Alright brothers and sisters we come now to our Sermon if you were here last week, you'll know that I'm trying to keep these under 20 minutes Usually come around 35 or so. What time is it? I Didn't worry about it 27. Okay. Alright, so I got three minutes to burn. I Brothers and sisters on the back of your bulletin, if you have one, we have our Heidelberg Catechism question and our text for this evening. Anybody not have a bulletin? Cool, so we don't need to use the hymnal. If you do want to look it up in the hymnal, they are in the hymnal in the back. The Heidelberg Catechism question number 37 for this evening. So I'll ask the question and then together we'll answer it and then I'll read through our text for this evening. Brothers and sisters in Christ, what do you understand by the word suffered? That during his whole life on earth, but especially at the end, Christ sustained in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race. This he did in order that by his suffering as the only atoning sacrifice, he might deliver us, body and soul, from eternal condemnation and gain for us God's grace, righteousness, and eternal life. Amen. And then, of course, just a note on that, it's not asking generally, you know, how do you understand the word suffering? It's talking about the word suffering in the Apostles' Creed. 1 Peter 2, verses 21 through 24. For this you are 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. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your son and for his suffering. We thank you that he suffered on our behalf so that we might receive from your hand life forevermore. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. Peter was a pastor. Peter was a pastor to a church that was surrounded by those who mocked the plight of the Christian. What I mean by mocked the plight of the Christian is this. Peter wrote to a church that was surrounded by people who thought, well, why are these Christians even bothering with their religion? Why do they bother believing in Jesus? Why do they bother believing in God? Because, well, they end up suffering for it. Why do they bother believing in Jesus and obeying God if they are going to die just like us? You see the people around the church that Peter was writing to were mocking the church, were criticizing the church, were even attacking those members in the church who believed in Jesus because they said, all of this Christianity stuff, it's useless. You are just gonna suffer for your faith. So why bother? Oh, come on, spoilers. But yes, exactly. But Peter, he doesn't go to glory right away. Instead, he points very specifically to one who suffered for them. He says, guess what? Yeah, you are gonna suffer as Christians. Yeah, your life is not gonna be necessarily the happiest or the easiest. You aren't gonna get to do all the fun things that you used to do before you were saved. But guess what? Jesus suffered as well. He says, this one that is calling you to suffer, he's not just sitting up there on his throne in complete comfort saying, you know what? I've never had to suffer a day in my life, but you must suffer for me. No, no, Jesus was the one who suffered more than anyone ever suffered in the world. And this is the Christ, the one, the Savior, who calls them to suffer. So Peter points their eyes to their suffering Savior and he says, guess what? Jesus suffered for you. And so you be willing to suffer for him. Now, unfortunately this evening, we are not gonna get into the whole application of now you should suffer for Christ because that's not really where the Heidelberg Catechism is going. What we are gonna talk about though in detail is the fact that Christ suffered on our behalf. Christ suffered, not just for Christians, Christ suffered for every one of you who believes in his name. Our theme that we'll be going through in two points this evening is that Jesus truly suffered for sinners. Jesus truly suffered for sinners. And we're gonna break this into two points. First of all, Jesus truly suffered. He didn't just seem to suffer, he actually suffered. And then, of course, our second point is Jesus suffered for sinners. So first, Jesus truly suffered. When we think about the suffering of Christ, we normally think about the Passion Week, right? The week that led up to, that included, and that followed his death. So he suffered as he was betrayed. He was taken to the cross. He died on the cross. And then at the very end of that week, at the beginning of the next, he rose. And so we usually think of that Passion Week. Now there are 89 chapters in the four gospels combined, so if you add up Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you're gonna get a total of 89 chapters. Would you like to guess how many of those chapters cover the Passion Week? How many chapters do you think? What did you say? Half? Pretty close, pretty close. Who said 20? Cool, 30, so somewhere between 20 and a half. We have about a third of the chapters of the Gospels deal with the events of the Passion Week. God wants us to see that in full detail. That is actually the place in Christ's suffering that is expounded on the most. This is not some minor event in the life of our Savior. This is actually the main event, and God really wants us to slow down and take a look at his suffering. And yet the suffering of Jesus began far earlier than the Passion Week. Let's take a few moments to briefly survey the suffering of our Savior. We see the Heidelberg Catechism answer before us. It says, during his whole life on earth, but especially at the end, Christ sustained in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race. So that means from birth to death, Christ experienced suffering. Now for the record, this is what we mean when we talk about Christ's suffering. We don't just mean that his life on earth was miserable or that he had more than the average allotment of paper cuts. No, we mean that all of Jesus' life here on earth and especially his time on the cross was spent bearing the wrath of God that properly should have been borne by us. We usually think of him bearing the wrath of God on the cross. And yet there's far more. In