and a little bit different today. It's been a while since I preached this message, but it never grows old. The message on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Let me say this about that, if I could please, before we get started. It's very important for you to understand that the crux of or the center point of our faith is not just the crucifixion, but the day that separates by three days sadness and three days later gladness. is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so when you talk about the crucifixion, I want to make sure that you clearly understand it didn't end at Calvary. If it had, we wouldn't be here. The atonement ended and it was finished there, but had he not come out of the ground, then we would be, like Paul says in Corinthians, he said, we'd be of all men most miserable. the center stone, the corner stone, the key stone, the most important thing is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Many people have died on crosses. What makes a difference is His cross becomes the cross, and that's the most important thing that you have. So not to be morbid and not to be thinking, well, why do we need to know all these things? You need to understand a couple of things as we start this message. The atonement was completed on Calvary, but it began in Gethsemane. He began sweating great drops of blood in Gethsemane and then was beaten and people have wondered how come he had to suffer because his stripes are what begins the healing, the atonement for your sins. In 1 Peter chapter number 2, when Peter makes a reference back to the book of Isaiah chapter 53, many people try to apply that pre-Calvary and say, well, now that I am saved, I'm sealed to the day of redemption, but that means by his stripes, I'm therefore healed of all my physical infirmities. Before Calvary, healing was a part of it, but after Calvary, your healing is spiritual. you may still have physical afflictions and physical ailments. You may still have problems. That part of the atonement for you is not completed until the day of the rapture when you get a new body. And I don't know about you, but the older I get, the more I look forward to getting a new body. And one of the reasons we begin to age is all of a sudden things that used to work and work pretty well, they all of a sudden quit working and go to hurting. Of course, Brother Terrell, who's gone on to be with the Lord now, he used to say, well, preacher, you'll learn this as you get older. If it quits hurting, it ain't working. So sometimes pain, they say, is good, but I don't know about that. But sometimes we fail to remember that the blessings that we received of God are spiritual blessings, though along the way we may get some physical blessings. Our purpose for being saved is not relief from pressure here, but relief from pressure in the world to come. So I want you to understand if you're here today on what most people refer to as Easter Sunday, or Resurrection Day as we refer to it, and we try our best to put the focus or the emphasis on Jesus Christ, His death, His burial, and His resurrection. The reason we have the Lord's Supper tonight is that before He went into the Garden of Gethsemane, they had the Lord's Supper known as the Last Supper. And of course, you know what the Lord said to everybody at that table. All of you that want to be in this picture get on this side of the table. But we know that at the Lord's Supper, we know that's where Judas betrayed Him, and that's a tight picture of somebody that is taking the Lord's Supper inappropriately, and then he winds up betraying the Lord, Satan's entered into him, and then we begin what Jesus Christ came for, and what He came for was not to just die on the cross, be buried and raised again the third day, but was to die for sinners. He came to die so that we could be saved, we could be reconciled to God the Father. So even if you may not have everything else down pat, the most important thing is to understand salvation is through the blood atonement of Jesus Christ. And we're going to talk about the crucifixion to help you to understand the devil made every attempt he possibly could in the Lord's flesh to try to turn him from completing that which God had called him to do. But make no mistake about it, if you read even the Old Testament passages, the Bible says that God the Father, that it pleased God to bruise His only begotten Son. It pleased Him to make Him a sacrifice for sinners. Why? Because no matter what the devil poured out, no matter what God Himself poured out on mankind's sin, it did not deter Him from what God sent Him to do, and that was for Him to die. This time, this day, this period is not about bunnies and eggs and fancy dresses and hats and those kinds of things. This is a day that we wouldn't have that would be like no other day or be like any other day had he not been resurrected. It is the day, the first day of the week that he came up. By the way, I don't have time to go into it, but there was no good Friday. The Lord didn't die on Friday and then come up 24 hours later on. He was in the tomb three days and three nights. Matthew chapter 12, as Jonas was in the belly of the well three days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth. You have to be very careful about individuals who try to make a religious or a holy day out of something that is not holy. There was nothing good, except for us, about Jesus Christ dying on Calvary. There was nothing pretty about it. There was nothing remarkable about it in the sense that you would look at it as any other person being crucified except that was God manifest in the flesh who was being crucified for our sins. The difference in his and 500 others that would have occurred within a couple of days of this crucifixion is this is God manifest in the flesh being crucified for you. You've never had a Savior like that. There is no religious leader like that who is able as God to die for his own creation. Matthew chapter 27, if you would like to stand, I'll give you a few verses here, and then we'll come through this passage. I want you to begin to be able to see what's going on. The Bible says, Matthew 27, and we'll pick it up there in verse number 22. They released unto him Barabbas. In verse number 21, Pilate said unto him, What shall I do with Jesus, which is called Christ? Now, let me say this, that's still the question today. We're here in church today, and the issue becomes, even after you're saved, what are you doing with Jesus Christ? Now that you're saved, what are you doing with this man called Jesus? But if you're not saved, what are you going to do with him? That's the question. When you see it presented to you today, ultimately at the end of the message is going to come a decision that's going to say, okay, he died for you according to the Scriptures. He was buried and raised again the third day according to the Scriptures. Now, what say ye? What are you going to do with this man called Jesus Christ? You only have two choices. You say, I don't want to choose. Then you chose by not choosing. You have a choice to accept his atonement for you, or you have a choice to reject him. Rejecting him causes you to spend an eternity in hell, come out of the great white throne, and then go into the lake of fire, or trust him as your Savior and wind up in heaven with him. But he leaves the choice to you. The Bible says when Pilate saw verse 24 that he could not prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person. See ye to it. then answered all the people and said, His blood be on us and our children. Then released He Barabbas unto them, and when He had scourged Jesus, He delivered Him to be crucified." Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your many blessings. We thank You, God, as we look back on Calvary today, that You may allow us, through not only the things that we see visually, but through the use of words and through the power of the Holy Spirit, that we might be able to paint in some horrid manner what actually occurred on Calvary's cross. We pray, Lord, that you may not only infuse the speaker with the Holy Spirit, but those that are listening, that you may cut down on the distractions, that you may, as it would be, plead the blood of Jesus Christ over this place, as we're sure that the devils will be very interested to try to do all they can to subvert this message. We'd ask God that you may save that one today nearest hell. Allow us the opportunity to hear the cries of newborns as we've already heard newborn fleshly children born. We'd ask that we may see newborn Christians saved here today and cry out unto thee. We'd ask now, God, as we go through these things, that you may take control of the service and we pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Notice, if you will please, as you're being seated in verse number 26 in the parallel passages, that the first thing that happens is a scourging of Jesus Christ. Make no mistake about it. It's not as many people try to paint it. This scourging was done, and generally speaking, they followed very precisely Roman law. Roman law said that it was possible to scourge or to beat anybody 39 strikes or 40 strikes, save one. So it would be 39, which is 3 times 13. So what they realized was is they could not inflict enough damage by just hitting somebody with a single whip, so what they did was is they decided or devised what they call either a cat of 9 or 12 tails. That tad of nine or twelve tails was formulated into a leather thong, a leather makeup of a whip there, and what he did there was is they put in bits of pottery and bits of clay, bits of mire, bits of steel, bits of bone to make very sharp instruments so that when they would whip the victim that was tied, oftentimes hands and feet tied together, oftentimes chained up between two poles, sometimes around poles, and the whips would be on either side, Roman soldiers on both sides of them, and they would count them out as they lashed across the back. But they would hit that back right there, and as the Bible teaches this in the book of Isaiah, he gave his back to be plowed like furrows rode in it, and they would grab that thing in there, if you could imagine the teeth on a chainsaw, and then they would drag that across the victim's back and lacerate his back, laying bare the bone structure, the kidney structure, everything on the inside, literally flaying open the back of Jesus Christ. so that you understand how horrible that is. We tried our best. Miss Bridget has painted. I think Miss Dreena made all of the labels and stuff so that you can kind of see it. This is just a picture that doesn't really do it justice, but it talks about here this leather thong or this whip that was made, bits of bone and bits of pottery and bits of clay and things that are in here, metal balls used to inflict pain upon the victim. Oftentimes, as a matter of fact, studying historians back in this time, these Roman legionnaires were the biggest, the baddest, the meanest, and the strongest, and usually the drunkest, and their job was to do what they could to try to kill the victim by blood loss. Oftentimes, when they struck the victim the first time or two, the blood would immediately begin to pool underneath the skin, and it would begin to create contusions, and then begin to create edema, and begin to create different things where there was blood and fluids up underneath it. And then once they finally broke through that flesh, then it would burst through into huge pools of blood, and oftentimes the individuals would wind up dying from simply blood loss alone. By this time, Jesus Christ has already been to a trial. By this time, he had been tried at nighttime. He has already been beaten. He has already been spat upon. They've already made fun of him by putting a little reed in his hand. and then taking something similar to a bamboo rod, plaiting a crown of thorns, placing it upon his head, and then banging that crown of thorns down into his head, and he was already bleeding profusely. He had not had anything to drink. He was dehydrated. He was emaciated. He had been up all night long. He'd had the last supper there with the apostles and then gone out into the garden and after that was taken through this sham of a trial. By this time, he stands before Pilate and Pilate says, well, I can't find any fault with him. And they say, well, give us Barabbas and go ahead. So Pilate's thought was, if I have him beaten bad enough, if that doesn't kill him, when they see him beaten, You know what they'll say? That's enough. Then let him not be crucified. You say, why? Pilate was an instrument in the hands of the devil himself because the devil did not want him to go to Calvary. You see, this portion of the atonement wouldn't have been enough to complete the atonement for your soul. This portion of him starting to shed his blood for the things that you've done and did, that is not going to cover everything. The Bible says by his stripes you're healed. Every stripe you see right there would cover every sin you could possibly commit. As a matter of fact, if you look at the body of Jesus Christ, you'll see holes in his hands, which we'll talk about in a little while. What are those there for? They're for sins, the things you've touched you shouldn't have touched. What about the holes in his feet for going places you had no business going? What about this crown of thorns around his head? That's for my sins of intellect, my thinking things that are not right to think. What about the hole that's over in his side that ran up in his heart? That's for my sins of affection. Every sin you could possibly account for, he died for and he paid the price as he was laying there and being whipped. The devil is right here, make no mistake. If I could get this painted the way I'd like, I would have Miss Bridget paint a picture of Satan incarnate over here. I'd have that sulfuric breath right in the face of Jesus Christ and say, and you're going to let your creation do this to you? You're going to let these people that are going to deny you and betray you anyway do this to you? You're going to die for these people who've never done anything good for you? These people that have spat on you and plucked out your beard and mocked you, belittled you, made fun of you? After all you've done for them,