298: Jonno Nutter - Exhortation: Trying to Appreciate the Sacrifice of Christ More

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:13

   Welcome to Good Chris selfie and talks. I’m Levi and I’m Chris. And I’m Brian, thank you for joining us this week. On this podcast, we select one talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. We post a new episode at the start of each week, with a short intro beforehand to kind of set the stage for the talk you’re about to listen to. And now let’s talk more about this week’s talk. This week’s talk was an exhortation presented at the Whamaran Ecclesia in Australia on April 14th of this year by brother John O Nutter.

2. 1:00

   The title is trying to appreciate the sacrifice of Christ more. Very much enjoyed this talk. As far as I thought this was a really great balance of kind of clearly something John O has been dealing with, kind of struggling with thinking about for a long time. Something he has a passion about. Matched with a lot of really interesting study points that I had never heard of, things I hadn’t kind of thought of about specifically the death of Christ.

3. 1:28

   This is a really powerful execution. I’m excited. I think it’s been good that we’ve kind of called out exhortations as separate from talks in our descriptions, because this would be an awesome one to use if you were in a situation occlusionally. We needed to have a recorded exhortation. So yeah, very, very excited to share this one.

4. 1:47

   John and I are trying to appreciate the sacrifice of Christ more. There’s a purpose for us coming here this morning, and that purpose is the same purpose that we come here every Sunday to take the bread and the wine and to remember what Christ has done for us. Now we do this every week, and every week turns into every month, and then every month turns into every year.

5. 2:08

   And some of us have been doing this for literally decades, decades and decades. Some of us have been doing it for just a few short months. I was baptized in January 2008. So I’ve gone through this process of taking the bread and the wine 800 odd times, more than 800 times. And in doing this so often and so many times, I think it’s easy to lose the power behind it. Do you ever feel like that?

6. 2:37

   Do you ever feel like you don’t have maybe the appreciation that you should have? Maybe you don’t have the appreciation that you had when you were baptized, that maybe this activity, this process of taking the bread and the wine and remembering Jesus has become a little bit ritualistic. Maybe it’s become a little bit ordinary, mundane and all.

7. 3:05

   I’ve felt like that. And I’ve felt that I don’t have the appreciation for what Christ has done for me in the past. And that’s something that I’ve really thought about, something that I’ve, I’ve pursued, I’ve tried to pursue that appreciation and something that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last sort of 12 months. You know, I take especially something I think about when I take the bread and the wine, I’ll take a sip from the wine. I’ll close my eyes and I’ll say a prayer for a minute and I’ll open my eyes and I sort of think that Christ died for me. And I’ll go, oh, I feel like I need to appreciate this more. So that’s what I want to focus on this morning. Is this appreciation for what Christ has done. Now, if you aren’t like me, if, if your heart is bursting with gratitude every time you take the bread and the wine and, and you are overwhelmed with appreciation, then my hat off to you, good Sir, good man.

8. 4:00

   You’re a step ahead of me. And you can kick back and sort of zone out now because this exhort isn’t for you. For the rest of us, however, I want to consider the antidote to the state that I’ve just mentioned. Come with me, please. To Hebrews chapter 12. We’re going to look at the verses that our opening song were based on Hebrews chapter 12 verse two and three.

9. 4:28

   The verses where we all know well. I’m going to read these from the NRV. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning it shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such hostility from sinful men so that you will not grow weary or lose heart. Now that’s exactly what I want to do this morning is I want to consider the hostility that was shown to Christ and as an antidote to this feeling of of taking the bread and the wine being ordinary or mundane.

10. 5:13

    This, considering these, this hostility that was shown to Christ makes us appreciate the bread and the wine more. And and as a spinoff or as a bit of a byproduct of doing this, I want to better understand the words we just read in first Corinthians chapter one. So just before I start to consider this hostility with you, I wanted to say that my thoughts this morning were really kick started by a Christopher podcast that I, I listen to from time to time called wilderness conversations. And, and this particular episode was two brothers who were talking about the cross, you know, a crucified saviour and the implications of that.

11. 5:52

    So if you want to think about this subject a little bit more, I’d encourage you to find that podcast. If you don’t know where it is, come see me after the meeting. And I’m happy to, to try and help you with that. That podcast really struck a chord with me and I wanted to share what I learned from that and, and the other things that I’ve sort of learnt along the way.

12. 6:10

    And that’s the other thing I, I wanted to, to say is I feel like considering the trials and the crucifixion of Christ is, is really hallowed ground. I know this is something that is deeply personal to all of us. And so I’m trying to approach this subject respectfully and, and sensitively. I’ve never spent so much time preparing for an exhort as I’ve spent preparing for this exhort. Never spent so much time reading and, and listening and, and talking to people about these particular things that we’re going to talk about this morning. But I think it is something that we need to talk about. And I think it’s, I think we find it a little bit distasteful to consider the hostilities shown to Christ. And I think it’s hard for us to think about this sometimes, but the Gospels, between the four gospels, 8 chapters are dedicated to this time from when Judas portrays Jesus to the time that Jesus, Jesus dies on the cross. It’s not common that all four gospels record one, you know, an event, often two or three gospels will record an event, but it’s not common that all four do. And yet all four gospels record this, this event thoroughly. They all have different angles on it, but they all record the trials and the crucifixion of Christ in great detail. In fact, I think this is the most witnessed, most detailed crucifixion there has ever been.

13. 7:40

    Right? So the hostility that was shown to Christ didn’t actually begin started the moment he was born. Really. We know that when Jesus was born, Herod wanted to take his life as a baby. So right from the very, very beginning, Christ faced hostility. We know that through his ministry he was shown hostility by members of his family, from his townsfolk, they wanted to kill him and a lot of hostility from the Jewish leaders, the religious leaders of the day.

14. 8:21

    Aziah 53 verse two says it was the will of the Lord that his servant grow like a plant taking root in dry ground. He had no dignity or beauty to make us take notice of him. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing that would draw us to Him. The climax of the hostility towards Christ is encapsulated in his death on the cross.

15. 8:49

    But it really started well before then. I want to start in the Garden of Gethsemane today. So in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was portrayed by one of his closest friends, a man who had travelled and lived with him for the past 3 1/2 years and and Judas. This man betrayed him to a violent group of thugs, men who came to Jesus and beyond him carrying staves and carrying clubs. All of his other friends, all of his best friends, abandoned him. They all fled into the night and these thugs dragged him off to the local courts.

16. 9:31

    The local court was corrupt. His fate was decided before he stepped into it. There’s false witnesses that testified against him and the odds were stacked against him. It wasn’t a it wasn’t a fair court at all. It was here that it was decided he should die here. It says they beat him. The record speaks of them spitting in his face, hitting him with their hands and scorning him. As I 53 Seven says, he was treated harshly but endured it humbly.

17. 10:08

    He never said a word. Like a lamb about to be slaughtered, like a sheep about to be sheared. He never said a word. He was then denied by Peter, one of his best friends denied that he ever knew him. He was dragged by the local leaders to Pilot, where he was accused of all sorts of terrible things that were untrue.

18. 10:32

    Pilot doesn’t want to know about it. Pilot palms him off to Herod. Herod wanted to see Jesus. Herod wanted Jesus to perform miracles for his entertainment. But Jesus is silent. Jesus didn’t comply and so Herod let his soldiers make fun of him. They mocked him, put a robe on him, and they laughed at him.

19. 10:55

    In the ESV, it says he was treated with contempt. The King James says he was treated as naughty. He was treated as if he was nothing. He’s probably beaten again. Jesus was sent back to Pilate, who found him guiltless and wanted to release him. He could find no justification for for an arrest.

20. 11:18

    Mark 15 says these words. And Pilate answered and said unto again unto them, What will ye then, that I shall do unto him whom ye call King of the Jews? And they cried out against him, Crucify him. And Pilate said unto them, Why? What evil hath he done? And they cried out all the more exceedingly, Crucify him, crucify him. The people cried out against Jesus, asking Pilate to release a vile murderer, a person who was involved in an uprising. And they crucified Jesus who had done nothing wrong. It says their voices prevailed as I 53 verse three. We despised him and rejected him. You can imagine how Jesus is feeling. Do you think he felt rejected when all of his closest friends ran away into the night when Peter denied that he even knew him?

21. 12:23

    Do you think Jesus felt despised when all the people had no justification, just yell, kept yelling out crucify him crucified? When the Roman leaders were ready to release him, His own people wanted him crucified.

22. 12:41

    Jesus was scourged by Pilate. The whip that they used for scourging had multiple leather thongs coming off it and each one had a piece of bone or or metal tied to the end of it and his clothing would have been removed and he was whipped across the back by a Roman soldier.

23. 13:06

    Now this whip didn’t just cause damage to the surface of the back it it ripped into the flesh exposing muscle tissue and bone. Josephus tells us that it had exposed, there were cases were exposed internal organs and there are people that died just from the scourging. And it’s here that I really start to struggle to comprehend what Christ is going through.

24. 13:36

    I’ve had small injuries, you know, I’ve, I’ve had, you know, minor injuries where I’ve exposed tendon and bone. And when that happened to me, I felt nauseous and I felt shocked. But to try and to comprehend this scourging and to comprehend the violence that continues to happen to Jesus from here is really hard.

25. 14:00

    As I 53 verse three says, He endured pain and suffering. The Roman soldiers took Jesus again and they took him into their battalion. They stripped him down and put up a kingly robe on him. They made-up this cruel crown of of thorns that they twisted together and they pushed it onto His head and then they put a stick in his right hand and they bowed down to him and mocked him.

26. 14:35

    And then the record says that they spat on him and they took the stick and they hit him over the head and around the face with it. When they had finished tormenting him, they put his clothes back on, as I 53 verse five says. But because of our sins he was wounded, beaten because of the evil we did.

27. 15:10

    We are healed by the punishment He suffered, made whole by the blows He received. They put the cross member of the cross on him and they made him carry it. Now Jesus with the punishment that it already received, was not able to do this, so they found someone else to carry it for him. When they arrived at the crucifixion site, His robe was taken off of again and he was crucified. As I 53 verse eight says, he was arrested and sentenced and LED off to die and no one cared about his fate. He was put to death for the sins of our people. Now the Bible says simply that he was crucified. It doesn’t describe the anguish of it. It doesn’t describe exactly how he died. When we look at a cross today, it means something very different to what it meant in the time of Jesus. Yeah, the cross is is a bit of a throwaway item these days, isn’t it?

28. 16:19

    People from all walks of life where non Christian gangsters walk around with a, a cross around their neck. It doesn’t really mean anything. It certainly doesn’t mean the same thing to our generation as it what it meant in the days of Jesus, because and, and, and we don’t see crucifixions like people at the time of Jesus saw them.

29. 16:39

    So it’s, it’s good for us to understand how this was viewed and, and, and what people thought of it, what connotations it had. We have an English word that literally comes out of the word crucifixion. Excruciating. And the Romans didn’t actually invent crucifixion, but they perfected it. It’s it was invented or at least made popular by the by the Persian Empire now, because sorry, crucifixion was a distasteful subject, a shameful subject.

30. 17:18

    It was almost a Boo in in Rome. So we don’t have loads of documentation about it. And I guess you don’t make history books about something that you’re ashamed of. An example of this is when Jerusalem was invaded in 8070. After the siege of Jerusalem, the Roman military crucified a a large number of men. And no Roman records indicate that this happened. The the records of the general, no Roman historians record it, yet Josephus records it.

31. 17:49

    And that’s how we know that it it did happen. So again, you don’t write history books about something that you’re ashamed of. The Alexis Minos graffito, also known as the blasphemous graffiti, is the earliest depiction of Christ crucified that we know of.

32. 18:07

    It and and other depictions of crucifixions in the same era show a cross that probably isn’t typically represented by the mainstream Christians. The the the the cross that’s shown in the Alexis Minos graffito is Tower Cross, also known as a low cross, and it has a figure of a capital T It’s likely that the post of the cross stayed upright in the ground. It was a permanent fixture and that the the part that Jesus carried was the cross member for this cross. And and when a victim was crucified, the Roman soldiers would lift the cross member up and onto a joint on the top of the post.

