to the glory of God. At some point after the flood, God spoke to Noah and his sons and God established the death penalty for premeditated murder. Genesis 9, verse 6 says, whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God he was made man. There is an ongoing argument in this country and other countries about the death penalty and whether it is just, whether it is right. Does the state have the right to knowingly take the life of another individual? Is that not murder? And if it's murder, how is it okay? And God Himself established the death penalty for murder, for premeditated murder, in Genesis 9 verse 6. So even though the book of Genesis was written down by Moses approximately 1,450 years before Jesus was born, the events that are described in Genesis occurred many centuries before that. When you hear people tell you, that the word of God can't possibly be true because it was passed on from word of mouth from one person to another generation for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before it was written down. That is only true about the book of Genesis and perhaps the book of Job. Other than that the events were written down real time and people were still alive about whom the events were written. And so it is my personal opinion that when Moses was in the mount getting the law of God during the 40 days and 40 nights, this is when God revealed to him the book of Genesis. And it is also interesting to note that since the publication of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611, there have been over a million archaeological discoveries in the Middle East. And there is not one person, place, or event that the Old Testament describes that have been disproven by any of the archaeological discoveries. But hundreds of them have been proven to be true. So the more we investigate this, the more we study this, the better the Bible looks. So it is wonderful. I personally am very happy that we debate about the death penalty in this country. I don't want it to be easy to kill people. I want it to be a struggle. I want it to be agonizing. And I'm happy about that. So we should struggle with that. So those of you that don't seem to have a problem with it, you need to pull the plug. And after you do that, you'll struggle with it. So the institution of the death penalty after the flood is the earliest that is on record. Now the earliest written legal code concerning a government carrying out a death penalty against its own citizens that has been found so far was discovered in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon which about 1800 years before Jesus was born expanded the death penalty to include 25 different crimes. Among them were, by hanging, burglary, and that was done on the spot. You catch somebody in your house, you hang them in your front yard. Building on the King's Highway. You could not build a gas station on the King's Highway. That was the King's. Getting a slave's brand removed so that you could claim that slave to be your own. That was death by hanging. And enlisting somebody to kill your husband. was death by hanging. Death by burning was incest with your own mother, a religious vestal entering or opening a tavern, looting a burning house. And then death by drowning was adultery, rape of a troth maiden, or bigamy, or disrespectful conduct of a wife, or seduction of a daughter-in-law. The earliest record that has been discovered of a death sentence that was carried out occurred about 1600 years before Jesus was born in Egypt, about 150 years before Moses, where the wrongdoer, who was a member of the royal family, was accused of performing unsanctioned magic in order to take his own life. Normally during this period, the condemned in Egypt were usually killed with an axe. So the death penalty was part of history from the earliest days after the fall of Adam in the garden. And even though the reasons people were put to death varied, almost every nation on earth had some form of capital punishment. And the nations of the world continued to experiment with the death penalty. And as technology evolved, they used various means to carry out the sentence. As God was revealing to Moses the Old Covenant, probably when he was up with God in the Mount Zion, God told Moses to codify the death penalty as a correct and proper response to crime so heinous and so destructive that the intentional taking of a life was warranted. So in the other four books of Moses, the death penalty was imposed on those who committed religious sins, such as worshipping false gods, sacrificing children to Molech. Now by the way, the name Molech was a derogatory term that the children of Israel put on the God of the Canaanites. Their God, we don't know what their God's name was. The best we can see is there's initials MKR or MRK or something like that. And we don't know what that stood for. And the children of Israel mocked the God of the Canaanites and called him Molech. Interestingly, after the children of Israel were mocking the God of the Canaanites, God used the derogatory term to describe the God of the Canaanites. So God thought that was a good idea as well. Uttering false prophecy. TBN. Divination or soothsaying. We used to have one on Highway 49 right down here. $25 and she could tell you who you were going to marry. I went there. And I called her to repentance and asked her to shut down. I don't think she listened to me, but she shut down. Breaking the Sabbath was punishable by death. And for sexual sins like adultery, rape, incest, bestiality, homosexuality, and prostitution, and for other crimes such as murder, cursing a parent, kidnapping, contempt of court, or bearing false witness. And to Moses, God revealed three main methods of carrying out the death penalty. The main one was by stoning. And this is not pea gravel. They either buried you up to your neck or