We come this morning to affirm once again what Christians believe. We say that Christians believe in the forgiveness of sins. This morning it is impossible to speak of our belief in the forgiveness of sins without speaking of the movie, "The Passion of the Christ". My purpose of mentioning that is not to rehearse for you the massive amount of words, opinions and emotions that have been spoken, written and felt about this one movie. Regardless of your personal feelings about the movie, whether you chose or choose to see it or not the movie has confronted and exposed our entire world to the horrible death of Jesus on the Cross. But you do not need a movie to remind you of the depth of the suffering of Jesus. The prophet Isaiah wrote almost 600 years before the event:

"Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? [2] He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. [3] He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. [4] Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. [5] But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. [6] We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. [7] He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. [8] By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. [9] He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. [10] Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. [11] After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. [12] Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.

For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

Those ancient words tell us Jesus died so my sins would be forgiven. The words call us to come to a place central to our faith. They call us to return to a piece of lumber upon which Jesus was executed. They call us to listen to final words, watch once again his final acts and spend his final hours, six final hours one Friday over 2000 years ago.

How do I set the scene for you? If we look closely at the record of those hours written by New Testament evangelists we notice immediately how brief and blunt their words are. Matthew said: "And when they had crucified Him…." Mark wrote: "And they crucified Him…." Luke and John recorded: "There they crucified Him…." What they describe so briefly The Passion of the Christ spared nothing for our minds to enter the moment of Jesus’ death. While all of the pain of the cross has been portrayed for us, it is imperative that we look beyond the pain to the purpose: "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins…" (Col. 2:13). His Passion was for our forgiveness and it was his passion to forgive us that took him to the cross.

In the midst of that physical suffering and spiritual agony Jesus spoke a prayer of forgiveness for those who had caused his suffering and death. Spikes had been driven through wrists and ankles. The stake bearing his shocked and dehydrated body had been dropped with a thud into a hole prepared for it. Callous soldiers, who had crucified plenty of others, were sorting out his clothes among themselves. Then He speaks his first words: "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." Immediately we can’t believe our ears. When we hurt we want others’ sympathy. When we are mistreated, we demand justice or revenge. We focus inward, nurturing our rage, resentment and bitterness. We become consumed by our pain as if no one else existed.

Yet just as Jesus’ clothes were removed and he was hung in shame so he puts aside all of those human emotions. His physical sufferings were enough to cause anyone to lose rationality. Yet regardless of the horror of his pain, he spoke a word of awesome power. While the Savior dies and soldiers gamble for the last tangible elements of his association with this world, he dismisses all the other temptations to give in to all that we would. To call on God at such a moment, under such circumstances, to rise above all that would drag him down and pray "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing," leaves us wondering, "What does it all mean?" It all means one simple thing. This statement of Jesus teaches us that forgiveness of sins is a gift He offers for all people.

Those words tell us that forgiveness of sins is a gift offered for all persons (Luke 23:34). Jesus said "Father, forgive them…" We say we believe in the forgiveness of sins. What does it mean to be forgiven for our sins? The word means literally, "to send away," "to abandon," "to leave alone." When we say that in Jesus we have forgiveness of sins it means that in his death on the cross God sends away, abandons, walks away from our sins as a barrier to our relationship with him. The New Testament uses the word in two ways. One is from a legal perspective and the other is a personal one. To think of forgiveness legally it meant a debt that had been paid or removed for someone. Whatever penalty was due for all our sins was wiped away by Jesus death on the cross.

The other way this word is used is in a personal sense. Forgiveness is what is necessary for a relationship that has been broken to be restored, for it to be reconciled. Forgiveness involves someone taking the initiative to resolve a disagreement after two persons have drifted apart. That relationship will remain broken unless someone starts the reconciliation. Both persons must admit that the relationship is broken remembering how things once were. Then the person who started the process asks if the relationship can be restored. If the other person is not prepared to accept the reconciliation then the relationship stays broken. If and only if both parties agree to the reconciliation can forgiveness be achieved.

In an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer Mel Gibson was asked about the basis for his film. He told Sawyer that when man rejected God’s commands in the Garden of Eden that the gates to eternity were closed. He then said that God has chosen that through the death of Jesus to open them again for everyone. When I heard that I thought, "What a perfect description of what the death of Jesus means!" From the moment you and I knew the right thing to do and chose the wrong thing we have been separated from a relationship with God. In Christ God has initiated restoring that relationship. He is saying that through Jesus’ death everything that separates us has been removed on his part. All that is waiting is for you and me to receive or recognize that the gates are open once again. The Bible says, " For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them" (2 Cor. 5:19).

Who is the one who will forgive me? Jesus prayed, "Father…" But did they do anything to God? The soldiers were just following orders, the Jews thought they were executing a heretic and the crowd was just taking part in the circus! And if this was all God’s plan anyway, what did they do wrong? Why ask God to forgive them? What did I ever do to God for Him to reject me or accuse me of guilt? Who will forgive me? The answer is the "Father." It is in our nature that somewhere in our life we would turn from the Father and our rebellion, wherever and however it displayed itself, was against the Father. He is the one from whom we need to receive forgiveness.

