The Distressed Christ: Embracing the Depth of Atonement

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In this brief section because as we allow our eyes to go down these familiar verses now, we realize that we are pausing before a very unusual spectacle and that is that we're pausing before a distressed Christ, a crying Christ, a weeping Christ. We're about to see in the balance of the chapter that this same Jesus was deserted by his followers. [00:03:05]

It was not that he had turned a corner in the road and been confronted by something that took him unawares. He had been moving purposefully towards this event indeed, from all of eternity the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in a covenant of redemption had planned, if you like in children's parlance, what each of them would do. [00:04:06]

Jesus confronted now with the imminent prospect of his ordeal, how is he going to handle it? How is he going to face the trial? Well you will see from looking at the text that the answer to that is simple, it's on the very surface of the text. He is going to do what he now urges his disciples to do, that is he's going to pray. [00:08:07]

Learn says Jesus to his followers to make sure that it is the will of the Father that you are seeking at all times, and here we find him practicing what he preached. When you pray say your will now look at what he says, Father if you are willing to take this cup from me, fine yet not my will but yours be done. [00:09:52]

What compassion thinking of the fact that although he was about to endure all of this suffering his primary concern was for his followers. I want you to watch and pray he says and he finishes in the same way come on fellas, let's keep praying here and then I wrote down what commitment. [00:11:07]

What Luke along with the other gospel writers tells us at this point in redemptive history is that the time had come for Jesus to surrender himself as an eternal expediatory sacrifice for sin. Now I'm not going to give you a quiz on eternal expiatory sacrifice at least not now, but you will know what this means within the next 20 minutes. [00:13:22]

Jesus who is fully God and fully man, Jesus who is utterly without sin and Jesus who is beloved and uniquely precious to the Father. It is this Jesus who is about to be destroyed at God's hands. Jesus is about to be destroyed at the hands of God. [00:15:17]

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Now loved ones, this is beyond belief, you say we use the notion that things are unbelievable but this I suggest to you is unbelievable because the innocent is about to suffer at God's hands. [00:16:56]

He died says Paul to the Galatians in 1 4 he died for our sins. He was in every realistic sense made sin for us he became if you like all of our rebellion, all of our lying, all of our cheating, all of our adultery, all of our filth, all of our ugliness he became all of that on the cross. [00:22:29]

Without substitution, the death of Jesus is unintelligible. It's unintelligible unless what we have here is what is being described in 2 Corinthians 5 21 that he was made sin for us, not that he was made a sinner for us but that he was made sin for us then how else do you explain it. [00:23:29]

Because Christ died for us those who trust in him may know that their guilt has been pardoned once and for all. This is actually the answer to many of our fears, the reason that many of us are so fearful is because there is no room for thoughts of God within our minds. [00:30:36]

This is the great issue of life, this is the issue of life, is it well with you health wise, is it well with you finance wise, is it well with you family wise, is it well with your soul, with your soul young person listen to me, is it well with your soul. [00:32:39]

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