O Christmas Tree

Providence Baptist Church

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Amen. I think that it was,

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I think it was in 2017. It could have been 2016, but I think it was in 2017 that I had cut like a little branch off a cedar tree and stuck it in my office.

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It was like August and kind of decorated as a

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Mary Ann and Tony, so I was like a little over seven years ago. They were disgusted with my decoration and they bought me a little

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Christmas tree for my office and it's still in there today, so it doesn't come as a surprise to you.

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I'm kind of a fan of Christmas trees. It's actually, you're gonna think

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I'm kind of joking. You're like, oh he's just joking, but it's really not much of an exaggeration to tell you that in the

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Nelson household there has been a tree up from before, hopefully not this year, but before from Halloween to Easter.

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You think I'm joking, but you can ask my wife about that. Now I know that people can make anything an idol,

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I get that, including Christmas trees, but for us in our home it is a

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God's goodness to deprave little babies and our family.

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We talk about God's kindness to us. We talk about that light has pierced the darkness in the midst of dark days and that there is hope.

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We love the lights, we love the tradition, we love the ornaments. For us, we love all of it and so this morning

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I am going to preach about a Christmas tree, but not the one in my office and not the one in my living room.

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We're going to continue our series from 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 24.

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We've taken a break from Nahum. If you turn there, 1 Peter 2 24 and you'll notice if you haven't already, maybe you have noticed it, but haven't thought about it, but in 1

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Peter 2 24 there is a tree in our text and it is a

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Christmas tree in this sense that Jesus Christ was born to die.

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You understand that God did not put his gift underneath the tree, but upon the tree.

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And it is a tree of death, as it were, not a beautifully decorated tree like in our home, but an ugly one, not a tree of light, but a tree that went dark, the

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Bible says, for three hours. And that's the subject of today's sermon.

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Oh, Christmas tree. 1 Peter 2 24. Would you stand as we honor the reading of God's word?

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1 Peter 2 24. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds.

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You have been healed. Father, would you help me to have my thoughts collected, to have my purposes ready, to be able to rightly articulate the truth of this text?

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Holy Spirit, may this not just be the ramblings of a man up here. I need you.

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I plead for your work as we exposit the text and think through what it's teaching.

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Give me grace. Lord, I have prayed this week for every soul in this room.

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I just pray you would answer that prayer, that they would hear what your word has to say and they would be edified, challenged where they need to be, encouraged where they need to be.

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Some even in this room need to be brought from death to life. Spiritually speaking, we pray, oh God, that you would be pleased to do this.

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Lord, may all of this bring glory and exaltation to Christ and may it show our belief and trust and the power and efficacy of the word of God.

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That all these different places today may be doing a number of different things, more songs or maybe a play or a skit.

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But what we want to do is we just want to preach the word because we believe through the preaching of the word that you're going to build your church.

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You're going to edify the saints. You're going to sanctify saints. You're going to bring sinners from death to life.

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You're going to cause them to be born again. You're going to bestow the grace of justification by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone.

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You're going to do these great wonders. Because you love the glory of your name.

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So we pray that you would do that in small part here. Let us not lose sight of the goal, the upper call of God in Christ Jesus, our

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Lord, and the glory of his name. We pray it all in his name. Amen. You may be seated. This now is our fourth sermon on this text, and we've just kind of been walking through these little phrases.

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He himself, Christ alone, bore our sins that he is a sin bearer in his body.

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We talked about the incarnation last week and now on the tree, on the tree. J .C.

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Ryle has this to say. We can never attach too much importance to the atoning death of Christ.

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It is the leading fact in the word of God on which the eyes of our soul ought to be ever fixed.

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Without the shedding of his blood, there is no remission of sin. It is the cardinal truth on which the whole system of Christianity hinges.

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Without it, the gospel is an arch without a keystone, a fair building without a foundation, a solar system without a sun.

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Let us make much of our Lord's incarnation an example, his miracles and his parables, his works and his words.

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But above all, let us make much of his death. Let us delight in the hope of a second personal coming, but let us not think more even of these blessed truths than of the atonement on the cross.

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This, after all, is the master truth of Scripture that Christ died for our sins.

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To this, let us daily return. On this, let us daily feed our souls. Some, like the

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Greeks of old, may sneer at the doctrine and call it foolishness. But let us never be ashamed to say with Paul, God forbid that I glory, save in the cross of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Galatians 6 14. The cross, friends, the cross, beloved the cross, brothers and sisters, must be the central focus of our church.

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We must never tire in preaching the cross. And here we have in our text this glorious truth.

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He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. Now, the cross and Christmas, we know, are separated, if you will, by thirty three years.

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But we don't want to take one without the other. And the culmination of Christmas is the tree here that Peter speaks of.

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Oh, Christmas tree. Oh, Christmas tree, the son of God, there bled for me.

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Number one, this morning. I want us to contemplate the savagery of crucifixion.

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We're just going to think about this for a moment. Now, this isn't the main point of the text, and it's not the main point of of what happens on the cross.

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But it is something that you should be aware of because it is what is happening to our Lord. He himself bore sins in his body on the tree.