Now the problem is for us is that as people we don’t even realize that the relationship with the Father is broken! Therefore we have nothing it seems to be forgiven, no debt to repay and no relationship to be restored. Jesus said, "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." He was aware that these who were the cause of his pain didn’t even understand what they were doing or to whom they were doing it. The soldiers are a perfect example as well as the Jews who mocked him – all were a part of the murder of an innocent man. They showed no guilt or remorse. Yet he still pled for their forgiveness. So do I need forgiveness? Especially if I don’t feel it? My friend, regardless of how I feel about my life or my failures, God’s word tells me clearly that my personal acts of sin and rebellion have made me guilty before God. I need forgiveness. They needed it and Jesus prayed for them to receive it.

One of the reasons that our culture is having such an extreme reaction to the violence portrayed in The Passion of the Christ is because we don’t see ourselves as needing something that violent done on our behalf. When Jesus first began to speak of his impending death Peter immediately corrected him. The Bible says, "Then Jesus began to tell them that he, the Son of Man, would suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the leaders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, and three days later he would rise again. As he talked about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and told him he shouldn't say things like that" (Mark 8:31-32, NLT). Peter couldn’t imagine Jesus the Christ having to die a death of a criminal. Yet Peter would write, "

He personally carried away our sins in his own body on the cross so we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. You have been healed by his wounds!" (1 Peter 2:24).

We imagine that we might be disagreeable and even a bit unpleasant but there is nothing we have done that would require something like what Mel Gibson’s movie presents. Our culture has taken Mel Gibson aside and said, "You shouldn’t say things like that! Watching someone die unjustly and violently offends my sensibilities!" Yet our culture has no problem portraying the full degradation of humanity for the purpose of art and entertainment! Can we not see that the reason for the horror of his death is because of the depth of our sin?

Stephen Mosley describes the massive weight of sin that Jesus bore in his body, "Noon arrived. Darkness fell like an unexpected sentence on the world, thick and terrifying. And amid this sudden night Jesus tumbled violently, as if in the epicenter of an unfathomable storm, wrenched apart by a planet careening out of control. It had been a long and costly ordeal that Jesus threw Himself into: Arrogant Assyrians gloating over the captives they skinned alive. SS troops machine-gunning women and children who ran from the burning synagogue with clothes ablaze. Child molesters making sure their victims would never testify against them. Pharaohs sacrificing thousands of faceless laborers to build themselves a deifying tomb.

"Jesus took on all this and more. It all fell on Him with unspeakable violence. He was tossed about in the endless storm of pimps seducing teen runaways into lives of drugs and prostitution, Canaanites burning their children to Moloch, nice church ladies cannibalizing other nice church ladies over coffee, grand inquisitors piously binding conscience to the rack and demanding right doctrine at a stake, impoverished parents in China selling their daughters into slavery, Bible-believing elders praying long and loud while their wives sit in the back pews hoping heavy makeup covers the bruises.

"On and on it goes, a storm of titanic currents raging between Heaven and Earth, two irreconcilable moral fronts colliding at full strength in the dark. Jesus tumbles alone amid embezzlers, gangsters, bullies, rapists, liars, the indifferent, the sadistic, the self-righteous. It’s a scene of unbearable horror and unspeakable madness. Jesus writhes amid this suffocating cloud of witnesses. He is the accused for them all, bearing the weight of abused children scarred for life, families destroyed by adultery or apathy, civilizations decaying, wars ravaging, victims, victims, always victims crying out. They are numberless and their anguished voices all focus on this one Man tumbling in the storm, exposed, vulnerable to it all. Wasted lives, heartache, monstrous atrocity, petty transgression—humanity dumps its wreckage on this one spot." (Discipleship Journal, Issue 56)

And he cries out, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Can we not see that the unimaginable suffering was because of the unfathomable degree of his love? Jesus cried out for the Father to forgive the ignorance and sin of those around him. That extends all the way to me. The way I am forgiven is through Jesus’ death. All my guilt, all my rejection and rebellion, Jesus took upon himself. Everything that Jesus endured, all the blood he shed, all the pain and agony, all the death he died – it was for me. There is no other way I can be free but through his death on the cross. That’s how I am forgiven.

Was that offer of forgiveness for just that moment? How long does it last? Will it run out? The prayer that Jesus prayed used a verb tense that meant a forgiveness that would be once and for all. It is not something that will run out or be reserved or exclusive. It is forgiveness available for me when I recognize for the first time how guilty I am or forgiveness plentiful enough to apply to my sin today or 20 years from now. It is once and for all. The marvelous power behind all of this is it is a gift. The Bible says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). Nothing outside of the heart of God himself could have gone to the cross and the first word out of his mouth is a word of forgiveness to you and me.

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34, NIV). There are two responses to this message today. One is to recognize that your sin put Jesus on the cross and through that cross those sins are forgiven. What is needed is for you to receive that gift of forgiveness for yourself. The next response is to realize once again the depth of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ so that your sins can be forgiven. You may have come so far and forgotten that there is no sin that you have done for which Jesus did not die to forgive.

John Donne wrote,

"Wilt thou forgive that sin, where I begun,

Which is my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt thou forgive those sins through which I run

And do them still, though still I do deplore?

When thou hast done, thou hast not done,

For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin, by which I’have won

Others to sin, and made my sin their door?

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallowed in a score?

When thou hast done, thou hast not done,

For I have more.

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." I believe in the forgiveness of sins!

Sunday, February 29, 2004

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas