Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

The Suffering Savior Isaiah 53:3 We Believe Sermon Series #8 Many years ago after a few of the usual Sunday evening hymns, the church's pastor once again slowly stood up, walked over to the pulpit, and he then gave a very brief introduction of his childhood friend. With that, an elderly man stepped up to the pulpit to speak, "A father, his son, and a friend of his son were sailing off the Pacific Coast," he began, "when a fast approaching storm blocked any attempt to get back to shore. The waves were so high, that even though the father was an experienced sailor, he could not keep the boat upright, and the three were swept into the ocean." The old man hesitated for a moment, making eye contact with two teenagers who were, for the first time since the service began, looking somewhat interested in his story. He continued, "Grabbing a rescue line, the father had to make the most excruciating decision of his life...to which boy he would throw the other end of the line. He only had seconds to make the decision. The father knew that his son was a Christian, and he also knew that his son's friend was not. The agony of his decision could not be matched by the torrent of waves.  As the father yelled out, 'I love you, son!' he threw the line to his son's friend. By the time he pulled the friend back to the capsized boat, his son had disappeared beyond the raging swells into the black of night. His body was never recovered." By this time, the two teenagers were sitting straighter in the pew, waiting for the next words to come out of the old man's mouth. "The father," he continued, "knew his son would step into eternity with Jesus, and he could not bear the thought of his son's friend stepping into an eternity without Jesus. Therefore, he sacrificed his son. How great is the love of God that He should do the same for us." With that, the old man turned and sat back down in his chair as silence filled the room. Within minutes after the service ended, the two teenagers were at the old man's side. "That was a nice story," politely started one of the boys, "but I don't think it was very realistic for a father to give up his son's life in hopes that the other boy would become a Christian." "Well, you've got a point there," the old man replied, glancing down at his worn Bible. A big smile broadened his narrow face, and he once again looked up at the boys and said, "It sure isn't very realistic, is it? But I'm standing here today to tell you that THAT story gives me a glimpse of what it must have been like for God to give up His Son for me. You see, I was the son's friend." “I believe in Jesus Christ...[Who] suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried...” That’s what God the Father did for us. He gave up His Son Jesus on the Cross for us. The Cross is the place of The Suffering Savior.   Last week was Christmas. This week is Good Friday. The Apostles Creed jumps from Christ’s birth to Christ’s sufferings, omitting all reference to His life. The New Testament emphasis is on His death, not His life. Our Lord Himself explained that He was born in order to die, not to live. In fact, after the resurrection He gently rebuked His disciples for not knowing that His death was essential to His saving mission. “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter His glory?” (Luke 24:25‑26). The synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—devote a third of their space to the account of His death. John devotes fully half of his gospel to narrating the death of Christ. When we look at the epistles of Paul, virtually the entire ministry of Jesus Christ is ignored. There is no mention of His ethical teachings, and no mention of a Sermon on the Mount, which liberal theology has exalted into a virtual substitute for the gospel of Christ. There is also no mention of His miracles or His parables. The emphasis is always upon His suffering, death and resurrection. The emphasis is on The Suffering Savior. Today we are at the very heart of the Creed and the very heart of Christianity. It’s all summed up in one single, somber, solitary word, a word that stands out in all of its solemnity and dignity, one comprehensive and emphatic word: suffering. Jesus Christ suffered. He suffered under Pontius Pilate. He suffered on the Cross. The word “suffered” sums up everything that happened between His birth and His death. It’s noteworthy that the Bible never tells us that Jesus smiled or laughed. I’m sure that He did, but the gospels never mention it. Isaiah 53:3 calls him “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” John Stott, in his classic book, The Cross, points out that at the cross God did not observe suffering; He suffered. God did not learn about torture; He was tortured. God did not have a brush with death; He experienced death. He was buried. Jesus Christ came to suffer for us. The Cross is the climax of His suffering. So how did Christ suffer? 