Introduction…
My prayer is that over the past six weeks that those of you who have been present for this series of sermons have been moved by the stories that we have experienced.
One of the great things about preaching – is that before the message ever gets to you I’ve spent hours and hours in the text – and while you have 20-25 minutes to hear a story I’ve dug into the details of that text and been challenged and overwhelmed by it all week long.
This series in particular has spoken to me. I’ve never experienced the last 24 hours of Christ the way I have during this series. And to be honest with you I’m really looking forward to this coming week – because the stories of the betrayal, the agony, the persecution, and the crucifixion of Christ have weighed heavily upon me. The graphic details you heard last week were toned down considerably from the research which I conducted. The last two weeks especially have been very depressing as I’ve dug into these accounts of the pain that was suffered by the Christ.
This morning’s message is at the very heart of our faith. Without the event that will be recounted today you and I wouldn’t be hear. It is the watershed event of history.
Would you pray with me…
Body…
I am one of the few people in the Bible who has been remembered for the one thing I did right, not everything I did wrong. In fact while my life was filled with not only mistakes but with outright crime the Bible remembers only my best moment.
My moment, while a part of the darkest day in history, serves as a beacon of light and hope for all who are haunted by what they’ve done wrong. The very brief glimpse of my existence that the Holy Spirit has chosen to preserve speaks to millions who like me have wasted their years away and are hanging on to the very edge of life just waiting to die.
That’s what I was doing the day my destiny was changed – waiting to die.
I had been sentenced to die by quite possibly the most painful death ever invented by humankind. The Persians had invented crucifixion around 300-400 years before my lifetime and the Romans had adopted it as a means of punishing dangerous criminals, slaves, and the populace of foreign provinces. It was a public affair.
Affixed to a stake or tree naked the prisoner was subject to ridicule and all those who observed were reminded of the fate of those who asserted themselves against the authority of the state.
Crucifixion was a slow means of death. Sometimes it would drag on for days before the victim would die. It damaged no vital organs and there was no excessive bleeding that resulted from it. The complication that eventually led to death had to do with the difficulty in breathing that led to the collapsing of lungs, dehydration, and the inability to get sufficient oxygen which damaged the heart and lead to heart failure.
Ultimately, it was my heart that needed to die. While I had been terrified of what I was about to face, in some strange way I was looking forward to the end, when my heart would finally cease to beat within me – because then and only then would I be free from the guilt that haunted me every moment of my life.
There was no hiding from my guilt. I remembered all the crimes I had committed. I remembered the people I had wronged. I remembered those I had robbed and those I had beaten. And try as I had, I simply couldn’t escape the life I had made for myself. While I had many times considered running and leaving my lifestyle behind I just couldn’t escape. I couldn’t save myself. And every day the guilt and the shame that I had been feeling increasingly weighed down upon me. It had gotten to the point that it was more than I could take.
I had to die. I deserved it. There was no other option – no other means of escape.
Have you ever felt the kind of guilt I’m talking about? I mean the kind of guilt for decisions you’ve made and actions you’ve committed that digs its tentacles so deeply into your heart and mind that you can’t get loose? Have you ever tried to forget those things you’ve done and yet the pictures of you in that situation just keep returning to haunt you day after day? Have you ever felt so guilty about something you’ve done that you don’t think there’s anyway that you’ll ever be able to escape?
The only reason I am here with you today, the only reason that the Holy Spirit saw fit to remember me in the pages of Scripture is because my guilt was removed by a man who died not because he had to, but because he wanted to; not because of his guilt, but precisely because of his innocence. Let me tell you about my encounter with him.
It was the morning of my execution. I had been jailed along with another convict who was older than I and seemed anything but sorry for the life he had lived. If anything he was only sorry he had been caught.
After we were taken from our cells and our cross pieces placed on our shoulders we were led to the street where the procession to Golgotha would begin.
There were people everywhere! At first I thought they were there to watch us – but then I realized they hadn’t come out to see either of us, they had gathered to see him, a third man who was carrying a cross. While we had spent the night in jail, he obviously had just been flogged. I couldn’t bear to look. I had seen some gruesome things in my time but never anything like this. Some of his organs were visible and his skin was torn on every part of his body.
As we made our way down the street it became evident that he was popular. People lined the streets and even stood on rooftops to catch a glimpse. At times the soldiers had to fight off those who ran into the street and fell at his feet embracing him and kissing him.
Women and children were weeping alongside the street.
And as devastated as some seemed to be at the site of his suffering, there were others who were jeering him and shouting insults at him. The reaction of the crowd was mixed.
As we processed it was as if the other thief and I didn’t even exist. No one was weeping for us. If it hadn’t been for the chords that were tied to our waists I think we may have been able to slip through the crowd and escape unnoticed.
As I walked, the reality of what was about to happen began to sink in and I started to tremble. The soldiers would stretch us out and bind us to the cross before they drove the nails. And then they would take large spikes some seven to nine inches long and drive them through our wrists and through the top of our feet. And then they would let us hang there to die. Sometimes it would go on for days. Other times they’d break our legs so that we would suffocate to death.
Then they wouldn’t even give us the dignity of a burial; instead they’d leave our bodies on the crosses for the birds to feast on.
