become this Lord's Day after two weeks gone. What a joy it is to be here again and to meet around the Savior's feast and to remember what He has done for us, how He has saved us by His dying for us. Well, I thought it would be appropriate this Lord's Day to discuss in a few words the subject of weakness and frailty. because that's what I've been battling the last three or four weeks now. The lot of mankind is frailty and weakness. When the body just won't go anymore, and all the energy is drained out, you feel like you've been wrung out like a dish rag, and the result of weakness is not just that you are faltering in your strength, and power, but also that you lose your appetite, and you lose your drive, and you lose your motivation, and you just want to lie there and rest and wait for the strength to come back. Nobody wants to get out and exercise so they can restore their strength, not when it's the kind of weakness that just saps you. We're talking not just of mere thirst or hunger, or even exhaustion from hard labor. Those are things that are normal to the original creation that God made us in perfection to be hungry and to seek food and eat, to be thirsty and to seek out water and drink, to be tired and to obtain rest and restoration. All of those things are not any result of evil or of sin or of the fall. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a weakness that seems to know no cure. You see, all of those weaknesses are temporary and fleeting and can be easily resolved. People get dehydrated, they can drink water and they can be restored very quickly. grow exceedingly hungry and weak, and they can be restored with a good meal. Their strength can be restored with a good long sleep. But we're talking about the weakness that none of those things cure. Old age brings about weakness in our bodies. Our bodies break down, or our medicine goes astray, as is in my case. and the doctors have to tinker and adjust and poke and prod. So what we're really talking about is the kind of weakness that's the result of the fall. It's the result of sin. Your particular weakness now is not the result of any particular sin that you committed, but it is a result of the corruption of the fall that has come into the world because of man's sin and that has taken away some of the quality, has degraded the creature that God made. Because of this topic on my mind, I came to think of the bodily weakness of Christ near the cross. The bodily weakness of Christ near the cross. I'm talking about actual faintness, actual weakness, actual draining of energy and of strength. As I thought of that, to a comfort that Jesus knows even my weakness. Every time you come to think about it, you'll discover that whatever frailty you have found yourself in, the Lord Jesus has already beat you to the punch, as it were. He already tops it. He doesn't do it out of pride or anything like that. It's just that it was part of His work as the Redeemer to come into the world, to be made like His brethren, and to suffer many, many, many of the problems that we suffer so that He could be a faithful high priest, so that He could know how to intercede for us. You know, usually when we talk of Christ's weakness, we talk more of His posture of weakness, submitting to death, He appeared weak psychologically and positionally. Powerful people seemed to hold control over his body. He was subject to death. He went to the cross and was crucified. The evil of this world seemed to have taken over him and overwhelmed him, didn't it? That's usually what we mean when we speak of the weakness of Christ. We sang a song this morning. It has a verse that says, By weakness and defeat he won a glorious crown. We exalt, though, in that weakness, we exalt in his strength in that lowly posture. Because unbeknownst to everybody else, Christ always had the upper hand in all of that. He laid down His life to save us. His victory was by weakness and defeat. He trod all our foes beneath His feet by being trodden down." So you see, the weakness that we usually discuss when we think about the weakness of Christ is this sort of strategical weakness, if you will, by which He frustrated, overturned, and overcame the forces of wicked power that had seized his people and enslaved us and drug us down to doom. But today we speak of Christ's bodily physical weakness, not that strategic weakness postured to great victory, but only known to Christ. There are several places in the scripture where the bodily weakness of Jesus is discussed. foretold, of course, by the Spirit of Christ Himself, the David, in Psalm 22. Many aspects of Christ's crucifixion are described in Psalm 22. How He would be forsaken by God. How the people would mock Him and say, He trusted in God, let Him deliver Him if He'll have Him, for He said, I am the Son of God. How He was strung up on the cross you could tell his bones because they had stripped him of his garments. All sorts of little details of the crucifixion which Christ by His Spirit revealed to David. But we may focus only today on those references to his physical weakness. In Psalm 22 at verse 14, Christ says, I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws." Here is a short description of physical weakness by the Lord Jesus when He is on the cross. It feels like He's poured out like water. as all of his strength and vitality just trickles away, trickles away onto the ground. His heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of his bowels. This is a reference to the stress