1. Christ suffered in His humanity. Some Christians find it surprising that Pontius Pilate should be mentioned in the Creed. A few even find it offensive. Nevertheless, the governor of Judea from A.D. 26 to 36 has found his way into the creed. And it is very important that he should be there! The fifth‑century writer Rufinus observed, “Those who handed down the Creed showed great wisdom in emphasizing the actual date at which these things happened, so that there might be no chance of any uncertainty or vagueness...” This reference to Pilate firmly anchors the creed to history. It affirms that we are dealing with an event—the crucifixion of Jesus Christ—that actually happened in history. It’s as if someone says, “I lived in Wisconsin when Jim Doyle was governor.” That drives a stake down at a particular moment in history. Pilate gets mentioned in the death of Christ because he was there. This means it really happened. That, by the way, is one reason Mel Gibson’s, The Passion of the Christ” stirred up so much controversy compared to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Everyone knows that the Lord of the Rings is a legend, a fable, a tale well‑told and wonderfully filmed. But it is not true and no one thinks that it is. By contrast, the story of the death of Christ is true. And that fact drives some people up the wall because they are happy with Jesus as a fairy tale—but as the literal Son of God and Savior of the world, forget it! The gospel is not like some fairy tale that happened "long, long ago and far, far away.” Its central event happened in a definite place and at a definite time. Why is it so important to emphasize this point? Because you and I both live in time and history. The gospel affirms that God Himself entered into that history, in order to suffer in our place. God came down to meet us where we are, in time and space. The doctrine of the incarnation tells us that God came down to our level in order to bring us up to His. The gospel is not just about ideas; it is about God acting, and continuing to act, in history. The mention of Pilate also brings out the public nature of Jesus’ trial, suffering and crucifixion. Pilate here represents the witness of the world to the suffering and death of its unacknowledged Savior. The final days of Jesus ministry took place in full public view, where all could see what was happening. The crucifixion took place in public, under the gaze of the citizens of Jerusalem. It was impossible for anyone to deny that these things had happened. Pilate is also of importance in another respect. Within the creed Pilate represents the rejection of Jesus Christ by the world, a major theme of the New Testament. The disowning of Jesus is seen as representing the rejection of the Creator by His creation. The New Testament portrays that rejection in many ways: Jesus is rejected by those who had known Him from His youth at Nazareth (Luke 4:16‑30). He was condemned as a blasphemer by the leaders of the Jewish people (Matthew 26:59‑66). And by Pilate he was condemned as a political threat to the stability of the pax Romana in the region. It would be wrong to isolate any of these groups and place the burden of Jesus’ crucifixion on them and them alone. In the New Testament the behavior of the synagogue congregation at Nazareth, the Jewish leaders and the Roman governor all point to the same thing: the sinfulness of human nature. All human beings, no matter who they are or when they live, are sinners needing God’s forgiveness and reconciliation. It is sinful human nature itself that led the creation to crucify its Creator. Sin bites so deep into human nature that it comes close to destroying our ability to recognize God when He comes among us. And the price is the suffering of Christ. Christ suffered in His humanity, at the hands of human beings. 2. Christ suffered physically. Billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God's throne. Some of the groups near the front talked heatedly, not with cringing shame, but with belligerence. "How can God judge us?" said one.  "What does He know about suffering?" snapped a brunette. She jerked back a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. "We endured terror, beatings, torture, death!" In another group a black man lowered his collar. "What about this?" he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. "Lynched for no crime but being black! We have suffocated in slave ships, been wrenched from loved ones, toiled till death gave release." Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering He permitted in His world. How lucky God was to live in Heaven where there was no weeping no fear, no hunger, no hatred!   Indeed, what did God know about what man had been forced to endure in this world? "After all. God leads a pretty sheltered live," they said.  So each group sent out a leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. There was a Jew, a black, an untouchable from India, an illegitimate person, a victim of Hiroshima, and one from a Siberian slave camp. In the center of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather simple: before God would be qualified to be their judge, He must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God "should be sentenced to live on earth ‑‑ as a man!" But because He was God, they set certain safeguards to be sure He could not use His divine powers to help Himself: Let Him be born a Jew.  