirit and fully understanding what he did.
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Imagine looking back and remembering Jesus singing this. The next psalm reminds worshippers of Israel's deliverance from slavery,
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God's desert watch care over them. When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob, from a people of strange language,
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Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his dominion. And that psalm ends with tremble, O earth, at the presence of the
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Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.
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And imagine looking back after his ascension with the Holy Spirit enlivening your spirit to understand this and remembering, for example,
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John chapter 4 and the Lord's discussion with the spirit woman, speaking to her of the living waters, something all the prophets spoke of, something
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Moses gave a typical precursor of when he spoke to, well he didn't speak, that was a misspeak on my part, when he struck the rock and out came waters which brought life then, singing this with Jesus Christ who is the living water that brings all that completion.
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Psalm 115, the very next one, wonders at the sheer stupidity of idolatry. They have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk, and they do not make a sound in their throat.
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Those who make them shall become like them, so do all who trust in them. O Israel, trust in the Lord. O church, trust in the
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Lord. O Providence Bible Church of Sunnyvale, trust in the Lord. He is our help and our shield.
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O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield.
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Again, stand in the Apostle's place after his ascension and remember singing this with Jesus Christ, who is the help and the shield that God always intended when his spirit inspired authors like David to write a psalm like that.
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The 116th Psalm, which I know, which we believe Jesus sang with the disciples, praises
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God for his salvation. What he grants to us, he says, For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
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I walk before the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 117, just two verses, calling men to worship.
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The only true and living God says, Praise the Lord, all nations, extol him, all peoples. For great is his steadfast love toward us.
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And the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord. And finally Psalm 118, a summary of Israel's long history as God's people.
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With this refrain throughout, for his mercy endures forever. You know how this goes, it's a very long psalm.
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It says, He delivered us and he parted the Red Sea for us, I'm paraphrasing. And all
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Israel says, for his mercy endures forever. And he gave us water from the rock, for his mercy endures forever.
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And he defeated the Amalekites, for his mercy endures forever. And he parted the Jordan, for his mercy endures forever.
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I mean, if Israel sang these with hearts swelling for gratitude as they look back on God's mighty acts on their behalf, when
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Jesus sang them, he is looking ahead to the mighty act that God would do.
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God, three days later, would raise him from the dead after Jesus Christ had completed God's mercy,
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God's righteousness, God's justice, God's wrath at sin. Psalms of God's redemption of Israel out of Egypt were about to come to their intended conclusion at Christ's cross.
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Really just a few hours away from the time that he sang the Hallel, these psalms that were traditionally sung at the
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Passover. But there he is in Gethsemane, the second garden, the singing has stopped, the company of the heavy -lidded disciples, not one of whom stayed awake are there.
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Krumacher says here that the original word began to be is a sudden and a horrifying alarm at a terrible object, and the sight of it froze the blood in his veins.
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That gives some idea of the drama there. But we know from Luke's account that the blood wasn't frozen in his veins, he sweated blood.
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But it does give an idea of the drama of the intensity of the moment.
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And this is when Isaiah's man of sorrows became what was prophesied.
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Christ himself even said, now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose
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I have come to this hour. John Calvin puts it this way, though God had already tried his son by certain preparatory exercises, he now wounds him more sharply by a nearer prospect of death and strikes his mind with a terror to which he had not been accustomed.
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Now my soul is troubled, and he began to be sorrowful.
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He's facing death. He's facing death the very next day. This gospel without Jesus Christ's death, without the blood and the suffering of Jesus Christ that brought that blood,
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I tell you is no gospel at all. This is the reason I take this day outside of our normal expository pattern here at this pulpit, just to remind us of this basic fact of the gospel.
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The Lord Jesus Christ suffering on our behalf, sorrowful as we would be if such a thing was before us the very next day, and we knew we had to go there, which of course we didn't.
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And of course if we had, it would do sinners no good, because your death, my death, would be deserved before God, not our
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Lord's. He's facing the cross the next day. You know, there's many men in history who've died with a calm spirit.
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Socrates is one who's often cited as one such. He faced his hemlock with steady hands and steady eyes, but not really because of his nobility of spirit.
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I might credit him with some nobility of spirit, but I don't think that's really the reason why. He, by practice, by sheer discipline, had, as a
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Stoic would, had mastered his emotions. He can go forward many centuries from there.
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Read Foxe's Christian Martyrs, and you'll find men and women as or more steadfast than Socrates.
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You'll find men who kissed the stake at which they were soon to be bound and burned, because they knew they were suffering for the
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Lord Jesus Christ. They knew that they stood on the truth of this gospel, and therefore accepted that suffering with very calm spirits.
