S. Lewis Johnson - Leading Figures in the Drama of Golgotha: (Part 1) - The Divine Side of Jesus' Crucifixion on the Cross

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

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Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. We're going to start a regular new feature here.

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I don't know how long I'll do this, but I so praise the Lord for the ministry of S.

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Lewis Johnson Jr., Samuel Lewis Johnson Jr., professor at Dallas for a long time, then

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Trinity, went home to be with the Lord about 10 years ago. And you can access his messages online at Believer's Chapel, Dallas.

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Just type in Believer's Chapel, Dallas, S. Lewis Johnson, and you can get there. And we're gonna run a series of his sermons that he preached way back in the day, leading figures in the drama of Golgotha.

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And so today, the sermon is Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, The Divine Side of Jesus Suffering on the

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Cross, S. Lewis Johnson Jr. His commentary on Romans that I've edited should be out sometime in 2014.

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S. Lewis Johnson, part one, Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, Divine Side. Beginning this Sunday and continuing for the next few

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Sundays, I want to give a series of messages on leading figures in the drama of Golgotha or God Unveiled and Man Unmasked.

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And we're going to be studying some of the great characters who appear in the Passion of Our Lord Jesus.

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Men like Pilate and Herod and Caiaphas and Annas and Simon of Cyrene and others that live on the cross.

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And in preparation for that, I want to speak this morning on the 19th chapter of the

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Gospel of John and the picture that is given there of the Passion of Christ.

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So for our scripture reading, will you turn with me to the 19th chapter of the

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Gospel of John for the Johannine account of the death of Christ.

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John chapter 19, verses 16 through 30. We often read in our newspapers in accounts that have to do with the religious features of the church of the we are

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Dolorosa. Now that is a Latin expression which means the sad way.

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The we are is V -I -A in case you didn't take Latin. The sad way is the way that our

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Lord took to Golgotha or the place of the crucifixion. And so it is the description of what it meant for him to go out to be sacrificed.

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Now this is John's account of the we are Dolorosa, the sad way.

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Beginning at verse 16, then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified.

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And they took Jesus and led him away and bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the

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Hebrew Golgotha, where they crucified him and two other with him on either side one and Jesus in the midst.

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And Pilate wrote a title and put it on the cross. And the writing was

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Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. This title then read many of the

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Jews for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city.

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And it was written in Hebrew and Greek and Latin. Then said the chief priests of the

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Jews to Pilate, write not the King of the Jews, but that he said,

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I am King of the Jews. Pilate answered, what I have written,

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I have written. Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts to every soldier a part and also his coat.

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Now the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, let us not rend it, but cast lots for it.

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Whose it shall be, that the scripture might be fulfilled which saith, they parted my raiment among them and for my vesture they did cast lots.

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These things therefore the soldiers did. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother and his mother's sister,

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Mary the wife of Cleophas and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciples standing by whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, woman, behold thy son.

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Then saith he to the disciple, behold thy mother. And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

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After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled saith,

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I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar there and they filled a sponge with vinegar and put it upon hyssop and put it to his mouth.

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When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, it is finished.

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And he bowed his head and gave up the ghost. May God bless this reading from his word.

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Let's bow together in prayer. Our gracious God and heavenly father, in the presence of the triune

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God, we give thee thanks that we are able to read the word of God. In a public company such as this, we know

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Lord that there are many places upon this globe where it is impossible for men to read the word of God.

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And we want to give thee thanks that we have this privilege here in the

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United States of America. And so Lord, we acknowledge our gratitude to thee for the word.

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We acknowledge also our deep gratitude to thee for the living word,

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Jesus Christ. When we were dead in trespasses and sins, thou didst come in and give us life and set our hope and trust upon him whom thou hast raised from the dead.

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And so Lord, we thank thee that we are able in a meeting such as this to acknowledge our faith in him, the living word openly as well.

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And Lord, we rejoice in the way in which thou hast manifested thy work in our hearts according to the principles of grace.

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We know that we did not deserve this blessing which thou hast bestowed upon us, that it is purely because thou hast set thy love upon us in electing grace and chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.

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And so Lord, we thank thee and praise thee that the purposes of God are impossible to thwart and that thou dost work all things according to the counsel of thine own will.

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We know too, Lord, it's not an accident that there are a great number in this auditorium who are here together in this meeting.

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And we know that thou dost have plans and purposes for each one of us, believer and non -believer alike.

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And may, O God, the purposes of our sovereign God be accomplished through the ministry of the word today.

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Thy word which is a savor of life unto life and a savor of death unto death.

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And, O Father, if it should please thee and if it should be in accordance with thy will, may today be a savor of life unto life.

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We pray again for our country, for our president, for his cabinet, for men who have the responsibility of making important decisions.

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We pray, O God, that they may be truly the ministers of God as thou dost say in thy word.

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And then, Lord, we pray for the ministry of the word wherever it may be going forth today, not only in Dallas and Texas and the

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United States, but to the uttermost part of the earth. We pray especially for the college ministry which is so strategic and would bring to thee,

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Lord, the ministry of organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ and Univarsity Christian Fellowship.

