South Shore Pentecostal Church

Guest (Female): Welcome to the Apostolic Truth radio program with Pastor Craig Ouellette, our radio ministry of South Shore Pentecostal Church located in Whitman, Massachusetts. At a time when many Christians do not know what to believe, South Shore Pentecostal is honored to bring you clear biblical teaching on which you can confidently build your faith. Thank you for joining us.

J. Craig Ouellette: Luke 23:32 says, "And there were also two other malefactors led with him to be put to death. And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified him and the malefactors, one on the right hand and the other on the left. Then said Jesus, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' And they parted his raiment and cast lots. And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, 'He saved others; let him save himself if he be Christ, the chosen of God.'

"And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him and offering him vinegar and saying, 'If thou be the King of the Jews, save thyself.' And a superscription was also written over him in letters of Greek and Latin and Hebrew: 'This is the King of the Jews.' And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, 'If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us.' But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, 'Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this man hath done nothing amiss.'

"And he said unto Jesus, 'Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.' And Jesus said unto him, 'Verily I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.' And it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.' And having said thus, he gave up the ghost."

And then in 2 Corinthians 5:21, it says, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Amen. Let's pray. Lord God, we ask you to open our hearts and minds. Help me to say things the way they ought to be said and presented, Lord God, to bring forth your truth, not my ideas but your ideas and ways, Lord God, that we might receive of you, Lord God. Help us to be in concentration, and we bind every spirit that's contrary to you, in Jesus' name. Everyone said amen.

Praise God. We're going to try to address the question, "Why Calvary?" this morning. Why Calvary? I know we all have a little bit of an idea on there. Before we move on, I just want to point out that sometimes that passage that we read there is a stumbling block for people because we'll say you need to be baptized in Jesus' name and get the Holy Ghost to be saved, and they'll say, "Well, what about the thief on the cross?"

The thing that they're not understanding is Jesus has not died yet, been buried, and ascended to heaven and sent back the Holy Ghost. So the church age has not started. That man is still under law. He does not have a requirement to be baptized in Jesus' name and receive the Holy Ghost. But once Jesus dies, is buried, resurrected, takes the blood up to the altar in heaven, and sends back the Holy Ghost, now men are supposed to repent, get baptized in Jesus' name for the remission of sins, and receive the Holy Ghost.

So it's just like what God asked Abraham to do is different than what God asked Israel to do after they came out of Egypt and went to Mount Sinai. They had different things. What God asked Noah to do was different than what Abraham had to do. What we have to do today is different than what they had to do in the Old Testament because we have the blood and the spirit available to us to cause us to be born again. Amen. But why Calvary here today? Let's just see if we can answer this question.

Now the word Calvary—the only place it's used is there in the book of Luke. The word Calvary is derived from a Latin word which means skull. So the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John use the word Golgotha, which is a Hebrew or Chaldean version of the same word. They both all mean the same thing, basically the skull. And the question before us is why did Jesus have to die the way he died? I think everybody here this morning understands that we needed a sacrifice. Yes, that's right. We needed a sacrifice.

But think about it. Why did he have to die on a cross rather than just being stoned? Why couldn't they have just decapitated him like they do sometimes for Roman people? Or why couldn't they have just hung him with a noose? Why did he have to die on a cross? So when we're saying, "Why Calvary?" why did it have to happen the way that it happened? Jesus' death is a fulfillment of prophecy, first of all. And the Bible lets us understand that sin and death and curses came into the world through Adam's sin. Romans 5:12, death came upon all men because one man sinned. And Romans 3:23 says, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."

So the debt for sin is death. Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life." So humanity required an innocent man for a blood sacrifice to atone for our sins. So let's look at Hebrews 9:22 because sometimes we forget that even in the New Testament we still need the blood. It's just we don't need the blood of a different lamb; I need the blood of Jesus. I need the blood of Jesus. And all those Old Testament sacrifices are foreshadowing what God is going to do through Jesus Christ to help us understand that sin is going to require blood to deal with it.

So Hebrews 9:22, "And almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission." That's a statement that applies from Genesis to Revelation. All things without shedding a blood is no remission. So the blood is the blood of Jesus. Amen. So Jesus shed his blood for us. Matthew 26:28, we look at that scripture when we do communion. And Jesus lets us understand that his blood is going to inaugurate or initiate a new covenant. Again, that's why we have different requirements than they did in the Old Testament. We've got a new covenant, a new agreement. The word covenant means testament, so we call it New Testament.

So we look in Matthew 26:28, "For this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." And I'm going to say that remission means more than just forgiveness. I don't know about you, but I don't need just forgiveness; I need to be freed from my sin. I could be forgiven but still be in bondage for my sin. And so I need remission, which means freedom from. I need freedom from my sins. And the blood of Jesus and the name of Jesus and the spirit of God give us power to rise above the sin nature, and it breaks the bondage of sin in our lives.

That's why sometimes people don't get the Holy Ghost before they get baptized in Jesus' name, but when they get the baptism in Jesus' name, they get the Holy Ghost afterwards because it breaks things in their lives. And sometimes there are things in our lives that even when we've repented, we need God to break it. You need God to break it off. You need God to break the hold of sin. Amen. So just believing doesn't break the hold, and sometimes we need God to break things in our lives. Amen.

And again, in Romans 3:24, we read Romans 3:23, or we mentioned it, that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But then he goes on to say that the blood through faith in his blood, faith in the blood. So Romans 3:24 and 25, "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation"—that means a satisfaction—"through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God." Amen.

And again in Colossians 1:20, we see that the blood reconciles. We need the blood to reconcile us to God. See, sin makes us an enemy, but the blood will make us friends with God. Amen. So Colossians 1:20, "And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven." So the blood of Jesus applied in your life will make peace with you and God. Amen. Now I don't know about you; you may not have peace in this world, but you can have peace with God. For me, I found if as long as I got peace with God, I can handle the other stuff that comes.

It's when my peace with God gets upset, now I start to wonder what's going to happen. But when I got peace with God, I can handle the storm. When I got peace with God, I know that God's still on my side. When I got peace with God, I know that God's going to show up when I need him. When I got peace with God, I know that I can go to God and he's going to give me what I need in due season. So the blood of Jesus works in my life to let me know that I can have peace in my life. So why the cross? The cross is made of wood and it's referred often as a tree, especially in the book of Acts.

So we look at these scriptures on the screen: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree." I thought it was a cross; says a tree. "And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree," Acts 10:39, Peter's preaching to Cornelius. "And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre," and in Acts 13:29, now Paul is preaching. So what's the deal with the cross and the tree? Well, the law of Moses stated that everyone which is hanged on a tree is cursed, Deuteronomy 21:22-23.

So sin, death, and curses came into the world through eating the fruit of a tree, right? Hey, so trees go all the way back to Genesis. Tree's affecting us, and the Bible says that righteous saints are supposed to be trees planted like trees of the Lord. And when we're stable, we're trees of righteousness, we give honor unto the Lord, that he might be we might be the praise of God in Isaiah 61. So Jesus was crucified on a cross made of wood, wood from a tree, so he could pay our sins, overcome death and curses. And Galatians 3:13 says, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."

Now the cross is made of wood; wood comes from a tree. It's the same word that's used in most of the cases. So the tree is just a type. Amen. It doesn't have it's the fact that it's a tree, and the cross is made from wood. The cross was not made from iron, not made from brass; it's made from wood, and that cross is a type of the tree. So the manner of Jesus' death was prophesied hundreds of years before it happened, and in even in the case of Psalm 22, a thousand years before it happened. And it said his death would be humiliating. So let's look in Isaiah 53:3 and 4. Old Testament, Isaiah 53.

Isaiah 53, verses 3 and 4, it says, "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not." It's talking about Jesus. And the reason we know this is about Jesus is because Philip, in the book of Acts, preaches to the Ethiopian eunuch from this passage, Jesus. Verse 4, "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." He's got a humiliating death. It's saying people in general are not accepting him. People in general are despising him. People in general are mocking him. Amen. He's by himself. He's got sorrow. He's bearing things by himself. He's a man of grief; he's acquainted. And when he looks to others, they're hiding their face.

Sometimes God's looking for something from us, and we hide our face. He's just looking for a little praise from us, and we're hiding our face. He's looking for a little sacrifice from us, and we hide our face. Amen. So his death would be humiliated. He would be wounded and whipped for our sins. The next verse: "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." So he's going to be despised; he's going to be rejected; he's going to be wounded; he's going to be whipped. He would die by crucifixion. When we look in Psalm 22:16, it says, "They shall look upon me, they pierced my hands and my feet," Psalm 22:16.