Let the legitimacy of His birth be doubted, so that none would know who really is His father. Let Him champion a cause so just, but so radical, that it brings down upon Him the hate, condemnation, and efforts of every major traditional and established religious authority to eliminate Him. Let Him try to describe what no man has ever seen, tasted, heard, or smelled ‑‑ let Him try to communicate God to men. Let Him be betrayed by His dearest friends. Let Him be indicted on false charges, tried before a prejudiced jury, and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let Him see what it is to be terribly alone and completely abandoned by every living thing. Let Him be tortured and let Him die! Let Him die the most humiliating death ‑‑ with common thieves. As each leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up from the great throngs of people. But when the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No one uttered another word. No one moved. For suddenly all knew: God had already served His sentence. The Apostles’ Creed strongly emphasizes that in Jesus God physically suffered. To enter fully into the human condition, God had to experience the pain of death. The incarnation made that possible. The Gospels minimize the gory details of the Crucifixion, possibly because its horrors as a means of execution were commonly known in those days. Also it may have seemed important to the gospel writers to highlight the non‑physical aspects of Jesus' pain. Undoubtedly the rejection, mockery, humiliation (crucified victims hung naked on their crosses, not in the polite loincloths added by later artists), loneliness, and desertion by His friends all caused unimaginable pain. These were the greatest stumbling blocks to Jews accepting Jesus as the Messiah, because physical pain was less of a scandal than humiliation. Nevertheless, it is too easy nowadays to forget the excruciating physical suffering which Jesus endured. After being scourged with a deadly whip that contained sharp little pieces of metal and bone, an experience which itself left some men either raving mad or dead, the victim would be kicked and dragged to his feet and compelled to carry the timber crossbeam, called a patibulum. He would then be driven on by blows from the flat edge of a sword or goaded with its pointed end to his place of execution. But that was just the beginning. What is crucifixion? A medical doctor provides a physical description: The cross is placed on the ground and the exhausted man is quickly thrown backwards with his shoulders against the wood. The executioner feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drives a heavy, square wrought‑iron nail through the wrist and deep into the wood. Quickly he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement. The cross is then lifted into place. The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed. The victim is now crucified. As he slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating, fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain—the nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As he pushes himself upward to avoid stretching torment, he places the full weight on the nail through his feet. Again he feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of the feet. As the arms fatigue, cramps sweep through the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push himself upward to breathe. Air can be drawn into the lungs but not exhaled. He fights to raise himself in order to get even one small breath. Finally carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subside. Spasmodically he is able to push himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen. Hours of this limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint‑rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from his lacerated back as he moves up and down against the rough timber. It often took days to die. Finally, another agony begins...a deep, crushing pain deep in the chest as it slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart. It is now almost over–the loss of tissue fluids reached a critical level–the compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues—the tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. He can feel the chill of death creeping through his tissues.... Finally he can allow his body to die. All this the Bible records with the simple words, “And they crucified Him” (Mark 15:24). Jesus suffered physically.             3. Christ suffered spiritually. Though it is hard for us to comprehend, Christ’s greatest sufferings were spiritually. Most modern day Christians speak of the cross and Christ’s suffering as symbolic of God’s great love. And while that is true, the cross is also symbolic of God’s great wrath. It is only at the cross that God’s holiness and justice are satisfied. Modern day evangelicals like to think of God as the loving Father. But the cross reminds us that God is also the righteous judge who keeps track of every sin and infraction. The family room is represented at the cross but so is the courtroom, as God the righteous judge demands punishment for sin. The great concern of our lives in modern America is, "How can I be happy?" We will do almost anything, pay almost anything, to be happy. We pamper ourselves, dote on ourselves, and