Those Final, Dreadful Hours, Part 3

In light of His suffering on our behalf, we give our thanks to Jesus. Thank you, Lord, for enduring the scourging that I deserve. Thank you, Lord, for taking the nails that should have been driven into my hands and feet. Thank you, Lord, for paying the complete price for my sins. Thank you, Lord, for dying that day that I might live forever and ever with you.

How grateful I am for the rest of my life. In the last few episodes, Chuck Squindoll has guided us through a detailed description of the final hours of Jesus' life. His source is the Gospel writer named Matthew, who meticulously described the vicious cruelty of the Roman authorities. They were unrestrained in their brutality as they delivered the slow and agonizing beating that preceded the crucifixion.

Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Squindoll continues this study of the final verses in Matthew chapter 27. This passage is not for the faint of heart, but it certainly raises our affection for the one who suffered on our behalf. That's our Savior, scourged by brutal Roman soldiers who could care less about who he was. Just another crucifixion criminal to them.

When they were worried of this, if the victim lived through it, and Jesus did, which tells us something of his physical condition, he was in great physical shape to endure such torture. They lead him now along a path. We read of it in verse 32 through 34. Along the way they come across or they came across a man named Simon. It's a Jewish name.

He was from Cyrene. He's randomly chosen and to begin with, he's forced into the scene, which he never expected as a visitor in the land of Israel. He's forced to carry Jesus' cross. Verse 32 ends.

Back then they carried only the cross beam, which is the horizontal piece that weighed approximately 200. And then we read they went out to a place called Golgotha, which means the place of a skull. When he gets there, before they do the nailing, and again Matthew writes it with such simple words, there they nailed him to a cross.

But before that, notice the soldiers gave him wine mixed with bitter gall. It's a mixture of oil with myrrh, a thick oil designed to stupefy the one about to be nailed to large beams to keep him from struggling and screaming violently. These aren't small nails. These are what we would call spikes. They are driven into the beam through the palm or the base of the palm or the wrist, and once on the beam, through the feet that are brought over each other, that are drawn up so the knees protrude.

From here on, it's almost more than our imaginations can comprehend. We read, verse 35, after they nailed him to the cross. And then Matthew goes on. Understand that he's nailed while everything is on the ground. The cross beam is attached to the vertical beam.

And then it is lifted and the vertical beam or pole is dropped in the hole as the victim now hangs, pulled by gravity. And so they crucified him. People who pass by, according to verse 39, are shouting their mockery and they are shaking their heads as they yell at him, misquoting his words from earlier times. Even the leading priests and teachers of religious law and elders join in the scene. Dare I add that his own mother is watching it all? Along with a few of his closest friends, unable to do a thing, hearing these words that taunt the one they love as he is going through his darkest hours.

Let me add this. As horrific as the pain, that isn't the worst part. You'll read the worst part at verse 45 down through 46. Look in your Bible. At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o'clock.

We would call it an eclipse, but it isn't a natural eclipse. It is a supernatural shroud of darkness over the land. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, Jesus literally screams with a loud voice, Aloy, Aloy, Lamma Savatani! Translated, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? For the first time in all of existence, God the Father turns his back on God the Son.

Why? Because the Lamb of God is bearing the sins of the world. A holy God cannot in any way relate to such a conglomeration of evil being borne by the Son. Thus, the Father's abandonment in that brief period of time as Jesus bore your sins, my sins, the sins of the whole world. If you were like me, you were reared in a church. You've heard of the cross, the crucifixion.

You've heard of the death of the Savior all your life. But I doubt that you have ever heard sins listed as I'm going to list them. In all my years of ministry and preaching, I've never done this before, but I sat down alone in my study and so that I might have some sense of order to keep myself on target, I listed as many as I could think of alphabetically. You'll hear yours and I heard mine as I read the list aloud several times, always thinking I could add more and finally deciding it's inexhaustible. These are the things he bore on our behalf. Listen to your sins as I listen to mine.

