He Is Able (1 of 2) - 1955 — Leonard Ravenhill

Christ’s Ability to Save to the Uttermost

They were not suffered to continue by reason of death. But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.

He is able to save to the uttermost all them that come unto him, because he ever liveth to make intercession for them. Or to condense the text further, he is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto him.

A Text That Leaps Out of the Word of God

If open confession is good for the soul, then I have to confess that a little more than two hours ago I didn't intend to preach from this text. My thoughts had been in another direction, but while Dr. Hegry was giving his discourse this afternoon, my mind was directed into this channel.

As I mentioned before, one of the great modern writers on preaching said, there are texts which leap out of the thicket and they seize hold of you. They take you by the hand. They're texts that talk. They're texts that have about them something that, at least for that moment, transcending everything else.

And somehow as he was preaching this afternoon, it seemed to me that this text seemed to leap out of the word of God. I didn't look for it, it was looking for me. I didn't talk to it, it talked to me.

And it seemed immediately that in surveying this tremendous, this awful truth here in the word of God, for this text is as fathomless as the ocean. This text is as high as heaven. This text is longer than time.

It stretches right through an unbeginning and an unending eternity, because it brings out the wonder of our Lord Jesus Christ. This text is the despair of devils, because Jesus Christ is able to rescue out of all the powers of darkness all who come unto him, to us who are not his bound.

Inspiration, Imagination, and the Glory of Christ

It's not only the despair of devils. I believe that this text is a very depthology of those wonderful beings we were singing about a few minutes ago. No angel in the sky can fully bear that sight. And if you merely read the word of God without inspiration, well it's like a mouthful of sand.

It has no life and it has no refreshing. But inspiration demands imagination. And I have never failed to grasp something of the wonder of that hymn that we have been singing now. I sing it almost in every service somewhere, or every campaign that we have.

Crown him with many crowns. So remember this, that whatever the world may have, or the world has had, that eventually God has committed everything into the hands of the Son. And so I say this text is as despair of the devils, because Jesus Christ is able to save to the uttermost, however low they may be, however lawsome they may be, however twisted they may be, however dark they may be, however oppressed or depressed or suppressed they may be, that that wonderful hand of Jesus Christ, as we sang again in that lovely, wonderful hymn just now, those his arms, those crimson trophies won, which now his brow adorns, that one day we're going to see around his wonderful throats fresh flowers as paradise extend.

For after all, the Lamb is all the glory in Emmanuel's land. And I say then again, again, for the third time, that this text is a despair of devils. This text is a doxology of the angels, and this text is the delight of men.

Salvation for Every Class and Condition

For irrespective of color or creed or class, irrespective of whether a man is on a throne or in the prison of the king, it declares the emancipation. And I feel as happy as a man tonight that has found the secret of life, and he could go to every dead person and grant them life.

I feel as happy as a man who has found somewhere how the mystery of solving the curse that enslaves millions of people diseased in hospital tonight, people in whom the lamp of reason is flickering because they're mentally hollowed.

I feel as though I've got that answer in my hands, and I wouldn't feel more happy tonight to go and emancipate every thin shattered body that I am tonight to preach to a limited audience like this, and say to you irrespective of your needs tonight, that I don't care a snap of the fingers about your malady.

For the malady doesn't matter, it's the remedy that matters. And however cursed and crooked and deformed and twisted your life may be, if you're in bondage to secret sin, the word says here in its wonderful emancipation, that he, not a system of religion, not a series of pilgrimages, not by genuflecting to the altar, not by turning the knees to say your prayers, not by making the sign of a cross, not by the resolution of your will, not by something which is hereditary, or something you might inherit, that free grace abounds tonight, whereby he's able to save you to the uttermost.

And one condition, and that condition is, that you come unto God by him. The very purpose of this glorious and wonderful epistle to the Hebrews is to show the supremacy and the majesty and the transcendency of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ’s Supremacy Over Earthly Powers

I believe that the word of God is true, and therefore I know that that cursed, devilish system of communism that tonight is gripping the earth just like an octopus would grip a man on the water. It's suffing the lifeblood of our generation.

It threatens to press the Church of God to the wall. I know that God has already dug the grave of communism. I know that God has already declared that communism will die because the word of God says that Jesus shall reign wherever the son of his successive journeys run.

