The Crucifixion Part 2 - Mark 15:22-39

0:44And the more I study this passage, the more I realize just how central this passage is to all of Scripture. Really, this is the center point of human history, and it's the center point where so much teaching of the scripture just converges. Many of the Old Testament pictures and patterns and types and prophecies all collide right here. And so we are going to spend some time again going slowly through this section to linger long at the foot of the cross and witness this crucified Messiah. Verse 22. I'll read the whole section. Then they brought him to the place of Golgotha, which is translated place of a skull. They tried to give him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided up his garments among themselves, casting lots for them to decide what each man should take. It was the third hour when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read the King of the Jews. They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left. And the scripture was fulfilled, which says, and he was numbered with the transgressors. Those passing by were hurling abuse at him, wagging their heads, and saying, Ha, you who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. In the same way, the chief priests also, along with the scribes, were mocking him among themselves and saying, He can save others, he cannot save himself. Let this Christ, the king of Israel, now come down from the cross so that we may see and believe. Those who were crucified with him were also insulting him. When the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with the loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachani, which is translated, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? When some of the bystanders heard it, they began saying, Behold, he is calling for Elijah. Someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, And gave him a drink, saying, Let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. When the centurion, who was standing right in front of him, saw the way he breathed his last, he said, Truly, this man was the Son of God.

3:22There we have the crucifixion of Christ. And to the world, a crucified Messiah is foolishness. A crucified king is a contradiction of term. It is foolishness. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 1:22, Paul says this: For indeed Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to the Gentiles, foolishness. In other words, the Jews look for a miraculous power, a mighty deliverer, somebody who will come on the scene. This is their definition of a Messiah, someone who will liberate them, set them free, and do what they think a Messiah ought to do. And the Greeks, they search for wisdom. That's the logical connections and deductions, rational thought. And a crucified Messiah makes no sense to either.

4:19Because the very definition of a king is one who rules. The very definition of one who is Christ is that he would not be able to be crucified. And so it is foolishness. In fact, early in church history, Justin Martyr had to give a defense for Christians. And he says this: the world says our madness as Christians consists in this, that we give to a crucified man a place equal to the unchangeable and eternal Creator God. And this is ridiculous. And yet, this is how we interpret our world, is it not?

5:02We interpret our world through the lens of a crucified Messiah, God Himself crucified for us. And that is the grid through which we can understand all of the world around us. It's last week, beautiful weather we're having, right? Don't you love being in Texas in the middle of the fall? I mean, this is why we live in Texas. Earlier this week, I was up early and I was out jogging, and it was one of those beautiful Texas fall mornings, the mist in the air, the sunrise coming up, just a beautiful, beautiful morning. And as I was running up the hill, I could see the masterpiece of creation and just the sun coming over the horizon. Just a beautiful, beautiful picture. And I see this through the lens of a crucified Messiah. I don't see this as. Just a random chance or some event that I can't really understand. It's more than just glorious. Yes, it is glorious. Yes, it is beautiful in its own, but it also is not the complete picture. But I can rightfully interpret that sun coming up. It's like this is just one more testament of God's goodness and love towards me. That He put this in the sky, that He created the world, that He created an environment to which I could live and breathe and move so that I might know Him.

