The Only One to Lead a Sinless Life & Die a Sinner's Death | Max Lucado | Oak Hills Church

45:28 in which we are highlighting the features that can only be attributed to Jesus Christ. Why don't we pray, and then we'll get right to work. these good people have entrusted me with their minutes grant that I can be a steward worthy of the call you've allowed me the astounding privilege of discussing the only topic only person who matters salvation through Jesus have mercy upon the speaker his sins are many and if we could Lord all we care about is seeing Jesus just Jesus through Christ we pray and all the church said if you had the opportunity to visit the Holy Land what site would you want to see the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized maybe the church of the Holy Sepulcher which commemorates a possible location of the cross.

46:41 The garden tomb makes the short list of most travelers, as do the southern steps of Jerusalem. What would be your spot? I've enjoyed asking that question a lot over the years. The answers tend to include the ones I just mentioned, plus the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. Curiously, no one has ever given the response that I'd give. Actually, the response I gave.

47:18 When I first traveled to Israel in 1990, there was only one place that I wanted to experience. And our group made many stops, but the one that I longed to see turned out to be the one that I was most honored to see. It commemorates the decision of Jesus to be the only one to lead a sinless life and die a sinner's death. The location became significant on the night before the crucifixion of Christ. Jesus and his followers have celebrated the Passover. Christ has assigned new meaning to the bread. It represents his body and the wine. It represents his blood.

48:14 He washed the dirty feet of his followers in the same way he washes the dirty hearts of followers today. He spoke of his father's house, of mansions, of a coming comforter. He spoke about the impending betrayal, not just of Judas, but of all of them.

48:39 And having done and said all that he needed to do and say, when you see words in bold, please read them out loud with me. Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him, and he began to be deeply distressed. and troubled. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, he said to them. The location of this lament is a garden, the garden of Gethsemane. To this day, it's open to the public. The shrine is modest, and olive trees still canopy the soil, and one can easily imagine the night that Jesus arrived there with his three friends.

49:37 A spring moon peeking down from behind a fleet of clouds, and the grass moistened by the dew and the followers and their lanterns and Christ and his heavy heart. Across the Kidron Valley, the city of Jerusalem slept. In Gethsemane, the wind whispered through the trees and nothing about the nature of the night hinted to the impending storm, yet the dark clouds were brewing. Within hours, Christ would go on trial, and crowds would mock him. Pilate would wash hands of him. Friends would scatter, leaving Jesus alone, all alone. And knowing what awaited him, Jesus fell on the ground.

50:31 He prayed that if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by. Still Mark 14. He begged for an out. He requested a change of plans. He filed a petition with the Father for a different path, a path that would not be lined with bloodthirsty people and would not culminate in six hours of writhing pain.

50:59 The Garden of Gethsemane is a tranquil place, yet on crucifixion eve, it was a war zone. It witnessed the battle between the will of Jesus the human and Jesus the divine. Jesus the divine knew what needed to happen. Jesus the human resisted it. And he did so with such intensity that he began to sweat blood. hematidrosis is a condition brought on by severe anxiety in which the body protests an impending struggle. Jesus prayed with such ferocity that rivulets of crimson streaked his face. Exactly what did he dread?

52:01 In a word, abandonment. rejection came at Christ from all sides, all corners. Judas betrayed him with a kiss. Peter betrayed him with a curse. All of his friends turned tail and scattered into the shadows.

52:22 And the prophecy of Isaiah, by this point, 800 years old, came into sharp focus. People made fun of him, and even his friends left him. He was a man who suffered a lot of pain and sickness. We treated him like someone of no importance, like someone people will not even look at, but turn away from in disgust, Isaiah 53. Such isolation.

52:51 On Friday morning, the Roman soldiers marched Jesus into the praetorium, a judgment hall of sorts near Pilate's palace, and they costumed him in a scarlet robe, and they struck him. they placed a reed in his hands and they began to mock him, to make fun of him. Someone took a collection of thorns and of all things wove a circular crown out of the thorns and dressed it onto his scalp. They spat upon him. They blindfolded him, played games with him. Who hit you, they would say. now with the word Jesus could have rained rocks upon the instigators he could have called upon angels to descend and defend him again the Isaiah prophecy but he didn't say a word he was like a lamb being led to be killed he was quiet as the sheep is quiet while its wool is being cut he never opened his mouth.

54:14 Men took him away roughly and unfairly. The whipping would have been enough to kill most men. The lash consisted of a wooden handle to which several leather straps or thongs were attached. Pieces of lead, brass, sharpened bone were attached to the end. Two soldiers would stand on either side holding a lash, and they flogged his back, the ornaments on the end of the whip serving as hooks that would yank the flesh, leaving deep gashes in the side and the abdomen. such a thrashing would leave exposed deep-seated veins, organs, entrails, arteries.

