Cherish The Blessing Of The Curse On The Cross

Yet we come here today because we ARE blessed. The blessing doesn’t come from being on the right or left. The blessing comes through faith in Jesus, on what happened to Him over 2,000 years ago. Ironically enough, the blessing comes through a curse. Clearly no one is declared righteous before God by the law, because “The righteous will live by faith.” 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. As it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”

There’s two different types of curses being placed on Jesus at the cross. The crowd of humanity yelling “crucify him,” spitting at Him, and taunting Him to come down. They are doing all they can to declare He is nothing but an empty suit, another failed king. They are doing everything they can to strip Him of any dignity. And even His own disciples disown Him and act as if they had nothing to do with Him. It’s like Psalm 22 says, “I am a worm, and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people.” Or we might think of Isaiah 53, our Old Testament reading. He was despised and rejected by men, like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Yes, we wouldn’t even look at Him, like an Amish family that turns its back on the excommunicated member. He was cursed by humanity.

But the second kind of curse was so much worse, the One where God the Father Himself turned His back on the Son. Jesus cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Just recently, Rachel Morin, a mother of five was out for a jog in Maryland, she was brutally raped and murdered by strangulation, then left in a ditch by a man from El Salvador. People are extremely angry over what happened and want him to suffer and die for what he’s done. Imagine the anger you would feel if you were her mother or husband or children. Now look at Jesus. When Jesus went to the cross, He was treated as if HE did it. God blamed Him for all the rapes, all the murders, all the backstabbing, all the pornography, for all of our laziness and our outright rebellion. The Father viciously punished Him for it in a most emotional way. For a moment in time the Father turned His back on the Son, and in that moment Jesus suffered an eternity of hell as humanity’s substitute.

All this happened because God didn’t take our sins lightly. This was the deepest kind of curse. It wasn’t just that Jesus had to die. It was worse than that. There was hell to pay. Jesus knew how serious this curse would be. He sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. What a heavy burden, to bear the sins of the world from every time and every place, and pay for them all in one place and at one time. Isaiah 53 describes it in such a heavy manner. You can feel the weight of it . .

we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way;