6:35And so, as I look at the world around me, I recognize that I can properly interpret the creation, but the creation itself is inadequate to communicate all there is to communicate about God to us. Only the crucified Messiah can really rip back that veil and show us the heart of God and show us that it is the crucified Messiah who gave all for us. So, as I see that sun in the sky, it's one more testament of his love toward me. It's not the perfect testament, that is the cross. And it's on this knowledge that I know that that sun in the sky is there for my good, and that no matter what happens in my day, I have a Messiah, I have a creator who loves his creation, and it is in that knowledge. That I can boldly go before him and go to him. It is only through the lens of the cross that we can truly see a true picture of God. That God loves his creation to such a degree that he would give infinitely beyond our ability to understand. Now, this is where we start: the crucified Creator. This is the degree, this is the expression of his love for his people. So, I want to continue our walk through this passage and stand at the foot of the cross this morning, looking upon the crucified Christ, our crucified Lord. And as we do, I want to bring to your attention five things that we learn from the cross. And there's going to be more next week. We're not going to get through the whole passage, but there are five things, five lessons that, as we go through, I want you to learn that the cross teaches us. Well, as we began, we recognized last week that Mark likes to divide this whole thing up according to the clock. He does such a great job of just following the clock. You remember from pre-dawn to 9 a.m., there is the period of the trial of the spotless lamb. And that's where he was tried before the Jewish authorities. That is where he was tried before the Roman authorities. His crime was that he. Was the Son of God before the Jewish authorities, and he was the king before the Roman authorities. But from pre-dawn to 9 a.m., Gethsemane all the way to the cross. As in verse 22 and 23, they brought him to Golgotha, and they gave him wine mixed with myrrh, but he didn't take it, perhaps because there was a narcotic effect and he wanted to face the cross without any inhibition at all. But then you have the second time, and that is the time from 9 a.m. to noon, three-hour period. This we looked at last time. This was what I called the silence of heaven. And we could even put it as the, maybe even add to it, the submission of the Son. But here we see absolute humiliation. Verses 24, 25, crucify, dividing his clothes, setting him up there naked, crucifying him. See, humiliation, absolute rejection, absolute blasphemy. His crime was that he was the king of the Jews. And they crucified him, put him up there with the robbers, verses 26 and 27. And then you see this blasphemy. Verse 29, those who were passing were hurling abuse at him, literally blaspheming him, the same word that the Sanhedrin condemned him for death for. But actually, here's the real Blasphemy. And there were those three groups. We looked at them last time. There were those passing by in verse 29. They were wagging their heads, saying, Ha, you who are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Save yourself and come down out of the cross. Then there was another group, the chief priests and scribes. You see them in verse 31. In the same way, the chief priests, along with the scribes, were mocking him, saying, He saved others, he could not save himself. Come down now, let him come down now, and we'll see him believe. And then there's a third group that were also insulting him in the end of verse 32, and that's those who were crucified with him. But each of these served as agents of Satan for the express purpose to get him to abandon the cross, to come down, not to finish the work that God had started for him, but to end it prematurely, to abort the mission. And in doing so, they were issuing the severest temptation that Christ had ever faced in his life. This is the greatest temptation, the temptation of all temptations. And here he is on the cross. Just look at him for a second. This is the one that crushed the head of the serpent. And he does so on the cross. Temptation is his strength. And just look at Jesus and all that's going on after being crucified, beaten. His restraint is amazing. He stays. His restraint. Strength is amazing, that of a crucified will. He maintain perfect peace throughout the whole thing. He didn't give in. And it brings us to the first lesson. I think as we linger long before the cross, what we can learn is how to defeat temptation. How do we defeat temptation? Here he is crushing the head of the serpent. So how do we destroy temptation in our lives? Well, just think about this for a minute. The first Adam, you remember, he was brought down in the Garden of Eden. He had perfect health. He had a perfect environment. Everything was going his way. Here comes the tempter, takes out the first Adam in a perfect environment. Now we see the second Adam, Jesus. We've already seen previously, he's already confronted the devil in the wilderness. And after 40 days of hunger, then the temptations begin. It's like, here comes the second Adam in a weakened state, taking on Satan. You see the victory there in the wilderness. But here, this is ratcheted up even far more intense. Here he is, crucified, deserted, denied, beaten, mocked, ridiculed, totally taken to pieces by the whips and the scourges, totally mocked and scorned. You talk about a weakened state. Well, now here again comes the adversary. Let us take him down off the cross. Now, let us get the son to turn away from the plan of God. And here he is. He stays. And it's even a no-contest event. You don't even get a hint that it's even a struggle for him because he so much loves the Father's will that the thought of abandoning it is just so far from him. He is so desirous to please the Father that he resigns to anything that the Father would have for him. Even when heaven seems to be silent in the face of the biggest and most brutal and most heinous crime in all of history, he trusts the Father's will. This is what overcoming temptation is about: loving the Father's will and trusting the Father's will to such a degree that the thought of abandoning it is just out of the question. That is how much distance there is. And here he is, crushing the head of the serpent. It's a no-contest event. He takes him, he stays. He crushes the power of Satan in his own life. And in so doing, he begins that process of crushing the power and crushes the power of Satan in the lives of his people.