55:19 By the time Jesus was nailed to the cross, he had been beaten to a pulp. at 9 a.m., a soldier whose name is scattered into the winds of history shoved his creator against a horizontal beam, and he pressed the knee into his maker's forearm, and he pounded a nail into the median nerve, first of one hand, then the other, then the feet. he motioned for soldiers to help him and they lifted the cross of our Lord erect and they plunged it into the ground nails tore skin in tendons pain erupted like volcanic lava Decency causes artists to depict our crucified Christ as scantily clothed in a loin cloth, but he wasn't wearing one.

56:23 The soldier stripped him naked. and his body parts were visible for all to see. His mother, the female faithful, the onlookers, such humiliation. Yet, as one writer states, he suffered death on the cross, but he accepted the shame. Hebrews 12 and verse 2. The odor from the trio of crucified men would have turned stomachs, sweat, urine, feces. As the bodies began to lose all self-control, the event soiled the atmosphere. When the Apostle Paul later wrote an epistle and mentioned this death, he was speaking to those who were members of the Roman Empire, very much acquainted with the Roman practice of crucifixion.

57:30 They lived under Roman rule. And so Paul was referring to this when he talked about Jesus becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Suspended on the cross, Jesus could not breathe. The passage, his air passage, was blocked.

57:59 And the only way to inhale was to push upward on the nail below, triggering an explosion of agony. And for 30, maybe 60 seconds, he would gasp and swallow air. until he could hold the position no longer and then sink downward, up and down the pole of pain. Roman soldiers often broke the legs of the crucified out of mercy,

58:34 accelerating and facilitating asphyxiation. But the legs of Christ were left untouched. at noon the sky darkened and the onlookers still unmoved still in their pride cried out he saved others but he cannot save himself Matthew 27 at this point the ministry of Christ appears to have failed all the people he helped the bodies that he healed, the stomachs that he fed, the multitudes that he touched. Where are they? Where are they? just the Sunday before when he entered Jerusalem on the back of the donkey on Palm Sunday they celebrated him Now they've deserted him.

59:37 won't someone show up speak up stand up look up into the face of the dying form of the one who loves him so will they not appear this Friday that we're discussing has come to be called Good Friday and yet we are right to ask what is good about this day such a cast of cowards treacherous Judas calculating Pilate weak disciples asleep one moment and afflight the next, deceptive priests, gutless Peter, abusive guards, and won't somebody help Christ carry that cross?

1:00:32 The soldiers had to requisition someone out of the crowd. No one volunteered. hours earlier Jesus had begged to be spared Golgotha's cup now we see why such a toxic cup it was a witch's brew of betrayal and blood and humiliation toward the end of these six gruesome hours our Savior lifted a heavy head toward heaven and he offered this unanswered, mournful prayer. He said, my God, my God, why have you abandoned? With these words, the execution of Christ took on a new dimension. His sacrifice became unique in all of human history.

1:01:38 Unique to him. Thus far, the crucifixion has been a tragic but a familiar one. I mean, there were two people crucified with him that day. Jesus died a brutal, unspeakable death, but others died equally violent once. So it wasn't the horror of his physical death that set him apart. There was more. His abandonment led to atonement.

1:02:09 Peter can explain this from 1 Peter chapter 3. For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body, but made alive by the Spirit, through whom he also went and preached to the spirits in prison. this scripture is dense with significance. It deserves to be pondered phrase by phrase, so let's do so. First of all, for Christ died for sins. To sin is to rebel. To sin is to turn away.

1:03:03 To sin is to tell God, I don't want you to be my king. Sin centers life on self, not God. We were made to be centered on God. Sin gets us off center. Selfish ambition, not divine celebration. And the wages or the consequences of sin is death. We die. We die a physical and a spiritual death. Adam and Eve created in the Garden of Eden were immortal. They would not have died had they not sinned. But they sinned and death entered the garden. But even more, death is a spiritual death. They were separated from God. The immediate consequence of their sin was to be separated from God. They were isolated.

1:04:00 Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. sinners by nature separated from a sinless God but God did not abandon his plan he did not abandon his garden he has not abandoned his children he will have his paradise and he will populate it with perfect people sinless saints yet there's this conundrum who's perfect in reference to heaven the apostle John wrote nothing that God judges guilty will be in that city speaking of the new Jerusalem Revelation 22 well that rules me out because I've already been judged guilty I've never lived a sinless hour much less a sinless day not to speak of a sinless life God is holy, holy, holy then Max is sinful, sinful, sinful.