they let you get into a lowered area of the ground and they threw rocks at you and they broke open your skin and they busted your eyeballs hanging out and your face is crushed in and they kept throwing rocks and kept throwing rocks until they killed you. by burning, they tied you and burned you, or by hanging. That was the three main methods that God told Moses to implement the death penalty on the people who were guilty of these sins. Now at some point after God had revealed the partial and inferior revelation to Moses, the Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Assyrians developed a very horrific means of carrying out the death penalty that was designed to inflict the most pain while causing the most humiliation in the process. In about 600 years before Jesus was born, this rather new means of execution was picked up by the Persians who carried it out in one of two ways. The condemned was vertically impaled on a single stake that was placed in the ground. The condemned was tied or nailed to a single post or a post with a cross beam over the top. The ancient Persian medical doctors found out that by tying or nailing the hands above the head or out to the side, that the condemned would die slowly by suffocation rather than quickly through blood loss. As the longer the condemned man hangs there, the weaker he would get and would eventually become unable to exhale. This horrific manner of killing the very worst criminals became known as crucifixion. So hanging a human being on a pole, either by bodily impalement or by nailing him to a cross piece, was an execution. It was a means of carrying out the death sentence. Now today, many states in our country use a form of lethal injection to kill the worst among us. Other states use the gas chamber or the electric chair. And I think Utah still has a firing squad. It's hard to find. But the cross was originally a symbol of death. The very worst kind of death. So when an unbeliever wears a cross around his neck today, when a man who makes millions of dollars writing and singing songs using filthy language about treating women like dogs and killing police officers, and then goes up to receive the award that some people feel the need to give to him, and he's wearing a gold cross around his neck, I wonder what he's thinking. Would he wear a miniature gas chamber around his neck? Would he wear a gold-covered electric chair or a diamond-studded syringe? Would jewelry stores start selling little hangman nooses or images of firing squads if Jesus would have died like that? I ponder things like that because the cross is not merely an image of horrific death anymore. It symbolizes the eternal hope for sinners like me. And it reminds me that the only reason I can go to heaven is because Jesus went to the cross. And that makes me speak about the cross with reverence and in hushed tones and with great shame that my sin made Jesus hang there. Now, the ancient Greeks adopted this form of capital punishment at some point after the Persians. An ancient Greek used two different verbs for crucifixion. Anastaro means to impale on a stake, and apatompantio means hang on a plank. Now there's evidence that captured pirates were crucified in the port of Athens by the ancient Greeks around 500 years before Jesus was born. And Alexander the Great crucified 2,000 survivors from his siege on the Phoenician city of Tyre about 450 years. before Jesus. So even though the Greeks are officially on record as condemning this means of torture and death, history says they used it often and on a mass scale. But when the Romans adopted crucifixion at some time after the Greeks, they perfected crucifixion to the most feared and horrific means of death that the world had ever seen. Roman medical doctors had advanced knowledge of the human anatomy that other cultures lacked. And so, as they studied crucifixion, they developed special techniques that were able to make it the terror that it was. And to give you an idea of the pain associated with Roman crucifixion, the English word cross comes from the Latin word crux. And so the English word excruciating, which in Latin means agony from the cross, was invented to describe the pain associated with crucifixion. Initially, crucifixion was known in Roman law as the punishment of the slaves. Later on, it was used to punish foreign captives and rebels and fugitives, especially during times of war and rebellion. captured enemies and rebels were crucified in masses. For example, accounts of the suppression of the revolt of Spartacus in 71 BC tell how the Roman army lined the road from Capua to Rome with 6,000 crucified rebels on 6,000 crosses. After the Romans quelled the relatively minor rebellion in Judea in 7 AD, triggered by the death of King Herod, Quintilius Varus, the Roman legate of Syria, crucified 2,000 Jews in Jerusalem. During Titus Vespasian's siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Roman troops crucified as many as 500 Jews a day for several months. In times of war and rebellion when hundreds and even thousands of people were crucified within a short period, little if any attention was paid to the manner in which the crucifixion was carried out. Crosses were haphazardly constructed and executioners came from the common ranks of Roman legionnaires. In peacetime, however, crucifixions were carried out according to very strict rules and only by special persons authorized by the Roman courts. Crucifixions took place at specific locations. For example, in particular fields outside of the capital city of Rome and on the Golgotha outside of Jerusalem. Outside the nation of Italy, only the Roman procurators possessed authority to impose the death penalty. So anytime a local provincial court prescribed the death penalty, the consent of the Roman procurator had to be obtained in order to actually carry out the