In Zechariah 12:10, it says, "They shall look upon me whom they have pierced." Zechariah 13:6, "And one shall say unto him, 'What are these wounds in thy hands?' then he shall answer, 'Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.'" So crucifixion was already prophesied when crucifixion was not even something that was going on in history in a general sense at the time. The crucifixion was handled by Rome. Now think about it. Even though the Jews rejected him, they didn't kill him. They handed him off to the world power, which is Rome. So Rome, Babylon is a Rome as a type of Babylon. Rome is Babylon if you read Revelation 17, city set on seven hills. That's Rome. Rome has got seven hills.

City set on seven hills. So Rome is Babylon. Amen. And so let's understand: his own nation rejected and handed him over to the world power for execution. His death was not accomplished secretly but was open before all men, documented. You can find Roman documents. Pliny the Younger and Cicero, they wrote about him. You find something about Josephus writing about him. It's in the records of our Bible. So his death is not a secret; it's written. It's written. It's there so we can know. Amen. And when Paul stood before Felix or Festus, one of those men, to give his presentation, he said to them that the death was not accomplished secretly but was open before all men. So it was documented by the Jews.

So part of Paul's petition was, "You know the news. You've heard the story. It's a regular story around here. It's not a secret thing." So what's happening? God was setting it up in a way that they couldn't say, "Well, we don't know that he was crucified because the Jews did it some place." God did it in the open under the authority of the world power so that it would be open to all people, that all people could see that this man was crucified. And when he rises again, there's a witness to let us understand that God is real and Jesus is God manifest in the flesh.

Again, Jesus himself said, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to me," in John 12:32. This he said to signify what death he should die. He knew he was going to be crucified. Hallelujah. So death on the cross. Let's just take that for a little bit, and I know that there's all kinds of different articles you can read about this and doctors and different things you can see. But his hands and feet were pierced through. And hanging so he's got to hang down by his hands, and he's got to stand by his feet. Sometimes there was like a little step they put them on; sometimes there wasn't. Amen. In most cases, there wasn't.

So he's hanging down; he can't breathe. So in order to breathe, he's got to push up against the nails through his feet. But that hurts so much he's got to let go, and now he's got to hang by the nails in his hands. So this is going to go on until he dies. Push up, pain; hang down, pain. Push up so I can breathe, pain; hang down, pain. And sometimes it could go on for days, people would say. That's why the Romans were kind of amazed when he died in three hours. But he's up there, not only is he hanging there with power to come down, with the ability to turn the pain off as God. He could turn the pain off. He could turn on his God power and say, "I'm going to override the pain. I'll heal myself."

He could have done that. He could have come off the cross, healed himself. He could have brought angels and wiped everybody out and come off the cross. So there he is in pain: up, pain; down, pain; up, pain, can't breathe; down, pain. And while he's up there, they're mocking him. We have a hard time living as a Christian when we got a headache or don't feel good sometimes. Maybe you guys are better than that. So he's hanging after he's been mocked, beaten, having a crown of thorns on his head. He's been whipped. The Roman whip they call a cat-o'-nine-tails. It's got pieces of bone and metal and stuff in it. And it's designed that when it when you whip and you pull it back, that it rips and shreds the skin.

So it's not just like he gets a sting of the whip. But every time the whip hits, those bones and pieces of metal grip, and when the whipman pulls it back, it shreds. So he's got 39 of these under the law. So now he's already gone through this before he's nailed. He's already gone through a crown of thorns on his head, and he's being mocked and provoked in this condition. In Luke 23:35, the elders are mocking him, and he knows they're hypocrites. He knows they're wrong, and they're mocking him. The Romans are mocking him. "You're King of Jews? Come on, save yourselves." And there he is, taking all that.

What's going on? What is all that? God is trying to illustrate to us how evil sin really is. God is trying to illustrate to us the cost of sin. He's trying to help us understand that sin is a big thing. We often dismiss sin and its effects. Even though we know sin is sin, sometimes we say, "Well, it was just a small one." We put it aside; we brush it aside; we rationalize it. And even though we know in God's eyes that all sin is big and some small sins can keep us from hell or keep us from heaven rather, we sometimes dismiss those sins as just small. We sometimes justify small sins thinking it's only going to affect me. I wouldn't do it if it was going to affect others, but it's only going to affect me, so I can make a decision to do it. Amen.