33. 18:49

    Seneca, a Roman philosopher, rights of people starving to death when crucified. It was by design A slow and painful way of death, so slow that that people have survived crucifixion. A crucifixion was considered barbaric and repulsive and considered as an evil by many, of many, many Romans. It was, it was the worst way to die in the Roman Empire. Now, crucifixions didn’t happen in Rome. They weren’t a part of the arena. In fact, if somebody was crucified in Rome, they were taken outside the city to a, to a designated place. That’s how distasteful it was to the Roman citizens. And these are people who watched the gladiators for sport. Roman citizens were protected by law against crucifixion. It was.

34. 19:54

    It was reserved for foreigners and for slaves. For people of a of a low class. They could use other forms of capital punishment for Roman citizens, but not crucifixion. It’s interesting that church history has Peter crucified and Paul beheaded because Paul was a Roman citizen.

35. 20:18

    Ciceroy, a philosopher and a politician of Rome, calls crucifixion the most cruel and disgusting punishment. Crucifixion was all about publicly humiliating, embarrassing, debasing, disgracing and discrediting the victim, stripping them down and hanging them up to slowly die a horrible and painful death in front of a crowd. This whole affair was very public by design.

36. 20:47

    It was very public. Now, the Alexis Minos graffito, which is the depiction of cross crucified that I mentioned earlier, was found in 1857 and it gives us some insight into the way that Romans viewed victims of crucifixion. So the Alexis Minos graffito is a a graffiti. It’s literally a graffiti found on a Roman wall buried under under Rome. And it’s a scroll by someone about Alexis Minos, who appeared to be a young Christian in an act of supplication towards a man on a cross presumably crossed. But the twist is that the person that the artist swapped cross’s head from the head of a man to the head of a donkey. Now this is insightful because it shows us what the Romans thought of a crucified Saviour.

37. 21:42

    Next to the next to the scroll was written some words Alexis Minos worships is God, so so they thought, they looked across and they made fun of him. Even in the in the early 1st century, the Romans thought crucifixion was a shameful way to die. No one with any honour or any respect died by crucifixion. With crucifixion, death wasn’t just the penalty, it wasn’t just an execution, but it was the shame that was associated with it.

38. 22:16

    It was the shame on your name and it was the shame on your family name. It was a double penalty. It was a humiliation by making the victim as vulnerable as possible. And as Jesus hung there on the cross in complete agony, the record continues to give us details on what he said and did and what was said and done to Him. Jesus said roughly 50 words on the cross and we don’t have time to go into detail in all of them. The cross said these words.

39. 22:54

    Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. He said this about the Roman soldiers. That and that displays my marks are the most cruel people that you could think of. He said truly I say to you today you’ll be with me in paradise. Woman. Behold your son, behold your mother. I thirst. Eli.

40. 23:24

    Eli Lima Sabaktoni. It is finished, Father. Into your hands I commit my spirit. And as we think about those words, as we reflect on those words, most of the things that Jesus said when he was on the cross were for the benefit of others.

41. 23:44

    Even then, when he was in that terrible pain, he was still thinking about others and not himself. And as he was stretched out there on the cross in pain, every class of people despised Christ, from the lowliest thief, the lowliest thief hanging next to him, that absolute scum of society, right up to the local and religious rulers.

42. 24:12

    The chief priests and the scribes mocked him, saying he saved others, he cannot save himself. Let Christ, King of Israel, come down from the cross so that we may see, so we may see and believe. What absolute fools. What idiots. You know, they looked at Christ up there in absolute agony and there’s no remorse. They didn’t, they didn’t feel any pity for him at all. They were just trying to continue disgracing him. They were trying to disgrace him culturally and religiously, trying to disgrace him politically. And in their mind, Christ was finished. They could say these things because Christ was never coming back, not coming back from a crucifixion. He was too disgraced.