15:00It's a beautiful picture. This is what loving the Lord your God with all of your heart looks like. Remember, just a couple of days ago when he was in the temple in chapter 12, you can turn there in verse 28. This is just a couple of days before the cross. One of the scribes came and heard them arguing in verse 28, and recognizing that he had answered them well, asked him, What commandment is the foremost of all? And Jesus answered, The foremost is here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

15:46And here he is on the cross, giving us a vivid picture of exactly what that means. He loved the will of the Father so much. Let me tell you, love for the Father is directly related to the love for the will of the Father. The degree to which you love God in your life is the degree to which you love the will of God in your life. And this is Christ. He loved, he fulfilled the perfect embodiment of loving the Lord with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And he adds to it, love your neighbor as yourself. You see the perfect man on the cross? Now, can you imagine a world for a moment where Everybody loves the Father to such a degree. You see, he teaches us the second lesson, right? He shows us what loving God with all of your heart looks like. This is it. To trusting, loving the will of the Father, His morality, His ways, His leading, all that. The station He's put you in life, all that. Loving it more than anything else. So He shows us, second, what loving the Lord with all your heart looks like. Now, can you imagine what a world would look like if we all loved God like this? You want to talk about what the answer to civil government is? Is when you will have the people on earth loving God, loving His ways with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and be willing to lay down their life for their friends. Could you imagine what kind of world this would be? That is the answer for civil government. It would be paradise, would it not? This is a glimpse of heaven. This is a glimpse of paradise on earth. And this is where I see hope for the world. The hope for the world is that the people, the ultimate inhabitants of the earth, are going to be those who are like Christ and who respond to the will of the Father like Christ.

17:58And this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Spirit in our lives. This is what he does. He conforms us into the image. You want to know what you're going to become? Look at the cross. That is what he is doing. He is causing a change in you, a transformation, so that you would love the will of the Father like Christ. And that there'd be such a distance between you and ever wanting to violate the will of God, that you would want the will of God so intensely that the thought of going against it would be out of the question. That is the work. That is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. And one day we know we'll be resurrected. We'll be put on fully. And we'll be glorified in Him, and we will be like Him.

18:52So if you linger long at the cross, you'll catch a glimpse of heaven. Because in there, you will see the perfect humanity. And then you can imagine what life would be like with the infinite wisdom of God, where everybody follows the infinite wisdom and infinite goodness. There is no telling beyond what God has in store for His people when sin, that ugly defector and murderer and killer, is done away with. But He came to save His people from their sin. So, if you linger long at the cross, you'll catch a glimpse of heaven. But if you linger long enough at the cross, you will also catch a glimpse of hell. And that is a terrifying sight. As we stand before, we see the glimpse of heaven in Christ, and that's a beautiful sight. But then we also catch a glimpse of hell, and that is a terrifying sight. And that is what I want to look at next.