Now let's look at Adam's sin. Let's just take a little look here. All Adam did was take a bite from a piece of fruit. He didn't kill anybody. He didn't rob anybody. He didn't steal; he didn't beat anybody. He didn't have a tail. He didn't break a contract with somebody else. He took a bite of fruit. A bite of fruit! Come on, just a piece of fruit, a bite of fruit. And that became sin because God said, "Don't eat that fruit." See, it doesn't have to be a big action to be a sin. A bite! Doesn't say he took a big bite; didn't matter if it was a micro-bite. It was going to be a sin because God said, "Don't eat of that fruit." Amen.

So his sin was he disobeyed what God said not to do by eating of that fruit. And again, we often think our sin's not going to affect anybody. But Eve sinned. The Bible's judged because of Adam's sin. Humanity is. But Eve's sin affected Adam, causing him to take the bite. That's all she did too, was a bite. One bite. Doesn't say she ate the whole fruit up and then went to Adam or ate most of it; she took some, went to Adam. Her sin affected Adam. Our sins affect other people. Amen. And again, we often think that sin's not going to affect us at all. Adam's sin affected all of humanity.

In the Bible in the book of Joshua, you've got a man named Achan that when they come to Jericho, before they go in there, Joshua tells them that everything in there is dedicated to God. It belongs to God. All the gold, all the silver, all the people, all the animals, all the clothes—it's all dedicated to God. It belongs to God. It's a curse, meaning it's set aside for God. Burn it all; nobody gets anything. It's God's. But Achan goes in there and sees a Babylonish garment, and he finds a wedge of gold, and he finds some silver, and he covets that and he takes it, hides it in his tent. Now nobody knows but God and angels.

But yet when Israel goes out to fight the next time, they can't fight. They have to turn their backs because Achan's sin has affected Israel. And now Joshua's going, "What's going to happen now?" Israel's turned its back. He seeks God, and God says, "There's sin. There's sin. Bring the people and find out who it is." And they find out Achan has done that and he says, "I saw that garment, that gold, that silver. I coveted it. I took it. I hid it in my tent." They go find it; it's there. And the verdict is Achan is going to be stoned. But his sin doesn't just affect him. His wife, his kids, all his animals—they're all taken down to the valley and they're all stoned and burned.

Our sin does not just affect us; it affects those around us. Amen. David's sin—and he's called a man after God's own heart, and the reason I believe is because when he's confronted by his sin, he repents. He doesn't try to wiggle out of it. He doesn't give excuses. He just says, "I have sinned." So David admits his sin. He's not perfect. Okay, so he's a man after God's own heart because when he's confronted—that's what God's looking for. He's looking for us when we do the wrong thing. We'll say, "Yes, Lord, we did the wrong thing. I'm wrong; I sinned. Forgive me."

That's what God's looking for. Not, "Well, they sinned, that's why I sinned." No, that doesn't work. Amen. I did the wrong thing. They might have, but that's their business between them and God, but I've got to deal with myself. Amen. So David, when he says, "I've sinned," when Nathan tells him, "You're the man," he tells him a parable and David says, "The man that did this should suffer fourfold, four times." Nathan says, "You're the man." David says, "I've sinned." Nathan says, "God's put your sin under. Nevertheless, you're going to have the sword in your house for the rest of your life." And guess what? David's own words judged him too because he lost four sons after that. The baby that Bathsheba was bearing, Amnon who raped his cousin Tamar or stepsister, Absalom, and Adonijah. He lost four sons because of the sin.

I'm trying to say our sins do not just affect us. Even when we repent, but repenting will help because it brings God back into the equation. It brings God back into the situation. It brings God into a way that God wants us to have the best outcome we can have. But I've got to get into his position. I've got to get where God wants me to be. I've got to come under God's hand and authority. When I'm trying to run my own life, then I'm saying, "Okay, God, you step back." But when I come under God's authority, now God will say, "Okay, you shouldn't do that. Come over here. Wait now here. I'll do this for you here." God's in control; he can do the things he needs to do. When I surrender, I can let him be Lord. He's not Lord till I do surrender. Doesn't matter how many times I say "Praise God." Doesn't matter how many times I sing "He is Lord." When I surrender, he's Lord. Now he's my Lord, when I surrender. Amen. Not when I make excuses for not surrendering, but when I surrender. Hallelujah.

Again, Solomon's sins affected the nation. His sin led to the splitting of the nation, of the ten tribes separated from Judah and Benjamin. Amen. And so Adam's sin—and again going back to Adam's sin—Adam's sin affected creation. Creation! All men would come under the curse of sin. Death came into the world with animals, first death because Adam sins. To cover Adam and Eve, the Lord killed a couple animals. Nature was changed. Thorns and thistles are coming out of the ground where before God said everything is good. So sin even causes nature to change. So I'm not when I hear somebody says, "I feel like I'm gay," or "I feel like I'm a lesbian," or "I feel like this," sin will bring you to the place where your nature will start to change, and you need to repent to get straightened out.

Animals would eventually change and eat each other because of Adam's sin. They didn't eat each other; they all ate all ate vegetables and fruits before that, even the lions. Even the lions and the bears and the tigers did that. Man was now estranged from God. Sin puts a gap between us and God. And eventually, after the flood, God would put a fear of animals on the fear human beings. It wasn't always that way; animals did not always react the way that they act today. My point is sin changes nature. Praise God. Sin changes nature.

So let's get back to the crucifixion. We're talking why did he have to die? Why Calvary? The place of crucifixion where Jesus was crucified is called the place of the skull, Calvary or Golgotha, the place of the skull. It's symbolic of the death and the pressure that Jesus was under mentally and physically leading up to that crucifixion. The pressure of sin. Amen. If you tried to live for God, you get some pressure in your mind sometimes. Amen. You get some pressure coming against you and you need God to come and help you. Amen. You need the Prince of Peace to come and lift off that pressure or God to come in with the Holy Ghost and lift you up above. Or get a drink out of the well of salvation and have the joy of God come. If you've tried to live for God, you face pressure in your mind, and a lot of times sometimes we get it in our body, but most of the time it's more in our mind than anything else because the devil comes and says, "This is going to happen," or "That's going to happen." And the thing we're afraid of is the thing he says to us. And maybe we slipped a little bit and we're feeling guilty and we don't feel God. And now the devil comes, says, "This is going to happen. This is the way this is going to turn out. There's no hope for you."

But I want you to understand that in Jesus there's hope. I want you to understand that in Jesus there's an answer. I want you to understand that in Jesus you can have peace. I want you to understand that Jesus will deliver you. I want you to understand that even if your face is in the mud, God will pick you up and bring you out of the mud. I want you to understand you got no hope? Doctor Jesus will give you a hope injection and give you something to raise you up and help you. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. He will help you, but you got to commit to him. You got to let the sin go behind.

He gave us a great clue on the cross. One of the first things he said is, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." That's what Stephen said when he was stoned: "Don't lay this charge this sin to their charge." There's a clue. No matter who sins against you, if you can say, "Forgive them," you don't have to take the shackle of their sin, of their mistake. You don't have to be bound to their attitude. If I don't forgive them, I've made a connection to them that's holding me back. If I don't forgive them, I'm getting involved I'm letting their sin, their attitude, their thinking get a hold on me.

But if I forgive them, they may stay the same, but I'm not bound anymore. I've been released from that. Hallelujah. Amen. So that's why Jesus said, "Father, forgive them." If you'll forgive, you can be free. If you'll forgive, you can have power. If you'll forgive, you can have resurrection. Amen. They might have done wrong, they might have intended, but just like Jesus, if God in flesh can forgive men that meant to kill them, saying they don't know what they're doing, we as human beings who are sinners can definitely forgive others that are around us. Amen. If you'll forgive, you'll get a release. If you'll forgive, you'll get power. If you'll forgive, you'll get a resurrection in God.

Hallelujah. Don't let the devil bind you by past faults that others have done. Don't let them bind you; don't remember their face. Don't remember their attitude. Don't let it get into you, but forgive so that you can have the bondage of sin be broken in your life. Amen. So he's at Golgotha, and it's a skull because it's representing our mind, our head. Amen. There's a pressure in our lives when we're trying to live for God. Everybody's got a pressure, even those not living for God. That's why they get high. That's why they're getting drunk. That's why they've always got to have a vacation. That's why they got to have a party. That's why they can't stay by themselves alone because they're afraid. That's why the TV's got to run 48 hours a day even though there's only 24. Amen. That's why they've got to do it that way. Because they've got sin in their life. They've got no peace in their life. Amen. Their mind is all tangled up. Amen.

But you come to God. He's letting us understand, "I can deal with your mental problems." That's why he's called the Prince of Peace, the Counselor. Amen. If you'll go to him, he'll give you counsel. Amen. Sometimes we think, "God, I need something. My mind's going crazy." But God will stabilize your mind. Anchor it in the scriptures. Amen. Thinking that's not by the Bible? Throw it out. Get something from the Bible. Anchor in Jesus, anchor in the scriptures; your mind will get stable. Amen.

The Bible says that the warfare's in the mind. Amen. We'll read the scriptures; I think we probably know them, you probably heard them. But 2 Corinthians 4:3 and 4, it says, "But if our gospel be hid, it's hid to them that are lost. In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not." How does he deal with us? He blinds our minds. He's got people today so angry, they're so blinded by anger, their anger's so amped up that even when they're looking at something good, they're interpreting it wrong as evil. That's the devil. The devil's able to blind your mind so that even when you're looking at what's good, you interpret it as evil because he's got people amped up and angry. They're not really seeing the situation; they're seeing some event that's in the past that was wrong, and they're being taught to look at this situation like that situation when they're not the same situation. But the feelings come up. Their mind is blinded so that they cannot see the truth.

The devil will put a filter in front of your eyes. He'll put a filter in front of your eyes so that you don't see what's really happening. You only see what he wants you to see. Amen. He can blind minds. And how do you do that? I got to go to God. "What's really going on, God? What's really going on? What does your word say? How am I supposed to handle this?" Amen. Again, 2 Corinthians 10:3, "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal." In other words, they're not from our flesh; we don't get them out of the gym, we don't get them from the army. "But mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds." What are the strongholds? We cast down imaginations. Cast down imaginations.

Fear of failure, fear of being rejected, fear of tomorrow, fear of all these different things, fear that I can't take it. We cast down imaginations. You might not be able to take it by yourself, but with God all things are possible. You got the Lord, you can do it, you can make it through. Hallelujah. Amen. And so you got to cast down the imagination. Every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Amen. You got to cast down the ideas that are contrary to the word of God. Amen. Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. You got to train your mind, bring it under the authority of the scriptures of God. You got to quit thinking the way the world thinks. Amen. If you're always worried about what's going to happen, you're not letting God be in there. Because God says, "I'm not going to let more happen to you than you're able to bear." And if you're seeking God and you're still going through it, God knows you can bear it, and God's going to help you through it. Hallelujah. Amen.

So don't let that imagination get you. Don't let the devil dictate the outcome. Don't let the devil tell you the cause. Don't let the devil tell you the answer. Go to God and get the answer. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and let him exalt you in due time. Hallelujah. So people are defeated by sin and the devil because of incorrect thinking. So he goes and gets crucified in a place that represents the mind, skull. He's going to resurrect from that situation, which means I can resurrect from my situation. Hallelujah. Praise God. Hallelujah.

Again, crucifixion so ugly and brutal because it's trying to illustrate the ugliness of sin in the sight of a holy God. Just a little one to us maybe, but to God, it's ugly. We can't see all the results. Again, we don't always see how our sin is affecting those around us. Amen. But sin does affect; it goes beyond. And we see that in the Bible. It talks about sin going to the third and fourth generation of the fathers. Fathers' sins. That's why that's why God makes the men the head of the household because through them, through them to the third and fourth generation, the sin will be propagated. Not through the third and fourth generation of the mother. Amen. That doesn't mean men don't need to be godly and right; they do need to be godly and right. They need to be Christ-like. But God is giving them the authority because he's going to hold them accountable to the second, third, and fourth generation. Amen.

So we see Jesus whipped with a crown of thorns, crucified, rejected. We see God manifest in the flesh, taking all our sins so we can have salvation. We read over in Hebrews 2:9, and Hebrews 2:9 says, "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man." He died for us. Now I want you to understand that if God had exacted judgment on Adam right then for biting a piece of fruit, his judgment would have been if God had crucified him and whipped him and put a crown of thorns on him, that would have been a righteous judgment. We don't see it that way because we're measuring from human perspective. But Jesus is illustrating what's just for sin. And so that could have happened for Adam.