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It's not the word for cross here in the text. It's not the common word for cross in the

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New Testament. I'll tell you more why Peter chooses that in just a minute. But we want to think about for a moment the savagery of crucifixion itself, because it's undeniable, though Jesus, though Peter uses a different word here than the word for cross, he uses the word tree.

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It's undeniable what he's referring to, right? He's referring to the crucifixion.

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And in the first century, some of you probably already know, maybe most of you, the first century is the time that the savagery of the crucifixion was mastered.

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Some say it was invented by Persians. It doesn't really matter. We know by the time it comes to the Romans that they are perfecting it and they're perfecting it because essentially they want to say this is what happens if you mess with Rome.

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And most of the time, even Roman citizens weren't ever crucified. It was reserved for the slaves and the poor and not

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Roman citizens and the worst kind of criminals. But the point was that someone was going to die a horrible death.

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That's what it was designed for. It's easy to kill someone, right? There's multiple ways that they could have killed people, but they did it in this specific way because they wanted it to be a horrible death.

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And so it was designed to be a drawn -out process, taking a long time.

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Usually what would happen is you would die of asphyxiation. But that's what you had to do.

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The weight of your own body was crushing your lungs. And so you had to continue to push yourself up in order to breathe.

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And eventually you couldn't do that any longer. I illustrate how difficult or how painful it is because we have a word in English.

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Be careful how you use this word probably. We have a word in English. It's called excruciating. So you say that pain was excruciating.

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Well, the etymology of that word excruciating means from the cross.

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So when you say I am in excruciating pain, you're saying etymologically speaking, you're saying

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I'm experiencing pain like that of the cross. And the reason that we have such a word like that is because of the pain, the notoriety of the pain that flowed from the cross.

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Of course, we know that prior to Jesus being affixed to the tree, the

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Bible says that he was scourged. Now, scourging was a horrible method in and of itself.

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And sometimes people actually died from the scourging alone. It was done with a whip. At the end of the whip, it had several strands.

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And at the end of those strands, it would have like chunks of bone and maybe bits of metal.

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And so the condemned would be stripped naked and tied with their hands above their head.

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And then they would be lashed. And as they were lashed, and I'm not trying to, you know, be morbid here.

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I'm just trying to help you understand. Let's just revisit for a moment what's happening. So as they're being whipped, so as our

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Lord is being whipped, the chunks of bone and metal, they reach into the flesh.

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So it's not just like you're getting spanked with a belt or whatever, but these reach into the flesh. And then when they're pulled back, comes chunks of flesh with it.

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And that alone is causing bleeding, internal bleeding, external bleeding.

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And then, of course, we know that they take this man,

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Jesus, with a raw, bloody back. They put a purple robe over it. They put a crown of thorns on his head in mockery.

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And they continue to pull at his beard and mock him and ridicule him. And then as he's delivered over to be crucified, he has to carry the crossbeam.

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And we know from the gospel accounts that he's not able to do it very long.

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And Simon of Cyrene is forced to carry it behind Jesus. And once Jesus reaches his

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Golgotha, it's interesting that the gospel writers, they don't go into much detail about what happens.

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They merely say this. He was crucified.

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Now, I think this is for a few reasons. One of the reasons that I think it is because many people reading the accounts would not have needed an explanation.

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He was crucified. I don't need you to tell me what that is I'm talking about in the first century. I don't need you to explain that to me.

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I understand what that means. It is enough. You don't talk about crucifixion in polite company.

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It's not something that you just sit around over Christmas and you talk about. Let's talk about who was crucified today because it was grotesque.

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It was terrible. It was unimaginable for our 21st century minds to conceive.

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So he wouldn't talk about it. A couple of years ago, you can look in the foyer, but a couple of years ago,

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Connell, he helped me put up the Mexico map. It's a funny story in and of itself. We kept trying to find a stud. We couldn't make it all work.

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Eventually, we just did this. And that is I'll call it the the placard back there.

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We took the picture of Mexico and our missionaries and the things that we're doing. And he just said, OK, we're going directly into the stud through the frame.

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And that's what we did. And I'm just telling you, if something happened to this building, that map is still going to be standing back there.

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All right, because it's attached. But listen to me. That's what's happening to Christ on the cross.

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Jesus is treated like that map or maybe a Christmas wreath or some inanimate object, because they take three large metal spikes and they hammer them through each hand and then one, the third one through both feet and they affix him like he like they're hanging a picture and they go through his flesh into the cross.

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And here is obedience of Jesus. Obedience, the Philippians says, to the point of death, even death on the cross.

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The active obedience of Christ leads him now to his passive obedience, whereby he bears our sins.

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He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. Now, this isn't the end of the physical suffering, beaten, wounded, tired.

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Jesus is now he's been stripped naked and he's crucified. Most likely, it's just above eye level.

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And the whole point was so that you could you could look the accused, you could look the condemned in the eye and you could scoff at him and you could say this is who are you?

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You're pathetic. Look at you. And so they did. We know from the accounts they did of Jesus. Who are you?

