PT-3 "More on the Sufferings of Jesus"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/21/2023 9:49 AM

 

My Worship Time                                          Focus:  PT-3 “More on the Sufferings of Jesus”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Matthew 20:17-19

 

            Message of the verses:  17 As Jesus was about to go up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and on the way He said to them, 18 "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, 19  and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up.’”

 

            I want to continue to look at the sermon from John MacArthur on these verses.

 

            “Then a fourth kind of pain that I see in this text: They scourged Him and crucified Him; but the reason they did that was because they had condemned Him. And I would call this the pain of unjust guilt, the pain of being held responsible for something you’re not guilty of. I mean, you know, if we had been accused of something for which there was a severe penalty and weren’t guilty, we would be screaming all over the place.

            “But in silence, He had to accept the responsibility for sin that He never committed. And all the guilt of all the people that ever lived was put on Him. I can’t imagine any pain or suffering more terrible than to be accused of a crime with a death penalty, and you knew you didn’t do it. And then to have all the guilt put on you, just incredible. Now you take those four things alone – the pain of betrayal, and rejection, and humiliation, and unjust guilt – and that alone, if you never got nailed to anything, would be enough to kill you.

            “And that’s what I think was going on in the garden. I believe in the garden of Gethsemane that the suffering and anxiety of His soul over these things almost killed Him, and His body literally began to come apart at the seams and leak great drops of blood. The nails are not a big deal. It’s the pain of bearing all the sins of all the people who ever lived when you’re the spotless Lamb of God. It’s the pain of humiliation when you deserve exaltation. It’s the pain of rejection. It’s the pain of betrayal.

            “Well, you could add two more. There is the pain of injury; and I think that’s here, He points it up: the scourge. And there He’s referring to the fact that He will suffer physically; and scourging was a horrible thing. We’ll see more about it future. But forty lashes was the Jewish thing, and forty lashes basically the Romans. The Jews always stopped one short, because they didn’t want to break the law, so they hit thirty-nine and then stopped.

            “The traditional way, the Romans did it with metal and bone in the end of these three leather thongs was thirteen lashes across the chest, and then thirteen on each of the two shoulders. It usually took two men to do it, because one wasn’t strong enough to continue the whipping at the pace they wanted it. They would tie the hands to a post so the body slumped; and they’d turn it around and take care of the chest, turn it around and take care of the back. And the organs would be exposed, the bleeding would be profuse, and many people would die. And He suffered tremendous physical pain.

            “Finally, the proportion of His suffering extended to death, He died. You say, “How’d He die?” I don’t think He died by the nails in His hands. He didn’t die by the spear; it didn’t go in till He was already dead. I don’t think the crown of thorns killed Him. It’s possible that the suffocating of His organs is the physiological reason that He died. But I think it was the cumulative grief, anxiety, pain, and suffering that all of that stuff brought upon Him that killed Him.

            “And the greatest suffering is not physical, the greatest suffering is the suffering of the soul. And the proportions of Christ’s suffering, as I think Isaiah 53 is trying to tell us, by almost to a point of being criticized from the literary standpoint, repeating over and over and over and over and over different words to say the same thing, is an act on Isaiah’s part by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to give us a little bit of an understanding of how wide, and broad, and vast the degree of His suffering was.”

            I have decided to continue to look and follow the next section which is entitled “The Predictions of His Suffering” in the next SD.  There could be some repeated things in this, but I don’t think that it will matter as I have stated before I think it is very important to better understand the sufferings that Jesus went through.  The reason is that He did it for me, and for you.

4/21/2023 10:04 AM