Some week I'll get to real affection, but
I thought that maybe, this being Palm Sunday,
we should look at what Jesus did for
us on this day.
So, you remember, last Sunday, we talked about
the inner conflict that most Christians in the
world experience.
It's the conflict expressed by those words, you
remember, in Romans 7, 15.
I do not understand my own actions, for
I do not do what I want, but
I do the evil that I hate.
And you remember, we looked at that famous
Romans 7, that is regarded as the standard
for the normal Christian life.
And we looked at the cry towards the
end of it, that expresses the experience of
so many of us.
Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver
me from this body of death?
And then you remember, we said that that
is an utterly wrong interpretation of Romans 7,
to regard it as the standard of the
normal Christian life.
And you remember, we pointed out to each
other that it isn't at all a description
of Paul's life after he had been delivered
by Jesus.
It is a flashback description of his life
as a Jew, living under the law, and
unable to do what he knew he should
do.
And that in fact, Romans 7 does not
end at that verse 24, Wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from this
body of death?
It ends at Romans 7 and 25, the
next verse, where Paul says, Thanks be to
God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And he points out that we are delivered
from this miserable, impotent, moral life that so
many of us are caught in.
And you remember, he said that we are
delivered from it because of the fact that
is stated in Romans 6 and verse 6.
And that fact is that our old self,
our old self-righteous, self-seeking, self-asserting
self, our old sinful nature, our old carnal
ego, was destroyed and crucified with Christ, so
that the body of sin might be destroyed
and we might no longer be enslaved to
sin.
And that we are in fact delivered from
that.
And it's because of that victory that is
described in Romans 6, over the defeat that
is described in Romans 7, as a Jew
under the law, it's because of that that
Paul, in summarizing the whole thing, says in
Romans 7, 25, Ara un autos.
Ara un autos.
So then, of myself, that's what autos means,
and that's the order of the Greek words.
Ara un autos.
So then, of myself, if I'm left to
myself, on my own, without Jesus, without his
death, without my death with him, on my
own, with my mind I serve God's law
and with my flesh I serve sin's law.
And that's what we shared, you remember, last
day.
That in fact Romans 7, 25 is a
flashback description to the old powerless life of
a Jew living under the law.
And that we who are God's children are
through Jesus delivered into a life of victory
that is above that.
And of course, I don't think you need
me to tell you how unmanageable that miserable
old self is.
I mean, we all know it.
We all know how we've wanted to do
certain things that we know to be good,
and up from within us seems to surge
from almost primeval, savage depths of our being,
there seems to surge a monster that we
cannot recognize, that wants to strike out at
a loved one, or uses a cutting word
to slice into some heart of someone that
we really love, or uproots all our best
resolutions to be clean and pure, and seems
to release in us a lion of lust
and grotesque hatred that we cannot ever think
is part of us.
And isn't that what we all feel?
We all feel that.
We feel, oh, this can't be me.
It can't be me.
This is not me.
It's like another self I have.
It's like another person inside me.
And that's why we talk about it as
our old man, our old self.
It's an old sinful nature that we don't
seem to even regard as part of ourselves.
And loved ones, that's what God's Word tells
us was crucified with Christ.
That old sinful nature of ours that wants
its own way, that asserts itself and defends
itself, that wants to stand up for its
own rights, that wants to make all the
rest of us submit to it, that was
crucified with Christ.
That whole attitude in us was destroyed in
Jesus.
And the amazing thing is, you see, when
Jesus was born in Mary's womb, as His
body formed around Him in Mary's womb, He
also began to inherit the tendencies of our
race.
He did.
He began to inherit the tendencies of our
race that does not trust its Maker as
its Father, of a race that at times
pretends that it doesn't even have a Maker,
it doesn't even have a Creator.
He began to inherit all those tendencies, except
that from the very moment He was born,
He exercised His will to reject those.
And so He rejected this feeling that we
have, that we have a right to our
way.
He rejected this feeling that you and I
have, that we want everybody to look up
to us and respect us and acknowledge us
and praise us.