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His man said he was the king of the Jews. He can't even save himself. And that's.

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The reality. A very public event. You know, it's a tradition in small towns, particularly in the

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South, we'd even did it here at our Christmas prayer, but tradition in small towns, you gather around the public square, the court square, the town square early in December, you put the tree up, you like the tree and everyone witnesses what happens.

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Well, that's what happens here on this tree, except it's a much darker tree. It's not the light on the tree that we expected.

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Gather around and behold this man, see him beaten and battered and bruised and shamed.

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And you've got to be thinking in the back of your mind as the as a serpent one. But see, that leads us to another reason,

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I think the gospel writers didn't go into detail about the savagery of the crucifixion. Because they're concerned about a greater aspect of the cross.

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So now to our next point, number two. The substitution of Christ, he himself, the text says, bore our sins in his body.

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On the tree. Now, we want to be careful with something as brutal and wicked and horrendous as the crucifixion was, the

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New Testament writers are primarily concerned with this aspect of it.

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That is that it is the means of atonement by offering to God a spotless blood sacrifice.

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It was about substitution. In my place, condemned, he stood.

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That is, we need to be careful, the physical torture should not be made light of.

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But neither should it take the place of what Peter is trying to communicate to us here.

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That he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.

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Why did he hang upon this tree? Your sins put him there.

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God, in his magnificent mercy, provides a substitute for what you and I deserve.

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So listen carefully to me, because I think this kind of preaching can happen in especially in the

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South, in the Bible Belt. We can hear this kind of preaching, and that is Jesus was tortured.

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Jesus suffered so much. And so now I need to try to do my best to follow him. Well, it is true that he suffered physically.

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We should not make light of that. It is true that he had to face the cat of nine tails and carry the cross upon his back and the crown of thorns upon his head and the robe around him and then the nails driven into his hand and to his feet.

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The physical brutality is true. And don't make light of it. It's a reality.

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But the point of it is not to say, well, he was tortured. And now, see, he suffered that. And so I guess

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I can just, I got to just press along and follow him and that sort of mentality.

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And I'm going to prove that from our text. There's many places that it can be proven, but it's proven here in our text.

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That's not the point that Peter's making for us. And it's proven in the very fact that he uses the word tree and not the word cross.

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Now, let me just get this out of the way. It's crazy stuff out there. Well, it's just down the road.

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You know, there's the Jehovah's Witness building. Now, I got a lot of strange things that they teach. And here's one thing that they teach.

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You know, Jesus was really crucified on a stake and not a cross. And then they go through this long, complicated, but let me just,

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I'll cut it straight. False. He was crucified on a Roman cross. OK. And when

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Peter says that he was crucified on a tree, he's not trying to talk about a stake. Rather, he's doing something, he does it.

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By the way, this is not the only time he does this. I read a couple of times in Acts that he talks about tree.

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So in Acts 530, he's preaching. He says, The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.

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OK, that's kind of weird. You say it once and you're like, well, did he just mess up? You say it twice. You're like, well, what?

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Well, hold on. Just say he's he's making a point here. Acts 1039. And we are witnesses of all that he did, both in the country of the

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Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. That's Peter says that again.

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So three different times we have an example in the scriptures of the Apostle Peter using the word for tree instead of the word for cross.

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There's not some sort of conspiracy here. There's merely a theological point that Peter is trying to hammer home.

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And that is to draw our minds to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 21, 22 and 23 says this.

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Listen, Deuteronomy 21, 22 and 23. And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day for a hanged man is cursed by God.

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Paul elaborates on this to Galatians 313. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.

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What am I saying? I'm saying to you this morning, Providence, that this is the reason that the

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Apostle Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, uses the word tree.

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Christ's death was a substitution. He was being cursed in our place.

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He became a curse for us. That's what the text is saying to us. He bore our sins in his body on the tree.

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He became a curse. Peter is using the word tree to draw our minds back to the whole. By the way, you don't just read the

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New Testament. You don't just read the Old Testament. You read the whole Bible, right? Because the whole Bible tells us one great story.

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The little passage in Deuteronomy. How would you think it means so much as we get to the New Testament? They say they say it helps us understand the cross.

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Because what's happening on the cross is Jesus becomes a curse.

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And sin is the breaking of God's law. You know that. And to break God's law is to be under a curse.

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It is deserving of being cut off from fellowship with God forever in a place eventually, the

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Bible calls hell. No human being can escape the fact that we're guilty all of us of violating

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God's law, we have failed to do what God has commanded us to do. And that's such a trivial way of saying it.

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It's like, it's like someone, it'd be like saying the man recently who who murdered people in Germany by driving his car into that celebration and running over people.

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And I don't even know all the details, but I just know that that happened. It'd be like saying, yeah, well, yeah, he was driving a little too fast.

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Like, that's so trivializes it, doesn't it? And when we say, well, yeah, we haven't done everything that God has commanded us to do.

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That really trivializes sin. We've gone and did the things that God said not to do as well.

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So we're guilty. And so we're under a curse. And this is part of what

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Isaac Watts is saying, when we sang that song just a minute ago, joy to the world, part of what he's saying anyway, and that line that says he comes to make his blessings known far as the curse is found.

