When We Killed God

Well, howdy, we are honored you're joining the real faith family for Good Friday.

We cannot celebrate the joy, the resurrection, the greatest day in history, which is Easter

without realizing that we killed God.

That's what we do here on Good Friday.

This is a somber moment.

This is the moment where we need to sit in what we did and what God did for us.

Spend some time with your family after this, take communion.

We would encourage that.

And yeah, we're just grateful that you're tuning in tonight.

And if you text live to 993 at 3, you can join us all throughout the year when Pastor

Mark goes live with awesome sermons, just like this, and we'll be going live a whole bunch

of this weekend to celebrate Easter, the greatest day in history.

But tonight we're going to celebrate the worst darkest night in the history of the world.

Jesus, Jesus, I have known you and to me, and it lifts me up to glory, for it is

it lifts me up to glory.

Today is Good Friday.

It's a holy day or a holiday for Christians around the world.

And it's actually the darkest day in human history.

It was on this day that a man named Jesus of Nazareth after declaring himself to be God

was sentenced to death.

Though it was midday, we are told that darkness came upon the earth in the darkest moment

of human history.

In our time together, we're going to examine the crucifixion, the execution, the murder

of Jesus of Nazareth, and we're going to examine it historically, medically, biblically,

and personally.

Let's begin by examining crucifixion historically.

Christians have long used the cross as our symbol of faith or icon, if you will.

Christians began wearing the cross, adorning their homes with the cross, making the sign

of the cross in the earliest days of Christianity, starting with a church father named Tertolian.

It's a bit shocking that this symbol was chosen because it was a death sentence for someone

to be crucified, and it was the most shameful, painful, and dishonorable way to die.

The pain and horror of crucifixion is so overwhelming that a word was literally created to explain

its suffering, excruciating comes from the Latin derivative, meaning from the cross.

What we know historically is that in more modern days, some crucifixions have continued.

In the days of Adolf Hitler, he had Jews crucified.

In addition, the Nazis, during the World Wars, would crucify their enemies on the sides

of Barnes and also trees with bayonets through their shoulders, their necks, and with men,

even their testicles.

The Kalmer Rouge in Cambodia crucified their enemies.

In Africa, the regions of Sudan and Darfur, it was as recent as 2002 that 88 people were

crucified, including two children.

After this day, Islamic extremists around the world occasionally will crucify Christians

in mockery of our Christ.

Some nations have actually used crucifixion to declare that Christianity is outlawed and

to discourage anyone from worshipping Jesus Christ as God.

For example, in 1597, 26 people were crucified in Japan for their Christian faith.

This is still happening globally as it has historically.

Crucifixion is ultimately state-sponsored terror.

It began, it is believed, about 800 BC by the Persians.

The Persians began by impaling enemies of the state.

They would take a long pole that was a hune at the end toward a sharp point.

They would run it through the mid-section of someone who was considered an enemy of

the state.

They would dig a hole.

They would drop the pole into the hole so that the person was impaled and suffering

a very violent bloody and prolonged death.

This continued until the time of Alexander.

What Alexander did is he added the crossbar and that allowed crucifixion to be more painful

and elongated.

What crucifixion was really perfected by the Romans who ultimately crucified Jesus of Nazareth.

The Romans would take turns tormenting prisoners, seeking to elicit the most incredible pain

and the most prolonged pain that they possibly could.

It became something of a sport or a competition for the Roman soldiers.

By the days of Jesus, there were two parts to the cross.

One, there was something called a stipe and that would be the post that probably remained

on location and it weighed around 200 pounds.

In addition, on top, there was the petibulum.

We would know that as the crossbar and sometimes it was nailed toward the center point and oftentimes

at the top.

What would happen is the person would be forced to carry that crossbar of about a hundred

pounds to their place of crucifixion where then it would be nailed to that post and that

is in fact what happened to the Lord Jesus.

Someone hanging on the cross could hang anywhere from hours to days.

A lot of the length of suffering was contingent upon the depth of scourging.

