This week, a friend of mine shared a story from a website that he visits. And it's a story that comes out of Fayetteville, North Carolina. It's about a man named Sergeant Joseph Serna of the U.S. Army. And Sergeant Serna, he spent three tours of duty in Afghanistan and had a terrible time there. And really, since retiring from the army, he's had a terrible time adjusting to kind of normal society. And is often, and he's kind of gotten into some addictions and was arrested for a drunk driving a year ago or so ago. Sorry. And part of his sentence is he has to appear before the judge every month. And last month, he appeared before the judge and admitted that he lied about a urine test. And his judge, his name was Oliveira. It was also a veteran. Someone who served in the Gulf War and the article says this. He understood that those Serna had broken the law. He was not a criminal by nature. But he had to do his duty. So judge Oliveira sentenced Serna to spend 24 hours in jail. Then he took off his robe and joined Serna in his cell for the full 24 hours. Where are we going, judge? Serna asked. We're going to turn ourselves in, Oliveira answered. He said he was going to stay with me, but I could not process a judge being my cellmate. So they took me to the cell and I was sitting on my bunk and then in walks the judge. Mostly from five in the afternoon, on April 13th, until 6.30am the next day, the judge and I talked about our respective military service, about post-traumatic stress disorder, from the three tours of duty in Afghanistan. He talked to me about how I could turn my life this downward spiral around. We talked for hours about our families and our military service, our dreams for us and for our families. And the road I would have to take to get us there. The judge wanted to help Serna climb out of the hole. I thought about a story that I once read, Oliveira says. It talked about a soldier with PTSD in a hole. He said, a family member, a therapist and a friend all throw down a rope to help the veteran. Finally, a fellow veteran climbed into the hole with him. The soldier suffering with PTSD asked, why are you down here? And the fellow veteran replied, I'm here to climb out with you. I love that illustration, I love every part of it. I even love the fact that it's true, unlike most of the stories I tell you. I love every bit about it because it's a perfect example of what grace, redemptive grace really is. It's a great example of what Jesus, God Himself has done for us. I love the fact that God was not content to stay in heaven and give us rules to follow. He was not content to throw us a holy rope in the way of meditation or things that we ought to do. That He crawled down into this pit of sin and misery with us. And that He has experienced with us every drop of misery that we have had to swallow. And that He has saved us from it. He has lifted us up, not even there to crawl out with us, there to pick us up and bring us out of this pit. I love that fact about the gospel. I want we meet to talk about it every week. And this series that we've been on since Easter, we've been going back just to look at that particular phrases, just different aspects of the crucifixion and things that have really captured our hearts. And I've loved it. I've loved the ironies that we've brought out. For instance, when the chief priest condemned Jesus for claiming to be the Christ, not knowing that condemning him to the cross would actually be sending him to the very place where he would become the Christ. I love the fact that the crowds yelled out, let his blood be on us and on our children forever, not knowing that in a few weeks they would be hearing the gospel preached to them and would be saved and their blood would be cleansing him and their children forever. And I love this passage, I love what we're going to read here in a second where the crowds mock Jesus and they say he saved others, but he can't save himself because we know the truth. And the truth is Jesus certainly could have saved himself, but he willingly refused to save himself so that he could save others. I love that. I love it. He willingly refused to save himself so that he could save others. I want us just to meditate for a few minutes on this great truth that Jesus has swallowed every drop of God's wrath so that we could enjoy every ray of God's pleasure. Let's please stand as we read. The final reading from Matthew, after nine years and 95 sermons in the book of Matthew, we're going to be finished for a long time. Sounds makes me sound old. All right, from verse 27, then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters and they gathered the whole battalion before him and they stripped him and they put a scarlet robe on him and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a read in his right hand and kneeling before him, they mocked him saying, all hail King of the Jews and they spit on him and they took the read and struck him on the head and when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. As they went out, they found a man of siren, Simon by name, they compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means the place of the skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with