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Socrates gave the appearance of Stoic mastery over self, but I think it's a veneer, at best,
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Jesus. Jesus is the true master of self, and his sorrow was no act.
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In fact, he made sure that there were witnesses to it all, so we would have this account. And one of the encouragements we must get from this is that the scriptures face square on the reality of our suffering.
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This human experience that we have, our suffering, the things that come upon us from sin, whether it's self -induced, because the things we do are foisted upon us.
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Just as Jesus Christ began to be sorrowful, and the scripture makes no compromise on that.
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It doesn't present him as some grand hero who's too tough or too strong to be sorrowful.
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Oh, he was so faithful that he didn't worry about the cross the next day. He just trusted God. No! The man,
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Jesus Christ, sorrowful at what he is going to endure the next day, square on our suffering in a very real and gritty way.
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We read the scriptures, and we read them as more than just stories. If we read it as the very word of God, we can find ourself entering into the experience of those who came before us where we see
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God's deliverance, but we also see them being true about their sorrows, about their sufferings, about their angers, about their depressions.
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David finds himself betrayed by his close friend. We can weep with him freely. When we ourselves can look at Psalm 41 .9,
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even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.
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Now, the gospel writers tell us that this was ultimately fulfilled in Judah, the betrayer against Jesus Christ.
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So like anything else that we read in the Old Testament, we understand it by taking the new back to the old.
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So what does Psalm 41 .9 ultimately mean? Jesus' close friend Judah was going to betray him.
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But in David's day, when David wrote Psalm 41 .9, that might have been Absalom, his rebellion -leading son.
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It might have been Ahitophel, his counselor, whose words were considered to be like oracles of God, the one who turned away from the anointed
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King David and joined Absalom's forces. Ultimately, of course, it is
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Jesus, the one who dipped his bread with Jesus. I caught that.
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Ultimately, it was Judas who dipped his bread with Jesus, even with the 30 pieces of silver jingling in his pocket.
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We can join with our tears into David's experience.
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And then be raised up by his final determination in that same
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Psalm. It says, but you, O Lord, be gracious to me and raise me up that I may repay them. Well, vengeance is the
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Lord's, we know that. Let us be much encouraged as we think about our
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Lord Jesus Christ at Gethsemane being sorrowful, troubled in spirit, that we have a
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Lord who lived as we live, who experienced what we experience.
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And he doesn't rebuke us when we, in our spirits, feel these things and feel these sorrows and become discouraged or depressed or whatever the case may be.
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But as we read through these, as we see how the scripture meets with our experience, let us remember in these cases such as Psalm 41, but you,
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O Lord, be gracious to me. You, O Lord, raise me up. Psalm 73, which talks about the discouragements that the man felt when he saw the wicked people doing well, doing well in this world, having comfort, having ease.
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And he comes after this gritty and honest to speaking with God.
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What does he say at the end? Christ's death.
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He's becoming sorrowful as he anticipates it here at Gethsemane. We have to acknowledge that it wasn't unique in and of itself.
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I mean, no one survived a crucifixion. The idea that Jesus Christ came down or he just fainted on the cross, they thought he was dead.
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These Roman experts who never made that kind of mistake, these were professionals. It's just silly.
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No one survived crucifixion. But crucifixion and dying on a cross in and of itself wasn't that unique.
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Josephus, the great historian Josephus, records the sides of the roads being lined with men hanging and ultimately dying on crosses.
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And there's no problem with that because it wasn't the Lord's death itself that was unique. It was the
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Lord that is unique. It is the reason he died.
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It is the quality of him who died, by which I mean without sin. When he hung on the cross, none of sin for him to pay for himself.
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That's what was unique. Many men died, but their death benefited no one.
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And in many, if not most cases, justice in their death was probably satisfied. In Jesus' case, justice was satisfied, but not justice against him.
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God's justice against us was satisfied in the Lord. He died as our surety.
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The 2 Corinthians 5 .21, I'm not going to read the whole verse to you, but 2 Corinthians 5 .21 tells us that Christ Jesus died as our substitute.
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That's what Isaiah was 53 years about. That's why I had Dale read it to you. That he bore our sorrows.
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He bore our griefs. The chastisement for our sins was laid on him.
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This is the gospel. This is 2 Corinthians 5 .21. He died as our substitute. God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us.
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Peter adds that he, that Christ Jesus, bore our sins in his own body, borrowing, of course, from Isaiah 53 again.
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No one but the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, could lay such a claim. Not Socrates, not the bravest, not the truest
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Christian, even those who kissed that stake where their blood would soon be spilled, because Jesus was facing a death he didn't deserve.