The beating prior to the crucifixion would literally end the life of many men so that they

didn't even make it to their place of crucifixion.

All of the crucifixions in the days of Jesus were generally done openly, publicly and

shamedfully.

This was not done in private with any consideration for the person's reputation or family.

The entire point was much like a beheading today, life simulcast on the internet is to

create terror and to strike fear.

And so if you can imagine going to a park or a mall or a grocery store and outside toward

the entry was someone who was hanging and bleeding and weeping and dying.

That was the circumstances surrounding ancient crucifixion.

Some of the Christian artwork depicts crosses as very high and that probably is not the

most accurate.

Most historians believe that people were crucified at eye level.

This is probably how Jesus was crucified for when they went to put a sponge in his mouth.

They were able to do so with a stick which probably meant that he was at about eye level.

This would also have allowed those who hated and despised those being crucified to look

them right in the eye, to curse them, to mock them, to place vets on the timing of their

death.

Women were rarely crucified and when they were, the women were generally turned around because

even that barbarous people didn't want to see the horrific look on the face of a dying

woman.

Often times too, they would have incredible psychological torment as part of crucifixion.

Meaning the man would be crucified and then they would punish and sometimes even execute

his wife and children in front of him to psychologically torment him.

But as others watched in horror, the message was very clear, however this man behaved

or whatever this man believed, you should not repeat or you will endure his fate.

Alexander Janius, who was a Jewish high priest, had 800 Pharisees, religious Jewish leaders,

crucified and before they died while hanging on the cross, he had their wives and children

slaughtered in front of the husbands and fathers.

In 518 BC, Darius, who was King of Persia, he crucified 3,000 Babylonians to warn their

enemies.

In addition, by 332 BC, Alexander the Great entire crucified 2,000 enemies on a day.

In 71 BC, the day that the Gladiator Spartacus died in battle, Alexander crucified 6,000

enemy combatant soldiers along 120 mile stretch of highway.

If you can even fathom or imagine that in the ancient world you are traveling on a highway

and over the course of 120 miles, there are 6,000 men in a single day who are crucified,

bleeding, sweating, urinating, defecating, screaming and dying.

While their mothers, their fathers, their friends, their brothers, their sisters, their own

wives and children watched in horror.

This was the ancient world and this was the way of ancient crucifixion.

It's even possible that Jesus of Nazareth, when he was a boy, that he saw a mass crucifixion.

It was right around the same time that Jesus was born, that there was a Jewish uprising

against the Roman government and they crucified 2,000 Jews.

This makes you curious, perhaps Jesus was able to see that and if so, he was able to

see something of the horror and future that awaited him.

While crucifixion is the most horrific way to die, it has been that way historically.

The entire point of crucifixion was to destroy someone's life and to destroy anyone who

would want to continue their legacy.

There's an old Christian hymn that rightly calls crucifixion and the cross quote, an emblem

of suffering and shame and that is precisely what it was and is.

Throughout the course of history, all cultures have agreed that there is nothing worse than

being crucified.

The Jewish historian Josephus called it quote, the most wretched of deaths.

The Roman leader Cicero said quote, it was the cruelest and most terrible punishment.

The Greek philosopher Plato said, the just man who is thought to be unjust will be scourged,

racked, bound, will have his eyes burned out and at least after suffering every kind

of evil, he will be impaled.

Most people always considered someone who was crucified as cursed.

In Deuteronomy chapter 21 verses 22 through 23, Moses himself says this, and it is a prophecy

about what Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth would endure for us out of love.

If a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death and you hang

him on a tree, a hang man is cursed by God.

The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians quotes that very line and he reminds us that

Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus our Lord God creator and savior.

He was cursed on the cross in our place for our sins.

In addition, those who worshipped Jesus for his death and resurrection were ultimately

mocked and hated.

It is believed to be from around 200 AD that an ancient painting was found on a cave wall

and it depicts a man being crucified and he has a donkey's head but a man's body.