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He's saying that Jesus lifts our curse. How? He doesn't just say, well, you know what?

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I'm just I'd just be an unrighteous, unfair judge. And I'll just say, well, I'll just lift the curse.

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No, you can't do that. A lot of man's justice. So how does he lift the curse from his people by becoming a curse for them?

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That's what the text is saying. Both Jew and Gentile stand cursed under the law of God.

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But on this tree, our curse is born by Christ. He climbs the old rugged cross suspended between heaven and earth to make propitiation for our sin.

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But don't let the sentimentality of the manger obscure your view of the cross.

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A son is given, Isaiah 9, right? And the culmination of that gift is his being nailed to a cross of wood.

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Oh, Christmas tree. Christ's work was one of bearing the legal penalty for our sin.

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God is holy. Sin must be punished. And Christ took our sins upon himself so that the righteous wrath of God could be completely propitiated, satisfied against our sins.

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This is what Peter's communicating to us by using the word tree. Now, are there other aspects of the cross?

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Certainly there are. Peter has already shown us this. If you back up to verse 21.

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For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps.

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There's nothing wrong by saying that Jesus is an example. Yes. Yes. That's what the

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Bible says. Right. Also, Colossians 2, Paul talks about that the cross is is a triumph over the demonic powers.

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So, yes, that is also true. So the cross is multifaceted and there are other important elements to this great work of Christ on the cross.

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But here's what I'm trying to communicate to you when I believe the text is communicating to us this morning. If you strip the gospel of substitution, you strip the gospel of saving power.

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He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree on the tree means that Jesus was cursed by God in the place of sinners.

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And if you take that away from the gospel, you don't have the gospel.

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This is the tree that we need. He paid a debt he did not owe and a debt that we could never pay.

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And this is critical to our understanding and proclamation of the gospel. Friends, Jesus did not die.

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I'm not preaching a gospel about the death of Jesus to ultimately give you some sort of life purpose.

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Jesus did not die in order to trick Satan. Jesus did not die in order for you to amass unto yourself material blessings.

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He does not die so that you would never have a bad day. Rather, Jesus Christ takes care of your most fundamental and crucial need.

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Are you hearing it this morning? You're under a curse outside of Christ. You're under a curse.

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The curse of who? This sounds bad. Osama bin Laden? No, it's worse than that. The curse of Satan then?

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No, no, no, no, no. It's worse than that. It's the curse of God. Outside of Christ.

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This is the curse you labor under in your slavery to your sin and your flesh and your rebellion.

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And this is the curse that needs to be lifted. And it has been lifted in Christ for those who look to Christ.

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The God man, the infinite and holy one in love and in mercy as part of this eternal divine plan of the triune

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God substitutes himself in the place of sinners in such a way that he drank down the wrath of God to the last drop.

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This is the gospel of Christmas. It is the only gospel we have. Christ is the offering we're saying,

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Peter saying by Jesus being on the tree, bearing our sins in his body on the tree, that Jesus is the only offering that satisfies the righteous and holy wrath of God.

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And this work is applied to us through the Holy Spirit as we're brought to repentance from sin and faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. But this is the heart. This is the meaning. This is the beauty of Christmas.

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A substitute was given for us. Jesus came as your substitute.

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Jesus came as the last Adam. Many people balk at the fact that you're held guilty in Adam, the fact that you're held guilty in Adam.

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But here's the beauty of grace and mercy of God. God sent another representative, and this representative is our

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Lord Jesus Christ, God himself, who lived righteously under the law. Adam failed and disobeyed.

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Jesus obeyed. Adam had to deal with the consequences of sin. Jesus defeated the consequences of sin by dying in our place and raising again.

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How do you how do you receive this? Well, the answer, of course, is it's faith. Faith alone.

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Faith alone in Christ alone. Children, hear me, faith,

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I talk to my children all the time or regularly, I should say, about this. Some of the younger ones are not converted.

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They're like, what does it mean? What's it mean, faith, belief? What does it mean? Well, it means just what it says. To believe means to believe.

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Faith means faith. It means to receive to instead of having your hands clenched against a holy and merciful

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God, to open them and to receive all that he is for us in the person and work of Christ, to receive

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God's pardon for us by the active and passive obedience of King Jesus.

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Some of you this morning, you need to be exhorted not to refuse Christ. Don't turn your back on the substitution of our text.

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Though the work of Christ is effectual for his people. In fact, Peter calls him in first Peter one, his elect exiles, meaning if you have

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Christ in faith, you can be assured today that not only was Christ's work sufficient for you, friends, but that it actually accomplishes your salvation.

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If you turn from sin and you turn to Christ. You can say with Peter, our text, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.

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So there's some in here you need to be trusting Jesus this morning as your substitute. Christians, are you living as though Jesus is your substitute?

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Some Christians continue to live as though they're still under the curse. You're not.

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You still live in a fallen world, but you're not under condemnation. Are you dying to sin?

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You understand you can die to sin because Christ died and rose again. Oh, yeah. Some Christians live defeat.

