Our Contact With His Death
Preparing a sermon recently about Jesus & People, something came to mind about
the death of Christ; specifically, our contact with that history.
First, we know this. There was a necessity about the death of Christ to save
sinners built into God's plan that can be best reckoned with by seeing what the
Old Testament taught about atonement, about the penalty for sin being paid.
When we read the gospel accounts of the imprisonment, torture and execution of
Jesus, we need to turn out thoughts with the deepest reverence to what He was
willing to do for people, and then make it personal. He was stripped naked,
flogged, spat on, struck in the face, subjected to mockery, pain and death - -
all of that indignity He endured, so that you and I could be forgiven of lying,
or evil thoughts, or any other kind of disobedience to God.
Now to the thought I had about our contact with this truth. You can watch scores
of movies and hear the songs of the season all you want, perhaps to some
benefit. There is nothing as powerful as reading what God has said about the
death of Christ through the Scriptures. No movie maker can do a better job than
the Holy Spirit. No orchestra or composer can move us like the words written by
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. No forensic/medical expert can describe it better
than those men who were there and who were inspired by the Spirit to tell the
story.
"For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an
example, that you should follow His steps:
"Who committed no sin,
Nor was deceit found in His mouth";
who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not
threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore
our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live
for righteousness-by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep
going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls."
1 Pet. 2:22-25
By Warren E. Berkley
The Final Page
From Expository Files 14.12; December 2007