I know the language is strong but so is the imagery and the imagery indicates that

anyone who worships Jesus is just worshipping a dead jackass.

And the quote under it says, Alexa Manos worships his God.

The point is this, there's nothing worse than crucifixion.

There's nothing more painful, more shameful, more public.

There's nothing that is more horrifying and haunting.

And what happened is when someone was crucified, they were considered forsaken by God and

oftentimes even forsaken by family.

Oftentimes the bodies were just left on the cross for the vultures and the wild animals

to feast upon the flesh.

Sometimes the bodies were just thrown into a dump to just be decomposed in a dishonorable

way or thrown to wild dogs to be feasted upon.

This is the history of crucifixion.

In the next portion of our time together, we will examine medically exactly what happened

to Jesus Christ.

We will now examine crucifixion medically.

The storyline of the Bible simply says that they took Jesus and had Him scourged.

The reason that the Bible doesn't give a lot of details was because the original recipient

saw men get scourged and crucified.

And once you saw it, you didn't need it to be explained to you because you were haunted

by it for the remainder of your life.

Scourging was used by Roman soldiers to begin the death process for criminal.

They would have had a handle that was usually made out of wood.

From it would proceed long straps of leather.

At the end of each strap of leather, there was a ball usually made out of metal or perhaps

stone.

And the point was to beat and tenderize the flesh to soften up the tissue so that then

the hooks could sink in as deeply as possible.

The hooks were oftentimes made out of bone or metal and they would then dig into the

deep tissue and organs of the man's body.

The man's body would be affixed usually to a poster over a stone so that his shoulders

and his back and his buttocks were exposed.

And a soldier on each side with a flagram or a cat in nine tails would then whip the man

across the back and then the tender flesh would have the hooks sunk in and then they would

literally rip the flesh off of the man.

This would begin contusions at the deepest level of the organs.

This would send the heart into a shocked state.

And some ancient reports outside of the Bible say that a man's rib would actually come

flying off of his body just from the scourging.

At this point, the skin, the muscles, the bones, they are bruised.

The lungs are struggling to breathe.

There is deep tissue damage and the death process is set in.

Many men died from the scourging.

They didn't even make it to the crucifixion and the more you were scourged, the more quickly

you would die if you were in fact still alive for your crucifixion.

At this point, a criminal, including Jesus who was treated as a criminal, would have

a body that was in total shock.

You at this point have significant blood loss and the heart is straining.

Some medical experts have said that the equivalent would be a shotman blast to a bear back at

a close range.

That's exactly what scourging accomplished.

And then the victim, if they remained alive after the scourging, would be hung on a cross.

And there is some historical debate.

Some think that the victims were in fact hung on the cross through the hands, but basically

the equivalent of a railroad tie.

There was a German researcher in the 1930s who began what has been a series of experiments

and he proved that if a man was crucified through the hand, what remained of the hand

could not sustain the weight of the body.

And so it is believed that Jesus was likely crucified as most men were through the wrist.

And perhaps as well, the hands at the wrist were tied via rope to the cross to help hold

the body.

And they would nail the man through the most sensitive nurse centers on the human body.

This would cause involuntary twitching.

The body would be in tremendous shock.

And every movement would be incredibly and overwhelmingly painful.

And so it is believed that Jesus, like most who were crucified in the ancient world,

that he was crucified by being nailed to the cross bar that he carried and nailed to

the post that would have remained in place.

It is unlikely in the ancient world that men carried the entire cross bar and the post

because that is about 300 pounds and after the scourging they were in dire medical condition.

But make no mistake, this is what happened to Jesus at Nazareth.

He himself a carpenter had driven many nails and suddenly those same nails were driven

through his hands and his feet.

And his feet were probably stacked one on top of each other as depicted in most Christian

art.

In addition, here's what we hear about crucifixion.

Seneca in the ancient world reports some hang upside down.

Others drive stakes through the genitals, still others extend arms on the petibulum.

That's the cross bar.