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Now, I'm not minimizing the struggle. I was just thinking as I was singing in this worship service,

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I was just thinking, man, I'm such a such a failure sometimes. My thoughts, my motivations.

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I struggle. Don't you struggle? Well, yes, we still live in a fallen world. You still struggle.

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But guess what? As a Christian, sin doesn't have the final say because Christ bore our sins.

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Those sins have been borne by Christ. You don't have to live in that. So quit, right?

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Repent. What's the answer? Someone confronts you with sin in your life. What's the answer?

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The answer is not to double down, make excuses. What's the answer? The gospel frees us. Frees us to do what?

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To run again to Jesus. Why? Because he bore our sins. It's done.

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Quit holding on to them. Some of you, you're looking at things you shouldn't be looking at.

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You know it. Maybe other people don't know it, but you know it. Repent. Turn.

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Go to Christ. He's the one that bore our sins. We should live in his freedom.

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You're set free from the curse. Now you can set a live a life of consecration toward God bonded and banded together with the local church.

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All right, thirdly, let me say this. The symbol of the cross.

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He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds.

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You have been healed. We like symbolism, I think, as people, just people in general.

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We like symbolism. My family, we like symbolism. Christians like symbolism. My family, when we decorate our tree, we talk about symbolism.

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We talk about evergreen, you know, even though it's it's a plastic tree, but we talk about an evergreen pointing to the everlastingness of the gospel.

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It's decorated with lights to remind us of the fact that Jesus is the light of the world.

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We like symbolism, but the tree in our text is a symbol, too. I want to just kind of put this into your mind.

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I probably could get canceled for saying some of this, but if you're driving down the road and you're just like there's a guy who's walking down the road with a noose on his shirt, let's say he's walking down the road, he's got a noose on his shirt.

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Are you going to pick him up? That's communicating something to you, isn't it? Or if he had an electric chair on his shirt, like you're driving down the road and you see a man walking down the road, you're going to put you're going to pull over like, oh,

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I'm going to help this guy. It's Christmas time. I want to help this guy. So you pull over. You're going to help him. And he turns in on his on his shirt.

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He has a picture of an electric chair. What are you doing? I mean, I'm advising you just go ahead.

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You can leave and you go. It sounds like a dangerous person, right? OK, but listen to me.

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Do you understand the symbol of the cross? It's a gruesome form of capital punishment for Rome.

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But for us, it has become something so much more. It's a symbol of hope because of the penal substitutionary work of Christ.

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OK, so what is the cross for us then a symbol of? First, I'll say this. It is a symbol of a tree.

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It is a symbol of a tree. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. It's not wrong for us to talk about the cross as a tree, number one, because Peter talks about it explicitly as a tree there in our text.

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But also, it's not wrong to talk about as a tree, because in one sense, the Bible is a story about trees.

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You ever heard that? What? What's the Bible about? It's a book about trees. Wait a second.

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Well, yeah, you see, there's this one tree in the beginning that our first parents eat from and they weren't supposed to.

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And then if you get to the end of the book, there's this tree that appears again, the tree of life, whereby all the nations are healed by this tree.

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But in the in the middle of these two trees, the one at the beginning and the one at the end, there's this tree, the tree of death, the tree that literally bridges the beginning and the end, the sacrifice and work of Christ upon the tree.

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The cross is that tree. It is the instrument by which Jesus reverses the curse and washes us in his blood so that we can reign with him eternally.

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Secondly, it is a symbol of unjust suffering. So I want to back up contextually and just remind you where we're at in the context of this letter of first Peter.

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So I already read verse twenty one. Actually, let me just read it again, for to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps.

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He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

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When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

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Now, we have to remember something. Jesus's death is not merely an example, right?

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It's not merely an example. However, it is still an example.

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And one of the symbolic realities of the cross is when you see the cross, you should think to yourself, one of the things you should think is unjust suffering.

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That is, Christmas is a great example of this, actually. There's tension surrounding

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Christmas because on one hand, in just a few days, on one hand, you're going to gather together and there's going to be so much happiness.

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And there's going to be so much joy. And you're going to enjoy being with your family. And you're going to enjoy celebrating the birth of Christ.

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You're going to enjoy that together. And there's going to be that time together of happiness. And yet, simultaneously, and you can't explain it unless you've been through it, that while you're celebrating, there's also sorrow.

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It's not everything's like it's supposed to be. Some of the people who were here at Christmas last year, they're not here this year.

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And the sad reality is some people that we gather with this year at Christmas, they won't be here next year.

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We're reminded simultaneously of the hope of Christmas, while also remembering that we're under the curse as a whole.

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The world remains under the curse. Death is still a reality.

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Sin is still present. Sorrows still are here.

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There's still pain. So the symbol of the cross comes in and reminds us this.

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We have a Savior who was crucified, but also resurrected. You want to be resurrected?

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You need to be reminded there's a cross first. Now, I don't mean to say that you have to live a life of pain in order to go to heaven.

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But it does need to remind the church today that the Christian life is one that is often filled with unjust suffering.