In other words, my little my sin might not seem as big as yours, or maybe it seems way bigger than yours. Maybe yours is not as big as mine; probably isn't. But if God was going to judge me here in this life, he'd put me on a cross, whip me, put a crown of thorns on me. Me! Just for my sin because it's so ugly to God. He's a holy God. That's why God said, "Moses, Moses"—we know he's he gets contact with with God. God says, "Nobody talked I haven't talked face-to-face with anybody like I talk with Moses." But yet Moses can't see God's face. So Moses compared to you and I, he's righteous. Moses can go up in the mount 40 days and 40 nights. Moses can come into the Holy of Holies without blood, right? He can do that; he can come into the presence of God. Amen. But he can't see God's face because even Moses, his little bit of sin, he'll be consumed by the glory and holiness of God. Hallelujah.

So the Bible says he who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. We read that scripture, 2 Corinthians 5:21. The cross was a public display of God's love and salvation and has made it possible for all people who desire to be born again of the water and the spirit. Jesus was crucified in that place of the skull. Before Jesus was arrested, he agonized in the garden of Gethsemane. And I know some of you know this, but Gethsemane means olive press. So he's pressed. We know he's pressed because when we read in Luke, we look in Luke 22:44, it says he sweated great drops of blood. He sweated like great drops of blood came out as he's under pressure in his mind because he does not want in his humanity to go to the cross. He knows what that's going to entail. He knows it's going to be a big temptation. He knows he's going to want to come off the cross and smite everybody in his humanity. He knows he's going to want to get the hypocrites. He knows that he's going to want to get the the devil and show him who he is. Devil's been saying, "If you're really the Son of God, come on, do this or do that." He knows that he's going to be tempted. He knows they're going to mock him. Oh, show us who you really are.

He knows that. So he's sweating drops of blood. There's going to be pain there. As in his humanity, he is so weak and struggling so hard, an angel comes to help him. God doesn't need an angel to help him, so it's talking about the humanity that God has now limited himself in. He's not there as God; he's there as a man that feels the same thing we all feel, has the same temptations we all have, has the same weaknesses, has the same desire to be comfortable, to have a nice life, to have a successful thing, to have the things that are considered the good things of life, to be liked by other people. That man is sitting there in the garden knowing he's about to be tempted, and he's got the power to do it! And he doesn't want to do what he's going to go through, and God sends an angel. Amen.

And then he takes a crown of thorns. Again, that's for our mind. His mind is pierced with those thorns. Amen. They're mocking him. They put a robe on him: "Behold, your king." Amen. He's suffering in the mind for us, not just physically. He's paying a price physically to shed innocent blood so that we can be washed. Amen. But he's also suffering with the things that we deal with in trying to live righteously in this world and live for God. Amen. The pressures that come upon our mind. Amen. Sometimes God wants us to do something and we're afraid because somebody else might think something about it. Amen. So there's pressures on our mind and on our emotions. Amen. What will they think? What will they think? What's my family going to think? What's my friends going to think? What will they do to me at work? Amen. What's going to happen if I live the way God wants me to live? He's got this pressure on his mind. Amen. But he's dealing with it. He's going to deal with it because he wants to conquer that thinking so we can have victory in our mind.

Amen. You can have victory in your mind. You can bind all the ideas of the enemy. It doesn't matter what the past has done. You can still have the right view of that. You can look at the scene and say, "I remember when I did that," but it doesn't bother me anymore. God has broken the curse. God has broken the he that connection. I can testify about it, but God has freed me from it. So look in Hebrews 2:18 again. He says, "For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted." Amen. There's suffering in resisting temptation. That's because you're not doing what you feel like. Resisting temptation is not doing what you feel like. Resisting temptation is doing what God says to do. So there's suffering in temptation. Amen. When temptation comes, the only reason temptation comes is because you do have a desire. So when you resist how you feel to do the will of God, you suffer in temptation. Amen.

Hebrews 12:3 gives us a message that says, "For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds." What it's trying to say is sometimes we think, "Man, I can't take anymore," but you think about what Jesus went through, you went, "Okay, I haven't gone that far yet." We might have some pressure, but we're still alive. We might have some pressure, but we haven't died yet living for God. We might have some disappointments, but we haven't died yet living for God, have we? Things might not be the way we'd like them to be, but we haven't died yet living for God. Amen.