Josephus reports when there was a mass crucifixion of Jews in the days of the Roman Empire, they

quote, out of rage and hatred amuse themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures.

The point simply being this, there were different ways that different soldiers crucified different

criminals.

And there was no consistency.

It was whatever they deemed most painful and awful in the moment.

How would someone die?

Well, what we know from the medical experts is that the cause of death varied from man to

man.

Some men died from the scourging.

Some men died from exposure to the elements.

Some men died of heart failure and or heart attack.

Some died of dehydration and others of asphyxiation.

Asphyxiation was perhaps the most common way that a man would die.

When you're crucified and your arms are extended above your head and your body is slouching

on the cross, you have an incredibly difficult time filling your lungs with fresh air.

And so you pass in and out of consciousness.

And so what you would do then to prolong your life, you would push yourself up on your

crucified feet or you would pull yourself up on your crucified hands, but the amount

of pain that would be sent through your body as your nerve centers were twitching and convulsing

was incredible.

And the men had to decide, are we willing to endure a little more pain so we can take

one more breath.

Eventually, their body would slouch on the cross to where they could no longer gather

air into their lungs and they would painfully die often by asphyxiation.

This explains why some people historically hung on the cross for upwards of nine days

passing in and out of consciousness.

And if they wanted to hasten someone's death, they would break their legs so they could

no longer push themselves up and gather air into their lungs.

The journal for the American Medical Association actually did an intense investigation into

crucifixion.

They came out with a special communication titled on the physical death of Jesus Christ.

They say, quote, it is our intent to present not a theological treaties, but rather a medically

and historically accurate account of the physical death of the one called Jesus Christ.

They say that the length of survival generally ranged from three or four hours to three or

four days and appears to have been inversely related to the severity of the scourging.

They also report the fact that Jesus later was offered a drink of wine vinegar from a sponge

placed on the stock of the Hissah plant, approximating 20 inches strongly supports the

belief that Jesus was crucified on the short cross.

We also read the short, terse utterances must have been particularly difficult and painful.

At about 3 p.m. that Friday, Jesus cried out in a loud voice about his head and died.

They say that at the time when Jesus was on the cross, quote, he was already dead, they

did not break his legs.

That was in fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy that not one of his bones would

be broken.

It also proves that Jesus very much did die on the cross.

There have been some who have purported a swoon theory, including some Islamic scholars

saying that he passed out and appears dead, but nonetheless, the medical record shows

that he in fact died.

He then had a spear run through his side and the journal for the American Medical Association

says the wound was in the thorax.

It goes on to say that a very large flow of blood would be more likely with a perforation

of the distended and thin-walled right atrium or ventricle than the thick-walled and contracted

left ventricle.

Although the side of the wound may never be established with certainty, the right seems

more probable than the left.

Their assumption and their conclusion is that when the blood flowed from Jesus's side,

it literally punctured his heart sack and Jesus literally died of a physical and spiritual

broken heart.

In conclusion, the medical experts say of the death of Jesus, a fatal cardiac arrhythmia

may have accounted for the apparent catastrophic terminal event.

And lastly, the spear thrusts between his right ribs probably perforated not only the

right lung but also the paracardium and heart and thereby ensured his death.

That is the summary of the medical death of Jesus Christ.

Next we will examine the crucifixion of Jesus Biblically.

We will now examine crucifixion biblically.

The crucifixion of Jesus was predicted a thousand years before his birth.

In the book of Psalms, it says that he would be pierced through his hands and feet.

What's interesting about that is the promise of Jesus crucifixion was also the promise

of the invention of crucifixion.

The crucifixion of Jesus was predicted roughly 100 years before Persians began even crucifying

people.

Nonetheless, the story of Jesus crucifixion is the most important in the history of the

world.

The most significant person in world history is Jesus Christ.

And the darkest day in human history was the day of his death.

The death of Jesus is for Christians one of the two most sacred days in human history.

The other of course being his resurrection to conquered death and to forgive sin and

open heaven.