They're in the list. He died for our sins of abuse, adultery, argumentative spirit, arrogance, assault, backbiting, bitterness, blasphemy, boasting, bribery, complaining, coveting, contention, coarse joking, deceit, defrauding, denying, and despising the poor, dishonoring the aging, disrespecting parents, envy, evil motives, fornication, fraud, falsifying tax reports, giving grudgingly and even not giving at all, the height of selfishness, gluttony, gossip, greed, hating others, holding grudges, harsh words, hypocrisy, idolatry, spiritual indifference, immodesty, jealousy, a loose tongue, loss of temper, lust, lying, malice, manipulation, mistreatment of children and others who are defenseless and helpless, murderous thoughts, murderous acts, prayerlessness, prejudice, partiality, pride, racism, rage, rape, rebelling against authority, refusing to forgive, resisting the Holy Spirit, returning insult for insult, selfishness, being sexually inappropriate, slanderous, slothful, stealing, ingratitude, secretly viewing pornography, violence, loving the world system, not loving your neighbor as yourself, not loving your spouse as you should, being unequally yoked with partners in business, and I finally tired of the list, and I've hardly begun. The Lamb of God bore those sins and thousands of others in his own body on the tree, that he might free us from that which would otherwise conquer us and lead us to a perishing grave. What an unattractive, unpleasant, undesirable list of wrongs, yet he came and he died for each one and thousands of others, those in your life and those in mine. A message like this is not easy to declare.

It isn't easy to hear, I understand. The subject isn't attractive, it's altogether unattractive. The historical setting and the biblical scene are gruesome just to imagine, to say nothing of reading. The sins our Savior bore on our behalf are distasteful, shameful. The price that he paid was awful, enduring it to the point of his final releasing his spirit, having borne the sins of the world. But there's good news.

There's good news. Had it not been for what he did for us on that cross, we would all perish in our sins. We would die doomed.

Our world would be a dark world without hope, and is there any worse way to live than without hope? And when we face our final day, our last breath, what we would then experience, I cannot put into words. Thank God for his forgiveness. Thank God that he so loved us. He gave his one and only Son to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. It took a spotless lamb, and he was that, willing to bear the sins of the whole world, and that he did. Therefore, all our sins are fully and completely forgiven. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin left a crimson stain, and he washed it, what?

White as snow. Crimson stain, white as snow, because of what he did on the cross on our behalf. There is only one appropriate response to what he has done for us. Gratitude. Thank you Lord for enduring the scourging that I deserve. Thank you Lord for taking the nails that should have been driven into my hands and feet. Thank you Lord for paying the complete price for my sins. Thank you Lord for dying that day that I might live forever and ever with you.

How grateful I am for the rest of my life. We have in rather recent months laid to rest some people from our congregation, loved ones we knew and appreciated and enjoyed during the years of our friendship, and God chose for one reason or another to take them to himself through death. So we lost them on this earth, though they gained him. To be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord. What a great message we were able to proclaim as we stood before loving families and friends who admittedly were grieving the loss on this earth but were living in the hope of forgiveness.

Why? Because he took our sins on our behalf and he forgave us so that we could die at peace with hope, facing an eternal home with him forever. How great, how great is that? Filled with hope, filled now with the joy and anticipation of resurrection. I am so ready for the passage on resurrection I could scream. I have not come to the end of myself in these dark scenes that have led up to it and finally this one, but it's part of the message and I can't leave it until I speak to you who are here without Jesus Christ. Think of where you are.

You are still under the load of that list. How do you think you could possibly step into God's perfect snow white heaven where all is pure and clean and fresh and lovely and forgiven if you've never come to Jesus who took your place on his cross? What on earth will it take to convince you to turn to Jesus Christ? You're surrounded by those who have. You listen to one Sunday after Sunday whose life has been changed by the grace of God and I plead with you to be numbered among us, to be a part of the forever family of God.

Let's make that happen right now. Bow your heads. Please close your eyes.