and the strain on his heart that was brought on by the crucifixion. His strength is dried up like a potsherd. It just vanishes away. We've all had that feeling. when our strength has drained out of us. Sometimes it comes on in an instant, in a terror or a horror that we face or a shock, and sometimes it comes on little by little until finally we're drained. And my tongue cleaveth to my jaws, probably referring to intense thirst, intense thirst. But note Christ's cry to God a few verses later. but be not thou far from me, O Lord, O my strength. Haste thee to help me." See, the Lord Jesus knew in whatever weakness that he was facing, whether it was physical exhaustion, physical weakness, or whether it was the attacks of wicked men, or the pain and anguish of the crucifixion, he knew that God was his strength. Haste thou to help me. And we've spoken on this subject many times, and of course, God did help Christ. He helped Him when He raised Him from the dead. Christ had to go through the awful wrath of God on the cross and all the pain and sorrow before the help of God would come. The God of His strength is who Christ looked to in His physical weakness. How did Jesus come to be weak though? And here is the great distinction between our weakness and that of the Lord Jesus. For Jesus was no doubt a fit young man. He walked everywhere, not just down to the grocery store, but miles and miles and miles and miles he walked. He didn't eat any processed foods. So assuming that the Father provided his bread that he needed, which is a reasonable assumption. He had good food. He had adequate food. He had sunshine. And so there was every reason to believe that the Lord Jesus physically was a fit young man. He was in his early 30s, of course. He walked everywhere. And so he should have been in good strength, shouldn't he? Naturally. As I mentioned earlier, we're not speaking of ordinary daily weakness, which is a regular, normal thing that's not a product of the fall. Christ grew hungry. Remember, after He fasted in the wilderness, it says He grew hungry. And that's when Satan showed up to try to take advantage of that temporary weakness. And the Lord Jesus grew thirsty. Remember, at the woman at the well in John, He sat by the well when He asked her for a drink. And then He launched off into His teaching on the living water that she ought to seek. She kept confusing it with just free water that's delivered without any work, but that's not at all what he had in mind. And of course, the Lord Jesus grew tired. You remember he slept in the bottom of the boat when the sea erupted in all of its anger and fury. But you see, the natural state of the creature, is such as what Christ underwent, even without sin, even without fall, even without the corruption. And people argue a lot about whether Christ was ever ill, whether He could ever injure Himself because He had never committed any sin. And it's generally believed that illness and so forth are the consequence of sin and corruption. And Christ was not subject to corruption. We know that for sure. So Christ's weakness at Calvary was not the weakness brought on by the fall, that is, any sin of Christ on Christ's part or by any health failures or the breaking down of the body due to the natural course of things, due to the corruption of the body by sin, which Christ had none of. So where did Christ's bodily weaknesses come from? We read what wicked men did to Jesus. We read that passage in Mark 15 this morning. Consider at verse 12, Pilate answered and said again unto them, what will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the king of the Jews? And they cried out again, crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them, why, what evil hath he done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, crucify him. And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, who was a murderer, and delivered Jesus when he had scourged him to be crucified. And the soldiers led him away into the hall called Praetorium, and they called together the whole band, and they clothed him with purple and plaited a crown of thorns and put it upon his head, began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews. And they smote him on the head with a reed and did spit upon him, and bowing their knees worshiped Him. And when they had mocked Him, they took off the purple from Him and put His own clothes on Him and led Him out to crucify Him." You see that it was by sin and the fall that Jesus was weak, but not His own sin and not His own fall. No, it was wicked men who beat Him and tortured Him mercilessly. It is our crimes that made Jesus weak in His body. Anybody else who had been weak, any of us, any other, unless it's due to some cruelty by someone or some sin or some crime by someone, maybe some drunk driver runs into you and hits you and you're reduced to a weakened state in the hospital. But no, see, in this case, it was wicked men who beat Christ pierced his head with the crown of thorns and who hit him on his head, who tore out his beard, as Isaiah the prophet told us. And so therefore, it was the sin of mankind, it was our sin, if you will, that made Christ's body weak. His body was weak because of our crimes carried out and exhibited against Him personally. You remember the thief on the cross argued, we suffer justly for our sins, but this man hath done nothing amiss. This man hath done nothing amiss. So you see, the thief on the cross was weak and dying and powerless, but it was because of his