Christians call this the gospel or the good news of the death burial and resurrection of

Jesus.

Likely the oldest record of the Christian gospel is found in 1 Corinthians 15.

It is believed by most scholars to be the first and oldest part of Scripture dating

all the way back to the first Christians singing these very words as a song hymn or creed

in church.

The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, he says, I delivered to you as of first

importance.

What Paul is saying is that the death burial and resurrection of Jesus is the most significant

historical event and fact in human history.

He says, I delivered to you as of first importance what I received that Christ died.

That's good Friday.

For our sins, he says, will examine that in the next section in accordance with the

Scriptures.

But I did not come to deliver the people from wrong and from what?

From sin.

From spiritual death.

God loves the world in this way, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in

Him shall not perish, but have He turned my life so that He says nothing to do with

wrong.

All about sin.

God did not sinned His Son into the world to condemn it, Nicodemus.

He sent him to save it for him.

For hundreds and thousands of years, God's Word through the prophets had predicted that

Jesus would come and that Jesus would die and that Jesus would rise.

And then He concludes by saying that He was buried and He was raised on the third day

in accordance with the Scriptures.

Well, we know that Jesus was crucified in His early thirties.

He was a healthy, strong young man.

He worked a job as a carpenter.

He would walk dozens, hundreds of miles.

He would sleep outside.

He was in great health and he was a vibrant and strong young man.

The night before His death, He had the Jewish Passover meal with His disciples.

It harkened back to the days of Moses when God brought death to everyone in the nation

of Egypt with the exception of those households that sacrificed a lamb as a substitute for their

sin and painted the doorposts of their home with the blood of the lamb so that death and

the wrath of God would literally pass over those who were covered by the blood of the

lamb.

All of that was foreshadowing good Friday and the death of Jesus of Nazareth, that He would

come as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Paul says that He is our Passover lamb who is slain and that on the cross, literally

Jesus would shed His blood in our place for our sins so that the wrath of God could pass

over us.

All of that was foreshadowed in the Passover feast and Jesus celebrated that with His disciples.

We now refer to it as the Last Supper.

During the Last Supper, Jesus began to ominously prophesy that He was going to be betrayed by

someone who was breaking bread with Him and they would participate in the breaking of

His body.

Jesus then spent an entire night in anguish in a garden called Givesemini.

He couldn't sleep.

He was overwhelmed knowing that His death was coming and the cross was looming.

The Bible says, including the writings of a doctor named Luke, that he began sweating

like drops of blood.

To this day, medical experts will tell us that this is a rare medical condition called

Hema Tidrosis.

It is evidenced only in those people who are overwhelmed with anxiety knowing that a horrific

fate awaits them and their body literally begins to leak blood through their capillaries

as their body cannot handle the level of stress.

Jesus spent the entire night praying, asking for another way to save sinners rather than

suffering crucifixion and enduring the wrath of God.

His friends fell asleep and abandoned him and he was all together alone.

At that point, Judas had left to betray him and the disciples had failed him and Jesus

was alone.

Suddenly, Judas arrived.

He was the pretend friend of Jesus.

He had been stealing from Jesus and plotting his murder through the course of their years

together.

And Judas brought together a collection of religious and political leaders conspiring

to murder Jesus.

They came under the cover of darkness.

This was not a fair trial.

This was a planned execution.

They then ran him through a series of trials.

None of the false witnesses agreed.

He's up all night.

He's dehydrated.

He's exhausted.

He's walking miles.

He's having to defend himself.

And eventually, he was blindfolded and beaten mercilessly by an angry mob of men.

The Bible says that then he was stripped nearly naked in shame.

A crown of thorns would be placed upon his head, mocking him as Jesus of Nazareth, King

of the Jews.

And he was forced to endure scourging.

The scourging of Jesus was absolutely horrifying.

As we studied scourging in general, I just want to briefly visit the scourging of Jesus

in particular.

By the time they were done ripping the flesh off of his body and tormenting him mercilessly

it was prophesied some 700 years prior by the prophet Isaiah that he would be, quote,

mard beyond human likeness.