I know because the book of the Revelation says that one day they shall stand before him out of every kindred and nation and people and tongue, and therefore communism is doomed to fail. But I say the excellency and the supremacy and the majesty of Jesus Christ is revealed in this glorious epistle.

Creation, Human Sin, and the Gospel’s Supremacy

I don't need to tell you because you know already that God made this race of men. Some people say that we came from Delhi, and the folk that usually say that usually look like it anyhow. A man said to dear old Bud Robinson one day, you know, he said, Uncle Bud, I don't believe the Bible.

I believe, he said, that we come from monkeys. Dear old Bud had a lovely list, you know, and he said to the man, stand on one side a minute. The man said, what for? He said, stand on one side. The man stood.

What did you say a minute ago? Oh, he said, I don't believe the gospel. I believe we come from monkeys. Uncle Bud said, say brother, he said, by the slant of your forehead and the set of your ears, I think you're right.

You know sometimes when I'm in a home, I see, I think, three monkeys. One with its hands over its eyes, and the other with their hands over its ears, and the other with its hands over its mouth. Well it's only monkey religion, but it's better than some folk have got anyhow.

For if you can hear no evil and see no evil and speak no evil, you must be in a real good state anyhow. I say that dismissing the idea of evolution, we believe that God created the race of men. Out of that race he selected a nation, out of the nation he selected a tribe, out of the tribe he selected a family, out of the family he selected an individual.

And the supremacy of this gospel is that Jesus Christ supersedes the Levitical priesthood. The wonder of the gospel is that Jesus Christ not only supersedes the Levitical priesthood, he supersedes the Aaronic priesthood.

The Oath and Immutability of God

Think for a minute if your Bible is open here, as you read these verses. I've meditated over them, and I don't have time to take all that they say tonight. But look there in the twentieth verse. Ask the question.

For the text says wherefore he is able and intelligent are you saved. Well why is he able to do that? Why is Jesus Christ able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him? Why is he able to purge us of our pollution and iron out all the difficulties in our lives?

Look at the twentieth verse. What does it say there? It says in as much as not without an oath, he was made priest. And therefore it's by an oath of consecration. Nor the priest took an oath that here is the oath of God.

He swore by himself, because he could swear by no one else who was greater. And then look again in the twenty-first verse. For those priests were made without an oath, that this oath, that this with an oath, by him that said unto him, the Lord swear and will not repent.

And there is the immutability of the father, because he says he will not repent. He'll never withdraw. He'll never abrogate. He'll never moderate. He'll never dilute. He'll never change his eternal purpose in Jesus Christ.

And therefore because of an unrepentant God. Because of the immutability of God. Because as the hymn writer says, firm as his throne his promise stands. And God has pledged himself. That's why you can believe the word of God.

God would let the stars fail to operate in their courses, rather than he would fail to keep his word. And therefore Jesus Christ is able, in the first place, because there is an oath from God. In the second place, because of the immutability of God.

Christ’s Everlasting Priesthood and the New Covenant

In the twenty-second verse, by so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament, and so Jesus Christ is assuredly himself of a new covenant. And in the twenty-fourth verse, that this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.

He continueth forever. The other priests failed by reason of death. But Jesus Christ here is pledged. He pledges his life for your life. He pledges his death for your death. He pledges his resurrection for your resurrection.

The gift of God is eternal life. And the gift of God is Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is eternal life. And Jesus Christ comes to live in me. I don't become a Christian because I vow to quit my sin. I don't become a Christian because I sign a church membership role.

I don't become a Christian because I overthrow my own life. I become a Christian by the indwelling of the Spirit of God, who comes to create Jesus Christ in my nature, as he created Jesus Christ in the Virgin's womb.

Christ’s Power Over Sin and Death

He is able to save to the uttermost, because of his mighty power. Samson lifted the gates of Gaza. Samson rent a lion. But Jesus doesn't lift the burden of the gates of the city. He lifts the burden of the sin of mankind.

He didn't lift the gates of Gaza off their hinges. He lifted the very gates of hell off their hinges. He didn't tear a lion. He tore the roaring land that would have devoured our race. Jesus Christ is able to save to the uttermost by reason of his timelessness.

Not that Jesus Christ is endless merely, but that Jesus Christ hath no beginning. If you can think away time, and think away space, and think away the world, and think away angels, and think away every living creature, Jesus Christ stands there.