43. 25:02

    Do you know how many angels it took to all but destroy that great civilization of Egypt? And Moses time one Angel, and in the time of Hezekiah it took one Angel to destroy Snack Rib’s army 185,000 men. Christ says that he had 12 legions, 60,000 angels in his command. Christ was the one who was in control, and I don’t know how many of us would be able to do what He did.

44. 25:32

    He turned the other cheek. And that would have been the hardest thing to do in this case because these evil, twisted, power hungry men who are leading Israel astray were torturing and killing the most pure, honest and gentle person to ever live.

45. 25:51

    And if Christ was to come down from that cross, He could have poured judgment down on society. He could have got rid of those corrupt systems, could have removed those evil men. He could have proven once and for all who he really was and shown him this ultimate power that he had. And here they were just sneering at him while there’s most vulnerable. Christ was in control the whole time, wasn’t he? Right?

46. 26:18

    Through the trial, through the injustices, through the torment, through the flogging, through the insults, through all the despisement, through the rejections, even through the nails going through his flesh at a click of his fingers. Anytime he could have turned the tables, he could have been the one who was in power, and he could have made those oppressing him the vulnerable ones. But he chose not to.

47. 26:46

    He suffered through it like a little lamb going to be slaughtered. And even while the thief on the cross was sneering at him, it wasn’t about Jesus. He wasn’t thinking of himself. You know, all these events that happened in the trial and the crucifixion of Jesus were prophetic. So many of these things were prophesied and they all happened bang, bang, bang, all in a row except for the thief on the cross.

48. 27:13

    It wasn’t prophesied. The salvation of the second thief was, I think, encouragement from God to Jesus. Jesus could just save one more. You’re still thinking about others. And finally, blissfully, Jesus said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And he died hanging there for the whole world to see. And all of history from the creation of this world had LED up to this point, and all of time since has pointed back to it. The most important minute of world history was there when Jesus died on that cross.

49. 27:57

    We don’t. Know the cause of death. The Journal of American Medical Association wrote an article about this in the mid 80s. And it’s it’s wildly. Available online if you ever do want to read it, but it states that the prominent causes of death were probably hypovolemic shock, exhaustion, asphyxia, or a or a catastrophic terminal and like cardiac rupture. We know Jesus.

50. 28:23

    Suffered on the cross between 3:00 and 6:00 hours. But even. To the Jews, it was all about humiliation of Christ. There’s an old law in. Deuteronomy 2123 where it says he that is hanged on a tree is cursed by God. The Jews wanted Jesus crucified. They don’t want they didn’t want him to die another way.

51. 28:47

    They specifically wanted him crucified because they wanted the Old Testament to condemn Jesus. How despicable. Were these men? How twisted were these men? They didn’t just want him dead, they wanted him to die the most barbaric way that they knew. And they wanted to have the Law of Moses condemn him, while while they did it, they cynically used the power of the cruel Romans, totally humiliating and disgracing Christ in the eyes of everyone. While simultaneously.

52. 29:26

    Leveraging death on the cross to have him cursed under the law of Moses and I think in First Corinthians one where it says that he was a stumbling block to the Jews. I think this is probably why. But a foolishness to the. Greeks. As I said earlier, no. One who was anyone ended up crucified.

53. 29:44

    You know the the Romans and the Greeks, They didn’t have a problem with a mortal becoming immortal. If you look at their mythology, they have heroes and demigods. It’s full of mortals who have done these great feats and have become immortal. But they’re all about honour and and and power and pride. And this story.

54. 30:05

    Of a poor tradesman from the backwater state of Israel who died the most shameful and abhorrent way just didn’t gel with them. They couldn’t get on board with that story. If if we were writing the story, we wouldn’t use the cross. We wouldn’t use the story of the crucifixion because it’s, it’s counter intuitive.

55. 30:24

    It’s actually counter cultural. People struggle to buy into that. Can you imagine? I want to tell you about the saviour of the world. Oh, who is it? Is it someone who knows? Is it a Caesar or a hero? No, no, no, no. It’s it’s a Jew who was a poor tradesman who was crucified.

56. 30:43

    They’re not. Not off to a good start. Philippians 2 verse. Eight says He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. Now this is not a humanistic way of thinking.

