The Cost Of God's Forgiveness - Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Now, the irony of it all is that God created such an extensive law so you and I would believe and understand clearly that we're sinners. He didn't write the law so that you and I could keep it and earn our way to heaven because he knew none of us could.

By the way, religious people sometimes think they can. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.

Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. In the year 2004, the movie The Passion of the Christ hit American theaters. And immediately controversy followed. James Carroll, a former Catholic priest who was a writer for the Boston Globe, wrote this after he had previewed the film. He says it will incite contempt for Jews. It is a blasphemous insult to the memory of Jesus Christ. It is an icon of religious violence. The subject of this film is the sick love of physical abuse. It contains the most brutal film episode I have ever seen approaching the pornographic. It is a lie.

It is sick. Jews have every reason to be offended by it. The Passion of the Christ should even offend most Christians. I remember seeing The Passion of the Christ with a Jewish couple. And when the movie had finished, the man said to me, So, from your point of view, the Jews killed Jesus Christ.

And I said, no. From my point of view, I killed Jesus Christ. But unlike any other Hollywood version of The Crucifixion of Christ, The Passion of the Christ was brutal.

But physically, it was closer to the biblical and historical account than any other movie ever made. You see, clearly, the how of Jesus' death produces horror. However, the why of Jesus' death produces wonder, worship.

You see, in His death, we see the cost of God's forgiveness. 700 years before that event, before Jesus had endured the cross, God had given one of His choice prophets a remarkable vision of what would happen to His servant and His son on the cross of Calvary. Would you open your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 53? If there is a chapter that should be marked in your Old Testament, especially when you're dealing with the prophets, it should be Isaiah chapter 53. Nearly every single verse of this chapter is either quoted or alluded to in the New Testament.

In fact, the night before Jesus Christ was crucified, as they were leaving the Passover mill, He quoted Isaiah 53, certainly a chapter that demands our full attention. And the reason for it is, and we often don't understand this in the Bible, one of the problems that we have as readers is this. In every book that you read, you usually just have a book, and there's an author, and the author wrote a book, and you realize that author was sat around for a couple weeks or months or years and wrote this book. And so the events of the book seem to just be in sequence. But the Bible's not written that way. I mean, the Bible's written over 1,500 years.

Now, no book is like that, that's for sure. So what's written here is written 700 years before the crucifixion, 700 years. Now, imagine with me nearly a couple hundred years before Columbus sailed for the Americas, that somebody wrote down in great graphic detail what was going to happen in Manhattan at 9-11. What if somebody wrote that 200 years before Columbus sailed? See, that'd be extraordinary to us. But we have this tendency to say, well, that's in one part of the Bible, and this is in the other part.

No, they're separated by 700 years. He says, who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Isaiah realizes this is going to be difficult for people to believe. And he's talking about, and it comes from verse 13 of chapter 52, behold my servant.

He says concerning his servant, which we'll find out in a moment, is Christ. He says, for he grew up before him like a tender shoot, like a root out of parched ground. He had no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. Humanly, Jesus was common, just about as common as someone could be, born of nondescript parents. He was born in a nondescript place. Apparently, he had no stately form or majesty. He wasn't handsome. Now, that's hard to do for Hollywood, because every rendition you've ever seen of Jesus is always a leading man.

Now, Lucifer was a leading man. He's beautiful. He's handsome. Jesus has no stately form at all. There's nothing special about his appearance.

In fact, one commentator said that he was utterly ordinary, just like many of us. And then it says something about him relationally. And the reference here deals with the context of the cross, as we'll see as we go on. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and appointed with grief, and like one from whom men hide their face. He was despised, and we did not esteem him. Now, obviously, he ran into trouble with Nazareth a little bit.

His family needed more convincing to become believers. But these words are used for the words of the Passion of the Christ from his arrest on until he was crucified. In fact, when he was crucified, the New Testament backs this up. In Mark chapter 15 and verse 29, Mark writes that the people there hurled insults at him. And in verse 31, they mocked him. In Luke 23, 35, it says they sneered at him.

The reason would be simple. Not just his claims, and he made incredibly outrageous claims, but the fact that he was being crucified. Crucifixion is so much more than capital punishment.

