Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Coming up on Telling the Truth with Stuart and Jill Briscoe, Stuart will share a message from Matthew 27 that is a sobering reminder of what Christ suffered for you on the cross. It's sure to deepen your understanding of what your salvation is all about. Stuart begins in just a moment.

Did you know you can find more life-giving content from the Briscoes at tellingthetruth.org and on the Telling the Truth app? There, you can sign up for daily devotionals, watch videos, read blogs, and access a variety of other resources to help you experience life.

And while you're there, you can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world. Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with Telling the Truth. Now, here's Stuart with the message, "What Really Happened on the Cross."

Stuart Briscoe: We are dealing with the words of Jesus from the cross. I promised you right from the very beginning this is not a feel-good sermon. I promised you that this message is a message based on the agonizing cry of Jesus in the darkness of the cross when he said, "My God, my God, why, why have you forsaken me?"

We cannot treat this lightly. I believe you'll not go away with a feel-good message. I believe we'll go away with a sobering message and one that can enrich our understanding of what our salvation is all about.

When Jesus was born, we are told that the angel choirs sang and that the glory of the Lord shone round about them. You're familiar with that story, the Christmas story. You're familiar with the Christmas carols that recount that side of things. If you look at it this way, the darkness of midnight over Bethlehem was suddenly transformed into midday when God, who is light, presented himself among us.

Darkness and light cannot coexist. Where light bursts into the scene, darkness is banished. 33 years later, just a few short miles over the hill from Bethlehem was another but much smaller hill, Golgotha—the place of execution. It was so-called because it resembled a skull.

Jesus was crucified there. Thousands of people were executed by the Romans by crucifixion in those days. Nothing unusual, I'm afraid, about a crucifixion; nothing unusual about three more people being crucified. Some reports tell us there was a shortage of wood for crosses, so many people had been crucified by the Romans.

But when Jesus was crucified, we are told that for three hours, deep, deep darkness settled over Jerusalem. When Jesus was born, midnight was transformed into midday. When Jesus hung on the cross, midday was transformed into midnight.

If light banishes darkness because light and darkness cannot coexist, what happens when darkness banishes light? It means that light has gone. In the same way that darkness is the absence of light, death is the absence of life. That is what is happening on the cross. It has something to do with the absence of God.

When Jesus hung on the cross, out of the stygian gloom of midnight at midday, he cried with a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The absence of God. Intolerable. This is a direct quotation of Psalm 22, verse one. It's very significant, I believe, that he only quoted one verse.

Some people have said the reason is very obvious. He started to quote the whole of Psalm 22, which he would undoubtedly know by memory, but he died before he had time to finish it. I believe not. I believe that it was intentional that he just quoted Psalm 22, verse one. Let me tell you why.

If you read Psalm 22 carefully—and you've heard me say repeatedly you always translate a text in its context—well, there's an exception here. Jesus lifts something out of its context. The context of Psalm 22 is that, rather strangely, this Psalm starts out as a lament, and then it becomes a statement of faith, and then it becomes a call to congregational worship.

Some people have said the difference is so striking that there are probably two Psalms that have been stuck together here somewhere. There's no evidence for that. But Jesus does not go through the whole Psalm. He intentionally quotes the first verse. Why? Because if you go through the whole Psalm, what you're really left with is a lament of a suffering person who is sensing the absence of God and is recounting his suffering.

But then, he is placing in juxtaposition with his lament a profound statement of faith and confidence which leads, because it is such a profound statement of faith and confidence, it amounts to the faith statement trumping the feelings of abandonment, which leads quite naturally to worship and to celebration.

That is the position of people of faith. This is how it works. We are very, very conscious of our feelings. Feelings very often are the driving force of our attitudes, of our behaviors, of our life. I distinctly remember when I was growing up, we would have intelligent conversations and then we would intersperse it with a question to the person we were conversing with: "What do you think about this?"

We don't say that now. What do we say? "How do you feel about this?" How do you feel about it? Why? Because feelings trump thought in our culture. Not in the language of faith, it doesn't. Feelings are real. Feelings profoundly impact the rest of our lives.

But people of faith say, against my feelings, there are certain things that I am committed to believing, like this. Jesus has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Do you believe that? Well, if you believe that, how can you say God is absent? You can't have it both ways.

Jesus said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me and behold, I am with you always. He didn't say I will be with you always, because he is the great I AM, the unchanging one. The one who transcends time, the one who belongs to eternity. In his great I Am-ness, his completeness, his entirety of his being, the great I AM, he says all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me and I am with you always. If you believe that, how can you say God is absent?

Guest (Male): More powerful teaching from the Briscoes is headed your way, so don't go anywhere. We've made a wide array of resources and content available to you online for free at tellingthetruth.org and on the Telling the Truth app.

There, you can listen, read, and watch powerful teaching from Stuart and Jill on relevant topics like the sovereignty of God, the importance of the church, and how to grow closer with Jesus Christ. You can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world.

Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with Telling the Truth. Let's get back to Stuart now.

Stuart Briscoe: You see, the faith person operates this way. His or her mind is informed by God's revelation of truth. There's no substitute for that, folks: an informed mind concerning truth. The informed mind then is able to instruct the will.