19:54Verse 33, and that's where we're going to spend our time this morning. When the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour. Again, Mark is very precise with the clock. We're talking from 12 noon to 3 o'clock. And this section I've entitled The Judgment of Heaven, the Judgment of Heaven. Darkness fell. What is this darkness? Let me tell you what it's not. First of all, it's not a solar eclipse. Solar eclipses happen during a new moon. That's when both the moon and the sun are up at the same time during the day. Passover coincides with the full moon. This is not an eclipse. It is not a natural phenomenon like a dust storm. It would be very unlikely, anyway, during the spring season and the wet season. Some have tried to explain this by a natural phenomenon. Mark is saying it is a supernatural event. It's not just a heavy cloud cover. Because Mark could see, he could pinpoint the time, and darkness fell. He uses a language that speaks of a supernatural event. At 12 noon, precisely at the moment when the sun would be at its zenith. You don't have clocks. You gauge things very well by the sun. And he knew precisely where the sun was. And it was at that moment darkness fell. So what does this mean? A supernatural darkness comes over. What is this about? I mean, is God just trying to add some little nice little touch, some little dramatic effect, like we would expect Hollywood to do? You know, something to just kind of shake the other senses? No, I think the darkness here is something that has already been prefigured in Scripture over and over, and that is the judgment of God. Darkness throughout Scripture is associated with the judgment of God. And that is what's taking place. And in Deuteronomy 28, I'll just take you through a few places where darkness is associated with the judgment of God. In Deuteronomy 28, God is speaking, and he's saying the curse for being a rebellious and disobedient people, forsaking the covenant, is going to be this. In verse 28, he says, The Lord will smite you with madness and with blindness and bewilderment of heart. And you will grope at noon as the blind man gropes in darkness. As the day of the Lord, spoken through many of the prophets, the day of the Lord is throughout the Old Testament prophets as a day of judgment, a day of wrath, and a day of darkness. Speaking about the coming Babylonians, the day of the Lord is coming in Isaiah 13:9, he says, This, Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, cruel with fury and burning anger, to make the land a desolation. He will exterminate sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light. The sun will be dark when it rises, and the moon will not shed its light. So in Isaiah, this picture of judgment is associated with darkness. In Joel 1:15, alas, for the day, the day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty. And in verse 10, in 2:10, he speaks about what this looks like. The earthquakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness. The day of the Lord is indeed great and very awesome, and who can endure it? Amos says this in 8:9, it will come about in that day, declares the Lord, that I will make the sun go down at noon and the earth dark in broad daylight. So, this darkness is associated over and over with the coming and the judgment of God. Zephaniah 1:14, near is the great day of the Lord, near and Coming very quickly. Listen, the day of the Lord, in it, the warrior cries out bitterly. A day of wrath. So the warrior is shaken and scared. A day of wrath is that day, a day of trouble and distress, a day of destruction and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. When the Lord comes on the scene in judgment, it is described over and over as thick darkness. You remember Exodus, right? Exodus 10, perhaps that picture in 10, remember what the ninth plague was, that thick and heavy darkness. In verse 21 of chapter 10, then the Lord said to Moses, stretch out your hand toward the skies, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even a darkness which may be felt. So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and there was a thick darkness in all the land for three days. They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, but all the sons of Israel had light in their dwellings. So this thick darkness, the last plague, the death of the firstborn, chapter 11. Chapter 12, the death of the Passover Lamb. So you see this imagery. You see the darkness in chapter 10. You see the death of the firstborn in chapter 11 of Exodus. You see the death of the Passover Lamb in chapter 12. But coming into the New Testament, this picture of darkness is. Also associated with the wrath of God. In Matthew 8, 11, it says, I say to you, that many will come from the east and west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the sons of the kingdom will be cast into outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. He's speaking about hell. Again, in Matthew 22, 13, speaking to the improperly clothed wedding guest, it says, the king says to the servants, bind him hand and foot and throw him into outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Again, in Matthew 25, 30, he speaks about the worthless slave. Throw thou that worthless slave into the outer darkness, a place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The picture of darkness, as revealed in Scripture, is the place of God's manifest presence to judge, his wrath, his fury, unrelenting. So as you say here at 12 noon, darkness begins to fall upon the land.

26:40And it is the Father coming in judgment. The question is, who is the Father going to judge? Is he going to judge the people, all these blasphemers, all these that have done this unrighteous act to Christ? Well, we know what he's going to do because of Genesis 22. Dustin read it earlier. So this event has already been prefigured in the scriptures. Genesis 22, now it came about after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, Here, here I am. He said, Now take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah. You know where the land of Moriah? The very mount where the temple was placed? The very mount of Jerusalem. Go to the very same place. Take your son and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will tell you. Then they came to the place of which God had told them, and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham stretched out his hand with the knife to slay his son. And in verse 11, the angel stops him.

27:52And then in verse 13, then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide, as it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord, it will be provided. What is being provided? Atonement, substitutionary atonement, that the innocent will die for the guilty.