sentence. Once a defendant was found guilty and was condemned to be crucified, the execution was supervised by an official known as the Carnifix Serum. From the tribunal hall, the victim was taken outside. He was stripped. He was bound to a column and scourged. The scourging was done with either a stick or a flagellum, a Roman instrument with a short handle to which several long, thick leather thongs had been attached. On the ends of the leather thongs were lead or bung tips. Although the number of strokes imposed was not fixed, care was taken not to kill the victim. Now normally after this terrible beating, the horizontal beam was placed upon the condemned man's shoulders, and he was forced to march to his own execution, which was usually outside the city walls. An entire cross would weigh well over 300 pounds, but the cross beam itself would only weigh about 100 pounds. As I told you earlier, there is reason to suggest that Jesus carried the entire cross and not just the cross beam. But we can't be dogmatic about this because there just isn't enough evidence in the words of Scripture to prove it. Now normally a soldier at the head of the procession carried the titulus, which was an inscription written on wood. The titulus stated the defendant's name and the crime for which he had been condemned. When the condemned man reached the site of crucifixion, the titulus was fashioned to the victim's cross. And Dr. Luke tells us in verse 38 that the titulus over Jesus' cross said, this is the King of the Jews. which means that Pilate's official and formal cause as to why Jesus was condemned and beaten and crucified was that He was the King of the Jews. So make no mistake about this. Jesus was given the most cruel, the most violent, the most severe means of executing the vilest of criminals for one single reason. He was the King of the Jews. Now when the procession arrived at the execution site, the condemned was somehow fixed to the cross beam. Sometimes the condemned was attached only with ropes. Many times he was nailed, or both nailed and tied with rope. Now we must remember that crucifixion was carried out to provide a death that was particularly slow and horrifically painful, gruesome, humiliating, and public. And in some cases, the condemned was forced to carry the cross beam to the place of execution. Tacitus, the ancient Roman historian, records that by the first century, crucifixion was so common that the city of Rome had a specific place for carrying them out situated just outside the Esquiline Gate. According to this historian, the Roman soldiers would permanently fix the upright post in place, and after nailing or tying the condemned man to the crossbeam, would hoist it and him up in the air using several long poles and attach the crossbeam to the fixed upright post. Another method was to attach the condemned man to the cross by a rope, though nails and other sharp materials are mentioned in a passage by the Judean historian Josephus when he states that at the siege of Jerusalem, quote, the soldiers out of rage and hatred nailed those they caught one after one way and another after another to the crosses by way of jest, unquote. Now even though crucifixion was a government-sanctioned execution, it was also a personal humiliation by making the condemned as vulnerable as possible. And although artists have traditionally depicted the figure on the cross with a loincloth or a covering of the genitals, the person being crucified was usually stripped naked. Writings by the Roman philosopher Seneca record that some victims of crucifixion suffered a stick forced upwards through their groin. Now even though the Roman government and military thought crucifixion was very needed and productive, the horrors of this means of execution were condemned by some of the most important people in the Roman Empire. One time, the well-respected lawyer Cicero described crucifixion as, quote, a most cruel and disgusting punishment. The very mention of the cross should be far removed not only from a Roman citizen's body, but from his mind, his eyes, his ears, unquote. Another time, Cicero said, quote, it is a crime for a Roman citizen to be bound. It is a worse crime for him to be beaten. It is well nigh parasite for him to be killed. What am I to say if he be killed on a cross? A nefarious action such as this is incapable of description by any word, for there is none fit to describe it." Now normally the vertical pole was permanently fixed into the ground and after the condemned was attached to the crossbeam either by ropes or nails or both, the crossbeam was hoisted up into the air and set onto the vertical pole. But there are records where the condemned was thrown down on top of the entire cross and attached and then the entire cross was hoisted into the air and set into the hole. Normally the arms of the condemned were tied or nailed or both to the crossbeam with his arms outstretched. The crossbeam with the condemned person attached was then hoisted into the air and attached to the fixed vertical pole. The finished product would then resemble a capital T. Now here's where we need to be careful, because there are a lot of legends about Jesus' crucifixion that simply cannot be proven by Scripture. For example, here's what the Bible actually says. Matthew 27.35, when they had crucified Him. Mark 15.24, and they crucified Him. Luke 23.33, they crucified Him. And John 19.18, there they crucified Him. Now the word crucified means fixed to a cross. So the means of execution in a crucifixion was that the condemned was fixed to a cross. So we know that Jesus was executed by crucifixion, which meant that Jesus was fixed to a cross. And questions come up like, was Jesus nailed or tied to the cross? And what about His feet? And how could a nail in His hands hold His body weight? And on and on the questions go. But the