our greatest fear seems to be that somewhere, somehow, we will be unhappy. Who will take care of us: The government? Our family? The church? And we see this reflected in the criminal justice system, where felons are often treated as victims of society. Maybe, we fear, what they need is our compassion, not our punishment! Rehabilitation makes sense in that sort of approach, where the demand for punishment itself is viewed as a sign of sin and wickedness these days. Similarly, we wonder, how can hell heal people? How can that lead to a happy ending and rehabilitate the wayward? The notion of God requiring the judgment of sinners at all, even if it does fall on the head of a representative substitute, is repugnant to many. The cross reminds us though that there is no hope for us of rehabilitation, instead our only hope is redemption. In the Apostles’ Creed we are told that He died. We are told when He died, under Pontius Pilate. And we are told how He died: He was crucified. But we are not told why He died. And that is the most important of all. There are millions of people who know that Christ died on the cross yet have no real comprehension of what that really means. They continue to go their merry way, oblivious of the true significance of His death. And though they see on the top of every church and in front of every sanctuary the symbol of that death, they seem blind to its meaning. The why is the basis for His greatest suffering. To help us understand how much He suffered spiritually, let’s use some key terms.   A) Atonement. Atonement basically means that someone must pay the price to bring reconciliation between two parties who are alienated from each other. We were alienated from a holy God because of our vile sin. The cross makes it possible for us to be brought together. Let me illustrate it this way. A small boy was always late coming home from school. His parents warned him one day that he must be home on time that afternoon, but he arrived later than ever. His mother met him at the door and said nothing. At dinner that night, the boy looked at his plate. There was a slice of bread and a glass of water. He looked at his father’s plate full of meat and potatoes. And then looked at his father, but his father said nothing. The boy was crushed. The father waited for the full impact to sink in, then he quietly took the boy’s plate and placed it in front of himself. He took his own plate of meat and potatoes, and put it in front of the boy, and smiled at his son. When that boy grew up, he said, "All my life I’ve known what God is like by what my father did that night." That Dad took his son’s just punishment. He atoned for his son. Atonement is the paying of a price to bring man and God back together. Christ suffered on the cross to pay or atone for our sin. He took our punishment upon Himself. Jesus, the Lamb of God, took all our sins on Himself and became the final sacrifice. Jesus, the ultimate high priest, paid for our sins, knowing we could never pay for them ourselves. This was the end of the sacrificial system. The price has been paid; the debt has been taken care of. That’s why He suffered on the cross. 1 John 4:9-10 says, “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” A. H. Strong said “God requires satisfaction because He is holiness, but He makes satisfaction because He is love.”   B) Propitiation. 1 John 2:2 says, “And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (KJV). Propitiation is the turning away of wrath by an offering. God could only turn away His wrath from us because Christ became our offering. Propitiation is then the satisfaction of God’s wrath toward the sinner and the foundation of that sacrifice is the crucifixion of Christ, who is Himself our propitiation. A simple illustration of this is found in the book of Genesis. You’ll recall that Jacob has ripped off Esau. Esau is ticked so Jacob splits. But eventually Jacob has to come back home. He sends word, and he sends spies ahead to check out Esau. They come back and report that Esau is coming and has 400 men coming with him. It doesn’t sound like a “welcome home party.” So Jacob sends presents ahead of him to his brother, hoping to turn his frown into a smile. The word used for those gifts is our word propitiation. Christ was God’s gift or propitiation on the cross to satisfy God’s righteous wrath.   C) Substitute. He could only atone for us and be our propitiation as He became our substitute. We were the ones who deserved to be on the cross. Jesus faced God’s wrath and took our Hell upon Himself on the cross. Peter describes it this way, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body” (1 Pet. 3:18). In his poem, Substitution, Peter Rogers wrote: A bee flew near my daughter A bee buzzed round her head I moved to protect my daughter And the bee stung me instead. The pelican was hungry And hungrier still her brood The pelican struck her body And fed them with her blood. A brush fire swept the prairie Consuming everything A hen was charred concealing Live chicks beneath her wing. A judge pronounced a sentence The guilty could not pay The judge gave his own money— And the man went free that day.   That’s substitution.   