We're going to begin reading at verse 13 and read through verse 49. This is the well-known story of Jesus after His resurrection, appearing to the two travelers to Emmaus. And there's two reasons we're reading this passage. The first is because when we consider the suffering of Jesus, we need to do so in connection with the resurrection. The resurrection is what gives the suffering of Jesus meaning and understanding, and without it, it would have been in vain. And we see the significance and the power that was in his suffering there in Jesus walking with those two travelers and his instruction. The second reason is because Jesus characterizes, in this passage to these two travelers, the entire Scriptures' instruction about Him as suffering. The Scriptures didn't simply point to the Christ, but a suffering Christ. Verse 13, And behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem, about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass that while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these, that ye have one to another as ye walk, and are sad? And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering, said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and have crucified him. but we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel. And beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done, yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulcher. And when they found not his body, they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulcher, and found it even so as the women had said, but him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. And they drew nigh unto the village whither they went, and he made as though he would have gone further, but they constrained him, saying, abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he said it, meet with them. He took bread, and blessed it, and broke, and gave to them, and their eyes were opened. And they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures? And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with him, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread. And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and said unto them, peace be unto you. They were terrified and defrighted and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And he said unto them, why are you troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy and wondered, he said unto them, have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish and of a honeycomb. And he took it and did eat before them. And he said unto them, these are the words which I speak unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures. And he said unto them, thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of my Father unto you, but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high. And we read that far in God's word. We consider this morning the instruction of the Heidelberg Catechism in Lord's Day 15. What dost thou understand by the words he suffered that he, all the time that he lived on earth, but especially at the end of his life, sustained in body and soul the wrath of God against the sins of all mankind. so that by his passion, as the only propitiatory sacrifice, he might redeem our body and soul from everlasting damnation and obtain for us the favor of God-righteousness and eternal life? Why did he suffer under Pontius Pilate as judge, that he, being innocent and yet condemned by a temporal judge, might thereby free us from the severe judgment of God to which we were exposed. Is there anything more in his being crucified than if he had died some other death? Yes, there is. For thereby I am assured that he took on him the curse which lay upon me. For the death of the cross was accursed of God. Beloved in our Lord Jesus Christ, by way of introduction, it's important for us to remember that the Catechism here is explaining the Apostles' Creed, and that the Apostles' Creed is summarizing the entire life of Jesus that's worth our attention. Last week, we saw that there was a great mysterious miracle in the origins of Jesus into this world. That He was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of a virgin, the Virgin Mary. so much for his entrance into the world as the eternal Son of God. But now, take note that everything the Bible teaches about Jesus, and there's much. Think of all the biographical data that is found just in the Gospels, about his life, about his works, about his preaching. And then think about how all of that was in fulfillment of other things prophesied about him throughout the Scriptures. Think of all the data, the information that we have about Jesus, even in the New Testament epistles. The Apostle John himself, near the end of his Gospel, says that he supposes that if everything was written about Jesus and what he had done, that there's not enough books in the world to contain it. And the Apostles' Creed takes that information, takes it all and boils it down to suffering. Well, and death. Think about that next time we recite the Apostles' Creed about Jesus. Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered, died. In other words, the entire ministry and life of Jesus, from his origins and that miraculous birth to the death, which is, of course, on the cross, is simply summarized as suffering. That's significant for us, too, although for a different reason. It's significant because that is really the summary of our life. It's not the summary we want for our life. It's not the summary that we often present when we're burying someone. We would much prefer to give a biography of our education where we worked and our contribution to a life and the world around us, and what we like to do for hobbies, and how perhaps we labored and worked in the church. And I'm not denying there's a place for that, even as there's a lot of data about Jesus that's there and important. But truly the Scriptures summarize the life of a child of God With that word, suffering. So