So Jesus' suffering was mental as well as physical. So why the cross? God wanted us to see that sin is ugly, that sin costs, that sin's got a bigger cost than we imagine. God wanted to fulfill prophecy for us. But he also wanted us to have a way to deal with sin and have salvation. God wanted this done in the open so somebody couldn't say, "Oh, they made that up. That's some story." No, it's in the records. It's in history. It's happened. Amen. There's people that saw the resurrection in the Bible. Paul says 500 people were alive when he writes 1 Corinthians 15 that had been there and seen him after his death.

Today, the crucifixion—why Calvary? God's trying to teach us sin is costly. Sin is ugly. But also that there's a way out of it. He died for us that we can have deliverance from sin today. Let's stand here. Amen. Are you thankful today that God loves you? Are you thankful that God loved enough to endure the shame of the cross, Amen, to go through all of that so that we can have salvation and healing today? I don't know this altar's open if you just want to thank God for what he's done in your life. Amen. If you've got the Holy Ghost, you need to thank God. Be thankful that God provided that. Without the blood, you couldn't have the Holy Ghost. That's why it wasn't there in the Old Testament. Amen. God only gave the Holy Ghost to accomplish his purpose to special people that were called. But today, anybody that wants the Holy Ghost can have the Holy Ghost. Today, anybody that wants victory in Jesus can have victory.

Today, if you're wrestling in your mind and you're weighed down with problems and the future and things that are going on, you need to come to the Lord and ask him, "Lord, I need somebody that's wonderful. I need somebody that's God. I need somebody that's a counselor. I need somebody to be my father." Hallelujah. Amen. Maybe you don't have your parents anymore, but you can have a heavenly father. Amen. He's wonderful, counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father. You can have peace in your life. You can go to bed tonight, lay your head on the pillow, and not be afraid of what's going to happen. You don't have to have a tranquilizer to go to bed, but you can go to bed praising God and talking to God and wake up refreshed in the Lord. There is a God because of Calvary and what's done in the open that will give you deliverance. Amen. But to maintain that deliverance, you need the baptism of the Holy Ghost. You need to obey God. You need to get under God's authority. Hallelujah. Come on, just praise him here today. Praise him. Come on, he's for us. The Lord is for us. He's done these things to show how much he loves. As ugly as sin is, God loves us more. God came so we could get by the ugliness of sin. He took it all upon himself so you and I can have peace and salvation today. Hallelujah, Lord. We thank you, Lord God. We praise you, Lord God.

Hallelujah. Come on, you need to call out to God. Hallelujah. Sometimes you need to open your mouth and let God know what's going on. "Lord, I need a change. Lord, I need some more strength. Lord, I need some understanding. Lord, I need you to help me. Lord, I need you to put that blood in my mind. Let my thinking be washed in that blood. Lord, I need that word applied to my mind. Let it get down to my heart. Hallelujah. Let me hide the word in my heart that I might not sin against you, Lord God." Come on, hallelujah. Come on, God's not against anybody here today. God is for everybody. But we've got to do it God's way. We've got to come to God. Come on, reach out. Amen. He wants you to have a healthy mind. He wants you to have a sound mind. Come on, that's part of the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance or a sound mind. He's not given us a spirit of fear but power, love, and sound mind. Amen. If you're tormented by thoughts, it's time to come to the Lord. If you're tormented by thinking, it's time to come to Jesus and let God do a work in your mind and in your heart. Hallelujah.

Guest (Female): Thank you for joining us today as we have studied the word on Apostolic Truth Radio. My name is Tina Ouellette, wife of Pastor Craig Ouellette of South Shore Pentecostal Church, located at 58 West Street in Whitman, Massachusetts. If you love praise and worship, you will love services at South Shore Pentecostal Church, and we invite you to come and worship with us.

Sunday School for all ages begins at 10:00 a.m., and our Sunday evening service begins at 6:00 p.m. Adult Bible study and children's churches held on Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. You can learn more about our church on our website at southshorepentecostal.com, or you may call us at 781-447-1668. If you have been blessed by this radio ministry, you can help support Apostolic Truth Radio via online giving through Venmo at SSPCWhitman. Write us today and request a free copy of today's message and join us for another broadcast of Apostolic Truth.