28:23And the question throughout Scripture is: what in the world did this ram ever do? To deserve death? And the answer is nothing. Nothing. The ram didn't deserve to die. He was a substitute, the innocent for the guilty. And animal sacrifice was a brutal and gross practice. It was a mess, especially as you read through Leviticus. And you saw how they would take a perfect spotless lamb or a bull, and they would cut it and they would slice it and they would dice it and they would arrange it and they'd have the place for the entrails and the organs and they would, it would just be this big mangled mess right there on the altar. And it was a gross and messy thing. And what in the world is God trying to communicate? Well, he teaches us that sin mangles creation. It is a mess. It mangles things. It gets it so messy. But with all these over and over deeply ingraining in the mind of God, what this is what sin does, this is the payment for sin, all those animal sacrifices could not take away sin. Why? Well, number one, they were not spiritual beings. They were not like sacrifice. But number two, they had no will of their own. They had to be willing. They were taken and sacrificed. So what was the purpose of the whole Old Testament system? It pointed to a human sacrifice. Sacrifice that would have to be made, a perfect sacrifice and a willing sacrifice. So he had to be completely innocent. That's why no one else could go to the cross on behalf of man because he had to be perfect. And all other humans that have ever lived were not perfect. They were not innocent. They had their own sin, so they couldn't offer themselves up anyway. But they also had to be a willing sacrifice. And what was prefigured in Abraham and Isaac became a reality on the cross. The same mountain, the Father, the bound son, condemned, but this time there's not going to be anyone to hold back the hand of the Father. And here upon the cross, the Father unleashes his full fury, not upon the guilty blasphemers, but upon the innocent victim. Upon the Son. You'd see darkness comes. Okay, justice is now going to be served, right? All these cruel, blaspheming monsters that have ridiculed, mocked, beaten, perverted justice, they're going to get it. But no, he turns his fury upon the son. And get this picture for a moment. Christ at this point has already taken the full wrath of the Jewish authorities. He has already taken the full wrath of the Roman authorities, Jew and Gentiles, but this isn't why he came. This is not the atonement. This is the rejection of man and how brutally and horribly they rejected God in their midst. That is what has been communicated to date. But here comes the Father. Now he's about to take on the full wrath of heaven. You think about it. Think of this picture. Should anybody, can anybody take this? After all this, we would look for some kind of reprieve after the way he's been treated and beaten and totally rejected and humiliated.

32:13And then here comes the wrath of the Father. One more is going to add to the mix on a level that you and I could not even begin to fathom. He's going to strike the Son. I was talking to a Muslim friend of mine about Christ, about the cross, about the principles of justice. And he was really struggling with it. He said, Look, how in the world can it be just for God to take an innocent person and put the guilt of another upon him? He says, that's not justice at all. I'm speaking about, no, justice and mercy. We see it at the cross. In this way, God fulfilled his wrath. In this way, God fulfilled his love. They have to come together and they. Come together at the cross. And he says, no, how can it be just that you would take an innocent person and make him pay for the sins of others? And the answer to that is Gethsemane. He had to be willing. If Christ was not willing, then it would be an act of injustice. But Christ was willing to take, I will take that. And that's what Gethsemane is about. And that's what Mark makes it very clear. He is a willing sacrifice. But the Son also had to be innocent. And this is what the trial passages are about. I mean, they tried him as vindictively and as cruelly as they possibly could in their verdict. Well, he claims to be the Son of God. Well, he claims to be the king. That's it. He's innocent. So what exactly did Jesus experience those three hours? I'm not sure anybody can fully express. There's so much that has happened there. In some degree, it is a mystery that we're not ever going to fully comprehend. But I can say this: that he experienced judgment. He experienced the eternities of wrath for his people.

34:09Hell came to the cross. God's presence in wrath. That's what the darkness is. The darkness was not the absence of God, nor was the darkness the presence of Satan. It was the presence of God in full judgment. That's what the darkness was. John MacArthur, speaking about the darkness of the cross, says this: The darkness is not the absence of God, and it's not the presence of Satan. The darkness is not the absence of God, it is the presence of God. It is God in full judgment vengeance, God in full judgment fury. It is infinite wrath moved by infinite justice, releasing infinite punishment on the infinite Son, who could absorb all the tortures and eternities of hell and do it in three hours. It is in those three hours that he bore in his body our sins. It is in those three hours that he was made sin for us, and it is in those three hours that he took the curse. Hell at the cross. And if you look at the end of this period in verse 34, at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, Lama, Sabakni, which is translated, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why have you left me? It's really interesting to note that through the whole crucifixion ordeal, Jesus is pictured as the silent Lamb. But here, when the judgment of God comes upon him, he cries out, You don't see this cry from this individual through any of the gospel narratives at all, nor prophesied at all. Here it is, right here.