57. 31:07

    In fact, it was foolishness to the Greeks. But you would elevate someone because they humbled themselves didn’t make sense to the Greeks. They elevated someone because they were powerful. But Jesus was. Elevated by God. For his humility. Despite his power. Now no crucifixion. Was ever witnessed like this crucifixion? This tiny group of people made-up of of tax collectors and unschooled fishermen who were tasked with giving the message of salvation of a crucified cross to the world.

58. 31:45

    And they faced. Opposition. Everywhere they looked, they faced religious opposition. They faced opposition from the Roman Empire, from the authorities. They they, they didn’t need any more opposition. And yet they never. Shield away from the fact that Christ was crucified. In fact, it was a prominent part of their message.

59. 32:10

    People had to decide, they had to make a choice that either Jesus was just a no one who was crucified and died and didn’t get raised and that is just what it is, or. That he was, in fact. The Son of God, and that he’d been subjected to the most barbaric execution in the known world. And if you can establish that Jesus was indeed the Son of God and not a common criminal, and that he was in fact righteously resurrected, it suddenly it flips the disgrace and the humiliation of the cross away from Jesus and back on mankind, represented by the Romans at the peak of ancient civilization and the prominent Jewish religious elders. Those are now the.

60. 32:57

    Criminals. They are now the disgraced ones. And all of the Gospels. When they record the crucifixion, they all take their own angle on it. Mark talks about the horrors of the crucifixion and and Matthew talks about the supernatural elements of the crucifixion. John is almost poetic in his approach, but Luke shows Christ in command of the crucifixion. Jesus in control.

61. 33:18

    Of himself and the situation. He asks for forgiveness of his crucifiers. He is converting other men while being crucified. He asks for for he says I’m thirsty. He asks for a drink. And he commits his spirit to God. Jesus is in control. There’s all this, this, this chaos and this violence and this darkness that’s happening around this event. And here’s Jesus right in the very centre of it. And there’s this calmness.

62. 33:44

    And the stillness about him. He even tells the high. Priest. That he the high. Priest would see Jesus sitting on the right hand of God in the position of a judge. This is Jesus judging humankind.

63. 34:01

    And here is Jesus who? Has been condemned with all the power of the non world to be the most humiliating and degrading and annihilating execution as possible. And all of that is just turned on its head. Christ’s righteousness is maintained and he rose more glorious to ascend to the right hand of God.

64. 34:23

    Humankind flesh had given Jesus their best shot, their ugliest, their most barbaric best shot, and cross had risen above. And that is the message of the apostles. That’s the message they took out into the world after Jesus was raised. It says that the apostles turned the ancient world upside down, and that is exactly what this teaching of a crucified Christ is doing.

65. 34:48

    That this crucified. Jesus of Nazareth, just a humble Carpenter, had for all intents and purposes been overpowered by the by the established powers of the world, and he had just reversed all of that, and he had called others to follow him. And I think this is. Why? Paul proudly says in First Corinthians chapter one we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. And again he says, Let the one who boast, boast in the Lord. So we know that the story.

66. 35:23

    Didn’t end with Jesus on the cross. We know that God’s laws about sin and death are absolute, and so the grave couldn’t hold him. Jesus was miraculously raised back to life as an immortal being, the first fruits of more to come, the first of us who will live and reign in that Kingdom with him. And as we bring our.

67. 35:45

    Mind forward to the present 2000 odd years later. Since. Since Jesus. Was raised immortal with his promise to the return. The faithful have waited. And they’ve waited, and they’ve. Waited for the fulfillment of his promise that he would return and that. He would come back. He. Would abolish the evil of mankind. And now we look at.

68. 36:09

    Israel and we see that the world is at their throat again. You know Benjamin Netanyahu. Has received phone calls over the past week or two from all of his strongest allies, from the the president of the US, from from the Prime Minister of from the UK. The Prime Minister of Australia has called him and they’ve all reached out to him to express their dissatisfaction with what he’s doing in Gaza.

69. 36:35

    The US has all. But threatened to pull support if he if he goes into the Rafah crossing. Now the world’s media. Is is really quite stacked against Israel and the public hate of Israel is has dramatically increased. It’s probably at at a unprecedented high in Australia. I mean no conflicts in. Israel must come before Jesus returns.