1:05:03 So what hope do we have? In a word, Jesus. When Jesus died for sins, he did not die for his own sins. He died for ours. As Peter wrote, the righteous for the unrighteous. Jesus for us. Please follow me carefully. The only person who could pay for our sins, pay our debt of sins, had to be someone who had never sinned. Right? Else that person would need to die for their own sins.

1:05:48 And only one person in all of human history has led a sinless life. Not Abraham. Not Moses. not Peter, not Paul, not Muhammad, not Confucius, not Buddha, not Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King. Only one person has ever lived a perfect life, Jesus. He is the only one. Hence, he is the only one who's qualified to die for my sins because he is sinless. He's never out of sync with his father. Never was a tyrant. Never was a mutineer. He was ever and always righteous. And we are ever and always stubborn and selfish and vain.

1:06:40 So Jesus, out of love, did what I could not do. Indeed, he did what no one could do. He came to earth for this purpose. To seek and to save the lost. To give himself as a redemption. for all to live sinlessly, to die sinfully. On the cross, he took on himself every act of arrogance, outrage, anger, every moment of disrespect, of misogyny, of racism. He took it all on himself as if coated in the mud of our own sin and in essence invited heaven, give me what they deserve. he became the victim of my sin and yours. By God, by God, he said, why have you forsaken me?

1:07:35 He experienced the forsakenness of the sinner. He absorbed the God-forsakenness deserved by every person who has forsaken God. Why? Why would he do this? There's only one answer. And Peter gives it. To bring you to God. To bring you to God. God wants you back.

1:08:02 God has destined you for an eternal existence with him. In his fellowship. In his company. And he wants you back. So Christ died for sinners to bring us to God. This is called atonement. He made atonement. He atoned for our sins. The simplest definition of the English word atonement is in the word itself. It's at-one-ment. He creates a sense in which we are at one with God, no longer separated. We are atoned. We are at one with God. As lawbreakers, we deserve punishment in the divine court. A just God must punish sin, else he is not just, but because he loves us and desires that all people be saved.

1:08:59 He did what we could never do. He placed our sin on his son and punished it there. the justice of God is satisfied the love of God is demonstrated as John Stott wrote God himself gave himself to save us from himself now had the apostle Peter in writing this epistle stopped right here we would have a treasure of a verse on the level with John 3.16. I mean, the gospel is in there. But Peter wasn't finished.

1:09:45 He dipped his quill in the inkwell and wrote what has to be the most ambitious and mysterious scripture. it reads like this. Jesus was put to death in the body, but made alive in the spirit, through whom he also went and preached to the spirits in prison. Still in 1 Peter chapter 3. What a curious, what a shadowy phrase. Wouldn't you agree? He preached to the spirits in prison. What prison? What spirits?

1:10:38 And what did he say? He went and preached. Peter tells us when this sermon took place. Sometime after the Friday crucifixion, Peter says he was put to death in the body. That was Friday. And sometime prior to Sunday's bodily resurrection, because what he did here, he did made alive in the spirit. So he's not in the flesh, he's in the spirit. After the death of the body, before the resurrection of the body, Jesus went and preached. In between the crucifying and the raising, there was a preaching. a sermon. Jesus, alive in the Spirit, preached. And he preached to the spirits in prison.

1:11:35 now some teachers take this passage and just dismiss it as a metaphor allegory in the luster of manner of saying that Jesus when dead was really dead I just don't get that Jesus according to Peter did not do what a dead man would do he went he preached he journeyed he spoke he was verbal he was active Why not take this passage at face value? Jesus went somewhere and he said something. Where did he go? He went to Hades. That's the only possible answer.

1:12:21 He went to Gehenna. Hades is the gathering place of the wicked until the final judgment at the great white throne judgment after the millennium. Hades is the counterpart to paradise. It's a holding tank for those who have rebelled against God. Jesus went there. He descended into the devil's domain.

1:12:51 Some of you grew up reciting the Apostles' Creed, and you're familiar with this phrase. The Apostles' Creed completed in 1648 includes the phrase, Jesus entered into hell. Now why would he do that? Peter's answer, because Jesus had something to say.

1:13:16 He had a sermon to preach. He had something to announce to the incarcerated. Is he giving them a chance to repent? Scripture never hints of a second chance after death. It just doesn't. Scripture says everyone is given adequate news about God to make a decision about God. But then everyone must die once and then they are judged. Hebrews 9.27.

