We're back in Keech's Catechism this week. You can find question 30 on page 245 in our blue confession books. As I continue to mention, I'm still seeing this section as a continuation of our study of God's decrees this morning, as we spend another couple weeks considering the works and offices of Jesus Christ. Ephesians 1 and verse 10. says it is God's will or His decree that He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him. That's a summary of the decrees of God that we've used to help us in understanding what God has been doing throughout history. Every time He creates, it's to gather. Every time He provides for His creation, It is for the purpose to gather. And everything is gathered in one in Christ. Why? So that Christ might be exalted as the first and foremost of all and the heir of all things. God is to glorify himself and his son and so everything that happens is to gather a people to himself in Christ. We'll think more on these things next week. In question 10, the question was asked, what are the decrees of God? And the answer that started our study was the decrees of God are His eternal purpose according to the counsel of His will, whereby for His own glory, He has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. So everything from sickness and death to joy and blessing to the rain and the sun. All things are used by God to accomplish his will. And of course that's where his will comes in. His will is to save sinners and gather all things in one in Christ. And how does he do that? Question 11 says God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence. Meaning that he creates so that he can gather all things and he provides for his creation so that he can gather all things. And this brought us to a study of creation and providence. God created the world and he created man and then he provided for them both physically and spiritually. And the catechism points this out to help us understand his decrees. He created man after his own image in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. with dominion over the creatures. So he made man to rule over the earth as an ambassador for himself. He made us like him so that we could serve him and be with him, to commune with him. This is part of his decree. He made a place for man and he made a place that he might gather man in heaven. and spend eternity in close communion and fellowship with man. That was God's decree. Which brought us to his providence. He creates and then he provides. He preserves and governs all things. There's not a single stray molecule in the world. God orders all things in his providence and the reason for his providence over all things is ultimately to gather all things in one in Christ. The Puritans in this document are kind of giving us an outline of a bit of a systematic theology. That's what these catechisms do. We're following the story of creation and providence, and we're watching it unfold according to God's decree to gather all things. There's a natural, obvious flow to this whole section in the catechism, which begins in question 10, what are the decrees of God? Everything that follows is to help us understand how God will gather. Then we see God entering into covenant with man. Another element of his preserving and governing all things. This is how God executes his decrees. He enters into a covenant of works with Adam in the garden. And if Adam disobeys and breaks that covenant, he is to be punished with death. And again, God has a purpose here. And that was eventually to gather mankind back to himself. But all the while, he's governing over the situations that will bring mankind back to him in a way that demonstrates the glory of God completely in Jesus Christ. So his plan is to gather. He gathers by way of creation and providence. And in his providence, he makes a covenant to bring mankind to himself forever And he says, do this and live. But we saw that man fell, as if the covenant failed, and then man would die. And this is still part of God's decree. God has a purpose. Without the covenant of works and the fall, and without sin, God couldn't be fully revealed. He couldn't be revealed as just, or righteous, or holy, or merciful, or gracious or loving. Death would lay the groundwork for God who would be fully revealed in conquering death. The same with sin and Satan and the flesh. God could not, in his mercy, conquer these things unless they were decreed to happen by his providence. Without these things, how could we be saved in Christ? God established our need for a mediator when he provided a covenant of works with conditions that would inevitably bring about the fall and death. So God isn't surprised by these things, is he? No, even in sin and death, we see him preserving and governing all things so that he might gather all things in Christ. And then the catechism goes into sin, right? This is the natural progression to show us what God is doing and to show us God's purpose in everything we see in this life. Sin is part of God's decree. God decreed that sin would be the wedge that would come between himself and mankind. When Adam fell, all of mankind fell in him. God allowed that to be, and he decreed it to be, so that he could gather those who were separated. Kind of, you see his wisdom. And why? Sin is part of God's plan to gather us in Christ. In Adam, all die. In Christ, all are made alive. Now do you see how these things kind of have to be so? How the fall has to be, and the covenant of works in the garden has to be, and sin must be. And so God has used these things And these things have brought man far away from God, and these things have blemished the very image of God in man. Mankind, created in a special way so that they could commune with God, is now separated by an infinite chasm, and this is all part of God's decree. But because of sin, we're able to see the goodness of God in his mercy to save us from it. It's one