It's so much more than death by injection or the electric chair. Crucifixion has an enormous stigma that goes along with it. Martin Hangle, a scholar who deals with the idea of the Roman crucifixion, says this. For the men of the ancient world, Greek, Roman, barbarians, and Jews, the cross was not just a matter of indifference, just like any other kind of death.

It was an utterly offensive affair, obscene in the original sense of the word. In the Roman Empire, crucifixion was a punishment in which the caprice and sadism of the executioners was given full reign. The Roman world was largely unanimous that crucifixion was horrific, disgusting business.

Death on the cross was a penalty for slaves, as everyone knew. As such, it symbolized extreme humiliation, shame, torture. Built into it is this whole idea of shame, torture. As I've said in the past, once you get to the cross and once they nail you up there, you're almost always naked. The idea of it is to bring as much shame. They almost always put the cross where people could see it and where people would walk by.

All of it was designed to shame and humiliate you. This wasn't unique to Jesus Christ. This past week I read one trusted historian said he believed that there had been about 30,000 crucifixions by the time of Christ just in the Judea area of the world. That's a lot of crucifixions. Alex Metherell, who has a medical degree and a doctorate in engineering, comments on the passion of the Christ. And he says this, The engineering load analysis, when added to the physiological information, will make it obvious why the Roman form of crucifixion is the most horrible, cruel, painful, and humiliating form of execution ever devised. And neither the flogging nor the crucifixion as shown in the movie, The Passion of the Christ, was as bad or as violent as the actual event.

So whatever images you remember from that movie, it was worse. You see, what is going on here? Simple. Isaiah is going to prophesy. Jesus is going to fulfill. What is the cost of God's forgiveness? You see, what is the cost of God's forgiveness?

It's immense. Think of those who have wronged you. Think of people that have hurt you.

You probably have a face or faces. Think of what they did. Now, first of all, let me not compare you to God. You've done your own share of hurting. You're a sinner. But think of how you feel about the pain you endured, whether you were abused as a child or as an adult, treated unfairly in the marketplace, whatever.

Think of how that feels. Now, think about it if you're a holy God and every single, every single wrong was against you as well as others. Every devious act, every impure thought, everything that ever happened was a sin against you. Now, you and I find great reluctance in forgiving. But God forgives.

But at what cost? Notice as Isaiah goes on, he says, Surely our griefs He Himself bore, our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening of our well-being fell upon Him. And by His scourging, we are healed or forgiven. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned by his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. What would that be?

Just imagine what that is. You see, one of the things that you're absolutely sure of when you read the Word of God is that God doesn't wink at sin. It has to be dealt with. Think for a moment of the Mosaic Law. It's not just Ten Commandments, it's six hundred laws and ordinances.

And there's a lot of things you shouldn't do. Now, the irony of it all is that God created such an extensive law so you and I would believe and understand clearly that we're sinners. He didn't write the law so that you and I could keep it and earn our way to heaven. Because He knew none of us could. By the way, religious people sometimes think they can. Even at the time of Christ, the rich young ruler.

He said, I've kept it all. And Jesus had to sort of pry one out of him to show him that he was at least lying. You see, that's what the law was for. But there was another part of the law. It was called the ceremonial law.

And what was the ceremonial law? Well, whenever I failed to keep the moral law of God, I had to make a sacrifice. Did you ever wonder how many doves, how many sheep, how many goats, how many oxen or bull? How many died over all that period of time? Every time you sin, there's a sin offering.

How many? Now, think of that against the words of John the Baptist whenever Jesus launches his public ministry. And the first thing that John says is, behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. You see, that's what's happening.

That's what he's talking about here. Who killed Jesus? Well, the Romans, with their indifference and their cruelty, killed Jesus. The Jews, with their hatred and jealousy, killed Jesus. A just and holy God killed Jesus. Your sin and mine killed Jesus. And his love for us to willingly lay down his own life killed Jesus.

All those factors. The central meaning of Jesus Christ, and this is an important thing to understand, is not found in the living of his life, but found in the giving of his life. Jesus Christ was born to die.