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I understand that there's theologies and eschatologies out there that want to eliminate suffering in this life.

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But I'm just going to tell you as pastorally as I can, it's not going to happen.

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Suffering will always be part of the church's existence while we live in this fallen world. But here's the good news.

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There's a resurrection coming. The church is going to win. The church wins.

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She does win, but she wins not in spite of suffering, but in spite of it, even through it.

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The cross is a symbol of unjust suffering. Thirdly, the cross is a symbol.

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The cross is a symbol of the love of God. Our Christmas trees, they remind us of God's blessings and the goodness of God's blessings.

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But listen, y 'all, you know, by the way, you don't have to have a tree up and there's fighting about trees and the

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Christian like you guys know where I stand. But you don't have to have a tree up. You're not a less of a Christian or something. And you're not more of a

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Christian if you don't have a tree or you have a tree or whatever. But here's something you need to be reminded.

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There's not a greater symbol of the love of God than the dark tree of Golgotha. The verse that we quoted earlier,

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John 3, 16, for God, so love the world, what it means is it's not like for God so love the world.

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What it means is God love the world. The word so there means in this way. So the text should say something like this, for God love the world in this way.

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That's what it's saying. For God love the world in this way. OK, how did you love the world, God? He gave.

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His only begotten son. Now, it's not talking there about merely the manger, but what the cross, the cross is a symbol of the love of God.

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Friends, the wrath of God and the love of God are not mutually exclusive. We cannot emphasize one to the expense or exclusion of the other.

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The cross is where the love of God is magnified because the wrath of God is satisfied.

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Romans 5, 8, God commended his love toward us and that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

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When you see the cross, you do see a symbol of unjust suffering. But when you see the cross, you also see a symbol of the unmerited love of God.

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And if God loves us in this way. How should this tree shape our love for one another?

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In the church, this is a different sermon, but if I may interject a few application points,

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I would just say that sometimes it's hard to love people in the church. Look, let's be honest.

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Sometimes it's hard to love your spouse, isn't it? Right. This happens, it's like they don't do things the way

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I want them to do. Or maybe I'm just talking about myself. It's hard for Stephanie to love me because I can be a knucklehead.

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OK, but listen to me. It's hard. People don't do things the way that you want them to do right.

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People act differently. People sin differently. All these things. But this is the way that God displays his love for his people laying down his life.

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I think there's application there. In the church. Well, I know there's application because John makes it in First John.

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There's application for us. We lay down our lives for the brothers. It's not always easy, but we do it.

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Why? Because we love Christ. Fourthly, the cross is a symbol of sin's defeat.

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Now, I've already alluded to this in the sermon, but let's make it more explicit. This cross is a symbol.

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When you see the cross, you are reminded that sin has been defeated.

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How can I say that? Because our text says this, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that or if I'm just supplying the word here so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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The work Christ accomplished, friends, is not only about heaven, right?

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It's also about the here and now. It is about living free from our sin now.

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Not that we're perfect, not that we don't struggle like I talked about earlier, but that we actually do what the text says.

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We actually do die to sin. You can't believe the first half of this verse and not believe the second half.

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A lot of people running around like they believe the first half of the verse and they're not living out the second half.

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But it all goes together. That's the whole point that Peter is making. He himself bore sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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That is the people of God as a whole, as a zoomed out picture. You see their whole life, not just one little thing on a slip up here or there, not their struggle here or there.

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But as you zoom out and you look at the church, what you see is a people who are by the mercy and grace of God dying to sin and living to righteousness.

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We have completely lost that point in churches today, particularly in the

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Bible. We have people all over and we like we're not a church that sits up on the on the on the lofty tower and looks down, say we've always got it right.

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No, no, no, we haven't. No, there's we still we're still growing. But there's churches all over the

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South that have a thousand people in their roles, but 50 people come to church. They have people who once served in this or that capacity, they're still in the role of the church, but now they're the town drunk or the town adulterer or whatever.

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Why? Because the church doesn't care about sin. Well, it's not true of a true church.

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The church cares about sin. It takes sin seriously. Why? Because of the gospel, because of what the text says.

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He himself bore sin in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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So we do this together. We show grace and we fight sin together and we are unapologetic that those who profess to be in Christ should live a consistent life of repentance.

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Jesus died for our sins so that we could die to sin. In one way, the cross is a symbol of that, fifthly.

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The cross is a symbol of the great exchange. So here's what's happening.

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Jesus bears our sins. He becomes our curse. He's the one who was prior to that perfectly obedient.

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He was still obedient in that, but he was perfectly obedient, actively obedient. He committed no sin.

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But here's the reality, by faith in him, I received his righteousness, so he bears my curse.

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I bear his righteousness. That's the deal. His perfection is credited to my account by grace alone through faith alone because God, my sin,

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God placed my sin on his account on the cross. That's why we say in my place condemned, he stood, he stood condemned, not because of his sins, but because of mine, he bore the curse and now

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I bear the blessing. We'll talk about that tonight from Galatians four.

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Now I'm adopted. He was treated like a criminal. He was treated like like a like a wicked sin filled person so I could be treated like a son.