When we made it to Golgotha, the soldiers raised beams upright, put a cross piece from one to the other and threw ropes over it.
They started with him. I was on the ground lying with my arms stretched across my cross piece and there were soldiers in between him and myself. I couldn’t see what they were doing but I heard the blows of the hammer. And I heard his cries of pain. It’s no wonder that your English language would later derive the word “excruciating” from “crucifixion.” I began to tremble violently in fear of what was about to take place.
Once they had raised him in place they turned their attention to the other thief and myself. They bound my chest with a rope to the crosspiece. And then they began to pull with such force that they dislocated both of my arms. When my hands got to where they wanted them they tied them in place so I couldn’t move.
Then they summoned the men who had been carrying the hammers. They stepped forward one at each hand and while one soldier held a long spike in place on my wrist another swung the hammer with such force that the initial blow drove the spike completely through my arm. The pain shot through my arms and flooded my body causing me to tremble violently.
Then they moved to my feet. With my legs flexed at a 90-degree angle they drove the spikes through the top of my feet. I couldn’t have imagined how the intensity of what I was already feeling would be compounded.
When they raised us in place and the cross fell into the hole, the weight of my body came down on the wounds in my hands and feet tearing my flesh and tendons, lacerating my sinews.
I didn’t want to live any longer but I found myself gasping for breath. I tried to will myself to quit breathing but my body was fighting for life.
Normally, to breathe in, the diaphragm must move down. This enlarges the chest cavity and air automatically moves into the lungs.
To exhale, the diaphragm rises up, which compresses the air in the lungs and forces the air out.
As I hung on the cross, the weight of my body pulled down on my diaphragm and the air that moved into my lungs stayed there until I pushed up on my feet to exhale. Every time I would exhale I would had to push up on my nailed feet causing more pain.
This was the death I deserved, I thought. For all the years of horrors that I had inflicted on others. For the guilt that I was carrying around which wouldn’t let me go, this is how I would pay for it.
Suddenly I heard him speak: “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Who was he talking to? Even though he was wearing a crown of thorns and lifting his head would drive the thorns even deeper into his flesh, he seemed to be looking up. Could he have been talking to God? Father? I hadn’t heard anyone refer to God as Father before.
And do you realize how difficult it was for him to speak? He was already in such intense pain from his flogging and he had to push himself up on his feet in order to even utter the words.
And forgive them? Huh? He’s got to be kidding, right? Why would they need forgiveness? Certainly we were criminals, but not even a criminal deserved the kind of treatment he had received. They had been jeering him, mocking him, abusing him. What could he possibly have done to warrant that kind of treatment. And now he’s asked that they be forgiven? What kind of man was he?
He had no sooner uttered those words then the Jewish leaders who were looking on laughed and said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.”
Saved others? The Christ of God? The Chosen One? Was this the man everyone was talking about? Was this man who was from Galilee who had healed the blind? Was this the man who had forgiven the tax collector Zaccheus claiming that he had been ‘saved’ that day? Was this the man who had interrupted a funeral for a little girl and brought her back to life?
The soldiers also approached him, mocking him. “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”
It had to be him. What could he possibly have done wrong? Were they executing him for the people he had healed? Were they abusing him for the good he had done?
Then the other thief that was crucified with us that day even spoke to him, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us?”
I pushed up on my feet. “How dare you mock him!” I cried out. “Don’t you fear God? You’re going to die too. And you know that you and I deserve what we’re getting – but this man hasn’t done anything wrong!”
If this man was who he claimed to be then everyone was missing the point, I thought! It’s not that he can’t save himself – he won’t save himself. This is his destiny. It’s God’s plan for his life. What did I have to lose? I had messed up my life pretty badly , there was nothing more they could do to me, and now I was dying – if this man really was the Chosen One of God then his kingdom wasn’t ending – it was just beginning. And I wanted to be a part of it!
I turned my head to him and said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Then he said the words that changed my destiny: “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”
I could tell you about the darkness that came for the next few hours. I could go on and on about the intense pain that filled the rest of the day. About how Jesus died first and how they finally would break our legs causing us to suffocate later that evening. But there’s something much more important for me to share with you.
When Jesus spoke those words to me it was as if the weight of the entire world was lifted from my shoulders. All of the guilt and shame that I had felt, it was gone. I didn’t know how, but somehow the innocence of my childhood, you remember it, when you were young and as of yet had not made any mistakes for which you would never forgive yourself, that innocence returned. And I felt as if I were a brand-new person. As if I had just been given a whole new identity.
The words he spoke, they were true. My home today is in paradise. And as I watch others struggle with the same guilt and frustration with their pasts that I had felt, I wish they would read my story.
Jesus wants to speak the same words of forgiveness and hope into your life. I know now what I didn’t know then. You don’t have to carry that guilt around any longer. You can be free! Free to live, free to love, free to have purpose and meaning, free to be the person you’ve always wanted to be.
For, you see, Jesus hung on that cross; he wouldn’t save himself, because the sacrifice of his innocence was the only means that could return our innocence to us.
If you find yourself trying to be free from your guilt, running from your past, give it up! You can’t save yourself! Like me, you’re bound to your guilt and as if you were tied to the cross, your death is imminent. You will die and worse yet, paradise will never be a reality for you, unless you allow yourself to be set free by him.
