To prepare us for the Lord's Supper, I'm gonna consider this question and answer. It's question and answer 36 from the Orthodox Catechism. What do you believe when you say he suffered? That he, all the time of his life, which he led on the earth, but especially at the end of it, sustained the wrath of God, both in body and soul, against the sin of all mankind, that he might, by his passion, as the only propitiatory sacrifice, deliver our body and soul from everlasting damnation and purchase for us the favor of God, righteousness, and eternal life. Those old catechisms have a way with words, don't they? A long answer, but a wonderful answer. The catechism, that catechism, is structured under three considerations, guilt, grace, and gratitude is the way somebody has put it a long time ago. Man's misery because of our sin. We are guilty. We are liable to punishment. We're in a miserable condition. That's our plight. God's grace, the answer to our plight, God's solution to it is Christ, the incarnation of the Son of God for us and for our salvation. As a response of Those who recognize their guiltiness and have believed the gospel, gratitude is the third part. How do we express ourselves? How do we live in light of the salvation that we have in Christ? This section, this question comes in the middle section. It's discussing man's redemption or God's grace. Man's redemption. This question brings us into the sufferings of our Lord, the things that he had done to him as a result of becoming incarnate and living in a sinful world. Before looking at it, however, it's good to remind ourselves of the method of the catechism at this point. The catechism is moving from the identity of the mediator, our Lord Christ, to his acts for us. So, who he is, what he does. The person of Christ, the work of Christ. He is the Son of God called Jesus because he saves sinners. He is called Christ because he was ordained of the Father and anointed of the Holy Spirit as prophet, priest, and king. He is the only begotten Son of God due to his eternal and natural relation to the Father. Our sonship, unlike his, is temporal by adoption and divine grace. His is eternal, natural, and therefore unique, one of a kind. We call him Lord because he redeems us, body and soul, and delivers us from the power of the devil, freeing us to serve him. Our Lord was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He is no ordinary man. He is God with us, for us, and for our salvation. What do you believe when you say he suffered? Now this question and its answer begins a section which discusses the sufferings or passion of our Lord. Now the Son of Man is glorified. I argued that he's talking about his sufferings and the epitome of that would be what he suffered on the cross. But the sufferings of the passion of our Lord isn't exclusively that which he endured on the cross. He had things done to him way prior to that that ought not to have been done to him because he was a sinless man. But he endured those sufferings, those happenings to him for us and for our salvation. Though we normally think of his sufferings or his passion as occurring on the cross exclusively, it actually extends to his entire lifetime during which he experienced the common infirmities of human nature, or as our confession says, yet without sins, sin. His entire life then, while on the earth, is sometimes called the state of humiliation. The resurrected state, the ascended state, the state of the current session and his second coming, his exaltation. But his humiliation was from the womb to the tomb. And it refers to the period between the conception of our Lord in the womb of Mary to his death and burial. More strictly though, our Lord's passion refers to his final trials culminating in his crucifixion. The word passion, we use it, you've heard it, what does it mean? Unlike love, it's easier to define. The word passion here means to undergo change because something happens from the outside that causes the loss or lack of something. Now when you think about that as the definition of passion, to undergo change, and you want to be orthodox on your view of Christ, you have to distinguish, right, between the two natures. We don't want to say the whole of Christ, that is both natures of Christ, suffered. Because then we would be predicating the undergoing of change to his divine nature. and undercutting divine immutability. But if the one Christ is both very God and very man, and he suffered, the one who suffered had to suffer not according to his divine nature, which is impossible, he had to suffer according to his human nature. So he had things happen to him as he was very man that ought not to have happened to him. but they still did. Have you ever had something happen to you that really ought not to have happened to you? Yes. How did you undergo it? How'd you deal with it? Sometimes probably okay, and other times failed the test, you know, really bad. Jesus had things that ought not to have happened to him, considered in himself, But he assumed all the common infirmities this side of the fall into sin in order to endure during those things happening to him in strict accordance with the righteous law of God to provide a righteousness that we didn't and couldn't. Our Lord suffered the common infirmities of human nature after the fall into sin, such as physical pain inflicted on him by other men, rejection by others, verbal mockery, and our Lord even suffered troubleness of heart. Now my soul is troubled. Remember when he said that? I think this is what Paul means in Romans 8, 3, when he says, God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. You've probably read that verse before. I know many times it just kind of went over my