That's the point. In Matthew 20, verse 28, he says, the Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for many. See, every other religious leader says, I have a philosophy of life.

I have a way of living. And if you do this, you'll probably be okay with God or gods or whoever. Jesus says, no, I came to give my life.

The theologians call it substitutionary atonement. Notice, as Isaiah goes on, he was oppressed and he was afflicted. He did not open his mouth. Like a lamb that was led to slaughter, like a sheep that was silent before its shears, he did not open his mouth. By the oppression and judgment, he was taken away.

And as for his generation who considered that he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgression of my people, he says, to whom the stroke was due. His grave was assigned with wicked men, and yet he was with a rich man in his death because he had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in his mouth. But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief, if he would render himself as a guilt offering. He will see his offspring and he will prolong his days, for the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper his hand. As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied. By his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, will justify the many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he will divide the booty with the strong because he poured himself out to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he himself bore the sin of many, and then don't miss this, and interceded for the transgressors. What's the first thing Jesus said on the cross?

It's just as though he knew what was going to happen, right? Father, forgive them. I'll pay this price. You see, I'll pay this price.

700 years. You see, the movie really wasn't anything exceptional at all when it talked to the physical aspects. In fact, in Isaiah 52 and verse 14, it says, His appearance was marred more than any man.

He was unrecognizable. Tremendous agony. The cost of God's forgiveness, the cost of your forgiveness, mine. Yes, grace is free. It's a gift that Christ paid dearly. Turn with me now to the New Testament, the book of Acts. The book of Acts, chapter 8. And watch how Isaiah 53 gets tied in to the cross of Jesus Christ. Acts 8, verse 26. But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, Get up and go south to the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza.

This is a desert road. And so he got up and he went, and there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure, and he had come to Jerusalem to worship. He was a proselyte. And he was returning and sitting in his chariot, and he was reading, coincidentally, the prophet Isaiah. Then the spirit of the Lord said to Philip, Go up and join this chariot. And Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet. He apparently was reading it out loud. And he said, Do you understand what you're reading? And he said, Well, how could I unless someone guides me?

And he invited Philip to come up and to sit with him. Now the passage of scripture which he was reading was this. He was led as a sheep to slaughter, and as a lamb before its shear is silent.

And so he does not open his mouth. In humiliation, his judgment was taken away. Who will relate, he says, his generation, for his life is removed from the earth? And the eunuch answered Philip and said, Please tell me, of whom does the prophet say this?

Of himself or someone else? Remember, he understands this is 700 years old, I'm reading the prophet, I don't understand, who's he talking about here? Well, then Philip opened his mouth and beginning from the scripture, from this scripture, he preached Jesus to him. And they went along the road and they came to some water and the eunuch said, Look, water, what prevents me from being baptized? He's converted right there with what text?

Isaiah 53. And Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and he said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he ordered the chariot to stop and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized them. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. That's what happens to Jesus often in the gospels. He just vanishes. And the eunuch, he said, no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing. I don't know about you, but if I was with a guy and he baptized me and I come out of the water and he's gone, that'd be the big question on my mind.

Where'd he go? Maybe, unless I found Christ that day. You see, he had just experienced the forgiveness of God. Based on Isaiah 53.

You see, that's what happened to him. Now I want to look at the actual crucifixion. Go with me to Matthew 27 and verse 27. And then the soldiers of the governor, they took Jesus into the praetorium and they gathered the whole Roman cohort around him and they stripped him and they put a scarlet robe on him. This is all mockery. Remember, the crime on which he is going to be executed is the claim to be king of the Jews. Now the Romans saw this as a funny thing. Pilate saw it as a ridiculous thing. But the soldiers saw it as something funny, so they mocked him and put a robe on him. And they stripped him and they put the scarlet robe on him and after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and a reed, much like what a piece of bamboo would be, a reed in his right hand as a sort of play scepter. And they knelt on before him and they mocked him saying, Hail King of the Jews! This was fun for them. And then they spat on him. That's what Roman soldiers think of Jews anyway.

But especially a condemned one. At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.

That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word. .