much so that if we imagine we're a child of God and we cannot say we're suffering, then we may question whether we're true representatives of Jesus Christ. Now the reason is different. Jesus was suffering under the wrath of God. And we suffer for Christ's sake. In other words, even if we summarize our life as suffering, it may simply be the biography, well, he or she suffered because they didn't have a lot of money. And they had this disease, you see. And this happened to them, and that happened to them. That's not really even the suffering either. It's the suffering that we endure for Christ's sake, either from the outside, because we bear his name, and they treat us the way they treated him, but also the suffering of the child of God in the battle against sin. It's related to the suffering of Christ. The last thing that we simply want to point out is the reason why this may be the summary of Jesus' life is we're describing the state of humiliation. That suffering is the word that is closely associated with that humiliation, an expression of that. And we talked about that last time, but that's also something we should remember. Consider with me this morning, this Jesus, the suffering Savior, and we look first of all at that suffering, then the explanation, and finally the significance. And of course, there will be a little overlap between those three points. But we begin with the suffering itself, And what we want to look at this morning to make sure we understand the uniqueness of this suffering, because that's what it's all about. When we describe Jesus as the suffering Savior, we do so in a way that differentiates Him from ourselves or any human being. When He suffered under Pontius Pilate, His suffering was unique. It wasn't the same kind of suffering that the two thieves on the cross suffered under Pontius Pilate. And so also his crucifixion. His crucifixion, his suffering of it, was not at all that of the other two people who were nailed to crosses next to him. The significance of their crucifixion is only in that of Christ's. So that's the burden in the first place. I could spend a lot of time laying out the various ways Jesus suffered, and we're going to do that. But none of that has any significance unless we realize who it is that's suffering. And that was really the point of the meditation that was in the bulletin from Hermann Huxma. You see, we have to connect these lines of the Apostles' Creed to who Jesus is. Now, we've been emphasizing the fact that Jesus is the Son of Man, fully and completely man, something we may not ever forget. But at the same time, we can never forget that this One in His person is the Son of God. And that is what explains the uniqueness of this suffering. Even when we realize, and I know you do, that the suffering of Jesus was suffering under the wrath of God. You all know that the explanation for his state of humiliation is that he appears before God as guilty. But now even that by itself doesn't have its full significance until you realize this is God who we're talking about. This is why it comes after conceived by the Holy Spirit. In other words, when we go through the suffering of Jesus in life and in death, we're talking about God suffering in the only way that God could suffer, which is in our flesh. You realize that, right? What makes this so mysterious, and why we have a hard time understanding and describing it and plumbing the depths of it, is we have to start with God. God, in His own good pleasure, and according to His choice, decided that in His Son He would take human flesh, under the curse, under His own curse, and then suffer, suffer His own wrath for what that human nature and flesh deserves. That's the miracle of it. You see, God cannot suffer, not in and of Himself. He certainly cannot suffer His own wrath. Why would God have wrath against himself? He's the perfect God. He's the holy God, the righteous God. He's never made a mistake. But that's exactly what God did. So when we read that he suffered, we have to ask, well, who? And the answer, of course, is Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, the one who was born in Bethlehem and then raised in that town of Nazareth by Mary and Joseph, that one. that one among all human beings, and only that one suffered the wrath of God. But none of that has any meaning whatsoever if that's all who he is. Then he's just a uniquely great man. Not only that, but we were talking about an impossibility because we've learned many, many times before, no human being can suffer the wrath of God against sin, not even your own sin. The wicked in hell will suffer the wrath of God eternally and never pay for one single sin. But Jesus does. So does that... Well, let me rephrase that. Certainly, that changes your thinking, right? About Jesus. So that when you look at Jesus, as we're going to look at Him in a little bit closer, we realize what's happening. The idea isn't simply that God, in the suffering of Christ, ordains a substitute to stand in our place, which is certainly what happened. But not like, for example, all the Israelites did with all their lambs and sheep. See, they brought substitutes too. They were being taught something. God taught them in the Old Testament, I don't want you to be sacrificing yourselves and your children to pay for your sins. That's not what I want. That's not what should be done and may be done. No sacrificing of your babies. That's an abomination to me. Don't sacrifice your own kids like the wicked do. Bring me some lambs and some sheep. Kill them. And so the farmer selected his substitute. He would walk out to his pasture, grab a cute little lamb, slice its neck, and it would be sacrificed. But that's not what God did. God didn't walk out into His pasture and grab the good shepherd Jesus and say, now you, now you, I'm going to nail to a cross, to save all these other people. No, God said, I myself will be the substitute. That's what God did. When God chose us in himself