fact, all of his life before that, he was bearing the wrath of God. He did not deserve what he bore, and yet he bore that wrath willingly so that we might be saved from the just wrath of God. But you might ask, well, how did he suffer during the beginning of his life? He had two great parents who cared for him. He had a whole bunch of disciples who did what he told them to, like he had a life on the road. He got to see places, he got to travel. Where's his suffering in that? Well, here the words of Ursinus are very helpful. Ursinus, by the way, is one of the chief authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, if not the chief author himself. In this commentary on the Catechism, in his commentary, Ursinus lists the ways in which Jesus suffered even before the cross. He says five ways. He gave up the joys of heaven. He experienced the infirmities of our nature. He knew deprivation and poverty. He endured insults, treacheries, slanders, blasphemies, rejection and contempt. He also faced temptation from the devil. You look at his life from the moment he gave up the glories of heaven and came to earth, that was the beginning of his suffering all the way until he died. But this is not just her sinus coming up with a couple of quick facts that, well, you know, I think he did this, I think he suffered in this and that. No, no, no, he has biblical basis for all of this. You remember our passage from a couple of weeks ago from Philippians chapter two, verses six through seven. Jesus Christ, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men. He humbled himself. Even leaving heaven was an act of suffering for our Savior. You know, we were born into this world, and so we don't a lot of times see, especially our early years, as suffering. My childhood was a pretty nice time in my life. A lot less stress, that's for sure. And yet Christ goes immediately from the glories, the infinite glories of heaven, surrounded by hordes of angels, worshiping him to a cattle stall. And not a nice one like we see in the pictures in the movies. This was a grungy thing. It was laid in this manger, this feed trough. Immediately he started to feel things like cold and pain, uncomfortability. This was not a great transition for him. But then we see him as well, hungering and thirsting. John chapter four, he asks the woman at the well for a drink of water. Now, of course, this was to start a conversation with her, but he actually thirsted. We see him hungering and thirsting throughout his ministry. He also needs sleep. Remember the time he falls asleep in the back of the boat and his disciples are freaking out because they're gonna die and they say, ah, we're gonna die. And Jesus wakes up and he calms everything. I like to think he probably went back to sleep, but you know. He slept, he was tired. He also mourned outside of the tomb of his friend Lazarus. He shed tears for the physical death that his friend had to undergo. So he experienced deprivation and grief. And then don't forget his poverty as well. Jesus did not come and live a cushy life on the road. He was not one of these, these campers, you know, off-road campers. It goes from one town to the next and has their van all decked out comfortable. No, no, no. Yeah, in Matthew chapter eight, verse 20, Jesus says to his audience, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. All of us, even if it's just a tarp to lay under, can say we have a place to lay our heads. Jesus didn't have that. Well, time doesn't allow us to catalog the insults and treacheries that Jesus experienced, but we remember that it was one of his own disciples who betrayed him with a kiss. And he didn't just betray him to the Romans, no, he betrayed, Judas betrayed Jesus to those very same opponents who had been ridiculing him and mocking him and attacking him for the majority of his ministry. Jesus did not have an easy life. He suffered all the way to the cross. But then we get to Passion Week, and we see Christ's suffering in Peter's condensed description of this. We see in 1 Peter 2, this short clipped description of his suffering. Peter, who walked alongside Jesus for the last three years of his life, he bore testimony to the way that his perfect, sinless Savior died and suffered. He says, when Jesus was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he 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. Francis' short statement about the suffering Savior reminds us of three very real ways that Jesus suffered for us during the week of his passion. First, he was reviled. Now, we don't use that phrase a lot. If I go and revile somebody, you guys are gonna be like, what is he doing? He was mocked, but not just in a, oh, you know, you're so goofy sort of way. No, he was mocked in a vicious, toxic way. We remember the sham trial that the Sanhedrin held where Jesus was falsely accused of being a temple destroyer. We remember the abuse of the Jews as they blindfolded him and struck him and said, prophesy to his Christ, which is the one who struck you? We remember the cynical interrogation of Pilate and the way Pilate then handed Jesus over to be beaten and crucified. We remember from Matthew 27, the way the Roman soldiers dressed him up and then spat on him and then jeered and then struck him again. Then he hung on the cross. And as he hung on the cross, people passed by and mocked him. Even the Jewish leadership mocked him, calling on him to save himself. They said, if you can save others, why can't you save yourself? Even the criminals that sat beside him, crucified on crosses on either side, hurled insults at him. That's the suffering that Christ underwent as he was reviled. But Peter also reminds us that he physically suffered. He physically suffered on the cross. Once he was brought to the place of the skull, Jesus was placed against a cross bar. His hands were nailed to that bar. He was lifted up with that bar to hang on the cross. And he hung on that cross for six hours. During that time, he experienced intense pain and dehydration and probably suffocation. I don't wanna get too graphic here, but the way that crucifixion works is you're nailed to this cross. If you're lucky, your feet are actually nailed too to the cross. You're able to support your weight on your feet a little bit and raise yourself up every now and then so you can get a breath of air. But as you do so, you're pulling at the nails. He suffered. The weight of his body pulled on the nails and he would have been very hard put to even breathe. There was no peaceful moment as he hung on the cross for your sins. This was serious emotional, physical, and psychological agony that he underwent. And in all of this, as we see from Heidelberg Catechism 37, he bore the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race. Mark chapter 15 verse 34 catalogs the anguish of Jesus as he experienced the wrath of God at our sins that was poured out on his sinless shoulders. We like to think of the crucifixion being the main suffering for Christ. And yet I think the main suffering for Christ was the fact that he was bearing our sins for us, that he was cut off from his father. Mark 15, he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Friends, Jesus suffered his whole life and especially on the cross in order to bear the full brunt of the just wrath of God for sinners. His suffering and his death that was intense enough and valuable enough to be sufficient for the atonement of every single sinner on earth was then applied efficiently to the ones who the Father had chosen and loved from eternity past. We really need to let this sink in. There's something very clipped and final when we talk about death, isn't there? I worked at a funeral home and saw my share of dead bodies. There's nothing going on there in that dead body. You look at that dead body and you understand whatever went on before their death, now they're done. They're not experiencing pain or agony anymore. They're at peace, hopefully in heaven. And yet we can't just think of Christ dying on the cross. We need to understand that he suffered on the cross for us. Jesus suffered not merely in body, but also in spirit for every single sin of every one of his people, all without complaint. Peter reminds us that he did not revile back. He didn't mock back. He didn't threaten those who made him suffer. No, he bore the suffering of his life and his death with patience, trusting in the justice of his father. If Jesus was not supposed to be there, If he ended up on the tree by accident, he would have called legions of angels to take him down and wipe out those Romans. If Jesus did not willingly go to the cross for us, if he did not willingly suffer for us, if he was there because, well, he was forced to be there, he wouldn't be there. No, he would have wiped out his enemies and brought justice on them immediately. And yet what does he do? No, he trusts in the justice of his father. Verse Peter says that he did not threaten. He committed himself to him who judges righteously. He committed himself to the justice of his father. He did this for us willingly. Now this of course brings us to our second point, that Jesus suffered for sinners. The Heidelberg Catechism reminds us that all of Jesus' suffering had a purpose. Jesus didn't just go and suffer for fun. No, he suffered for a purpose. For the salvation of souls. The Heidelberg Catechism reminds us that all of Jesus' suffering was for you. He lived and went to the cross so that by his suffering, as the only atoning sacrifice, he might deliver you, body and soul, from eternal condemnation and gain for you God's grace, righteousness, and eternal life. Jesus' suffering had a purpose. He atoned for us. He delivered us and gained grace, righteousness, and life for us. So let's look at each of these three benefits briefly. First, he atoned for us. We see Peter talk about this, excuse me, when he says in verse 24, Jesus himself bore our sins. in his own body on the tree. Jesus bore my sin and Jesus bore your sin. He atoned for my sin and for your sin. Now, the word atonement is not one we use every day. To atone for something, this is not lingo that we use. We say, well, what does it mean for someone to atone for something? This is more of that Christianese that confuses us so much, isn't it? To atone for something means to make amends for that thing, to make restitution. to make reparations, if you will. Now, when I was a kid, we had this horrible idea of vengeance on our siblings. We had this idea that if our siblings did something we didn't like, what we could do is we could go and take a handful of ice cubes and put it in their bed. This is such a stupid idea. As a child, I don't know why I didn't figure out that this was not a good prank or, you know, whatever. This is just a stupid idea. The kid's not going to jump into bed, like jump right in and then be shocked. No, they're going to open up their bed and see wet spots or ice cubes and say, well, what? You know, this backfired on the pranker, right? My parents found out pretty quickly that what you do is when you find these ice cubes in the bed, the person who put them there has to strip the bed, flip the mattress, put a new sheet on, put a new blanket on, then go wash the sheets and everything that was, you know, got ice on it. It didn't just backfire because it wasn't effective, it also backfired because you had to make recompense and restitution. It's the worst prank ever. Reparations had to be made. That was the parental rule. And on a much bigger scale, we see that for sin, reparations have to be made. You do something, you pay the penalty. Now reparations for sin, that's a difficult one because we're actually sinning against God who made us. For sin, no reparation can be made except death. We know this from the book of Genesis where God says, obey and live, disobey and die. And then like 65 other books of the Bible kind of back that up, you know. Brothers and sisters, when we sin, we deserve death. The wages of sin is death. One good deed cannot make amends for a bad one. God doesn't say, oh, you helped an old lady across the sidewalk. Well, I guess, you know, murdering that person in cold blood, I guess those two kind of equal out. It just doesn't work that way. Two goods don't equal out a wrong. No, the only way to pay, to make atonement for sin is by death. So when Jesus suffered on the tree, he did so to make amends for our sin. to pay the consequences for our sins. Not just one or two of our sins, but all of our sins. And not just ours, but all of his elect. What Jesus did in the atonement was something only a divine person can do. Only God can do this. He paid the penalty for millions of people and their millions of sins. I'm starting to think about how many Christians are alive in the world today. Let's not go in the world, let's talk about just here in this building. We recognize that, all right, we've got like maybe 20, 25, 30 people here. And then we start to think about how many times we sin a day, and then a year, and then in our lifetime. And we say, well, who can pay that massive debt for each and every one of our sins? Only Jesus. Only Jesus. The act of suffering is especially precious to us, though, in light of the sinlessness of Christ. Peter reminds us in verse 22 that Jesus is the only one who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth. His perfection, wow, that was a good one. His perfection underscores the righteousness of Christ and the unjustness of his suffering. Now the unjustness of his suffering is from mankind's perspective. From our perspective, he didn't deserve to die. And yet this is the amazing selflessness of our Savior. As he laid down his life for his people, Jesus went willingly. The sinless one suffered for sinners like us. His death atoned for our guilt and for our sin. But guess what? He did more than actually just atone for us. He delivered us. That flows from his atoning at work. He delivered us as well. We deserve to die for our sins. We deserve not just a physical death to mark the end of our time here on earth. We deserve a complete and utter eternal death as we burn in hell for eternity because of our sins. This is not popular stuff, but this is straight from scripture. The wages of sin is not just physical death. Yes, every single sinner will physically die. But hell is reserved for those who are the enemies of God. 2 Thessalonians 1, Paul tells us that God's enemies and the enemies of God's people will be repaid with tribulation. that God in flaming fire will take vengeance on those who do not know him and on those who do not obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is 1 Thessalonians 1 verses eight and following. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. God does not mess around when it comes to his justice. This is the punishment we richly deserve. This is the fate that lies before those who do not cast themselves at the feet of Jesus, begging him for mercy. But to those who repent and believe, God delivers their soul. God sees the suffering and the death of his son on the cross in his whole life. And he agrees with the dying words of Jesus saying, it is finished. Those are like the three most comforting words. Three in English. Three most comforting words for us. It is finished. Nothing more needs to be done. For his chosen people, Jesus did it all. Friends, we are delivered as we die with Him to our sins and the consequences of those sins. We are delivered from the slavery that we were in to the devil as we're freed by our Savior. Well, please notice one final benefit of Christ's suffering that the Heidelberg Catechism catalogs. Christ gains for us God's grace, righteousness, and eternal life. Now, the suffering of our Savior, it's not just, well, it atoned for us, and it delivered us, and we will experience the benefits of that when we get to heaven. No, it actually has benefits for us right now. We sing amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. And that's about our hearts. We say amazing grace that refreshes us every day. When we sin, we look at the odiousness of our sin and we don't say, well, I've messed it all up. I've lost everything. No, we instead say amazing grace that saved a wretch like me. And this grace, this gift of love and acceptance and fellowship is poured out on us day by day. But it gives us righteousness as well and eternal life. Peter says as much when he says, we having died to sins might live for righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. By the stripes given to Jesus, the beatings, the mockings, the nails, the spear points, by the stripes laid on our spotless Savior, we are healed. That means everything that was broken when Adam sinned is made new and fresh and whole once more. We're brought back into fellowship with our creator. But our healing goes even farther than just restoring a right relationship with God. No, we are showered with grace every day as our loving God forgives the sins that we bring to him in repentance. We're filled with the grace to grow as we heed the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and we live for righteousness. We're freed to strive daily for growth in holiness. We're promised eternal life as well because God through his son delivered us from eternal death. Brothers and sisters, this is the benefit of the suffering that Jesus accomplished on our behalf. Jesus suffered for you. He bore the wrath of God that you deserved, that I deserve. so that we might be healed by his stripes. That is our joy and our hope. As we face this life that may be filled with suffering at times, we know that our Savior suffered once for us, and we are given grace, righteousness, and life in him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Son who suffered on our behalf. We thank you that he died so that we might live. Lord, we are so amazed when we think about the suffering that should rightly be ours. We think of the fires of hell that should have been poured out on us, that we should have been cast into. And yet your son, Jesus Christ, experienced those fires and flames of hell as he hung on the cross. He experienced those for us so that we might be plucked from the fire and given life in your presence forever. Lord, Our gratitude knows no ends. We thank you. We throw ourselves on you and ask you to help us see how valuable your suffering was for us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.