Before time began he was there, in the excellent glory of the Father, in his great high priestly prayer, he says, the glory that I had with thee before the world was. I don't know whether the angels were given a preview of the Word of God, but I can understand, I think, very completely, why the Word of God says that the angels, that the morning stars sang together, sure they'd sing together.

Sin’s Ruin and Christ’s Deliverance

If they were able to hear a text like this read in eternity, that he is able to save to the uttermost, were the angels spectators of the ruin of man? Think for instance, you might have a building like this, but it might be filled with runes.

Those runes might be filled with precious but spoilable articles. And by somebody's negligence or purposely they might destroy that room, and the water might come in, and everything that's inside of that room and right down into every part of that building is destroyed, and affected, and polluted, and devalued by water.

But here is something infinitely greater than that, into the temple of man's body, into the wonder of his personality, for the Bible doesn't minimize sin anymore. Sin is more terrible than any leprosy was.

Sin is a worse death than even, as bad anyhow, as hell itself. Sin warring in our members. Remind, the Word of God gives no slight, easy interpretation of the fall of Adam. By one man's sin, disobedience, sin entered into the world.

Their sin, disobedience, and then sin, and then death, and then corruption, and just like that impurity that runs through the building, then death was in my very being the first moment I tripped out of my mother's womb.

The curse was upon me even as soon as ever I was born, and to the whole race of men. I say the Bible doesn't lightly esteem the sin of man. It says that that sin of Adam, his transgression, it means that my mind is warped, and your mind is warped.

It means that our conscience is seared. It means that I have more tendencies toward the devil than I have to God. It means that my natural bent is to iniquity and rebellion and hatred, and I will withstand the grace of God, and I will slight the Son of God.

No wonder in one of the hymns on that little sheet, I think, or were we going to put it on the sheet anyhow, a verse I believe written by a Roman Catholic indeed, but a very wonderful verse. It says, O wisest love, that flesh and blood which did in Adam fail should strive fresh against the fall, should strive and should prevail.

The Incarnation and the New Creation

And Jesus Christ is able to save to the uttermost, because one day deity became humanity, because one day he wrapped him in our clay, because one day he trod this sin-stained world in which you and I live, and he was despised and rejected as man.

And for the very moment he came to the place of his birth, to the very last moment to the cross, the devil harassed him. The devil tried to assassinate him. The devil tried to give him the kingdoms of the world.

The devil tried to make him a king and get him to bypass the cross. But Jesus came to undo all that Adam had done, and the hymn writer says triumphantly, In him the tribes of Adam bought more blessings than their father's lot.

For Adam was born innocent, but you and I were never innocent. We were already biased. We already had what Wesley calls a disease of sin in ourselves. But there was a day when Jesus Christ did something so wonderful.

For after all, time is not divided by an earthquake. We didn't change the calendar of men simply because man invented an atomic bomb or atomic energy. We have had different ages in the history of the world, the Ice Age, and the Stone Age, and the Iron Age, and other ages.

But time is divided by the coming of a little babe. We say now, before Christ, and we talk about after Christ. And there is a great loss of life miracle until that time, the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

And my new birth is guaranteed by his birth. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. The first Adam is the head of a corrupt creation, and Jesus is the head of a new creation.

By the first Adam there came death, by the last Adam there came deliverance from death, by the first Adam there came a curse, by the last Adam there came purity. It is our purpose to stay here except to pause for a moment.

The Wise Men Still Worship Christ

I've often thought of printing a Christmas card. I've never done it. But I've often thought of making just a single sentence on a Christmas card and sending it to people. And I'd just put this in very beautiful writing, not my own of course, but I'd get it printed.

And I'd just have on my card this. Wise men came and worshipped him. And underneath I'd put, they still do. Wise men came and worshipped him. A black man came and a white man came. They were there at his birth, they were there at the cross.

A black man carried the cross of Jesus. And there'll never be a black man, not what I think of that. A black man came and knelt there at the side of the manger, and the unconscious Jesus didn't know they presented gifts of gold and of frankincense and myrrh.

You see his mother and father were going away down there into Egypt, his foster father, and they had to go hundreds of miles and back again, and they had no money. So God paid the expenses, he sent them a gift of gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Christ’s Humiliation, Service, and Atonement

Have you ever tried to imagine the angels looking down over the edge of heaven and seeing Jesus born and lying in a manger? Jesus had an utter contempt for wealth. Jesus had an utter contempt for ease.

Jesus had an utter contempt for anything that was outside of manliness and character and virtue and glory. He came the hardest way of all. He died the hardest way of all. He suffered the hardest way of all.