1:13:50 No post-grave mulligans. This was not an evangelistic sermon. So what was it? What do you think? well a more complete answer would be this this is a victory sermon a proclamation sermon i can envision this happening i've been accused of having an overly fertile imagination but i can see this happening i can envision satan and hell's inhabitants hearing a voice at hell's gate. They look up and it's Jesus.

1:14:27 Jesus requests entrance. The devil sees him. He has no cause for concern. He just killed Christ on the cross. He's not afraid of Christ. Satan approaches the gate. He sees a subdued Jesus, even in his spirit form, still bearing the marks of a violent death. And Satan smirks. Glad to welcome this defeated foe into his caverns. But Christ rises up, suddenly shining and bright. So bright that the devil has to shield his eyes against the light. And he stumbles and he falls back. Jesus knocks down the gate. He snatches the key. And the victory is complete.

1:15:20 The gates of hell did not prevail. Having gained victory over sin on the cross, Jesus now declares victory over the grave in the pit. Death holds him about as much as a spider web could hold a lion. To use his own words, Jesus speaking, I died and behold, I am alive forevermore and I have the keys. of death and Hades. Revelation chapter 1 and verse 18. He leaves the devil shaking in the abyss, a defeated devil, proving that Jesus is the Lord. Not just of the heavens and not just of the earth, but as the apostle Paul pointed out, the Lord of those under the earth.

1:16:14 Yes, even those under the earth will someday confess Christ and kneel to him. This is the miracle of Easter Saturday. I wonder if Peter had this victory sermon in mind when on the day of Pentecost he declared, Christ was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. Acts 2 and verse 31.

1:16:47 Is this how Jesus spent the time between the occupied cross and the vacated tomb? only heaven knows the details but for sure heaven knows the details heaven knows that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

1:17:20 The greatest act of love in history. Church, on this topic of salvation, the Christian gospel sets itself apart from any other religion in the history of the world. Nothing else, and no one else, compares to this gospel. Please hear me. Every other religion, every other approach to God is transactional. It says something like, I'll do this and God will do that. I'll be morally good and God will reward me. Every other religion, whether it be Hinduism, Mormonism, Buddhism, the Islamic faith, even good old-fashioned pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, Western self-sufficiency says, okay, God, I'll do this and you'll do that. Let's work out a deal.

1:18:25 It's a barter. It's an exchange. The Christian gospel, by enormous contrast, says, I don't have anything to bring. I don't have anything to bring. I bring nothing to the table. as the old hymn says nothing in my hand I bring simply to thy cross I cling so none of this hogwash that all religions are alike they're not there's only two in the world one says do good and hope God saves you the other says Jesus is good for you and if you trust him he will save you Have you trusted him?

1:19:22 how much he loves you how much he loves you dear friend i'm sorry for all the hard knocks that have come your way every bad break i'm sorry i really am i'm sorry your heart got broken i really am i'm sorry your job got taken i'm sorry that life can be tough but let me tell you something that Christ counterbalances all the pain in this life with the assurance of the next life. You got to hold on to it like a barnacle to a boat. That's the biggest gift you could ever receive. So none of this, I've never gotten anything. Dear friend, you've been given everything. Everything.

1:20:10 Which takes us back to that opening question about Israel. and the place that I chose to visit. 1990, six or eight, I can't remember exactly how many of us, but six or eight of us, young preacher types, pulled our pennies. We stayed at the Jerusalem YMCA. It was in February, I remember, because it was actually chilly. We needed jackets. and we went to all the sites, but the one I wanted to see was where Jesus made this decision. You can go there today. We climbed out of our van and when we did, a solemn serenity settled over each of us.

1:21:04 No one said anything. No one wanted to talk. We each dispersed into a corner of the garden thinking the amazing thought that we are in the vicinity, somewhere in the vicinity. Jesus made the decision somewhere right here. I don't know what they did. I remember what I did. I got on my knees, and that wasn't enough. So I got on my chest, and that wasn't enough. So I put my face in the grass. I could smell the dirt.

1:21:41 And I said the only word that made sense to say. I said, thank you. Thank you, Father, for this unspeakable gift. of grace. That you led a sinless life but died a sinner's death. through Christ we pray all who agreed with the prayer the greatest gift is worth nothing if you don't receive it don't open it that's why we're going to offer a time now for you to receive it if you're not sure you have or you know you never have would you please at the end of this prayer it's a salvation prayer would you mind standing up so we can celebrate your decision would you please or if you're coming back to christ after being away for a long time.

1:22:38 Let's pray together and then we'll give you that opportunity. Jesus, I'm not perfect for I have sinned but I believe in you. Save me. Change me. Forgive me. I give you my life. In Jesus' name. Amen.