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And especially for those who are engaged in important activities in the next few days.

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May the ministry of the word be fruitful and may many young people be one to the

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Lord Jesus. We know, Lord, that there is no leader who is so great as he.

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And may some of our youth catch the vision of our Lord and enroll in his army and carry his banners into the battle fray which is before us on every hand.

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We know that the powers of darkness are about us and are active and vigorous and strong.

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And our hope and trust is in thee. And may, Lord, as a church, this assembly of Christians walk in the light of the word and in the conscious sense of the presence of the

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Lord Jesus and relying upon his power and upon his headship and captaincy, accomplish great things for thee.

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And so, Lord, we commit our meeting to thee, the ministry of the word to thee. May thy name be glorified in it for Jesus' sake.

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Amen. When we look again at the study of Golgotha or the cross work of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, we come to the converging point of all ancient history and the origin of all modern history.

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The prophets looked forward to the coming of Christ. They, of course, did not know all of the lineaments of his person.

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They did not know all of the facts of his life, though they knew certain things, but they looked forward to one who would come and suffer.

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And also they looked forward to glories that would follow. In the first chapter of Peter's epistle, he makes reference to the fact that they searched the scriptures seeking to determine the circumstances and the time under which the one, under which the sufferings and the glories of Christ should occur.

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And the answer was given to them, that it was not for them, but for others, that the spirit ministered the words through them.

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So when we think of Golgotha, we are thinking of that which is central in the history of man.

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And though, of course, the world has rejected our Lord Jesus Christ in accordance again with the prophetic word, still even in the world's activities, there is an acknowledgement of the fact that the cross of Jesus Christ is central.

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Now my wife and I like calendars. She especially likes calendars because she paints.

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And so we have calendars from Switzerland and calendars from Europe and calendars from Great Britain, from Scotland and from England and calendars from the

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United States. And all of these calendars acknowledge the fact that the cross of Jesus Christ is the converging point of all history.

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We read on them the year 1967. Anno Domini, that is in the year of our

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Lord. Every check that we write acknowledges the fact that the cross is the central feature of human history, even those that come back marked

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N, S, F. And I suppose that some of you have had checks like that.

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They too have the date upon them, January the 1st, 1967, or whenever it may have been dated.

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Our newspapers that we read, though written by men who generally speaking do not are not noted for their allegiance to the

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Lord Jesus Christ, still date those newspapers in accordance with his coming.

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We say A .D. and B .C. Almost everything that we do finds in it a silent acknowledgement of the fact that the cross of Jesus Christ is the converging point of history, ancient and modern.

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A French skeptic, I think his name was Rousseau, said it would take a Jesus to forge a

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Jesus. And the world has implicitly acknowledged that because it acknowledges in all of its activities the greatness of one whom it actually dishonors.

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Most studies of the death of Jesus Christ stress the human side of the suffering, the shame, and it was great, the scourging, and it was bitter, the blood that he shed, and that surely was painful, the spitting that he received, and that surely was dishonoring.

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But we want to stress this morning, because the Johannine account stresses it, the divine side of the sufferings of the

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Lord Jesus. Humans are active in John chapter 19, and human beings are active in the sufferings of Christ.

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But God is especially active in his sufferings. In the Old Testament we read that it pleased the

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Lord to bruise him. We read in Psalm 22, a psalm that we studied not long ago, which is very closely related to this passage, we read there that the psalmist speaks of the fact that God had put him to death.

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And so the sufferings of Christ are sufferings that preeminently are brought upon him by God.

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They also are brought upon him by man, and he willingly endured them. But they are sufferings that are produced by God.

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It is his love work for men. And it's an amazing thing to think that he loved us enough to give his only begotten son that we might have everlasting life.

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And when we think of the regard that the father had for the son, then surely this is a tremendous testimony to the love that the father has for us.

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Now in this particular account, I'm going to stress seven things. And since I only have 31 minutes, according to my watch, we're going to make a kind of review of them and hit the high spots.

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But the first thing that we will notice is Massah crucified. In verses 16 through 18, the high priest's duty was to prepare the sacrifices of Israel.

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And in this particular incident, the suffering of Christ, the high priests, in spite of themselves, prepare

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God's last sacrifice. We read in verse 17, and he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha.

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Now he went forth outside the camp. In the Old Testament, you'll remember the sin offering was taken outside the camp.

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And there it was burned. Now Jesus Christ is the antitype of the sin offering.

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That is all of those offerings, the sin offerings of the Old Testament, pictured him in his work.

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Every time one of those animals was slain and separated, part burned upon the altar and then part taken outside the camp and burned there.

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Every time that was done, there was an illustration of the fact that someone ultimately would come to die for the sins of men.