He did the hardest job of all. He rose again from the dead. But I like that hymn that says the servant's form he wore. He didn't even come as a king, he came as a servant. A servant's form he wore, and in our body bore our dreadful curve on Calvary.

He comes slipping into the world, bridging the widest extremes. As Wesley says, he deigns in flesh to appear, widest extremes to join. For the widest extremes are not as far as the easiest from the West, nor as far as heaviness from hell, nor as far as the highest start of the bottomless pit.

The farthest distances that I know of are between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. And Jesus never died to make a bridge out of heaven into hell. He died to bridge the immaculate spotless purity of an undefiled God away there in eternity, and corrupt sinful fallen humanity.

He came into the world as a little babe, a little helpless thing that, as the hymn writer says, made a woman cry. He lived on earth a virtuous life, and he died on the cross a vicarious death. I say Jesus did far more than Samson, for Samson lifted the gate there of Gaza, but Jesus Christ lifted that tremendous, but almost, well surely it is, incalculable weight of sin.

We are told there, for this great high priest of which we're reading here, he's making an atonement. I say out of one nation, God took one family, out of one family he took one tribe, out of one tribe he took a family, out of one family he took a man.

That man went once, only once, once a year for one nation. The leper breeds without the law. But Jesus gathers all the nations of the world into his arms. He crowds the sin of the world into his heart.

He surveys in one vast glance the iniquity of us all. There's that transcendent song in the fifty-third of Isaiah. Surely he has borne our grief, and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

That little babe now has become a mature man. They want him to set up a kingdom, and he won't do that. He's come to be a libation. He's come to do what all the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of an heifer, as it says in the ninth chapter there in verse ten.

If the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean sanctifier to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without but under God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

And the law never did it. It had to be done over again. They had to go the next year. They had to go to the same altar. They had to bring the same sacrifice. They had to say the same prayer. They had to admit the same failure.

It's the same narrative, but not for one nation, but at one altar. Not a throne in the sense that Solomon had a throne. Not a beautiful altar such as the ancient people had, but his altar was a cross.

No wonder the hymn writer says, when I surveyed that wondrous cross. No wonder John Bowering, when he went out there to India, eventually he found a place where the Portuguese traders had been more than a century before he got there.

And according to custom they built a church where they could worship. And they built it there on a hill so everybody could see it. And they surmounted that great church with a wonderful cross. But one day there was a gale, there was a storm.

They built that church so that that storm beat down. It just caught the church at the wrong angle and most of the church crumbled. And there was just the gable end of that building standing there. And on top of the gable a cross, and beneath it all the debris of the broken building.

And so John Bowering saw it like a moment, and he took his pen, even though he didn't believe in the message of the blood as you and I do. But he belonged to a church that did not honor the blood of Jesus Christ.

But he took his pen, and seeing that pile of rubble there, seeing those stones, seeing that twisted building, seeing the cross standing there erect, battered by the winds, battered by the fury of the storm, beaten as it had been now for a hundred years, and yet standing supreme, he took his pen and he wrote, In the cross of Christ thy glory, towering all the wrecks of time.

The Cross Reaches the Whole World

Oh the wonder of it. My dear friend, you may push that cross, you may do as you like, but remember God laid that cross down. And laying on the cross it pointed to the north and the south and the east and the west, because he's able to save to the uttermost.

Standing it up and it reaches to a topless heaven, and it points to a bottomless hell, and it reaches out to embrace the whole world. No wonder Wesley says, He would that all the world my Savior knew, then all the world would love him too.

No wonder Charles Wesley says,. Would Jesus have the sinner die? Why hangs he then on yonder tree? What means that strange expiring Christ sinner? He prays for you, you young lady with your lovely dress on tonight, you young man with a corruption of sin in your heart, you man with a twisted business life, you man with a sex demon in your body, you sister with whatever you've got there.

Jesus Christ died on the cross. Would he have the sinner die? No, he stands between the wrath of God and the judgment that must come upon sin. And so beautifully Isaiah puts it as he sees him there. In that matchless 53rd chapter of Isaiah, he says,.

Surely. Like the way it's put there, Handel put it there, didn't he? Poor old drunken Handel. If he'd written, he wrote the Messiah when he was drunk for three days, you wonder what he'd have written if he'd been sober.