thing to gather perfect and innocent people to live for eternity in his presence. It's an entirely different thing to gather enemies and give them new hearts and adore them as children as they now adore him forever. God in his providence is decreeing salvation to the elect and he is using sin to accomplish or execute his decrees. And all this sets the groundwork for our salvation. Question 23, still under the bigger heading of God's decrees, asks, does God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery? And of course, the answer is no. God creates a new covenant, a covenant of grace, to gather these people back to himself under a new law. The study of God's decrees is a study of the gospel. His people now, instead of being under a law of works, would be under a law of grace. Christ gathers us to himself by his work and applies his work to us in this great exchange or transaction. The gospel tells us that his good is exchanged for our bad works. And his death on our behalf is exchanged for eternal life for us. That's the gospel, right? He accomplishes the gospel by first creating and then providing for that creation, ultimately making the conditions to gather all things in one in Christ. Which brings us to the pinnacle of God's decrees in the very center of the gospel. How does God execute his decrees? How does he accomplish his will to gather all things in one in Christ? He does it through Christ as a mediator. Questions 24 through 29 focused our attention on the Son of God and his work as our Redeemer. He became a man, he was our prophet, he was our priest, and he was our king in order to gather us back to himself, and we are gathered once again in Christ, in him as our mediator. As the person who suffered and died on our behalf, and as the person who lived on our behalf, Christ becomes our only way to the heavenly city of God. And as we studied, and as we're going to study more today, Christ accomplishes his work through his sufferings and through his glory. Or put another way, it's often called his humiliation and his exaltation. Christ suffers for us as our mediator, and we benefit from his suffering. Later he is exalted as our mediator and we benefit from his exaltation as well. So the sufferings and glories of Christ summarize these works of Christ on our behalf in our salvation. And that's what we're going to consider today, the humiliation of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 2 in verses 9 through 10 says, but we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels, that's humiliation, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone, that's suffering, for it was fitting for him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, that's gathering, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. This verse perfectly illustrates Christ accomplishing Ephesians 1 10 through sufferings. That's what I'd like to consider this morning. Christ has a suffering which is crowned with glory and that suffering is to gather all things together in one in him as he brings many sons to glory. This brings us to our question this morning. Question 30 asks, wherein did Christ's humiliation consist? And the answer is Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God and the cursed death of the cross, in being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time. That will be the topic of our time this morning. Jesus suffered on our behalf as our mediator. If you look in your bulletin, the summary this morning for the message this morning is, God's decrees executed by him in creation and providence find their fulfillment in the works of Jesus Christ as revealed in the gospel. As mediator of the new covenant, it is in terms of his humiliation and his suffering that we see him securing our salvation. Christ died for the ungodly. And now with that, let's pray as we begin. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the time that we have together. As always, we thank you, Lord, that you have, in your mercy, called us out of a dark and dreary world and brought us into the light and life of Christ. We thank you that you've gathered us together here, that we might walk through this life together as a family of God, as a congregation of God's church. I thank you, Lord, for the word that we have, that we hold in our hands and we hold it dearly. We thank you for the Spirit's gift in teaching us what it means. We thank you, Lord, for the hymns that we're singing. Thank you, Lord, for the prayers that you hear. And we ask you in this prayer to be our teacher this morning. We ask you to bless us in our time. And we ask that Christ, even in our study of his humiliation, might be exalted in our hearts and in our minds, and that you might prepare us with these words and with these thoughts for eternal life in the presence of the Lamb who was slain for us. So we thank you, Lord, for this wonderful topic. We thank you for Keech's Catechism as it kind of gives us a place to jump from and look into these doctrines. And I just ask your blessing again on our time. For Christ's sake and in his name, amen. Okay, if you're following along in our confession books, or if your copy of the Catechism shows the proof text, you'll notice that this Catechism is split up with seven different references, and I'm going to use those seven references in their proof text this morning for our outline. To demonstrate his humiliation, we first see Jesus born in a low condition. Then we see him made under the law, Then we see him undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, the cursed death on the cross. We see him buried, and finally we see him under the power of death for a time. And before we begin, I want to think for a second about the person who's suffering for us, something that should be incredible to us. First, he is the eternal son of God and the very image of God's glory. This is the one who suffers. This is the one who