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Our iniquity is going to be laid on him. The chastisement for our sins on him. The flogging the day before the crucifixion, which none of us could have stood, was our sins being punished in him.
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What do we mean by repent? We stand here Sunday in, Sunday out, and call upon sinners to repent.
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You who know not the Lord Jesus Christ, we look you in the eye, as it were, and say, repent and believe this gospel.
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What do we mean by repent? We mean that you confess yourself a sinner, a sinner whose only hope is to be forgiven by God.
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Confess, as we read to you, Isaiah 53, and the suffering being prophesied, that that should be your due, because you have sinned before an almighty and a holy
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God. That's what we mean by repent, is recognize the sin. What do we mean by repent?
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Well, at its simplest, the definitional aspect of it just means turn around. Repent, in both
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Greek and Hebrew, the Old and the New Testament means the same thing. 180 degrees, go the other way, and it does mean that.
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It does mean that. Repent in the gospel means that, and it means more.
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You're a sinner in need of grace, because by grace you are forgiven, if you will but turn to Jesus Christ and his cross.
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We mean confess not just yourself a sinner, but one whose only hope is
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God's forgiveness. And the only fountain where we find that living water of that forgiveness is the cross of Jesus Christ.
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There's no other way, not by your works, not by your efforts, not by your philosophical acumen, not by your education, not by your checkbook, not by your intrinsic worth of any kind, but by God, who by grace sent his son to die for your sins.
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If you will but believe in him, you will not perish, but have eternal life. This is what we preach here week in and week out, that there's no other name given to men under heaven by which they must be saved, but this one, this one name, this name above all names, the name of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. So why in our
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Lord, why the loud cries, why the tears to him, to God the Father, to him who was able to save him from death?
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You heard those tears three times. He goes to the Father and says, if it is possible, take this cup away from me, three times with tears, with pleadings on his face before the
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Father, crying out to him, Hebrews 5, 7, who was able to save him from death.
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Before the light of salvation comes this darkness, as in the beginning of all in Genesis 1, 1, when there was chaos, disorder, and darkness, and God sets it all aside and says, as the first order of creation, let there be light, and there was light, and God saw that light was good.
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And then throughout the scripture, God is a God of light. This light becomes not only an increasing awareness of God and knowledge of God and his ways, but this salvation coming, and coming, and coming, and finally completed in Christ Jesus.
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Second Corinthians chapter four, the apostle Paul links together the light of the gospel with the glory of Christ.
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Light that overwhelms the darkness of sin that unbidden entered into creation. Darkness that shrouded what we call the imago
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Dei, the image of God that is in all men. That darkness soon to be set aside.
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The promise of Genesis 3, 15, the serpent's head about to be crushed and him expelled.
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The bruised heel would set itself on the enemy's head, and all his sway would be taken away from those who come to Christ.
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He'd be disarmed by Jesus Christ taking away from us our fear of death, which is how your enemy holds you captive.
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The last enemy destroyed is death, first Corinthians 15, 26. And the day after the struggle of Gethsemane, death's fate was once and for all sealed.
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If you want to know more about Jesus Christ's death, and how to understand it theologically, if you have a lot of time, and a slightly more agile mind than mine, because I had to read it two or three times to even start to get it, read
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John Owens and his death of death in the death of Christ. This is exactly what he's talking about here, that Christ on his cross, this gospel that Jesus Christ completed puts death to death, which is what the apostle picks up in first Corinthians 15.
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But our savior first himself needs to enter into the darkness. And it was this prospect more than anything else ahead that fulfilled in him that he was the man of sorrows as he began here at Gethsemane to be sorrowful.
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Any of us would recoil at the cross. Jesus Christ, the man
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Jesus Christ shrinks from its horrors here. The giver of life, he who dispenses living water is aghast at death, and that's why he wept for Lazarus.
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And might this not be the opportune moment that Satan was waiting for? It says in Luke that in Jesus Christ's temptation when
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Jesus Christ drove the enemy away by quoting back to him God's word in context, it says he left for a more opportune time.
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Wouldn't this be it? Wouldn't this be the time when Jesus Christ is on his face before God, when he is sorrowful, when his spirit is troubled, when the cross is there the next day and he knows what's going to happen even before the cross itself?
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When would he be more vulnerable, Christ the man, not Christ as God, but Christ the man, than that soon coming moment when
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God's wrath would be directed completely at him? If you're wondering what this has to do with the gospel, what this has to do the gospel is
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God's wrath was poured out on him. So when Jesus Christ said it was finished, it was finished.