D) Abandonment. The last word that helps me understand the suffering of the Cross is abandonment. While He was on the cross, Jesus suddenly cried out and the people misunderstood him. He cried out a quotation from Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And at that moment he cries out what is known technically as the cry of dereliction, the cry of abandonment. In her book, Life and Death in Shanghai, Nien Cheng, a Chinese woman in her fifties who was a widow of an oil executive who was trained in the West tells how she was captured by the Red Guard and accused of being a spy for the West for no other reason than she’d been educated in the West and was married to an oil executive, whose job she had held after his death. They kept her in solitary confinement for six and a half years. They required her, under torture, to confess to being a spy. She refused on principle, so they handcuffed her hands behind her back and left the handcuffs on permanently. Her daughter was murdered by the guards while they were in prison. They would bring food in to her, but her hands were handcuffed behind her back. She would put her face in her drink and lap up what she could like a dog. But how could she eat the food? She would put a rag on the floor, turn with her back to the table on which they placed the food, and with her manacled hands behind her, she would knock the food off the table onto the floor, hopefully onto the rag, and then get down like a dog and eat the food off the floor. And this is what she said: "I never prayed, ‘Oh Lord, get me out of this place.  I felt it was up to me to fight the battle, but the Lord would be with me. I could, through prayer, feel the Lord in the cell with me, so I never felt abandoned." That is one of the most incredible statements I’ve ever read. Now, go to the cross. If it is possible for somebody in solitary confinement, in those kinds of conditions, never to feel abandoned, because through prayer the presence of the Lord is felt, what must it be like, having been one with the Father for all eternity, suddenly to have your prayers hit a brassy heaven, and to cry from the depths of your soul, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The total emptiness of loneliness and abandonment is what Christ is suffering at that moment. And the answer comes, "for Thou art holy." It’s our sin—societal sin, corporate sin, national sin, international sin, and individual sin—that has separated Jesus and His God. That is the suffering of the Cross, the horrible spiritual suffering that our Lord faced for us. Conclusion: A Pastor in the pacific Northwest tells of the dramatization of Christ's trial and crucifixion by the youth group at his church. The youth director played the role of Christ, the youth the jeering mob. "Crucify him! Crucify him!" they shouted, and then they dragged the youth director into the back yard of the church and hung him up on an improvised cross. The pastor stood to the side of the assembly, to "see how the drama was going." The youth were hushed now, as "Christ" hung there and spoke these words to the youth group: "Even though you are doing this to me, I still love you." And then, the pastor noticed an eight‑year‑old girl standing in the front of the group, transfixed by the scene. He looked at her and saw real tears streaming down her face. "And," the pastor states, "I was envious of her." For us "professionals" it was a "performance." For her, it was the real thing. She was there. So often you and I come to the account of Christ’s suffering for us and we merely observe what is happening to Christ. We are uninvolved spectators. And yet the Savior of the world is hanging there, suffering and dying for your sins and my sins on the cross. So how should we respond to the suffering of Christ? The first response is belief. I do not mean belief in the fact of Christ’s suffering and death. Even His executioners believed in the fact of His death; otherwise, they would not have given orders for the burial. Belief in His suffering and death means belief in its purpose. As Paul says, "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:3). Not unless one believes in His death "for our sins" and accepts it personally, does he become a Christian. The second response is a sense of assurance. We know that God is with us. No matter how dark the path, or how harrowing the experiences, or how deep the grief, or how intense the pain we may experience, it is nothing compared to the cross. Why should we doubt our Father’s love? God the Father "did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all; how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32). A third response to the suffering of Christ should be devoted service to Him. As Paul says, "The love of Christ controls us" (2 Cor. 5:14). He meant Christ’s love for us. Our love for Him is weak and unreliable. If Christ loves us enough to suffer and die for us, how can we ignore Him or render indifferent service to Him? We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19, KJV). To believe in Christ’s suffering begins with salvation and continues with a life of praise, service and worship. That’s what we mean when we affirm, “I believe in Jesus Christ [Who] suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.”