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So I could be credited with his life. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.

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Christ alone is our only suitable and all sufficient savior. Christ alone is our sin bearer.

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Christ alone is the second person of the Trinity who took on a body. Christ alone is nailed to the old rugged cross.

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Christ alone resurrects from the dead and victory over death, hell and the grave. Christian, are you living in freedom right now?

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Are you living in the reality that crisis bore our curse that Jesus went to the tree so that we could be free?

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And in one sense, let me just say this, and this is true in first Peter, but in one sense, the New Testament, in one sense, the

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New Testament just keeps saying this over and over and over and over to Christians. Be the new you.

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Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth, that's what we're saying.

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Be the new you, be the born again you, are you in Christ? You've been born again.

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What does that look like? I'm glad you asked. Peter tells us first Peter chapter two in verse nine. Who are you?

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You're a chosen race. A royal priest, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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Once you are not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

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This is who we are. First Peter chapter one, verse 14.

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As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.

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Since it is written, you shall be holy as I am holy. The good news of Christmas is not merely that light pierced the darkness, but also that light has pierced the darkness of your heart.

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You've been born again. You're new. You don't have to be the old man anymore.

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Why? Because that's not who you are. Why? Because that man was crucified with Christ. Jesus took that man to the cross.

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That man is dead. Yes, that man rears his ugly head. I see it. I see it in my own life. I see it too often in my own life.

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I see it in your life at times. He rears his ugly head. But what do we do? By the grace of God and through the power of the gospel and by aid of the

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Holy Spirit, we mortify the deeds of the flesh and we live the new life. If you're a

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Christian, who you are is not who you were. I don't want to hear a gospel about such and such

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Christian. Well, you know, I'm just I'm just a drunken Christian. That's the kind of I'm just I'm just an adulterating

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Christian. I'm just a homosexual Christian. No, the adjectives are gone.

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Why? They've been nailed to a cross of wood. Jesus bore the curse and now we live new, not that we don't ever struggle with sin.

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Of course, that's not true. We struggle with sin, but now we're new. We're born again. We're free from condemnation.

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We have victory over sin. We're fighting sin, but we're fighting with the hope of victory.

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We're fellowship with God. We're to be holy right now. This is Christianity and this is the focus of the tree, friends.

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Christ tasted death to give us life. John Owen says it this way.

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Beautiful. This is the great and sovereign principle of the covenant of grace, that sinners should be provided a substitute, one that should undergo the punishment due to them, that they might go free and procure a reward for them who could procure none for themselves.

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You understand grace this morning? This is what God has given us in the gospel.

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Christ is all, Christ is sufficient, Christ is enough, Christ alone.

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This is the Jesus that we preach, the Jesus of Christmas, the Jesus of Easter, the Jesus of the

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Old Testament. He's all the same. It's one gospel. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds.

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You have been here to sink our faith deep into the realities of the gospel.

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And live in such a way that those realities seep out at every turn. Keep Christ in Christmas.

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Yes. But even more, keep Christ in Christianity, keep

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Christ in every day, he is worthy. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.

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Never lose sight of the cross. And. By the cross, we certainly mean the incarnation and the resurrection.

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The cross there is our focal point, and might I remind you, as we're working to land the plane.

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First Peter 1 8, just remember this, go, go, go, go to first Peter 1 8, right? First Peter 1 8.

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Though you have not seen him. You love him, though you do not now see him.

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You believe in him. Rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, though you have not seen him, you love him.

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You love him, right? Isn't this true? Don't you love him?

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Don't you love this sin bearing savior? Don't you love this one who came from an unimaginable glory beyond human comprehension?

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This one, the Bible says, conceived by the Holy Spirit breaks my brain open trying to think about that.

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But how simultaneously he is descended from the tribe of Judah and the lineage of David and Solomon, and yet he's born without sin.

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He enters the world just like you and I do through the womb of his mother, and yet she knows not a man.

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How can this be? And what was his childhood like?

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Hey, you guys know I've been around a few kids. And they're all sinners. Not Jesus.

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What would it be like to be around a sinless toddler? Always obedient to his parents, never breaking any of the commandments.

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We could we could think about that. But the Bible says he's fit not to give us the answer to all that. Other than that, he was just obedient.

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And he continued to grow in wisdom and favor with God and man. And then every law, like, you know, people just frustrate you sometimes, don't they?

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It cuts you off in traffic or whatever. You're just like, boom, there's a sin. He never did that. He never sinned.

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Never. Always righteous, waking up early and praying. Sometimes he spent all night in prayer, always giving of himself, taking up.

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These people are just, can you imagine when a person's, I don't like people's feet in the 21st century, and they got socks and shoes on.

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Can you imagine what a person's foot look like walking in the first century? And you're walking in this mud and maybe it's mud, maybe it's not mud.

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You know what I'm saying? I'll say no more than that. Jesus stoops down and he washes those feet. This is the

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Christ. This is the God man. And then he spends all night in prayer, in the garden of Gethsemane, blood coming from his pores, thinking about the cup.