Sit very quietly. Please pray for those sitting around you whom you do not know, some of whom do not know Christ. Right now I speak to you who are without Christ. God so loved you that he gave his one and only son. He so loved you. Your sin separates you from him. He's holy, you're not. He's perfect, you're not. He's clean, you're not. Right down to your thoughts, God saw that even the thoughts of men and women were wicked even in the earliest days of Genesis.

And your thoughts are wicked. You are separated from God by birth, by choice, by your everyday life, but today that can change. He's built a magnificent bridge across the chasm between your sinfulness and his righteousness and that bridge is the cross of Jesus Christ. If you will trust in Christ, simply trust in Christ, taking him alone as your Savior, you walk across that bridge and you will know instant forgiveness and eternal kind of life. Do that now. If we can possibly help you in the journey, please contact us.

Please let us know how we can help you. And if you make the decision, we wish to help you in the journey from earth to heaven as you begin to walk the Christian way of life, which is altogether different from the life you've known. He who has the Son has the life, but he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. Believe on the Lord Jesus right now. You will be saved and saved forever. In the silence of this moment, our Father, I pray that you will do a work in every heart that is unprepared, not ready to die, therefore not really ready to live. I pray that you will break through their wills, reach deeply into their minds so that they see and understand clearly that there is no hope apart from Jesus Christ. There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

Convince them of that. Bring them to faith, I pray, and then we will forever rejoice over the rescue that you have performed. Now, Father, we thank you for the significance of this message. May we never again envision the cross without these images coming to mind, along with a deep sense of gratitude for all your Son has done for us. We pray this in his matchless name and for his sake alone. As everyone said, amen.

Mark Swindoll has deliberately chosen not to rush through this gruesome part of Jesus' story. Though it is difficult to witness the brutality against him, it certainly gives us ample reason to submit our lives to him. You are listening to Insight for Living. To learn more about this ministry, please visit us online at insightworld.org. If today is the day you decided to confess your sinfulness and accept God's forgiveness, we want to point you to the vast learning resources at your disposal online. Each of these resources is designed to help you grow in your walk with God, whether you're a brand new Christian or have been walking with God for a long time.

Take a look at the variety of resources you'll find at insight.org. If you've been listening to Chuck teach the Bible for a long time, you might be surprised to learn our current study in Matthew has never been shared on Insight for Living until now. Well, along with this new teaching series, we're pleased to offer Chuck's commentary on Matthew as well. The commentary is published in two hardbound volumes, and it's called Swindoll's Living Insights on Matthew.

These two books are laid out in an easy-to-grasp format, giving historical context, practical application, and even pictures and illustrations. To purchase Swindoll's Living Insights on Matthew, call us. If you're listening in the U.S., dial 1-800-772-8888 or go to insight.org slash offer. It's your generous donations that empower Insight for Living to deliver these daily visits with Chuck. When you give, you're making it possible for others across our country and even around the world to have access to practical Bible teaching. By giving, you enable them to grow in Christ just as you have. So thanks for giving generously to this nonprofit ministry. To give a donation today, call us.

If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888 or give online at insight.org. In March 2022, Insight for Living Ministries is hosting an unforgettable journey to Israel. They plan to deepen your understanding of the Bible and draw you closer to God.

Chuck Swindoll. For thousands of years, no place has been more meaningful to God's children than the land of Israel. The rugged landscape reminds us to find refuge in God alone. The fertile valleys invite us to follow our shepherd. Jerusalem's position at the very center of the world announces the good news of Christ to every nation. And now you can see Israel with Chuck Swindoll and Insight for Living Ministries March 6 through 17, 2022. Every time I visited the Holy Land, I've returned home with a refreshed heart for God and a renewed vision for the world.

Really, I mean it every time. And so I want you to have the same life-changing experience. To learn more, go to insight.org slash events or call this number 1-888-447-0444. Insight for Living Ministries Tour to Israel is paid for and made possible by only those who choose to attend. I'm Dave Spiker inviting you to join us again tomorrow when Chuck Swindoll describes the mounting tension prior to the crucifixion. Be listening for Insight for Living. The preceding message, Those Final Dreadful Hours, was copyrighted in 2018 and 2021, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2021 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.