If you've been sitting here on several occasions over the last 50 years, uh, you've heard those verses read before. You've probably read them on your own. And I hope that they are verses that you treasure in your own soul as you live out the Christian life. I'll talk the top topic this morning is behold Jesus at Calvary. as we get ready for the Lord's Supper. Father, we ask for the ministry of the Spirit of God upon us. Open our eyes and our hearts. May the truth of these scriptures flood us with wonder and awe and submission and joy and thanksgiving. And for these things we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Here's a special word to every Christian. Jesus was made a curse for you. Now we'll see more of that as we go along. And for those of you who are in Christ, this is your testimony. If it's not, it needs to be, it must be. Galatians 2.20, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I. And then it goes further, but then in Galatians 6, 14, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. So in verse four of chapter one, we learned that Jesus gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present world. Now these scriptures that have been read before us today tell us that Christ redeemed, Christ redeems his saints from the just penalty of the holy law of God. And that to pay that price, to deliver us from sin's power, to deliver us from the curse of the law, the law is not bad. but we're under the judgment of it. We need to run to the cross and behold the lamb of God and be astounded. So when it keep in mind, when Jesus hung on the cross, he'd already been forsaken by all people, by his disciples. And yet We don't find him having any sort of pity party or upset. We find him, first of all, praying for his persecutors and then ministering in compassion to his family and to others. Those sacred words from the cross, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing. And keep in mind that 1 Peter chapter two verse 20 through 22 tells us that we're to walk in the steps of Jesus. This is not only something that Jesus did once and for all 2,000 years ago, but it is a life that he lives in and through us by the indwelling Holy Spirit. There's nothing more freeing in your life. I think every one of you, I'm pretty sure I'm not mistaken about this, From time to time, you have people in your world that trouble you. Worse than that, they cause you trouble. Worse than that, you're not making it up, it's really real. It can be a problem. Father, forgive them. I don't know what they're doing. Father, help me to walk in the steps of your son. Help me to minister during this time of difficulty. So Jesus came into a world says, father, forgive them. People say, well, I don't want to be in, in the condemning business. Well, Jesus, Jesus did not come to condemn sinners. Do you know why he did not come to condemn centers? Because all the centers of the world, every human being is under sin and under the wrath of God and already condemned. And for such sinners, Jesus went to the cross. Jesus paid the sin debt for sinners. We have to emphasize that. I listened to a preacher preaching to a very large crowd. I don't know when this was taped from, but boldly and plainly, he said, 99.9% of all people on the earth are good people. Well, you have to decide if you're going to believe the preacher or the word of God. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Jesus did not come for the righteous. If you think you are in that 99.9% you, you might as well leave here and never come, never enter the door of a Bible believing church again. Because the gospel is not for you. Jesus is not for you. Jesus came for sinners. Well, you don't know what I've done. He does, and it doesn't matter. He just came for sinners. And we need to walk in the steps of that public and of, oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Boy, that's a wonderful day. To have eyes enlightened by the grace of God, to cry out, On the conviction of sin and seeing something in Jesus, God be merciful to me, a sinner or like those two thieves, both of them had been railing on Jesus. And all of a sudden, one of them, something happens. This man is different. Hey, fellow criminal, you and I deserve to be here. He doesn't deserve to be here. And then he saw something in his own soul. He saw a need in his own soul. Remember me when you come into your kingdom. It's a wonderful day when by divine grace, our hearts awaken and we cry out for mercy, cry out for help. That's what Jesus does. He helps the hopeless and the helpless. And so when a person is saved and born again, they become God's workmanship and he doesn't just change our destiny, but he changes our hearts and he empowers us to walk in his steps. We are created in him and saved that we might manifest good works to the glory of God. So as we behold Jesus at Calvary this morning, we're gonna go right straight to the most sacred statement. in all of history. Where in Matthew 27, 46, Jesus cries out from the cross, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Here is Jesus, the eternal second person of the Godhead, very God with the Father, the Holy Spirit, three manifestations, one God, equally God, always God, but he became a man and was given a body and was tempted in Texas all at once as we yet without sin, and so now he's on the cross to become our sin bearer. And so for the first time in all of eternity, and there's never been and never will be another time, there was a breach, a breakage, a chasm between the Father and the Son. My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? We don't know how to enter into the depths of that. But we have to look at it. We have to remind ourselves that John saw something of that before it ever happened when he said in John chapter one, verse 29, behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. When he cries out, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? He is in those moments taking upon himself the sin of the world. In 