36:03He cries out on the cross. Incidentally, this is the only time in Scripture that Jesus refers to God as God and not Father. A separation has taken place. Punishment for sin. It's like he's on the cross and he's looking for that countenance of favor. The one that opened up the skies and said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. The only expression he had ever seen from the Father was that of favor and pleasure. And it's like he's looking up, and all he sees is that stern, angry face of the Father. Maybe you can relate. Maybe there's been a time when you were looking to somebody that would give you an accepting look, a loving look, only to be met with an angry, furious look. Well, this is what he experienced. This is what he experienced. God was still present, but he was present in unrelenting wrath, not there to comfort. Wrath without relief, punishment without mercy, fury without relenting. This is hell. Over and over, it's being in the presence of God in His fury and His unrelenting wrath forever and ever, never again to see comfort. That is hell. No comfort, no compassion, no mercy, just wrath.

37:30And so, as we linger long before the cross this morning, the fourth image we have is that the cross gives us a glimpse of hell. And this is what Jesus came to save his people from, from their sin. And the first thing he had to deal with was the penalty of their sin. And the penalty of their sin was the wrath of God. So we learned several things from the cross: how to overcome temptation, what loving God with all your heart looks like. He gives us a glimpse of heaven. The cross gives us a glimpse of hell, but it also gives us an understanding of redemption. An understanding of redemption. Why don't you turn to Genesis 6:5? I want you to see something here. I want you to see the trajectory that mankind is on. But as you go there, I want to tell you about an experience I had early in my professional career. I was put on a project. It was one of the first projects of a massive scale that I was put as a project manager on. It was a lake resort with a housing place, with golf course, clubhouse, all the stuff. It was a $32-something million-dollar project. That used to be a lot of money, by the way.

38:53But what happened to that project? My first big project. But what happened before I got to do that project? Is that it started out, a guy had big visions for the project, and something went horribly wrong, and basically the thing was bankrupt. And the only way that this project would get picked up and completed was if somebody would come in, pay off the debtors, pick it up, take the vision, and make it a reality. And that was this developer. He came in at a great personal risk, put in the money, made it, and kept going. And this project is there today, beautiful project, because a developer stood, stepped in, and redeemed it, you could say. Let me show you the trajectory of where man is going and what Christ did for man. Genesis chapter 6, verse 5. This is where man goes when he says no to God, when he excludes God from his life and his world. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Let that sink in. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man's heart was great. Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. This is where man ends up. And the solution was to send a flood.

40:30Wash him away. But this is what happens when God allows man to go without his influence. Man's own momentum takes him to destruction. And you may not be all as bad as you could be, but this is what happened to society as it moved away and excluded God from their life. But this is exactly what Christ came in and stepped in to redeem. He sees a great value. He hasn't given up on his creation. He is going to redeem it. And creation will bring glory to God thoroughly, completely, totally. And it is on the cross. How does one get saved?

41:15If I told you how to overcome temptation, if I said how to go be like Christ, can any of you be perfect like that? Can any of you tolerate what he tolerated? Can any of you be that perfect? The answer is no. But the gospel gives us a picture of grace here. As the serpent was lifted up, it is not by gritting your teeth and saying, I'm going to be like Christ. It's by looking to him. And as you behold him upon the cross, just like that thief was transformed, just like the centurion who led the charge against the crucifixion was transformed, so we are transformed. It is by looking upon him, looking through that doorway into heaven, and seeing what he did that we are transformed. So, I can't leave here and tell you, go out and be like Christ. What I can tell you is, go out and allow God to transform you into the image of his Christ, and you'll do what Christ does.

42:14That's the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this narrative of you on the cross, God, and what it speaks to us. Father, that you give us a picture of redemption, you give us a picture of heaven and hell, and that glorious picture of redemption. Father, I pray that you would cause us to look upon you. God, that we would be desirous to look upon you. For in a crucified Messiah, Father, we see your wisdom. We can know for sure how heaven views us. And Father, based upon that, we can have faith and walk and go to you. Father, you know the hearts, you know the minds, you know what everybody in this room is going through, you know where they are spiritually, Father. And I just pray now by your grace that you would draw each person here into a closer relationship with you. Father, and if there is those in here who do not know you today, I pray today they will look upon you and ask you to forgive them in Jesus' name. Amen.