and gave us to Jesus Christ to redeem us And to purchase us, God had to do it completely himself. It required God taking the very flesh that must suffer and bear the wrath. But since man can't do that, God bears his own wrath. I hope we get this. That even when we look at Christ, we can't see just the Lamb of God in the sense that God grabbed him out of all the creatures of his grand creation and says, you're going to pay. But God himself said, I will pay. I will pour out my wrath upon myself. And God does the impossible. If you think that the virgin birth is impossible, that God unites himself to human flesh forever, which is what we learned last week, that in his person, the person of the Son of God, by taking the nature of Mary, became a man permanently, while still remaining God. We learn why God did that, so that God can suffer in our flesh. That's what's going on. God who cannot suffer, suffers in our flesh. God who cannot sin, bears the sins of the world in our flesh. And that's how we have to see Christ. That's how we have to see everything. Now, that helps us understand this fact that the Catechism emphasizes that his suffering was lifelong. Now, there's a lot about that suffering we don't know the details about. We know that as soon as he entered into the world, he was suffering. He suffered in the womb. He suffered after his conception, his birth. As soon as he existed, he was suffering. And the suffering of his birth wasn't simply that he took a human nature, because then he would still be suffering in his human nature, and he's not. But the suffering had to do with the fact that he took a human nature under the curse of God, under the wrath of God, a weakened human nature, one that could die and therefore did die. But there's more. It means he suffered as a three-year-old and a five-year-old. He suffered in his family home. He suffered at school. But the Bible doesn't tell us much about that, much at all. He suffered in the loss of his own father, no doubt. Now, why he suffered, and the explanation of all that suffering, and again, we don't, I think, understand it. When we get sick, we just get sick. But when Christ got sick, if he got sick, or if he experienced all the troubles that we experience in life, including death, he's going through suffering that is uniquely human, not belonging to God, but experiencing it in a very unique way. When we suffer death, we don't really quite grasp why there's death, the implications of death, that death is the result of the curse of God. Jesus was aware of that. Part of Jesus' suffering is that already as a young child, He could see the ignorance of others, including his own mother. He could see the sin of the human race, sin of everyone around him in ways that you and I cannot, and how he suffered because he knows what sin is. And we tend to not understand this. His suffering also was unique, and this especially comes out in the beginning of his ministry. When his ministry, public, begins at his baptism, and on the one hand we see God the Father saying, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, and the Spirit descending upon him in a dove, the amazing revelation of the Trinity there at his baptism. No sooner is that done, and he is driven, driven, we read, into the wilderness to be tempted. He doesn't eat for 40 days. And here comes Satan. You say, what's suffering about that? Well, remember, he made Satan. Now, he made Satan good and right. He made Satan to serve God, his creator. Made Satan to serve the human race, which Satan, of course, rebelled against. Satan rebelled the original sin. Why should He, the most glorious, wonderful, powerful creature God made, the pinnacle of God's creation, serve the human race, those material beings? But that was suffering, to be tempted by that creature that He made. Tempted to bow down to Him and receive all the worlds that He had made, by giving himself to Satan, which is always the temptation of mankind. I'll give you whatever you want, bother me to me. That's a suffering that's unique. And then, when he gets into his ministry, his ministry basically is, I must suffer and die. And even his disciples question that. He has to rebuke them, get behind me, Satan, for saying, oh, it don't have to be that way, Lord. But then think about the suffering of His own flesh, which we see in the Garden of Gethsemane. It talks about especially at the end of His life He suffered. And we see Him making that prayer. And I don't know if we understand, but we see something in Christ there, that on one hand He knows He must go the way of the cross, and on the other hand He's praying if there's another way, make it so. He's suffering when he says, nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done. What other human being suffered in such a way that great drops of blood oozed out of their head? Now, especially at the end of his life, catechism points to the fact that there was something special about the suffering under Pontius Pilate and in his crucifixion. And here too, We want to emphasize the uniqueness of that suffering. Many, many people had been dragged before Pilate before. Even innocent people, I'm sure, had been dragged before Pilate before, perhaps even condemned. But none of them suffered like Jesus. Read sometime the history of the Roman Empire and how many they crucified, even crucifixion. The suffering of Jesus on the cross was unique above all men. And it's that in all of this, he's suffering the wrath of God for sins that aren't his own personally, that were sins only because he personally took responsibility for them, legally said, those are mine, I take them upon myself. So it's not only that God suffers, But he suffers voluntarily for sins that he took upon himself. That's what's all being laid out here. And again, emphasize, too, the Catechism's point that he did this body and soul. We can't just concentrate the suffering at the end of his life by looking at the pain that was inflicted on his body by the scourges of the soldiers. The public humiliation before all the people, the mocking and the jeering. Now what made it somewhat unique is Jesus was the king of the Jews. He was their king. The mockery and the scorn that David endured as the king of Israel was nothing. He represented all the Jews. Everybody knew it. But also, there's this, that he represents the human race. Catechism makes a point of that. It's shocking, in fact. Talks about the sins of the human race, the sins of all mankind. The idea there is, legally, He represents man. And the suffering that man deserves, He is bearing upon Himself. Now, we need to explain this a little bit more. And there's a lot of explanations that could be given. It talks about a propitiatory sacrifice. The explanation you all know. You all know the explanation is that God is visiting him for what those sins deserve, which is suffering, even eternal suffering. And in that, of course, there's a mystery, a great mystery. How could Christ, for a few hours on the cross, bear the wrath of God? even a wrath that God will pour out upon the wicked in hell eternally in just that brief amount of time, and do that just not for Himself, but all these sins, just my sins alone, how could He do that? And again, the explanation has to do with the worth and value which often comes up in the creeds. Your life isn't worth much, neither is mine. There's not much value in my life or yours. A farmer has some sort of sense of that when he has this farm full of different creatures, and they have a different value and worth. And so he might mourn more, and it's more costly when his prized ox that he relies upon so much, for its work goes down. He has to put it down. Verses say, one sheep out of the thousands on his hills. What explains the severity of the suffering has to do with who he is and what he is and the value then, which comes up again and again. When his blood is spilt, it is precious, uniquely precious blood. It is the blood of the Son of God. It is God's blood. God who doesn't have blood, God who is Spirit, has blood, unique blood, special blood, as we pointed out in the conception and birth of Jesus. And God voluntarily sheds that blood for the sole purpose of paying for sins. That's redemption, propitiation. But this morning, I want to connect a couple thoughts to expand on something. It's not the full explanation, but it's one worth pointing out because it gets at the heart of the matter. There's a couple of things about this Lord's Day that are strange. Maybe striking. Number one is its talk about Him sustaining in body and soul the wrath of God against the sins of all mankind. And about that I must point out that in the original, it's actually the sin, singular, the sin of mankind. And really, strictly speaking, the sin of the human race. Now, why that's strange is, number one, why sin is the singular. Number two, what's it talking about? Because, is it saying that there's a universal atonement? That's what some say that means. What they say is that Jesus literally paid for the sins of the whole human race, everybody's sins. They're all paid for. And we reject that explanation because if it's true that Jesus bore the sins and thus sustained the wrath of God for the sins of every individual human being, then every human being, they're saved. Their sins are paid for. It would be unjust of God to cast them in hell. It would be unjust of God to pour any wrath upon them whatsoever, which is part of the significance of this for us, as we're going to see. But note the phrase, it's there, it's not a mistake. Number two, take note of the fact that what Jesus does here obtains for us the favor of God. There too, the word favor is really the grace of God. In other words, Jesus had to do something in order to obtain the right for God to be gracious unto us. Think about that. Such is the justice of God, such is His righteousness that God really cannot even show us grace unless Christ suffered. Think about that. Thirdly, and more importantly, it takes His suffering and highlights especially His suffering under Pontius Pilate. And the explanation for that is, well, you see, the significance of his suffering under Pontius Pilate as judge is that he was declared innocent there and yet condemned by this temporal judge. And the significance, it says, is that he might free us from the severe judgment of God to which we were exposed. And we have a sense of that, but again, Why does the Catechism highlight that? Why did the Apostles' Creed highlight that? Why not his trial under Caiaphas and the Jews? Why is that omitted? Why Pontius Pilate, the judge? Now, again, there's partial answers. One of the partial answers is, well, that's the way he's going to be crucified. The Jews had a whole nother plan for killing Jesus. They were going to kill him secretly. They were perhaps going to stone him, slice his throat, whatever. But he may die that way. God has a different plan. He must die the accursed death. He must suffer on the cross, not because it's especially painful, but because of the meaning of the cross. God cursed that death. God was saying something in that kind of death. And Jesus must suffer that way, and the only way for that to happen is to be condemned unto Pontius Pilate. But there's more here. You see, what the Catechism is getting at is, what is the sin of mankind? The catechism here, you understand, is not looking at the human race individually. It's not concerned with that, your own personal sins as such. But it's saying that the human race is guilty of a sin, one sin. You can take all the sins of the human race. You can take all of its fornication and adultery. You can take all of its idolatry, all of its thievery, all of its false slander, and all these things, and there's one sin, one sin. And it's the sin that incurs the wrath of God. Well, that sin is the sin that's exposed under Pilate. Not just the sin of the Jews. The sin of the Jews was that they