biblical record tells us that Jesus was nailed in His hands. Because after the resurrection, Jesus said in Luke 24, 38-40, Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Touch Me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. And the fact that Jesus drew attention to His hands and feet indicate there was something visible about both of them that would prove that it was Him. I want to remind you here, Jesus was raised from the dead in the same body that He died in. With all of the beating marks, all of the wounds, all of them were there. Jesus was beaten until He was unrecognizable. When you and I are going to rise from the dead, we're going to be first in the Spirit. Then when we're going to be reattached to a body, it's going to be a glorious body. His body is glorified, but it's the same body because He never sinned. His body wasn't sinful. And so He has the same body. But perhaps the most descriptive statement about this is found in John 20, 25, where Thomas said this, unless I see in his hands the imprint of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. And don't get mad at Thomas. Would you have believed? I hope I would. I don't know. This is impossible. They watched Him die. So Thomas was aware that there were imprints of nails in Jesus' hands and that He could put His finger into the place where the nails were. And John goes on to say that eight days later, His disciples were again inside and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, And Jesus stood in their midst and said, Peace be unto you. He just appeared into the room. Why'd they shut the doors? They were terrified they were all going to be killed. Then He said to Thomas, Reach here with your finger and see My hands and reach here with your hand and put it into My side And do not be unbelieving, but believing. Thomas answered and said to Him, My Lord and My God. Hallelujah. Thank You, Jesus. This is mercy. So, here we go. I got in an argument with a guy about this when I used to work at the shipyard a long time ago. 150 years ago when I worked at the shipyard. And this guy said, you know the problem with people like you? And I said, what? He said, you're always biblical. I said, amen to that. Thank You, Jesus. You're not. So Jesus said that Thomas was able to reach with his finger to see Jesus' hands, meaning that there was a nail hole in Jesus' hands that a person could stick his finger into. Now, by the way, it also means there was a place in his side big enough to put your hand in. And back in Psalm 22, about a thousand years before Jesus was born, as King David prophesied, that they would pierce Jesus' hands. So, from this we know that Jesus was nailed through His hands. Now, here we go. The common argument that people bring up here is that if Jesus was nailed through the palms of His hands, like Hollywood portrays, that His body weight would have just caused the nail to rip through the soft tissue of the hand. And in response to this problem, you know why they say that? Because there's not enough bones there. This is all flesh and tendon, and you can get a nail in there, and you won't break a bone. I'm going to tell you how important this is in just a minute. And in response to this problem, many scholars said that back in the first century, the Greek word hand referred to both the wrist and the hand. I have read others that said that the hand included the entire arm all the way from the elbow to the tips of the fingers. That was all called the hand according to these guys. And so these people say that contrary to many of the paintings and the statues and the movies, Jesus was actually nailed through the forearm near the wrist which contained enough bones and tendons to support the weight of a human body. But we got a problem with that. You didn't fix the problem. Now this may be true. But if it is true, now that's interesting because I looked on my anatomy chart and there is bones in there that can be pushed aside very easily. So if they put a nail in there, The bones could be pushed aside so they could feel right there, and they could stick the nail right there, and that bone right here would hold the nail in place. So I'm not saying it very well may be true. But let me say that in my own personal study of the Greek word used for hand, I didn't find that. I found that the word for hand in the Greek is kerer, which literally means hands. There is no Greek word for wrist in the New Testament. Even though some versions translate the book of Acts chapter 12 verse 7 to say that the chains fell off Peter's wrists instead of his hands. But even then the Greek word in this verse is care. It is also possible that the nails may have been angled to enter through the hand and exit through the wrist, but it's just as likely that the nails were driven straight through the hand somewhere near the base of the thumb. Experiments have shown that both ways work. And either way could have been used in the crucifixion of Jesus. So it is not true that you can't nail in the hand and it support the body weight. Because here's another thing. You also got to remember that he was tied as well as nailed. He wasn't just nailed. Okay. Alright, so what do we do with this? Well, here's what we do. We say that Jesus was nailed in His hands, just like the Bible says. And if that means the wrists, then fine. But if it meant the palms of the hands, then Jesus' body weight was held up by the ropes that He was also tied with. Now what we do know is that by the time Jesus was crucified, the Roman physicians had discovered the median nerve that runs from the spinal column through the arm down to the hand. The Romans found that by placing pressure on that nerve with a single spike, they could cause great pain without loss of life. But then there's the problem with Jesus' feet. Were His feet nailed too? And all I could find was two