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That great hymn of the faith, my sin, not the part, but the whole, was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, praise the
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Lord, praise the Lord oh my soul. I once was accused of a theft.
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I was very young and I could say before God I didn't do it, but I couldn't convince my accusers, that was my parents and I was punished accordingly.
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You know in a western movie some time ago there's this brutal sheriff and he's told that after he brutalized an innocent man that that man was innocent and he looks at the person who said that and says innocent of what?
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Now it wasn't the point of the movie, but I thought to myself, well there's some theological grounding there that any of us, even if we didn't commit this or that particular crime, if we stand before God and we claim innocence and his eyes turn towards us and he says innocent of what?
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Our only answer can be of everything. Innocent of everything?
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Well of course not, we can't be, we never can be. We can stand before God and say no, not innocent, but justified.
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And how justified? By this gospel of Jesus Christ. Justified by faith in him and his obedience, his righteousness imputed to us.
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This is the gospel. This is why we call you to repent. This is why we take this day just to devote ourselves to this one idea that Jesus Christ became sorrowful, entering into our experience.
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Christ who is innocent of every and anything. Tempted as we are with no sin.
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He's in Gethsemane, Gethsemane means oil pressed. He was there to be crushed without mercy.
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We call it to God for mercy and God gives us mercy because of Jesus Christ. Jesus received no mercy but all the punishment for sin.
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He would have pressed upon him our iniquity and all God's wrath and all God's rightful punishment against every transgression of every sinner who
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God before the foundation of the world had placed in him. One man rightly says that Jesus began to be sorrowful because God's forsaking of his son began there in the garden.
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It was a precursor to that great cry the next day, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is your gospel.
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This is the gospel we call to you to because God having forsaken his son does not forsake those who come to him by faith in his son.
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What he calls out to God those three times and the answer comes but not by the father personally by an angel sent to strengthen him.
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He would drink the cup set in his hand and to the dregs he would empty every hellish drop that was in it.
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Without Gethsemane there could be no salvation and why is that? Because God saved us by a man, the
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Lord Jesus, always God, yes, he was always God and we rightly call him the
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God man. This man who in the second garden as man reverses the damage done by the first Adam in the first garden.
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Adam accepted the fruit, he brought disaster. At Gethsemane Jesus accepts the cup sealing death's fate and making our salvation sure.
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You know, 1 Corinthians 1 .17 the apostle Paul says that this message that I'm preaching to you and Lord willing is being preached from pulpits throughout this land is a message of foolishness.
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Not a message of strong and eloquent words. Not a message that is going to tickle the ears very much because what does it say?
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It says you, sinner, aren't good enough. You, strong, independent one, are unable.
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You're not going to bring yourself to God. You're not going to accomplish anything that's going to impress God. This is a foolish message which says that your pride is inappropriate.
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It says that your independence is a joke. Your self -esteem, whatever that is, is not existent.
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It should be none of it. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach. This is the apostle Paul in 1
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Corinthians 1 .17 to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
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What is the power of that cross? The power of that cross is that Jesus Christ, as he began to be sorrowful, still went to that cross and there paid the price for your sin before God.
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What's the power of the cross? The power of the cross is that it is all of God because of his grace accomplished all in Christ Jesus with no help from anybody.
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A foolish message today? We mustn't apologize for it. I preach to you
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God's grace. I preach to you a God who so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son whosoever should believe in him should not die but have eternal life.
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I preach to you this foolishness that only by faith in him and him alone,
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I mean Jesus Christ, this savior who sorrowful at Gethsemane went ahead with his father's will because I delight to do your will, oh
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Lord. So my only purpose this morning, and Lord willing
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I've fulfilled it, was to remind us of this gospel, to remind us of Christ Jesus, the man,
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God who became man in him who suffered and died for your sins.
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To remind you that God sent him not as a show of power necessarily but with a purpose so you can understand that there's no way to God but through him, that your sins have separated you from the
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Lord your God as the prophet called out to Israel. The same for us. Your sins have separated you from God but your sins can be resolved before God.
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You just flee to him. This savior who became sorrowful at Gethsemane, this savior who entered into your experience, every facet of it, nothing left behind, this savior who
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God unreservedly came to man in. If you just come to him, repent of your sins and put your faith, your trust, your hope and all your reliance on him.
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Amen. Heavenly father give you thanks again for this day, for this wonderful gospel around which we gather and for the hope that we have in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Hope father that you have given us because we know that in him our sins have been truly forgiven.
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So with these things Lord, we do give you thanks. We pray your pleasure be upon this gathering and that you continue with us this day.