70. 37:02

    And so we’ve been waiting and waiting our whole lives. But this could be it. Jesus could come back. At any time it could be 1159 and the clock’s just about to tick over to the return of Christ. As we watch Israel. We become excited to witness and to participate. And the biggest changed the world since its creation.

71. 37:25

    That time when Jesus will come back and he’ll be able to judge mankind for the evil that’s in them. And that stone will. Strike the image and a new world order will arise. And so the day draws. Closer and closer when he will return. And we don’t know the day and we don’t know the hour, but.

72. 37:45

    Jesus did tell us. To watch and pray and. While we wait. We are told by Jesus to take up our cross daily and to follow Him.

73. 37:59

    To put on Christ. And to lead a life like him. To hold. Him and our Heavenly Father in the highest esteem, no matter where we are or who we are with and at the end of the day, from the external viewpoint. The difference between being. Faithful and being crazy is non existent. Jesus told his.

74. 38:23

    Apostles that he was going up to Jerusalem to die over and over and over and they still didn’t get it. Let’s. Just have another look at. Hebrews 12 verse two. I’m going to finish here.

75. 38:41

    Let us fix our eyes. On Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning at shame, and sat down on the right hand of the throne of God. It tells. Us to look at Jesus. That’s our target, that’s our aim, to follow him and we’ve got faith to pick up our own cross and follow him. To put up with being.

76. 39:12

    Despised or rejected by our workmates by. Our school friends. By our associates. Because of we, of our. Faith because of our conviction and a crucified Saviour. And when we look at. Christ, it’s not really too much to ask, is it? You know we look at. What Christ has done, and we’ve kind of summarized that this morning and he’s done all the hard work. He’s not asking us to.

77. 39:43

    Do any more than him. He’s not even asking us to do what he did. And so as we look to the bread and the wine here this morning, we see the body and the blood of Jesus. And as we eat. This body today, it should become a part of who we are, this bread. Becomes part of our physical being, part of our physical makeup, and it should become part of who we are. Should be like Christ.

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    And as we drink this wine. Representing Jesus. Life is blood. It is processed and absorbed into our our own bloodstream. And so our. Life should represent the life of Christ.

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    Jesus says in the Gospel. Accounts that he will drink this wine anew with us in that Kingdom. And if you need a joy set before you, like Jesus had a joy set before him. Make it that. Can you imagine imagine being able to meet Jesus in the Kingdom, being able to look him in the eye and say thank you for what you’ve done for me? You’ve been able to reach out and give him a hug for going through all that suffering and anguish, for our sakes. What is it that?

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    Could inspire Jesus to do this. What was this joy that he went to such great lengths for that that he that he went through such bitter sufferings for? What was the joy? Set before him that stopped Jesus from clicking his fingers and coming down from all the humility and pain of the cross.

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    Jesus himself. Tells us. The word joy. In Hebrews 12 verse two is also used by Jesus. In Matthew 25, verse 21 and verse 23 it says this well done, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over a little.

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    I will set you over. March. Enter into the joy. Of your master. The joy that said. That was set before Jesus was him giving us the Kingdom. The joy that. Motivated him to endure the trials and the suffering, the taunts and the humiliation, the beatings and the scourgings and the crucifixion and death. Was the.

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    Joy of him being able to give the Kingdom. To you and I so now it. Is time for us to take this bread and the wine again? The purpose of US meeting. Here, together today, let’s appreciate what Christ has done for us. Let’s try to understand the. Hostility that was shown towards him and let us realize the extraordinary world changing event that happened when he willingly endured the cross, despising the shape for you and me. Even say, come Lord.

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    Jesus. Thank you for listening to. The good ’cause Adelphian Talks podcast We hope this talk helped you in your walk and brightened your day. If you would like to hear more, please subscribe for new episodes. We are on all major podcast platforms and also on YouTube. If you enjoyed this particular. Talk. Please share it with someone else who you think might enjoy it too.

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    God bless and talk to you next week.