sin. The Lord Jesus on the cross next to him was weak and dying, but it was because of our sin. Our sin laid on Him and our sin specifically executed against Him by wicked men. There is another hint about Christ's weakness to be found in Luke's Gospel, the 23rd chapter at verse 26. And as they led Christ away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country and on him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus." Now, John tells us that at first they laid the cross on Jesus himself. Only later did they shanghai Simon of Cyrene and impress him into the duty of carrying the cross. Well, why might this be? Old Brother John Gill says, of that phrase, him they compelled to bear the cross, which they did, he says, not out of goodwill to Christ, but fearing lest through his faintness and weakness he should die before he got to the place of execution, and they be disappointed of their end, the crucifixion of him. They were in haste to have him executed, and he was not able to go as fast as they desired, and when they first came out, the cross was laid upon Christ, and He bore it. But He being weak and ready to faint under it, not able to go the pace they would have Him, and meeting with this man, that is, Simon the Cyrenian, they pressed Him to bear it after Him, which He might be unwilling to do, partly because it was scandalous and ignominious, and partly because as a favor of Jesus, He did not choose to be any way's accessory to His death, But he was obliged to it, and it may be observed from hints that taking up the cross and following Christ is disagreeable to flesh and blood. Though the spirit may be willing, the flesh recoils. None care for it or choose to bear it unless constrained to it. And so the Scriptures say that then they crucified Jesus. We've discussed before the details of crucifixion. It wasn't just the driving of the nails through the wrists or hands to affix the body to the cross. It wasn't just the driving of the nails through the feet to transfix the body upon the cross. It was the positional nature of being strung up by one's hands where your feet can't reach the ground, where you can't stand on your feet. And when that happens, there's a process called positional asphyxiation by which your arms being drawn up, your rib cage and all find it harder and more difficult to draw breath. Fluid develops on your chest and in your heart because of the severe pressure upon the heart by this position that you're held in. And it's an agonizing death and it goes on sometimes for days. You might call it death by exhaustion because you could gain relief if you were able to stand on your feet and give your chest relief. But if you pushed up with your feet, then the pain was so great that you would collapse again. And so you were in a hopeless cycle of despair and the longer it went, the weaker you got, probably primarily due to lack of oxygen. Now, this is a method of death that is being used even today. The CIA has murdered several people on the record by tying them up by their wrists and suspending them above the ground until they died. You know, we ought never to scoff at those who die because they can't breathe, because of something physical being done to them to restrict or constrain their breathing. And you remember, if you want a picture of how badly beaten and mauled and mutilated the Lord Jesus was when He hung on the cross. After all they had done to Him, after the flogging After the scourging, they had whips with pieces of glass or pieces of metal wound into them, and they would lash the man on his back, and he would bleed rivers of blood. If you want a picture of it, remember that verse in Isaiah 52 at verse 14. As many were astonished at thee, that is Christ, His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men. I once preached a message on that text. And I made the point that the devil, through his henchmen, the wicked men, were trying to efface the humanity of Christ because somehow the devil knew that it was the incarnation by which Christ would save His people. It was His identity with His people, with His creatures, with mankind, that Christ would somehow find a way, inexplicable to Satan and his people, of saving his people. And so, anything that could be done to short-circuit Christ's life, to mar his image as a man, to alienate him from his fellow man, was all to the good as far as the devil was concerned. Now, Christ's weakness therefore came from the criminal acts of wicked men which they inflicted upon him." Criminal acts of wicked men. The beating and the flogging. The torture of the crown of thorns. Have you ever pierced your scalp with a needle or something or cut it? It hurts so bad. With the nails pounded into his hands and feet, the agony of being strung up on the cross, the heart pounding, growing larger, the agonizing thirst, the sweat, all those awful things, and the loss of blood from all the flogging and from the wounds and the inability to take a good breath. Sometimes we think about these things and it almost overwhelms us. I take away these three thoughts from the truth of Christ's weakness on the cross, physical weakness. The first is this, nobody knows weakness like our Lord Jesus. No matter how bad our weakness may feel in our body, Jesus was far worse. And so we ought to take comfort that when we are weak, that Jesus sympathizes with us because he has gone through worse that we ever will, even if you just limit it to the physical weakness of the body, not to mention