head, and then you have to stop and go, what in the world does the likeness of sinful flesh look like? Well, it looks like flesh. We could say it is flesh. And because he assumed flesh, he looked like everybody else, but he wasn't. But he endured things that sinners endured, even though he wasn't a sinner. Something like that is the likeness of sinful flesh. We could put it this way. Our Lord was subject to things happening to him that should not have happened to him. He was subject to Judas's betrayal. Should that have happened to him? Should Judas have done that? Ought to he have done that? No, but he did. These things happened to him because he lived in a sin-cursed world among sin-cursed men and women and boys and girls. He should have been loved and respected like no other man before. Instead, he was despised and rejected. He lived in a world where the wrath of God was in action against sin, was in execution against sin. The wrath of God since the fall into sin has been revealed among all men in various ways. God's wrath is the historical execution of his justice. All the wrongs and all the sorrows and all the difficulties and all the trials mankind has faced since the fall into sin are evidence that the wrath of God is in action among men. That's the world that our Lord came into. The mockery And the disrespect from others that he endured, he did so for us. Have you ever been mocked and reviled, reviled and reviled back? You know, called a name and then called somebody a name back. I first started perfecting that in 1964 maybe, I was three years old. By the time I hit kindergarten, I was really good at it because I had wicked brothers. And they had wicked brothers, too. Our Lord got what we deserve. Our Lord suffered many wrongs against him, both in body and soul, though he was without sin. He learned obedience from the things which he suffered, and there were more sufferings endured by the incarnate Son of God than Scripture indicates to us. As the Catechism goes on to tell us, there was a culminating aspect to his sufferings or passion, And that was when he made himself the only propitiatory sacrifice which delivers us, body and soul, from everlasting damnation. Our love and our doing for Jesus does not deliver us from everlasting damnation. His love for and doing for us delivers us from everlasting damnation. A propitiatory sacrifice refers to his death on the cross when he, offering himself For this purpose, this is an act of love, right? Was it in his mind, was it an intellectual activity of the son to consider giving himself for his enemies on the cross? And the answer is yes. Did his will enact his intellectual Thoughts and the answer is yes. What did that look like? Look at him on the cross. That's what it looked like. Offering himself for this purpose endured. and exhausted the wrath of God against us and for us in our place he stood condemned. He stands in our place and he satisfies the justice of God for us. He propitiates the wrath of God, divine justice in historical execution, by taking it for us. Divine justice was historically executed, terminating upon the Son of God incarnate on the cross. To propitiate means to appease or satisfy, and in the case of our Lord's death, to appease or satisfy the justice of God by taking the wrath of God. Instead of God's wrath against us finding as its bullseye our souls and our bodies, it finds as its target, as its terminus, as its bullseye, our Lord on the cross, and it is there extinguished in full, all the way down to the last drop. So that, once the apostle gets through the doctrine of the propitiatory act of God and the justifying verdict of God based on that, he can say there is therefore now zip, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is why we sing the following words, tell me ye who hear him groaning, was there ever grief like his? Friends through fear, his cause disowning. We're gonna get there in the next two weeks. You're gonna deny me, Peter. Friends through fear, his cause disowning, which he did not deserve but suffered for us. Foes insulting his distress, again suffering for us. He saved others, why can't he save himself? Many hands were raised to wound him. None would interpose to save. But the deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that justice gave. These precious words capture what the catechism says. He suffered in life, and he suffered in death. He deserved other than he received. He didn't deserve what he received. He deserved other than he received in order that we might receive other than we deserve. Let me say it again. He deserved other than he received in order that we might receive other than we deserve. Here is the great and mysterious exchange. The Son of God incarnate suffers what he does not deserve in order that believers in Christ do not suffer what they do deserve. It's why we're here today. It's why we come every week. It's why you endure lousy sermons sometimes and yet still come back. It's because somebody went before us and took what I deserved so that I can get something I don't deserve that's eye has not seen ultimately, neither has ear heard all that the Lord has in store for those who love him. So I believe then this is grounds for wonder, We should go, man, why, why, Lord? Amazement, this is amazing. I get all my sins forgiven. There is an alone righteousness approved by heaven outside of me, for me, fulfilled, completed, done by Christ. It should cause worship, right? We should just bow down and go, phew, man. And every week it should cause this, by the way. Not just worship and contemplation, right, but action. Love thinks, love wills, love ends up doing things. So may we wonder, be amazed, worship, and serve the Lord. Let's pray.