gol. But when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head, they put the charge against him which read, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews, and the two robbers who were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by to ride at him, wagging their heads and saying, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. If you're the son of God, come down from the cross. So also the chief priest with the scribes and the elders mocked him saying, he saved others, but he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel. Let him come down now from that cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts God, let God deliver him now, if he desires him, for he said, I am the son of God. And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way. As far as the reading of God's Word, please be seated. They yelled out, he saved others, but he can't save himself. And yet we know, he refused to save himself so that he could save us. I love it. I love everything about this story, and I want to just draw your attention to just a few things. First thing I want you to see is when Jesus was brought in before the soldiers, and they gathered a whole battalion in front of them, as many as a hundred soldiers in front of him, and they mocked him, the first thing they did was they made for him a crown of thorns. Now, for years, I couldn't figure that one out. I knew it had to be important. It was obviously an important symbol, it's one we've not lost in centuries. But why did they do that? And honestly, all I could think of was, gee, that must have hurt. Because your head sensitive, and probably hurt. And it was down at Borders Bookstore back before it became Fresh Market, and a place where you could buy peanuts for 50 bucks. Borders Bookstore, where I was reading, and finally it struck me. Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve sinned, the first thing God says to them is, cursed is the ground for your sake. It will bring forth thorns. And when they put that crown of thorns on Jesus's head, I have no idea what was going through this older's minds. They probably thought it was funny. But when they put that crown on his head, they were crowning him the king of the cursed. He was the perfect representative, the complete representative of undergoing the curse for us, the complete curse of sin. And everything that it means, every ounce of the punishment that we deserve, he did not take a shortcut in a single aspect of the miseries of this life. He became a curse for us. Apostle Paul describes it so beautifully in Genesis and Galatians 3. It says, those who depend on morality to make them right with God or under his curse. For the scriptures say, cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the commands that are written in God's book of the law. So it is clear that no one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law. For the scriptures say it is through faith that a righteous person has life. But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the scriptures, cursed is everyone who is hung on the tree. Therefore, through Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles. And that he promised Abraham so that we who are believers might receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith. Jesus became the curse for us. When those soldiers put that crown on his head, they were making him the curse. There were instruments of God. And at that point, he touched all the miseries of our life. And he touched them in order to heal them. There is a writer named Paul Brand, he is a surgeon. And he is a hand surgeon by profession. And he has been drawn, his entire lives have been a ministry to the lepers in India. People with leprosy, not the big cats, leopards. And you are a redneck, you have to explain what you say sometimes. But he has been drawn to spend his life doing ministry to those in leper colonies. Because for two reasons, one because leprosy causes their hands to wither up into claws and he can fix that. He wants to heal that. And secondly, because in India, where they teach about karma, what they believe is that if you have leprosy, it's because you deserve it. It's because you did something in your former life to cause you to get this terrible, terrible disease. So not only are you in miserable, but it's your fault. Have some fun with that. But being a Christian, Dr. Brand knows that the gospel is for the broken. The God is not a dealer in karma, he's a dealer in grace. And so he goes to these colonies and he does operations on their hands. And one Sunday he was asked to preach. And he's not a preacher and he didn't know what he was going to talk about. And he looked out at this congregation and he saw their withered up claw-like hands. Actually, what he saw was that no one was showing their hands. He saw that every one of them was sitting in such a way as to hide their hands because they were just living a life. They lived a life of being so embarrassed by them. And they didn't want anybody to know what they had. And so he started talking about hands. He said, you know, I'm a hand surgeon. I'm fascinated by hands. I love them. And I love to think about Jesus' hands. I love to think