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God exhausted grace and exhausted his wisdom in trying to prepare man for the coming of the

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Lord Jesus. And now when we think of the antitype carrying out his work, he who stands over against the illustrations of the

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Old Testament, we see in a remarkable way that now God, in the sufferings of Christ, brings to pass in these sufferings that which is the exact fulfillment of the illustrations of the

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Old Testament. I have often said, and I think this is the way we are to read these accounts, that we are to read them in the light of the offerings of the

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Old Testament. And when those animals were taken out, parts of some and almost all of others, they were in the eyes of the

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Jews cast forth as unclean. And so we are to regard our

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Lord Jesus, typically, illustratively here, in the mind of God now, as he is about to bear the sins of the human race, we are to look upon him as cast forth unclean, for there is to be no more fellowship now between the camp, that is the nation, and the sin -laden animal.

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The ugliness of the sin offerings should be stressed here too. In the sin offerings, the entrails of the animals were taken out, the blood of the animals was taken out, the dung of the animals was taken out and burned upon the heap.

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And it is not wrong for us to think that, in a sense, this is the way in which our

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Lord Jesus went out. That is, he is going out now as the sin sacrifice, and we are to look at the we are

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Dolorosa as the way of the stench. And of course, we should not stop there.

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We should realize that this is all because you and I are in the sight of God, that which he is trying to illustrate.

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So the ugliness of the sin offering is designed to show us spiritually the ugliness of sin.

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And if we, by the spirit of God, have our minds open to the word of God, then we will realize that what

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Jesus Christ endured for us is what we ought to endure. In other words, the picture is really a picture of us, of you and me, because he is our representative.

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In the 18th verse, it is stated that two others were crucified with him and that Jesus was in the midst.

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Since in a few weeks, we're going to study these two individuals, I want to say only this right now, that Jesus Christ coming into the world lay amid the magi, amid the shepherds, and amid the angels.

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But going out, he hangs upon a cross amid the bandits. Now, sometimes we're inclined to think this is an accident.

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It's not an accident at all. It is God's purpose that Jesus Christ should hang on that cross between two robbers, between two insurrectionists.

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It was his purpose that he should come in among the angels and among the shepherds and in the presence of Mary and Joseph.

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But going out, he is amid the bandits again because he represents us.

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It is God's pictorial way of showing us just what it means for the Son of God to suffer for men.

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Some commentator has said this was his inevitable company, and it was because you see, he must, as he suffers, give a visible representation to the world of what we are, and that's what we are, bandits and criminals and crooks, and above all, under the judgment of God.

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And so our substitute, our representative, must hang upon the cross in that way.

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Massah crucified. The next thing that John writes about is the Massah entitled.

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He tells us of the superscription that was placed upon the cross of our Lord Jesus.

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It was the custom for the title, which would give the reason for the crucifixion, to be attached to a sign, and then there would be painted upon that sign the charge, why the person is crucified.

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And so the Lord Jesus has a superscription, and his superscription reads, Jesus of Nazareth, the

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King of the Jews. Now, in the course of putting the superscription upon, over our

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Lord Jesus, Pilate and the Jews engaged in just a little bit of an argument over it.

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Pilate, I'm sure, had his tongue in his cheek when he said right on that superscription, this is

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Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. And the Jews sensed that, because they knew that Pilate did not believe that Jesus was the

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King of the Jews, but he was putting it there because it was a way of getting back at the

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Jews. So he could put that on the board and say behind his back, look what I did.

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You see, the Jews always talking about a king, and there's their king. Take a look at the

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King of the Jews. He'd had so much trouble with the Jews that this afforded him an admirable opportunity of pulling their leg, and that's what he was doing.

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Now, the Jews recognized that he was doing that, and so they came to him and said, write not the

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King of the Jews, but that he said that he was King of the Jews. So they wanted him to change the superscription to Jesus of Nazareth, who said that he was the

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King of the Jews. But Pilate says in the 22nd verse, what

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I have written, I have written. Now, of course, Pilate thought that in this crucifixion of the

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Lord Jesus, that he was really sovereign within it, but he was not. In fact, now, if we could see

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Pilate, and if we could hear the words that were really spoken through the words that he spoke, we would read these words in an entirely different way.

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For what Pilate wrote, he really did not write. It was God's desire, you see, that on that superscription there should be

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Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, because he wanted men to see that this really is the truth, and that even in his crucifixion, there is a testimony given by God to the fact that he is

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Jesus of Nazareth, and he is King of the Jews. And so if we had Pilate in our presence, we could say to him,

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Pilate, what you wrote, you did not write. And that really what he did was to say, what

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I have written, I have not written. That is God's word behind the words of this procurator of Judea.

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Thirdly, in verses 23 and 24, we have Massah disrobed.

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I have often said this, and I think it's true, that we pay entirely too much attention to the birth of our

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Lord Jesus at Christmastime, and not that I'm against Christmas. I think it's a time in which we have a good time, but all

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Christians should realize the real significance of Christmas. But we pay a great deal of attention to Christmas, but we don't pay nearly so much attention to the death of our

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Lord Jesus. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.