things. Number one, it was common for the Romans to either let the feet of the condemned dangle or to fix them to a vertical pole with either ropes or nails. In Psalm 22.16, King David prophesied, they pierced my hands and my feet. And with the references in Luke 24-39, it seems that we can definitively say that Jesus' feet were nailed as well as His hands. Now, without any supplementary body support for the feet, the victim would die from muscular spasms and asphyxia very quickly. So after being raised on the cross, breathing would become very difficult. And when left with his feet dangling, the victim would attempt to draw himself up only from the strength of his arms. Many people who were crucified whose feet were left dangling would be able to hold themselves up for 30 to 60 seconds, but this would quickly become difficult. And as he became weaker, the victim would be unable to pull himself up from just his arm strength, and death would come very rapidly. So in order to prolong the agony, the Roman executioners devised two instruments that would keep the victim alive on the cross for extended periods of time. They didn't do this to be merciful. They did this to increase the pain and to lengthen the time the condemned man would suffer. One of the instruments was called a sedal. It was a small wooden seat that was attached to the front of the cross about halfway down. This device provided some support for the victim's body and may explain the phrase used by the Romans, to sit on the cross. two early church fathers, Irenaeus and Justin Martyr, both described the cross of Jesus as having five extremities rather than four. And several scholars think the fifth one was probably a sedal. Now, five extremities, that means there was a part of the cross that stuck up above his head, part of the cross that went out to the side, that's three, and then if you had this seat, that was four, and then there's another thing I'm going to tell you about that would have been five. Now this is what Irenaeus and Justin Martyr said there was five extremities on Jesus' cross rather than four. And several scholars think the fifth one was probably a seattle. But even though this seat was normally provided, the Romans made the seat out of very hard wood that was very sharp and pointed so that it would inflict horrible pain if it was used. So you're sitting on a point. while you're being crucified. The second device added to the cross was a foot support. This was far less painful than the sedal, but it was also designed to prolong the victim's agony. Ancient historians record many cases in which the victim stayed alive on the cross for two or three or more days. with the use of this foot support. The church father, Origen, wrote of personally seeing a crucified man who survived the whole night and the following day. The ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, refers to a case in which he saw three crucified Jews survive on a cross for three days. During the mass crucifixions following the repression of the revolt of Spartacus in Rome, some of the crucified rebels actually talked to the soldiers for three days. But when the Romans did nail the feet, it was a very deliberate action. The single nail had to be driven through both feet, which were normally turned outward so that the nail could be hammered inside the Achilles tendon. Other methods were that the legs were turned to one side and the feet nailed together while still others had the single nail in the feet hammered on the top of the foot near the toes so that the crucified person's feet resembled a ballerina standing on her toes. So as the condemned man would inhale, he found it almost impossible to exhale unless he would push his body weight up the vertical pole using the single nail in both feet as the point at which his entire weight would rest. The pain from this action had to be unbearable. And so he could only do this for a few seconds and would allow his body to sink back down and all his weight would be on his outstretched arms. So the entire time that a person was being crucified, he was pushing himself up on the nail in his feet to breathe out, allowing himself to sink back down on his arms to breathe in. And this process would continue as long as the executioners wanted. Now there are a couple of important distinctions about Jesus' crucifixion that made what He went through unique from the others. For example, the legs of the person crucified were frequently broken or shattered with an iron club. And this brought about the death of the person faster as he could no longer push himself up to breathe. And it was also meant to discourage those who observed the crucifixion from committing similar crimes. That didn't happen with Jesus. Because the apostle John tells us in John 19, 32 and 33, So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man and of the other who were crucified with him. But coming to Jesus, when they saw He was already dead, they did not break His legs. Also, when it came time for the dead victim to be removed from the cross, it was not uncommon that the executioners could not pull out the nail from the feet, as it had become bent while the victim was struggling. And in that case, the only way to remove the body was to take an axe or hatchet and amputate both feet. Neither one of those two things happened with Jesus. In Psalm 22 and 17, King David said, I can count all my bones. meaning that no bones of Jesus were ever broken. When God was giving Moses the pattern for Jesus' crucifixion in the Passover lamb in Exodus 12 and 46, He instructed, it is to be eaten in a single house. You are not to bring forth any of the flesh outside of the house, nor are you to break any bone of it. In Numbers 9 and 12, the Holy Bible says, they shall leave none of it until morning, nor break a bone of it. According to all the statute