An informed mind is able to say to the will, "This is good, and this is evil. This is right, and this is wrong. These are the decisions that should be made." But there's a problem, and that is feelings, because feelings don't always go right along with what the mind is saying and what the will is determining.

So, what do we do? We say we know perfectly well what's the right thing to do. We know the decisions that we must make, but we don't feel like it. So, we let feelings rule. God is frequently silent but never absent. We feel that he is missing because he's silent. But faith says, frequently silent but never absent.

So, why did Jesus only quote verse one and not the rest of the Psalm? Because if he quoted the rest of the Psalm, he would have been saying something that at that particular moment he did not want to say. If he quoted the rest of the Psalm, he'd have hung on the cross and he'd have said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But I know as a matter of faith, you are always with me, so I know you haven't forsaken me. It just feels like it, so let's celebrate."

But he couldn't say that for one very simple reason: He wasn't feeling the absence of God; he was experiencing the absence of God. Light had gone and darkness had taken over. What Jesus is saying on the cross is that he is experiencing something unknown to man, and that is the absence of God.

If the absence of light is darkness, the absence of life is death. And this is what scripture says: Jesus tasted death for every man. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is really a statement that says, "I am at this moment experiencing death, the absence of God." That's what he's saying.

When it says that Jesus tasted death for every man, I think in our limited human understanding and our limited human experience, it's perfectly understandable that we think primarily of the physical sufferings of Christ. It's not to minimize the physical agony.

But the real essence of the death of Jesus is this: that he who in a bygone eternity has been one with the Father is now separated. And the absence of life is death. What is going on? Well, scripture gives us insight into this. Jesus gave us a clue.

He said that he had not come into the world to be served; he had come to serve. And then he amplifies that and he makes this remarkable statement: "and to give his life a ransom for many." To give his life a ransom for many. I'm sure that when Jesus said that, his contemporaries had little or no idea what he was talking about.

We have the benefit of 2020 hindsight, and we have the writings of Paul, that great man raised up by God to help us understand what had actually been happening. And here's the theology that Paul brings out of the historical events that have been passed down to him.

And this is what he said: Christ became a curse for us. He bore the curse of the law for us. Now, that echoes what Jesus said. I didn't come to be served but to serve and give my life a ransom for many. A ransom for many, a curse for us.

Or in another place, Paul tells us this: for God has made him to be sin for us, who had no personal acquaintance with sin. You notice the substitutionary terminology here. What is actually happening in Christian understanding of the crucifixion is that Jesus is tasting death as a substitute for all people.

Now, where do we go with this? The Bible says this: The wages of sin is death. Now, we immediately think of physical death. We may even incorporate into that the pain of dying. We may even go further and say there's a little piece of dying takes place in the emotional pain I suffer.

Yes, but we go even further and we read that the eternal consequences of sin is banishment from God. That's the other side of being absent from God. And Jesus on the cross is tasting death for every man. Substitution.

I believe there are two things of which we have little comprehension. One is the holiness of holiness, and the other is the sinfulness of sin. If it really comes down to it, holiness is a topic we'd rather avoid, and sinfulness is something we are experts at trivializing.

And God will do neither. His holiness and sin are innately, mutually contradictory. They do not coexist. That being the case, the justice of God or the righteousness of God now steps into place. God is utterly just, which means that if we believe in justice, we believe that God is the original just one, which means he does the right thing.

If his holiness and human sinfulness are mutually incompatible and God always does the right thing, then logically the conclusion is this: The right thing for God to do as far as sinfulness is concerned is banish it from his presence. The wages of sin is death.

And the incredible story is this: that God loves sinners to distraction, that he longs to reach out in grace—that is unmerited favor—towards them and be merciful to them and rescue them from their lot. To understand God, we've got to think in terms of holy, righteous, just, gracious, loving, and merciful.

Don't take your pick. He doesn't give you that freedom. How do we put all this together on the cross? And what we find is this: that God in his holiness still rejects sin, that God in his justice must punish sin, that the consequences inevitably must be separation from God.

But love says, "But I love those who are going to be separated. I want to rescue them mercifully, and I can devise something that will give them what they don't deserve." And it is this: "I can give them the opportunity to embrace a substitute for their sin, a ransom for many."

Someone who made sin for us, somebody who becomes a curse for us. Substitutionary atonement is the term. And the simple answer is to the question, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The answer is: for you and for me. And I'm overwhelmed. If it is true that Jesus Christ is God and he gave himself for me, no sacrifice that I could make can be too great.

Guest (Male): Tellingthetruth.org and the Telling the Truth app are great resources to help you grow in your spiritual life. Packed with videos like "Ask the Briscoes," articles from Stuart and Jill, and encouraging audio teaching content, you'll find a treasure trove of resources to encourage you and others in your faith.

And while you're there, you can also request this month's featured resource when you give a gift to help more people around the world experience life in Christ. So visit us online or download the app today. We look forward to connecting with you.

We're glad you've joined us today on Telling the Truth. Be sure to listen next time for more bold truth to help you experience life.