having our sins laid on and being treated as guilty, being made sin for us, He who knew no sin, all of those things piled on top of Him all at one time. Think about how the bodily weakness of Christ impacts His thoughts and His feelings and His heart regarding all the spiritual oppression and judgment that was also raining down on him. It's one thing, you know, to be weak and then pile on top of that other problems that you don't even have the power or strength to address. But then secondly, he underwent all of this deliberately to save his loved ones. This didn't just sneak up on him. It didn't suddenly overtake him as a surprise, like my weakness did. He knew long beforehand, from eternity, he knew that he would be hit with an overwhelming weakness of the body. He who had been so strong in his ministry, and better yet, more glorious yet, he who had created the human body. and all other things in this world, and created Him perfect. Yet because of sin imposed upon Him by wicked men, He knew He would be weak. He always knew of the travails of the cross. And yet He went towards it with His face set like flint, didn't He? He would not turn away. He was fully aware of all the consequences that were about to overwhelm him, as it were, although he was not overwhelmed. And yet he went straight into the maw of death to save us. No wonder Isaiah said that he is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And then thirdly, Christ was raised up in power and glory. from the depths of his weakness, from the depths of his physical loss of strength, from the depths of all the other things that crashed upon him, from the depths of being punished for our sin and treated as guilty and mocked and taunted and abused and put through unspeakable pain for us from those depths. Three days later, you see, he was raised in power and glory And one day He has promised that He will raise up us also. And that's the ultimate cure of physical weakness, isn't it? The ultimate cure of the corruption of the body, the ultimate cure of the presence of sin in our body, the ultimate cure of all the sorrows that come upon the Lord's people throughout our lives because of sin, because of the fall, because of the sin of other people, because of the sin of ourselves, because of the general corruption and degradation of our physical beings, the only solution to that is our resurrection, isn't it? He will raise us up also. If you go and read 1 Corinthians 15, you'll see Paul goes through the litany, buried in weakness, raised in power, Buried in corruption, raised in incorruption. Buried in mortality, raised in glory and immortality. We have a glorious future which Christ has purchased for us with His own body and blood. And because of that, He will take away all the weakness. He will wipe away all the tears. You wouldn't believe the stupid things people claim in order to try to frustrate what God's Word says. The latest one I've come across is that, well, God can't wipe away tears in eternity unless we have tears. And so therefore, we're going to be very sad in heaven so that God can continually wipe away our tears. What a bunch of fools these people are. That's not the promise of Christ at all. Sorrow and sighing shall flee away and never come back. Death shall lose its power and its sting, and one day soon, when Christ appears and raises us up, we shall be completely free of all these things, the weakness, the sorrow, the dying, and the sinning. We'll be free of it all. And it's because of what Jesus did for us and how He went through His death on the cross to save us. Well, let's give thanks for the Lord's table. and rejoice at what the Lord Jesus bought for us there on Calvary's tree, with all of the horrible details, many of which we never even consider, but which perhaps sometimes in our own personal lives, things may be brought to our personal feelings that will help us to recall and to rejoice and to glorify our Lord Jesus. Let's give thanks first for the bread that pictures the body that was broken for us. Oh God, our Father, we rejoice in the goodness of Christ, the obedience of Christ. We thank you that he laid down his life for us. We thank you that he went to the cross, despising the shame, that he endured all these things for us, that he patiently bore our sins in his own body. that we're healed by the stripes of Jesus, healed from our sinning, healed from our rebellion and our going astray. Thank you that He has captured us and brought us back unto His presence and around this table. Thank you that He left us this bread to picture the body that was broken. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. The scriptures tell us that on the night our Lord was betrayed, He took the bread and He blessed it and He broke it And he said, take and eat. This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. I'd like to ask Brother Whitten if he'd give thanks for the cup that pictures the blood of Christ shed for us. The Scriptures tell us after they had supped that he took the cup and he blessed it. And he said, drink ye all of it. This cup is the new covenant in my blood for the remission of sin. Do it as often as ye do it in remembrance of me. And the scriptures tell us that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we do preach the Lord's death until he comes. Let's stand and sing number 169 in the black book. Lord, we would ne'er forget thy love, who hast redeemed us by thy blood. And now as our high priest above does intercede for us with God. 169.