about those pudgy baby hands when he was a baby and clinging on to his mother. I love to think about those dirty little boy hands playing in the dirt. I love to think about those carpenter's man hands handling the wood. I love to think about him as a healer and as a teacher. How he was never content to just say words of healing, but he always wanted to touch the people that he healed. He would touch the lepers and make them clean. He would touch the blind and make them see. He would touch the dead and make them live. He said, I also think about the cross. You know, I'm a surgeon and I know how many nerves there are in a hand. And I can have an idea of how much it would have hurt to have spikes driven through your hand and to have to hang from your hands. And I think about how glorious it is that God willingly had his hands destroyed so that he could heal us. And he said by the time he was finished talking about the hands of Jesus, every one of those lepers were holding their hands up to Jesus, asking him to heal them. I want that to find a seed in your heart. Jesus experienced every drop of misery. He experienced despair. He experienced abuse. He experienced mocking. He experienced pain. He experienced betrayal. He experienced it all. Not just to say, I get what you feel like, but to heal you. To heal you. It is there for you. He didn't just come to touch the curse, but he came to trade life for death. He came to trade blessing for curse. He came to experience every drop of God's wrath so that we could have every ray of God's light. He came to be the curse and he came to bear the curse on the cross. I want this final reflection as we think about the cross. For those of you who are in my age group who have actually held a checkbook in your hands, who haven't just spent your whole life depending on the internet to tell you how much money you have. I want you to remember that experience of balancing your checkbook. Because I think it's important. Now I do just like everybody else. I do how much money I have. I touch the app on my iPhone. I look to see how much money I have and then somehow that kind of separates it from us, doesn't it? And we get mad at the phone. It's the phone's fault that I don't have any money. But there was something kind of sacramental, something therapeutic about having to balance that checkbook every month, wasn't there? You had to look through those return checks and you had to check them off and you had to subtract. You had to remember that you have to make a subtraction from your money for every withdrawal that you've taken. And you have to kind of take responsibility for it. Yeah, I spent that. Oh, I spent that. You felt it. And I think that's important. I want that to be in your mind because I want you to see how on the cross Jesus had to take a subtraction for every temptation that we've given into. He had to have that withdrawal of every type of every type. First of all, look at the place where they let him. It was called Golgotha, the place of the skull. Now, I've never been there, but I've heard when you visit Jerusalem and do the Holy Land tour, they show you two different places they think the crucifixion may have taken place. One's kind of a garden that's kind of beautiful actually. And you hope that it will take place there. And the other place is dirty and it's touristy and it's kind of foul. And those who know their Bible think that's probably where it happened. We've changed the name of the place to where Jesus died. We don't call it Golgotha, we call it Calvary. Now, it has this beautiful name to it. It's very rhythmic. I like the song at. Calvary. You can't sing Golgotha. Golgotha. There's nothing lyrical about it. But it's applicable. Donald McLeod says Jesus was not crucified on a golden altar between beautiful candlesticks. He was crucified on a garbage dump between two thieves. It was ugly. It was hideous. It was on the place where they crucified people. There was blood and an excrement on the ground. It smelled. It was the kind of place where no one, no one in this room could be without gagging. It was foul. And he was paying. He was paying the price for the sins, the temptations of the lust of our eyes. When Eve saw that apple, the first thing she noticed was it was beautiful. And we've been tempted to sin through the delight of our eyes ever since. We want to look good. We want to taste the beautiful things. We want to be with the beautiful people. We see beautiful cars. And we think, I want that. I'll send to get that. We immediately began to sin. When we think about how mad we are, we don't have that. And he had to die in an ugly place. Not only did he have to die in an ugly place, we had to die in a painful way. It's small. You might miss it. It would be understandable if you missed it. But they offered him wine mixed with mure when he got to the place of the crucifixion. It was the only act of mercy he would receive that whole day. It was basically a gift, some say from the Jerusalem women, others say from the soldiers. But it was basically a gift to deaden the pain. And the typical person getting crucified would take his big a drink as they possibly could. The deaden as much pain as possible. But Jesus spatted out. He refused. He refused. He knew how much he was about to hurt. And he willingly chose to feel every pain. He willingly chose to experience every ounce of the pain. Why? Because he has to pay for every time we choose to sin because it feels good. Every time we choose to sin, just because it makes us feel better. It would just make you feel better, wouldn't it? From the big things to the little things. Just a little drink. Just a little glimpse at pornography. Just a little something. Just to make me feel better. I listen to Jim Gaffigan's book on the way home from Mississippi this last week. And he says in there, he's justifying why he steals his children's candy. And he says at the end, he says, I know it's probably wrong, but you see I have two choices. I can either feel my feelings or eat their candy. It just feels better to eat candy than it does to feel feelings, doesn't it? It makes us feel better. And Jesus voluntarily took every pain because he had to pay the price. He had to stay in his right mind and pay the price in his body. It had to hurt. It had to be ugly and it had to hurt. And it had to be shameful. Not only did he take the pain, but he took the scorn. This is awful. I mean, the passive scorn, honestly. Maybe the apathy is worse than the active cursing. When people are cursing, at least they notice you, right? You're like, well, clearly I meant something to you. Your father and deal at me. You know, shameful, but something. But just this picture of the soldier stripping him naked and nailing him to the cross and then just gambling to divide up his garments. Just the complete discounting of him. Oh, you're still here? You're talking about you. Just the treating him as worthless. It reminds you of one of the final scenes in Ebenezer's Scrooge, when the chambermaid and the butler are all bragging about how they stripped his dead body and stole his clothes and his buttons, and just to show that ultimate insult to injury. They don't even recognize that he's human. That's the Christ. Why do you have to undergo that? I think that's probably the most important one for us, and our social group. That's the most important one for us to think about. We don't even think of pride as a sin, not doing. Not really. If you don't have pride, we don't have any room for you. Have some pride, have some self-confidence, have some pride. You better work than this. How often have you heard that? Don't you have any pride? It's like an insult to not have it. And that's the one that just keeps coming up, just that every time I feel insulted, every time I'm hurt, every time I'm even the least bit offended by someone, the immediate thought that comes to my mind is, at least I'm better than you. My religion becomes a source of pride. My achievement becomes a source of pride. My economics becomes a source of pride. I look down on you because you make me feel weak. I was cut off and tried it yesterday, and it was just awful. The things that came out of my heart and my mouth. It was so embarrassing. He had offended my pride. And so I discounted his existence. And Jesus had to die an absolute scone to pay the price for our pride. And he did it. He never fought back. He never traded insult for insult. He simply took it for us. And by his taking it, he conquers sin. Soldiers were so right. They had no idea how right they were, but they were so right when they put a crown on him. They were so right when they put a scepter in his hand. They were absolutely right when they wrote those words on the cross. This is the king of the Jews. They were absolutely right. And whether they knew it or liked it or not, they were making an utter display of his kingship because on this cross and on that grave, he conquered for us. It was the death of a king. He was a kingly death. And in that death, he defeated sin. And he defeated mocking. And he defeated shame. And he defeated guilt. And ultimately, he defeated death. Just like David, when he fought against Goliath, revealed that he was the true king. He was the rightful king. He was the one who would defeat Israel's enemies for her. Jesus proves that he is the true king. Just like the judge shows that he's a true judge. He understands justice. He understands fairness. He understands the purpose of his position when he goes to that cell and tries to redeem this criminal. In the exact same way, Jesus reveals that he is the true king when he goes on that cross and becomes the curse for us. He does it to defeat sin. Not to be defeated by it. He does it to defeat shame. Not to be covered with it. He does it to defeat death. Not to stay dead. He saves for us. He secures for us hope by facing hopelessness. He secures for us joy by defeating depression. He secures for us love by experiencing abandonment. And he secures for us life by undergoing death. And when he breathes his own, he breathes his last. He did it on his own. He expired. He gave his life up. He laid it down. He calls out into your hands, Father, I commit my spirit. And he gave up his life. No one took it from him. And when he did, he won the victory. And it is the victory for you. It is for you. It is your healing. It is your health. It is your true life. Enter into it. Please pray with me.