What that means is when they were done scourging Jesus, ripping the flesh off of his body,

plucking out his beard, putting a crown of thorns on his head, had you seen him in that

state and known him you would not have even recognized him from the beating and the suffering

and the scourging that he endured.

Jesus was then forced to carry his crossbar as we've established, perhaps upwards of

a hundred pounds to his place of crucifixion.

This would have been a recycled piece of timber, generally the crossbar and also the nails

used to crucify a man were used over and over and over.

This crossbar likely had the blood, tears, the sweat of other men who had died previously.

It was roughly hewn timber, perhaps like a hundred pound railroad tie and it was put

on his bloodied and barren back.

This had to be incredibly painful and Jesus was required to carry it through narrow streets

as onlookers watched in horror.

But today in Israel you can still walk this path, it's called the Via del Rosa or the

way of the cross.

The Bible says that Jesus was so weary from the scourging and beating and sleepless night

and dehydration that he fell and that the crossbar would have then crushed his chest cavity.

Medical experts including the journal for the American Medical Association who have studied

this will tell us that this would cause deep chest contusion and trauma.

One expert says it would be the equivalent of a head-on car crash where the driver is

thrown into the steering wheel not wearing a seatbelt with no airbag deploying.

At this point you have deep chest contusion and if you do not receive medical treatment

you will die simply from that event.

Nonetheless Jesus could not carry the cross alone to his place of crucifixion and so there

was a disciple of his Simon of Cyrene who helped the Lord Jesus carry his cross.

At this point Jesus arrives at his place of crucifixion.

Most likely the crossbar was in place laying on the ground before the hole that it would

be dropped into and Jesus was carrying the crossbar with the help of Simon of Cyrene.

He is then laid on the cross and he is crucified through the hands and the feet the most sensitive

nerve centers on the human body.

At this moment imagine Jesus being nailed through the rest and through the feet.

His body is twitching involuntarily.

The death process has begun and the human body has reached its limit.

When Jesus would have been lifted up on the cross the cross dropped in the hole as his

body would have been shaking violently and involuntarily.

What we know is that some men took days to die and Jesus took merely hours.

He was already near death.

At this moment while crowds jeered and mocked while bets were placed on how long a man

would live many men sought vengeance.

They would spit on their enemies, they would urinate on them, they would curse them, they

would argue with them, and Jesus did not.

Jesus remained loving and pronounced only blessing with his final breaths.

And as we have established for him to elevate his broken body to get air into his lungs

would have been incredibly painful.

As a result the seven final statements of Jesus called by theologians the seven words were

short but each one was pregnant and filled with love.

Father forgive them.

He tells the man dying with him, today you will be with me in paradise, caring for his

mother who is present, seeing her son be executed.

He assigns his friend John, look after my mother.

And then Jesus says I am thirsty and they put a sponge in his mouth on the end of a stick.

That sponge was soft in wine vinegar.

That was part of the ancient field kit for Roman soldier.

When a soldier would be deployed in battle they would receive a sea sponge.

They would stop it in wine vinegar on the end of a stick to cleanse themselves after going

to the bathroom.

It was their version of toilet paper.

When Jesus was loving and when Jesus was caring and Jesus was interceding even for his

enemies to silence him they shoved their sponge in his mouth.

That means that the remaining words of Jesus are spoken with the taste of a soldier's

bowel movement on his lips.

Nonetheless he then cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

The fact that he does so in a loud voice means that he is probably suffering a heart attack

and this is the end.

At that moment he becomes cursed.

He endures the wrath of God and he is forsaken.

In the dying moment he says it is finished and he does so in a loud triumphant declaration

of victory.

And then he says, Father in your hands, I commit my spirit.

Jesus died in a few short hours.

They didn't have to break his legs so that he could not push himself up to breathe.

He died quickly and this again was in fulfillment of the ancient promises and prophecies and

Psalms that none of his bones would be broken.