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What cup? The cup of wrath that God had promised. There's a sham of a trial, man.

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We've had a lot of sham trials that we could talk about in American history, but none like this. An absolute sham of trial.

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This is an innocent man. No, no, no, no. That's wrong. More than that. A righteous man, not just merely not guilty, but positively and perfectly righteous.

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And he goes through the sham trial. At any moment, he could just say, it's over. It's enough.

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But he won't do that. He couldn't do that. Technically, why? Because he had already made a promise. They had made a promise to Trinitarian persons and made a promise.

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And Jesus was going to carry this through. And Hebrews 12 says, for the joy set before him, he went to the cross.

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And there he's affixed to the wood. But that's just part of it.

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Because it's not any of the physical brutality that causes Jesus to cry out.

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But that moment. Of our sin. Laid upon him that he cries out

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Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

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And there he bears the curse. In our place. And he arises again from the dead.

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Live in light of these truths. Christian, if you say here, you're a

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Christian, follow the Lord and believers baptism, commit to his local church, serve your brothers and sisters, grow in holiness, give yourself more and more to the

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Bible. Take this message of the tree to your neighbors, to your family, to the nations. Go tell someone what

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Jesus has done. Why? Why? Not because this is a burden for you anymore. But why? Because you love him.

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You love him. Who is our savior? OK, unbeliever, what about you today, man?

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I don't I don't know. I can tell you this, you're not you can't bear your own sin that I mean, you can't.

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It'll be eternal in hell. It's not meaning that it never ends. In fact,

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I would just say this. If there's an unbeliever here, you don't understand what curse means. Until hell.

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But Christmas reminds us that Christ has come. And there's this sweet and precious promise today.

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The door of mercy is open. It's open. All right. We talked about in Sunday school this morning with the

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Magi, like all these people hanging around Jerusalem and not one of them are going over to Bethlehem to see the newborn king.

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But here come these Magi, right, and they're going. Why? Well, one one thing is there's a reminder that if you're rich, if you're poor or you're

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Jew, you're Gentile or you're or you're strong or you're weak or you're old or you're young or you're a man or you're a woman or you're a little boy or a little girl or an adult or a senior.

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So a senior citizen, Christ is offered to you.

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The door of mercy is open. How do you get in? How do you go through? I want this Jesus you keep talking about.

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I want this Christ. What must I do? You must lay hold of him by faith. The door is open, but the door's name is the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And you can't go in any other way. Would you call out to God right where you are?

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Even in your heart, cry out to God in faith, pleading for his mercy in Christ, repenting of your sin, that means turning from your sin.

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Why are you holding on to your self -righteousness? Why let it go and go to Christ and trust his atoning work?

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And for all of us, would there be any of us in here, any of us today who would just look in praise to our savior king?

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Who would look again to this tree and see the son of God who bore our sins, carried our curse, satisfied divine wrath, friends, the greatest gift of all was not placed beneath the tree, but as we said, hung up on it.

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Rejoice, beloved, because of Christ, the curse is broken and forgiveness flows and salvation is yours.

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Oh, Christmas tree. Oh, Christmas tree. The sun bore the curse to set us free.

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Let us this day repent and believe the gospel. And say to one another,

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Merry Christmas, indeed. Father, I thank you for your word and we pray that you would take it and apply it in only how the

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Holy Spirit can. So many needs, so many things said. Holy Spirit, only you can apply it perfectly in the exact way that it needs application.

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There are Christians here today who need to be encouraged. They need to be reminded that the curse is broken.

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Salvation rains down full and free and that Jesus saves to the uttermost, the utter most.

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Would you encourage those Christians? There are Christians here who this week.

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Have dabbled in sin. They saw something and they went after it.

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And Lord, today they need to repent. They need to be reminded that Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree and that part of that work is that they would die to sin.

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And live to righteousness, convict them of their sin, oh, God, and bring them to repentance, and may they be reminded of the great grace shown.

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Our church family needs to be reminded of the gospel this season and every season.

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Help us to be a church family that loves one another in Christ and extols the excellencies of the gospel and proclaims it to others.

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And finally, Father, I plead on behalf of the unregenerate in this room, I would surmise that there are children who are not born again.

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I pray, oh, God, that they would hear today and be reminded that the gospel that we sing about and preach and talk about in family worship, it's the gospel that will save them.

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But they're not called to wait, they're not called to contemplate, they're not called to figure it out later, they're called even today to look to Christ and to rest in him and to turn from sins and believe the gospel.

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But, Lord, we know that it's more than just young people, there are perhaps even people in this room who are pretenders.

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Oh, God, would you shake them out? They don't deserve it, but I plead for them, shake them out of hypocrisy, give them another opportunity, as it were.

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May they hear even this prayer and may they even think about how they have been wicked in their false.

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Pretenses. And I pray, oh, God, that they would see, oh, but there is grace today if they'll turn to Jesus, that his sin bearing involved the sins of our hypocrisy, too.

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And they can have Christ if they'll believe what I don't know, the hearts of all here,

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I don't even pretend to know, but you do. And would you apply your word effectually to each soul in this room?