Every time He exercised His own will, He
resisted that sinful nature that in fact He
inherited as we did.
Those tendencies, only tendencies, except that He rejected
them.
He didn't go with them.
And then the incredible thing is this.
After He had formed around Himself a human
nature that obeyed the good desires that His
Father had put in His heart, after He
did that, He began to take upon Himself
your carnal nature and my carnal nature.
And you know that's our problem.
Before we're born of God, we are sometimes
kind to people, sometimes unkind, but it's all
a kind of natural thing that we inherit
from our parents or from our environment.
But after we're born of Jesus and born
of the Spirit, there begins to be felt
within us a real love of God and
a real love of other people.
And then it's not long before we find
that our personality equipment that we have to
express this seems to have a law of
its own.
And it doesn't want to express that kind
of love.
And it seems to work against that.
And that's the sinful nature.
And we find that we're working against something
all the time, trying to get it out
to other people.
Now, you see, when Jesus was born of
God in this womb of Mary, He not
only resisted this coat of mortality or carnality,
but He transformed it into a personality that
would express the love that He has in
His heart.
And when He had done that, He then
went a further step and He took upon
Himself your carnal nature and mine, your desire
for your own way, your desire to stand
up for your own rights, my desire to
be respected, your desire to be proud or
to boast or to want what you want.
And He began to take that in upon
Himself.
And He allowed that to be burned out
of existence in Himself.
See, that's what that verse means.
2 Corinthians 5, you remember, and I think
it's 17.
God made Him to be sin who knew
no sin.
He didn't have a carnality of His own,
but He was made to bear our carnality
in Himself.
It had to be burned out in some
human being, and He took it into Himself.
And He was made sin who knew no
sin.
It's the same truth, loved ones, as is
in Isaiah.
If you want to look at it, in
that famous chapter that we all know, Isaiah
53.
And that's about page 634.
634.
Isaiah 53 and verse 5.
And the first two, you know, are well
known.
He was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised for our iniquities.
But do you see the next line?
Upon Him was the chastisement that made us
whole.
In other words, what God did to His
Son Jesus actually made us whole.
In fact, God burned out in Jesus that
old self of yours.
And so, the Word of God says, Upon
Him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with His stripes we are healed.
And you and I, you know, have a
tendency to think, Oh, Jesus died so that
God could forgive us.
God had forgiven us long before Jesus died.
God had forgiven us the very first moment
He saw us straying from Him.
But what God did in Jesus was not
simply to forgive us, but to take this
old self of ours that will not obey
Him, and to destroy it in His Son.
And that's why the Bible says, With the
chastisement that He suffered, we were made whole.
And, you know, there's another verse at the
end of 53.
You see, verse 12.
Isaiah 53 and 12.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with
the great, and He shall divide the spoil
with the strong, because He poured out His
soul to death and was numbered with the
transgressors, yet He bore the sin of many.
We have a tendency to say, You know,
I bore my sins.
I steal something, that's a sin.
I steal something else, those are two sins.
So Jesus bore the punishment for those sins
so that I wouldn't have to bear them.
That's not the heart of it.
The heart of it is the sin that
produces those sins.
The way you and I don't trust God,
the way we trust ourselves, the way we
want to make ourselves God, the way we
want to stand up on our own hind
legs and have everybody worship us, that's what
Jesus bore on Calvary.
He bore our sin.
He bore us ourselves.
So really, every one of us, loved ones,
have a personal interest in this day because
this is the first day of the worst
week that the earth ever saw.
We call it Holy Week.
We call it Holy Week because it's the
week in which the highest act of love
was ever done.
But really, it was an unholy week.
It was the week when the sin of
God became the sewer for the sin of
the world.
It was the unholiest week that Jesus ever
met.
It was the week when He bore all
of us in Himself and destroyed us and
remade us.
I don't know if you've ever thought of
it, but when He came into Jerusalem on
this day, this Palm Sunday, and all the
crowds shouted Hosanna to the King, and threw
palm branches in front of Him, His own
inner being had no trouble with that.
His own inner being bowed down to God
and said, Lord, I know this is foolishness.