But he wrote the Messiah. Remember that tremendous urge that comes in our train, that song,. Surely, surely he has. If he hasn't, God help us, but surely he hath borne our grief. He doesn't bear the sin of Israel.

He bears the sin of complicated, modern, sophisticated, drunken, debauched, lying, divorced, modern humanity. He bears the sin of the bloody Mao Mao's in Africa tonight that are eating maybe the bones of some Mishra.

He bore the sin of those people behind the iron curtain and the red curtain and the bamboo curtain and any other curtain you have. He bore their sin. When our good friend was saying a few minutes ago that he felt a kind of tremor standing here, I tell you I never preach with anything like that should be preaching unless I do tremble about it.

But I'm so sure that very often when people hear us preachers preach, they believe us. And I go home some nights and say when we preach, they simply don't believe us. I say a few minutes ago, I have more power, as it were, under God tonight.

I have a greater privilege than going to every condemned boy in death row tonight, than going to the thousands of young men that may be in prison and unlocking the gate and setting them free. For here is something which is eternal.

Death is a time sentence. Here is an eternal sentence. My friend, you've got the sentence of death in your cells tonight. And unless you go to that wondrous cause, unless that blood could be spilled and shed on you tonight, then there's no way by which you can enter into heaven.

The poet says, or rather the inscribed writer says, he is able to save to the uttermost. And I say he's able to save us by reason of his timelessness. It's a wonderful thing that when you have fought away time and you've fought away space and you've tried to think away angels and you think away every blade of grass and you think away the world so that there could be no grass and no animal life and no vegetable life and no any other life, and you think away angels, because it says that Jesus in the beginning was the Word and he was there before any angel or archangel or any other thing.

He was there with God the Father in eternity. He's endless. I like to think there, it's in that unbeginning thing that just tatters my mind and rots my understanding. Oh, I can think that I'm never going to end and God will never end and you will never end.

If you live a billion years in hell, you'll never end. Or if you live a billion billion years in heaven, you'll never end. For you and I have something in us God has made us. Your body will go to dust from which it came.

Your blood will go to water from which it came. Your breath will go to air from which it came. And other parts of you will just disintegrate and they'll go back to chemical substance. But there's a part in you that will live and that's your spirit.

There's a part in you that will live, that's your conscience. There's a part in you that will live, that's your memory. And Jesus Christ knew that and therefore he took our sin. And I say he did it there.

The Lamb of God and the Perfect Sacrifice

The manifestation is there. The sacrifice was there. He's the Lamb slain from the very foundation of the world. God sees the program going on and making atonement. As you heard this morning, even in the regeneration of Abraham and others, what a wonderful thing it is that after all you can love lovely people, can't you?

It's loving unlovely people that's the job. I don't believe Jesus liked lepers. He didn't like them but he loved them. It's a wonderful thing that God can come to me and he can come to you with all our unloveliness.

Of course you may persuade yourself you're lovely, well that's all right. I've never persuaded myself of that. I've persuaded myself that as an old preacher said, that when God found me, self-righteous Methodist that took communion and said my prayers and did all the other things, that I was as bad as a thief that died on the cross.

You see Jesus never thought about others, he thought about himself. And he said to him there on the cross, if you're the son of God, if you're as clever as you say you are, well come down and save yourself.

He saved others, himself. No he cannot save it. I read a little book during the early part of this year. It's written by an Englishman admittedly, but that doesn't make him any better or any worse. It's written by a Plymouth brother, bless your heart, that won't hurt, that won't, you may not like that.

But it's the Seven Sayings of the Cross by A. W. Pink. And you should read it, you can buy a copy over there. I don't think you should buy it on Sunday, but you can buy it. And if you can't buy it, Mr. Hegery has a copy and he says he'll loan anything he's got.

I never read a book that moved me so much as the Seven Amazing Sayings of the Son of God. I read that book on the ship going home. I read it when I got home. I gave it to somebody, I don't know who. But that man took it step by step.

Showed us the tenderness of Jesus on the cross. The word of tenderness when he looked down at his mother. Would you like to see your son on the cross? Would you like to see your son suffering from something he hasn't done?

Would you like to see one who is spotless and undefiled and immaculate? He's able to save to the uttermost because he's the only person in God's creation. Though they're like the stars of heaven's multitude and like the grass that stands by the seashore that cannot be numbered.

That from the very moment he was born to the very moment he died, he did the will of God. He never broke a law. He never polluted himself. He was spotless, body, soul and spirit. And therefore he's a perfect lamb.