2 Corinthians 5, 21, he that knew no sin was made sin for us. for believers, for those who are in Christ, for those who are brought by the grace of God to be in Christ. If you're in Christ, if you've come to faith in Christ, You don't pat yourself on the back. You're amazed at grace. You're amazed. I was a sinner and God in his mercy saved me. I don't know how to explain it. I lived a long life in sin and I could close my eyes and my heart and I could listen to gospel messages or I didn't want to listen to them. I didn't listen to them, but there came a day when the gospel began to penetrate my heart. And I came to a day when I repented and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I confess that this is good news to me when I read and hear the scriptures. Behold the Lamb of God that takes away, that has taken away my sin. That Jesus who knew no sin was made sin for me. 1 Peter 2, 24, he personally carried the burden of our sins upon his own body. Isaiah 53 verses three and six, God laid on him the iniquity of us all. And as we saw earlier in Galatians 3, 13, he was made to be a curse for us. All of these and many more verses tell us what was happening at the cross. Jesus was not doing something for himself. What he did on the cross was in behalf of others. in behalf of sinners. As a substitute, he laid down his life for his sheep. He died on the cross paying the sin debt of sinners. Have you ever come to Christ for him to pay your sin debt? Have you ever come to Christ because even though maybe you were raised in church and maybe you had a lot of scripture, maybe you went to a Christian school? Who knows why? But you can go back, you should sit here this morning, there came a point in your life when you came to Christ for him to pay your sin debt. You agreed, I'm guilty, I'm indicted, I'm under the sentence of God's eternal wrath. That's one of the things that Paul told the Ephesians in chapter two, when he gives a whole statement in chapter two, verses three, the first three verses of all the things that are common to a lost person and common to these Christians before they were saved. And he reminds them that you were children of wrath, even as others. It's good for us as Christians to remember I was a child under the just wrath of God, and Jesus saved me. Well, we have to ask the question, but so God has had and does have mercy on sinners, but how can a holy and just God do this? Well, he laid on his life, Isaiah 53.6. On the cross, he hung as a sacrifice. He satisfied the holy wrath of God against sin. He was made, as Galatians tells us, a curse for us. He was cursed by almighty God for our sake. Galatians 3, verse 13. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Well, the problem is, and we know this, we've all sinned, we've all broken God's law, God's law, There are wages for breaking God's law. Sin pays wages. The curse, God's holy wrath, is upon all those who have broken his law. Justice must be satisfied. This is why, incidentally, in all of the death passages of Scripture relating to Christ, go back to the Garden of Gethsemane. all the way through all the scenes that we have in the latter chapters of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John about the suffering and the death of Christ. You know something? You know someone who's missing? You know someone who does not get any mention there whatsoever? Satan. No mention. Neither at Calvary, nor after his death, You say, well, why is Satan not mentioned? And we have to say this because there are a lot of people who watch religious television and big time preachers and preacherettes teach that Satan, that Jesus, when he died, he went to hell, and Satan tormented him, and in hell, Jesus had to be born again. He was tortured by Satan. That is blasphemy. If that's the gospel, someone believes they are false teachers in the worst sort of way. Salvation is not a matter of being saved from the wrath of Satan. Salvation is a matter of being saved from the holy wrath of God. He is the one that we have offended. And when Jesus went to Calvary, he was going in our stead before holy God and paying our sin debt. And so therefore, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Jesus is taking upon himself the wrath that we deserve. And the father is dishing it out. There's no way that we can say it in a way that gets the depth of it. Let's imagine for a moment. Let's try to imagine what this must have meant to God the Father. After all, John 3.16 says, for God so loved the world that He gave His Son. This is incredible cost to God the Son, incredible cost to God the Father. God's justice had to be satisfied. So Jesus was cursed. Well, what does it mean to be cursed? Well, sometimes you can understand something if you look at the opposite. What does it mean to be blessed? Maybe one of your favorite passages that describes blessing is found over in the Old Testament in Numbers chapter six. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious to thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. to have the gracious presence of God, to have God's face upon us, God favoring us, being blessed by God, being kept by God. To be blessed is to be able to enjoy His presence, to see Him, to commune with Him, to have fellowship with Him. Jesus always had that. To be cursed above everything else is a total absence of that, to be cursed by God. to be in total absence of God's gracious presence, to be in total absence of God's favor. Now, I don't know all that hell will be like. The Bible gives us a lot of revelation. Jesus talks about in Luke chapter 16 that there'll be flames, people tormented, but that's not hell's worst feature. You do understand that God is omniscient and omnipresent and all powerful. He is everywhere. You say, well, I don't think God is in hell. He created hell. Jesus said so. And he is in hell in his wrath and only in his wrath. not a speck of his gracious mercy, kindness, love, and forgiveness in hell. The wrath of God is the justice of God