I know I am no national king nor
meant to be, nor will I have the
victory that a national king would have.
He had no trouble with that, but loved
ones, you and I were inside Him.
And every wish that you have had for
people to look up to you, every desire
you have had to be acknowledged and respected,
every desire you have had for people not
to criticize you, but to regard you as
wonderful, every desire that you have ever had
was in Jesus and put upon Him at
that moment.
And the most wretched, selfish ambition of Napoleon
and of Hitler and of Nero rose up
in our dear Savior's heart to grab the
attention and grab the acknowledgement.
And the desire of every little cheerleader and
every quarterback for attention and adulation, he felt
inside his own heart at that moment.
And that's the strain he bore when he
bent that carnal nature of everybody that has
ever lived in the universe under the sweetness
of his own submissive love.
And so, don't ask for whom the bell
tolls for a moment.
Don't ask what happened on Palm Sunday.
You and I were there on Palm Sunday.
We were part of the burden that that
dear man bore.
And it's the same, you know.
When he looked at Judas at the Last
Supper, you see the old eyes, the old
evasiveness, and the old sliding of the eyes
away from the Master's face as he prepared
to go out into the night to prepare
the betrayal.
Jesus had no trouble with his own inner
being.
He had no trouble with his own inner
nature, loving Judas with all his heart at
that moment.
But inside him, loved ones, dwelt all your
sense of indignation against those who have treated
you unjustly.
Inside his heart dwelt all that kind of
righteous resentment that you have felt against people
who have lied to you when you have
often lied yourself to them.
But do you know how uppity we get?
How dare they to deceive us or to
lie to us when we have lied to
other people a thousand times?
And yet you know that stiff-necked, self
-righteous indignation that we have.
And then that mixture of self-pity when
we feel how could they eat supper with
us and then go out and laugh behind
our backs or betray us.
And, loved ones, all the resentment that we
have ever experienced and all the resentment of
any man or woman that has ever lived
grows in Jesus' heart at that moment and
strain to make him resent Judas.
And at that moment he bent that unbendable
self of ours under his own sweet love.
So you and I were actually there.
And then, you know, the way they took
him from the garden and took him to
the high priest's house, then trailed him off,
you remember, to Pilate's, then trailed him to
Herod and then back to Pilate, and then
pushed him onto that Via Dolorosa.
He had no trouble with his own inner
heart.
He embraced whatever his father had for him
to bear.
But inside his dear heart he bore all
of us.
And all of us who have resented people
who have hurt us and all the feeling
that you or I have ever had that
we want to strike back at people who
are insulting us or treating us in an
undignified way.
And all of that rose inside him, the
cry of every little heart that has ever
been in a Siberian prison, the cry of
every one of us who have ever screamed
because someone didn't treat us right.
All of that raged in his dear breast.
And, loved ones, that's what he carried down
the Via Dolorosa.
The cross was nothing.
It was the burden of all of us
that he took while he bent us over
into the same attitude of acceptance that he
himself had.
And, you know, that cry of dereliction, My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Inside his dear heart there was acceptance of
what his father had for him.
But inside him on the cross we raged
and we joined with all the people on
the outside and said, This thing is coming
apart.
Evil is winning.
God is losing.
This is not working right.
The thing is falling apart.
This is an impossible tragedy that you cannot
escape from.
And at that moment on the cross all
of us were yelling that in his ears.
All of us who have never been able
to hold to faith because of the outward
appearance of tragedy around us.
All of that raged in his dear heart.
And it was all of us who called
out, My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?
And at that moment when all the wrath
of God burst upon our old sinful natures
and at last wiped them out and sent
them into oblivion, at that moment despite all
of us crying and yelling, Why have you
forsaken me?
He bent his head towards his father and
said, Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit.
And he took us with him into the
father's arms.
So, loved ones, you cannot say, I can't
keep my temper.
You can't.
All you can say is, I won't.
But you can't say, I can't.
Because that is what Jesus bent inside himself
on Calvary, your temper.
And you can't say, I can't control these
feelings of resentment.