Jesus was declared dead by an executioner a soldier who was present.

They then took a spear and they put it in his side under his rib puncturing his heart

sack so that water and blood literally flowed from his side.

At that moment as Jesus died from a broken heart the curtain in the temple was torn from

top to bottom.

Darkness came over the land though it was midday and Jesus' dead body was laid in the

tomb of a man named Joseph of Arimathea.

Jesus of course was poor yet in a prophecy in Isaiah it was said quote that he would be

buried with a rich and his death.

Postmortem Joseph of Arimathea gave Jesus his personal burial chamber as a gift and

Jesus' body was placed in this known location and a large stone was rolled over the entrance

as it was now possession of the Roman government.

The Roman government affixed a seal that this was now state property and that tomb was guarded

by Roman soldiers to ensure that there was no tampering with the body.

That is the biblical record of the death of Jesus Christ and next we will study crucifixion

personally and what this means for you and the most important decision you will ever

make.

I want to talk about crucifixion personally what does an ancient historical death and event

mean for you and not only your life but your death.

Since it is good Friday the question that we need to answer is how could this possibly

be good news that is celebrated by Christians on good Friday and for us to fully appreciate

and to also reap the benefits of the death of Jesus we need to understand not just that

he died or how he died but in fact why he died and my friend he died for you and he died

for me.

The storyline of the Bible is that when we sinned against God and we all did we put ourselves

in God's place we lived independently you my friend are going to die.

I will die everyone will die death is undefeated the past few years we shut down planet earth

just trying to preserve human life and the truth is eventually inevitably death comes

for everybody the Bible tells us why the wage for sin the consequence for sin is death

sin brings death God is the living God and rebellion against God is cosmic treason and

it results in separation from God who is the source of life and the consequence of that

is death not just physical death but spiritual and eternal death the Bible uses a little

word to give us a big understanding of why Jesus died that little word is for Isaiah tells

us he was wounded for our transgressions the Apostle Paul says Christ died for us and Peter

says Christ suffered once for sins the righteous for the unrighteous Jesus Christ declared himself

to be God he alone is the only founder of any major world religion who has declared

himself to be God Jesus also said that he was without sin these two claims are without

peer or precedent in human history Jesus then went to the cross and he died for sin but not

his sin because he had no sin he died instead for your sin for my sin for our sin on the cross

Jesus Christ took your place and if you trust in him he will put you in his place Jesus endured

the wrath of God so you could enjoy the grace of God Jesus suffered death so you could receive

life Jesus was separated from the Father so you could be reconciled to the Father Jesus went

into the darkness so you could spend forever in the light second Corinthians 521 says it this

way God made him who knew no sin to become sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of

God my dear friend I need you to know the most important thing is what you believe about Jesus

Christ the most important decision you will make is whether you receive him as your savior or

you reject him for your suffering you will die and Jesus death can be the victory in your death

if Jesus died for you he also rose for you and that will be celebrated this Sunday Easter where

the Church of Jesus Christ gathers globally to celebrate the victory over sin and death

and the gift of eternal life but on this day good Friday I want this to be the day that you

receive Jesus Christ that you turn from your sin and you trust in him if you do not you will die

and you will stand before Jesus Christ you will be judged and you will be sentenced to the eternal

flaming torments of hell I don't want you to go there but that decision is yours either Jesus

endured the wrath of God or you will endure the wrath of God I want the day that you die to be

your greatest day the day where the worst of your existence has ended and the best of your existence

begins for those of us who are Christians this life is as close to hell as we ever get and Jesus

and heaven await us if you reject Jesus this life is as close to heaven as you will ever be and

death and judgment and hell awaits you my friends this is the day of your salvation the best way

to prepare for Easter Sunday is to trust in Jesus today to give your sins to Jesus today and on

Sunday get up as he got up and go to church and worship him as you're living savior I'm praying for

you the decision is yours

God in God in Jesus Christ

God in God in Jesus Christ

God in God in Jesus Christ

God in God in Jesus Christ