meted out on sinners, and they experience nothing but his justice, his holy wrath. Hell is a place cut off from all of God's gracious presence and favor. People sometimes say, well, you don't know how bad I've had it. I've had hell here on earth. I don't know how bad you've had, or anybody else has had, but no one has ever had hell on earth. The worst that you can imagine, the worst that has ever been experienced, cannot begin to light a candle to the holy wrath of God in hell. There is only, the only penetration of God's presence there is his wrath. cut off, cursed on the cross. When Jesus was made sin for us, he was in those hours, cut off. And so he cries, my God, my God, why has he forsaken me? He was cursed, he was cut off. He said, but didn't Galatians 3.10 say, for as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse of the law, and curse is everyone that continueth not in the things that are written in the law. Jesus continued in all things. He did not deserve to be cut off. He lived by faith. But you and I haven't. And he was there on behalf of sinners. Jesus went to the cross as our substitute, as our sin bearer. Laid on him was our sin. So the greatest horror of the cross was not the physical suffering. It was not the horrible death by crucifixion. Thousands have died that way. Many have had more pain in their death, as far as I know. But only one man in all of history, in the midst of his death, suffered the unspeakable horror of the curse of God, which sinners deserved. God turned his back. The light of God's gracious presence was turned off. And Jesus, who was despised by men, was now forsaken by God. And there the wrath of God was poured out on his beloved son for our sake. The demands of God's justice were satisfied. We know that the father was perpetuated. His wrath was satisfied because he turned the lights on. He arose from the dead. Even before that, when Jesus said on that cross, it is finished. It's complete, it's done. Father, no longer my God, my God, but back to fellowship. Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit. The price had been paid. It is finished. God raised him from the dead, never to suffer again. We've been going through Hebrews for a number of weeks in our class. That's one of the great stories of that, one of the great accounts of history. So go to the book of Acts, go to the epistles. They preach a crucified, risen, ascended, reigning, and coming victorious Christ. It is finished. He was raised from the dead and the Holy Spirit has been sent to apply the work of the cross to each and every believing heart. No wonder Paul said, and that we should join with him, God forbid, that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified to me. I no longer find the world, O Christ chief. Oh, I can be tempted, I can fall into it. But I hate it. By the grace of God, I repent of it. And I'm crucified to the world, they don't like me so much either. Let me read something here. Friends, all of our wickedness and waywardness and cold hearts and all of our proud and unloving and unforgiving attitudes and all of our failures to hate sin and all of our murmuring and complaining and discontent can be directly traced to our failure to glory in the cross. Beholding him through his word and by his spirit, we become more and more like him. Knowing nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified gives us a growing hatred of sin and a growing love for God. And every time we come to the Lord's table, that's what should be taking place. It's a means of grace, a needed reminder of who we were and what God did and the price that was paid and who Jesus is. Knowing nothing but Christ and him crucified gives us great deliverance from sin's dominion and power. I'll no longer have to live this way. I'm dead to that. You say, is it hypocrisy for me to confess I'm dead to that when I've just sinned? Absolutely. You must, I must do not embrace one lie with another. You are accepted a lie when we yield it to the sin. And now if we say, I cannot come to Christ, I cannot repent, I cannot rejoice in the death and the dying and the rising of Christ, I cannot confess what God says of me, I'm crucified with Christ. That's a lie. I can confess it, I must confess that. That's why Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1.18, the preaching of the cross is foolishness to the world, but to those of us who are saved, those of us who are being saved, it is the glory of God is salvation. Knowing nothing but Christ and Him crucified gives us great joy in the midst of trials and tribulations because we know who we are. We know whose we are. Glory in Christ and his cross floods our heart with love and gratitude to God and brings about a double crucifixion. Crucified with him, crucified to the world. Behold the Lamb of God. brings about forgiveness of all my sin, floods me with hope and mercy for all the rest of my lives. All the rest of my life. So we're gonna come to the Lord's table. It's a sacred time. What Jesus did is so profound and so critical and so necessary, it doesn't call for some sort of dramatic presentation to try to thrill your heart or try to stir your heart. It just calls for a simple coming and taking a piece of bread. Do this in remembrance of me. Remembering his body broken for us. Do this in remembrance of me. His blood shed. It's a glorious gospel. Glorious good news. Our father, we bless you and praise you for the amazing wonder that you gave your Son, knowing what he would take upon himself. And the Son willingly came, knowing what would take place. And Father, we thank you that we're not left hanging. He arose. It's finished. He arose, he ascended, he's interceding for us, he's coming back. He sent the Holy Spirit. We're not orphans in the world. We have in Christ all that is needed to go out this coming week and live a life of hope and the life of victory, regardless of what happens on the world scene. And for these things, we thank you and bless you in Jesus. Precious name. Amen.