I can't control these feelings of pride.
You don't need to control them.
You just need to want to with your
whole heart.
They have already been controlled in Jesus.
They have already been destroyed and remade in
him.
There's no such thing as can't.
Our dear old parents and grandparents were right.
There isn't.
There's only, I won't.
Because ever since Jesus died, nobody in this
room has had a sinful nature that is
really in existence.
They have simply had the lie that they
have believed from Satan that that nature is
still in existence and still exerts its power.
And in fact, it's a lie.
That's what the father of lies is about.
Let me give you proof of it.
How many of you know somebody who has
struggled against some impossible overwhelming habit for years?
And then, when they became really persuaded that
cancer would result, or they became really persuaded
that this was it, they changed in a
moment.
Don't we all know people like that?
And don't we all realize and have a
sneaking suspicion they could have changed any time?
At any moment, they could have changed.
And that's the truth.
In Jesus, all of us were crucified.
All of our old sinful natures were destroyed
in him.
And the amazing fact is, loved ones, I
can do all things through Christ to strengthen
me.
You can actually stop this moment.
You can.
And you know the logic of it.
You remember the dear guy?
You remember on Perry Mason?
You remember he was the defender?
And he smoked and smoked and smoked.
Finally, you remember, he stopped smoking.
And he began to do the commercials on
TV against smoking.
But there's only one example.
There are probably dozens of us here in
this room who have struggled and struggled against
something that we said we could not overcome.
And in a moment, we overcame it.
And how many of us have said, I
could have done this 20 years ago.
And so you could.
You can actually do it today.
Because the power that you keep claiming is
overwhelming you was crucified with Christ on Calvary.
And you and I were there on Palm
Sunday.
And you and I were there on Good
Friday.
You have to decide, are you going to
take advantage of the fact that you were
there on Easter Sunday morning?
You have to decide that.
Are you going to live the lie that
all you've experienced with Christ has been up
to Good Friday?
Or are you going this morning to say,
no, I believe that.
I believe that I was crucified with Christ.
And I believe that if I've been united
with Him in a death like His, I'm
also resurrected in a resurrection like His.
I believe it.
Today, that's the end of that habit.
That's the end of that attitude that has
crippled me for years in my relationships with
others.
That's the end, Lord.
I believe it was destroyed with you.
I'm going to have faith in that.
Loved ones, that's what it takes.
It takes a definite step of faith.
Otherwise, anything that the Godhead has done for
you will remain up there in heaven until
you actually exercise faith and receive it into
your own life.
Lord God, we would apologize to you for
the way we have treated your Son, our
Savior's death, as a simple admission ticket into
heaven, as a kind of bribe to persuade
you to forgive us our sins.
Lord, we see that it is way beyond
that.
We recognize, Lord Jesus, that you were braver
than any man and that the agony and
pain that you bore was not your own
but was ours.
And that you bore it in order to
bend us and change us.
And, Lord Jesus, we believe that.
And we believe it about this particular habit
that we have, this particular attitude of our
whole mind and our old feelings.
We believe that all that was changed in
you and that we've been dragging about here
a body of death that is unreal and
is a lie of Satan's.
And that this very moment we can be
changed in a moment and the twinkling of
an eye.
Lord, we would believe that now.
We would see that all that we have
been up to this moment has been crucified
with you and is finished and dead and
buried and blown into oblivion.
And, Lord, at this moment we would thank
you.
And we intend to live like people who
have been resurrected.
People who have even forgotten what they once
were.
Lord, we intend to lead a new life
this day and live above in that realm
where you yourself are and where we have
always been meant to live.
Lord, we put now far from us not
only the thing or the attitude that we
have, but we put even the memory of
it out of our minds.
And we thank you, Lord Jesus, that as
we dwelt with you on the cross on
Calvary, so you now dwell with us here
on earth.
And, Lord, we ask you now to live
in us and lead us from this day
forward.
Lord Jesus, will you speak what you want
to speak?
And we're going to rise above it and
live above self and live in your spirit.
For your glory.
Amen.