The boy said going up the hill, Daddy I've got the fire, but where is the lamb? And prophetically Abraham said God will provide himself the lamb. And in the middle of the word of God John the Baptist comes and says behold the lamb of God and at the end of time when God has rolled the earth up like a straw, when all the gold in Fort Knox is worth a dime, when all the nations of the earth have been cast away like grass, there in eternity we'll see the fulfillment of that word.

God will provide himself a lamb. We may be hearing John the Baptist standing there in his resurrected glorified body, pointing again and saying there behold the lamb. For the word of God said in the midst of the throng and in the midst of the poor and plenty others, there's a lamb, a lamb, a lamb that's taken away the sin of the world.

The Sinless Son Bearing Human Sin

Think of him for a moment going to that cross. No wonder he's staggered under the cross. Oh he didn't stagger under the cross, he staggered under the sin of the cross. I don't understand how Jesus Christ became man, neither do you as far as that goes.

Don't you get too worshipful about the greatness of preachers. We're just about as dumb as you, or as clever as you on the other hand, but we don't know much anyhow. And unless we get inspiration we've got nothing to give.

I don't care who your preacher is. What are you of your own? The greatest preacher that ever lived said he'd not think of himself but what God gave him. Visualize I say, the spotless son of God. Perfect, a perfect lamb.

No blemish in Jesus, no iniquity was found in his mouth. He was the darling from the very heart of God. If angels ever wept they wept when Jesus came down to earth. If angels wept they wept by the way that mankind caused him to suffer.

If ever they wept they watched him there on his way to the cross. There's a great wonderful teacher. I have one of his books, though I don't read Hebrew, but I have one of the books of a very famous teacher in the University of Edinburgh.

He was there a few years ago, he's not there now. This little old bent man with a long beard. A great master of Hebrew, though he was a Scotsman, they called him Rabbi Duncan. He used to teach Hebrew grammar from the word of God.

Isaiah’s Prophecy of the Suffering Servant

And one Monday morning he went and he read very careful in his own Scots way, with his lovely long hours and dialect. He read the 53rd of Isaiah to that crowd of brilliant students. As he stood there he began to read, Surely he hath borne our grief, he hath carried our sorrows.

And I say if you stay a minute and think about it, if he hasn't, then we're fools and we're not only fools but we're damned. He hath borne our grief, said he, he hath carried our sorrows. And yet we have seen him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

Now gentlemen, said he, follow this in the Hebrew, that he was wounded for our transgressions. He was wounded for our iniquity. The chastisement of our peace. The chastising. That's why they whipped him.

That's why they pressed thorns upon his brow. That's why the poet said five bleeding wounds he bears received on Calvary, in each hand, in each foot, and the gash in his side. That's why they whipped him and laid stripes upon him.

Someone has calculated, I don't know how, that Jesus Christ had 29 stripes according to the law of the Romans, not according to the law of the Hebrews. And there are 28 major diseases in the world, and so they say that he took a stroke for every one of those diseases.

But those diseases are the outcome of a disease. The disease of sin, and the 29th stroke was for the stroke of sin. Not everybody's disease, thank God, but everybody's got sin. And then the old rabbi said he's borne our sins and carried our sorrows.

We have seen him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peers was upon him. It pleased the Lord to bruise him.

Then as he began to read, he said, let me read this verse to you. And he began to read, and they observed that he couldn't read. The tears were coming down his face, and running down his beard. The great, brilliant professor took off his old thick glasses and rubbed his eyes.

He said, gentlemen, listen to this, listen to this. Thou hast made his soul an offering for sin. We get very sentimental about Jesus. We get a bit of feeling when we sing George Bernard's lovely hymn, that great American writer, I'll cherish the old rugged cross.

Christ’s Death as the Sin Offering

We see Jesus baking in the sun, exposed in his nakedness. We see the vulgar crowd round about him. We see that dirty rebel that spit a clot of rotten phlegm in his face, and somebody smote him, and somebody dragged the hair of his beard out of his face.

We can get sentimental about it. My dear friend, we're not saved by the physical death of Jesus Christ. The blood doesn't merely mean the blood that flows from his body. It means that, but it means infinitely more.

There's a crowd of people, there's a railing upon him, and say, if you're the son of God, save him. Jesus didn't want to save him, not there. He was going to do more than save one man, and sweep up the cross.