of the Passover, they shall observe it. And David prophesied about Jesus in Psalm 3420 and said, He keeps all of His bones, not one of them is broken. And this is what the Apostle John was referring to when he quoted the Old Testament in John 19, 36 and 37. For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, not a bone of him shall be broken. And again, another Scripture says they shall look on him whom they pierced." So even though Jesus was beaten horrifically, His cheekbones were not broken, His collarbone was not broken, His arms were not broken, His legs were not broken, His wrist bones were not broken, none of the fragile bones in this area were broken. He had not one single bone broken. If He would have had one bone broken, you would still be in your sins and you could not go to heaven because He would not be the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Messiah. That's how important this is. Even on the cross, God superintended the beating and the crucifixion of Jesus that not a bone was broken. And you sometimes feel like God has abandoned you? Look to what extent He carried out the crucifixion. So we know from Scripture that not only were none of Jesus' bones broken, but when He rose from the dead, He rose in the very same body in which He died. The body that had all of the horrific marks of His beating and crucifixion. He died with our sins upon Him. And He went into the ground for three days. And the Bible says He rose out of the ground without our sin. Hallelujah! Forever! And our sins remained in the ground. And Jesus came up without our sins. Our sins were paid for. And that's why you can be forgiven now. Hallelujah. In Deuteronomy 21, 22, and 23, the inspired Word of the living God said, If a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day. For he who is hanged is accursed of God, so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance. Now at the same time that this was given to Moses by God, crucifixion had not even been invented. So God was talking here about a literal execution by hanging. But this passage developed several divine principles that played a major role in Jesus' crucifixion. Whoever is hanged on a tree is cursed by God. and leaving a condemned man hanging all night will bring God's wrath on the nation. So first of all, among the Jews of Jesus' day, crucifixion was an anathema. they considered it ungodly, but a fitting death for the people who were the most ungodly. And so the Sanhedrin thought it was fitting that the pagan Romans, whom they despised, would be the instrument to crucify such a terrible blasphemer as Jesus of Nazareth because he had made himself equal with God. But as good hypocritical Jews, they were free to falsely accuse Jesus. They were free to beat Him. They were free to have Him killed. But they couldn't dare allow Jesus to hang on the cross all night because that would be against the rules. I mean, after all, they wouldn't want to do anything that might displease the Lord. And so they compelled the Romans to break the legs of the two thieves and that itinerant from Galilee. And so the Roman soldiers broke the legs of the two thieves on either side of Jesus. But when they came to the man in the middle, he was already dead. But secondly, the principle that whoever hangs on a tree is cursed by God shows us the single most important aspect of Jesus' crucifixion. In order to please the Lord, in order to fulfill His Father's will, in order to purchase the salvation for every single human being that has been chosen by God to be saved, in order that salvation would be only by God's amazing grace and through God's sovereign gift of faith and not by any human works, Jesus not only had to die, He had to die by hanging on a tree. Because for God's righteousness to be fully vindicated, because of our sins, and for us to be forgiven and granted eternal life, Jesus had to actually become a curse. In his letter to the churches in the region of Galatia, the Apostle Paul referenced that very passage in Deuteronomy 21 when he said this in Galatians 3, 13 and 14, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. In order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Hallelujah. As Jesus hung screaming in agony between earth and heaven, suspended by three nails, God took every single one of our wicked, dark, and unspeakable sins and put them on the only sinless man who ever lived. And at that moment, Jesus Christ became a curse. And that is why 600 years earlier, Isaiah said, we ourselves, estamed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. So as the witnesses stood there beholding the spectacle, as they looked at a beaten and bloodied human being struggling to breathe, pushing himself up the cross by the single nail in his feet, and then watching him sag back down, too weak to hold himself up, as they heard him scream out, My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me? There was only one conclusion they could come to. God has abandoned this man. God Himself has cursed this man. This man has truly been stricken by none other than God Himself. God has smitten this man. God has afflicted this man. And that is what it took to save my soul. And so I confess to you this morning, dear friends, that I did that to Jesus. My sin caused Him to be falsely accused. My transgressions allowed Jesus to be beaten and mocked and spit on. My wickedness caused Him to rip His flesh and slap His face. My evil put those nails in His hands. My rebellion put that nail in His feet. My sin caused God the Father to make God the Son a curse and to pour out the full fury of His righteous wrath on the Lamb of God. And so this bloody and horrific scene, this violent and frightening moment, is what it took for the breathtaking glory of God's pristine grace to be seen and celebrated and treasured and marveled at forever. Amen.