rejected Christ as their king, as their Messiah. It was the Jews saying, we were looking for the Messiah, and we were looking for the Christ, but not this one. Not this one is king. In the Jews, he's the stone rejected We don't want this one as the cornerstone for our temple. We want to build on other material. We don't want a church represented by this man. We will not have him as our head. And that's the condemnation of the church of God in its natural state. The false church. Significant. And Jesus certainly suffered for such sins. The sins that were committed by the church. But there's more. sin of which every human being is guilty of, and it's the sin of rejecting God. But there's more than that. You see, we have an instinctive understanding that sin, the sin of all mankind, is that they reject God. In one way or another, in fact, we may never even think of the human race as being innocent. That there are these people out there, they never knew about God. That's not true. So all man is guilty of rejecting God, but even then we don't understand the horror of that sin. Because in Christ, what God makes clear is man will not have God in any form whatsoever. God comes as this weak and helpless but perfect man, absolutely righteous. And God says, here I am. It's one thing to reject me as this majestic Lord of heaven and earth, of righteousness and holiness, but that's not what man does. Man rejects the love of God and the grace of God that is revealed in Christ. That's what happened under Pilate. What happened under Pilate is that man who represents the whole human race. And not only that, but not the barbarians and the natives running around in their loincloths, but man at the pinnacle of development in all of his civilization, in all of his art, in all of his science, in all of his jurisprudence. and his interest in righteousness and holiness and all these things, and God exposes it all as a sham. Because when Christ, God, stands before Pontius Pilate, this man of supposedly upright morals, representing man, and there he is, innocent. And it's plain to all why he's there. He's there as the king of the Jews. He's there to represent God's people. He's there on behalf of the kingdom of God. No threat to Caesar. Man, and let's be very specific, you and me will kill God every single time. You could pretend we don't, but that's the sin of depravity. That is our depravity. You may think depravity expresses itself in some of the stuff we see going on in the seedy areas of town. We may look at a certain individual and they say, that's extremely wicked. But the real wickedness of mankind, that which exposes his depravity, is that when God comes in our flesh, God reveals all that he reveals there. Man says, crucify him. We don't want that. We don't want the righteousness of God. We don't want the light of God. That was the significance of his suffering under Pontius Pilate. And now keep in mind, this brings it all home. It's that sin that Jesus is suffering for. We tend to look at Jesus and we say, well, he suffered for my particular sins. He suffered for my fornication. He suffered for my thievery. He suffered for my slanderous tongue. And that's an amazing thing. But you need to go further and understand that especially we who are all gathered here this morning, members of the church, those who claim to have faith in Jesus Christ, that when we sin, especially, and when any man sins, at any time, he is saying, I hate God. And I hate even, and especially, God who would come and save me. I don't need a savior. I don't need anybody to die for me. That's what man says. And as a gift? Free? Grace? I don't want it. I'll have a God where I can earn salvation. I'll have a God where I can contribute something. I'll have a God that allows me to be rich and famous in this world. I'll have a God that allows me to rub shoulders with the Romans and be somebody, and I don't want Christ. And when Pilate said, he's innocent, but kill him anyway, he said that for the whole human race and exposed there the sin of the human race. That's what we're condemned for. We're not just condemned simply for hating God and rejecting God, but rejecting God in Jesus Christ. God revealed way back in the garden, we forget this, way back in the garden to Adam and Eve, and He revealed to Noah and his three sons how He would redeem and save the human race. And every human being has rejected that information. That presentation. And it's still going on. It still goes on in the church. This Christ is presented. The Christ right here. And we can sit back in the pew and say, eh. Eh. I think I'll go still commit adultery and live addicted to alcohol and gossiping and backbiting. And that's the sin of rejecting Christ. That's what it is. That's what it really is. It's crucifying Him anew. And the suffering of Christ. And you want to know the real, real depth of it. And the wrath of God is, that's what He dies for. He dies for the sin of rejecting Him. Now you can see why it's grace. And should be able to see, therefore, the significance for us. The significance is if Christ died for that sin, is there any other sin? for which He died that we have yet to suffer for or atone for. Can there be any curse of God left in death or sickness or any trouble? And the answer is no, there can't be. Oh, there's suffering, but it's a different kind of suffering now. Oh, there will be death, but death has changed. That's what the Catechism presents to us this morning. That Christ, the suffering Savior, and why there is salvation only by faith in Him. No other way. So believe in Him. Amen. Our Father which art in heaven, O Lord our God, we thank thee for Jesus our Christ. We thank thee for his suffering, for suffering our terrible rejection even of him, which is still our sin and iniquity. Help us to live, O Lord, in thankfulness and humility before him who has done such great things for us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Turn to Psalter number 114,