submits himself to humiliation and suffering and death as our loving and merciful mediator. Before he came to this world, Jesus never experienced humiliation or suffering. As God, he actually couldn't experience this kind of humiliation and suffering, and that's where I want to begin in our thinking. What is humiliation and suffering? What is it that God subjected himself to in taking on human flesh? Let's start with a definition or two. Humiliation might be defined as being embarrassed, or according to Merriam-Webster, It means to reduce someone to a lower position in one's own eyes or other's eyes. Or, it might mean to make someone ashamed or embarrassed. One synonym for humiliation might be the word to mortify. I'm sure you've heard people who are embarrassed or humiliated say they were mortified by a situation. Think about what the Bible tells us about our need to mortify the flesh. We need to be ashamed and embarrassed and humiliated. Or to say it another way, we need to be reduced to a lower position in our own eyes in order to lay hold of the gospel and have progress in our Christian walk. We need to mortify the flesh. And that's what Jesus demonstrated for us in his ministry on earth. He demonstrated humiliation. Hebrews says the Son of God was made a little lower than the angels. The one who would receive the worship of angels would be brought lower than the angels and be humiliated by this world and mankind and even death. The eternal God and creator of all things subjects himself to weakness and humiliation and is brought to the lowest position on this earth, and he does it for us. That's part of his ministry as our mediator and redeemer. In order to purchase us, he must first become poor. The word suffering is similar. That's why the Bible uses both of these words to describe Christ's earthly ministry. Suffering means experiencing pain, being in great trouble. And according to Miriam Webster, would include great physical or mental strain and stress. It's also defined as being a conscious endurance of pain or distress or agony. Again, consider these things in the context of Christ, the Son of God. All of these things are a form of humiliation in the sense that he allowed himself to be brought to a lower position, a lowly position, especially when you think about who he is. He is the eternal, infinite, unchangeable God and the creator of all things. The other thing I want to just think about before we begin is the fact that these things Jesus endures, his humiliation and his sufferings, are all the consequences of the fall of mankind. Jesus didn't come to live under the conditions of the garden. He didn't come prior to sin and the curse. He came after because he came to suffer for sin. That's an amazing thing about Jesus and his ministry. He came to suffer for sin. Before the fall, there was no suffering and no humiliation. Adam was made upright and that's where he stood. He wasn't higher than he was created to be or lower. He was made king over the earth and he remained king over the earth. Adam didn't experience humiliation until after the fall. He was brought lower, reduced when he was forced to submit to Satan and sin and death, all of which happened after the fall. Adam was brought low when he sinned and then became a slave to sin. The king, Adam, became a slave in the fall. That's humiliation. Same with suffering. Adam never experienced suffering prior to the fall. Think about Genesis 3 and verse 17 when God curses Adam with suffering. He says, Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. That's suffering. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you. and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you are taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return." That's humiliation. The pinnacle of God's creation returns to the dust. Listen to these words that God uses. He curses the ground and Adam will now eat in toil. By the sweat of your face you shall now eat bread till you return to the ground. Suffering and death is Adam's new condition. And that is the condition that Christ comes into. He comes to suffer under the curse and die. The one who had never experienced hardship or difficulty The infinite and eternal Son of God, full of grace and truth and life and light, comes to experience a life plagued with hardship and difficulty and darkness. He is brought low. He is reduced. He is humiliated for us. This gentle soul, who we call Jesus Christ, left his position in the heavenlies was made lower than the angels and for one purpose, to purge our sins. Hebrews 1. And to gather all things together in one in him. Ephesians 1 10. Christ's mission in gathering us is to cleanse us from the curse and the stain of sin forever in Christ. And that is by definition love. John 3 16 says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. What did he give his son up to? To suffer and die. And why? So that all who believe in him might have eternal life. There is no gospel without the humiliation and suffering of Jesus Christ, the infinite and eternal Son of God. All right, turn with me to Luke 2, please. Luke 2 in verse 7 is our first proof text. And it's here that we're introduced to the humiliation of the Son of God. Catechism says that Christ's humiliation first consisted in his being born, and that in a lowly condition. The Christmas story, we all remember, it says, verse 7, And Mary brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. This is a really simple verse that demonstrates humiliation. This is the king of the world, the very creator of the world, and he was born in a stall with farm animals. Let me just paint a picture. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Mary's dress was stained with manure that day. Think about that. And as Joseph knelt by her side, his knees were stained with the wetness and messiness of an animal's stall. That's the entrance to the earth that God chose for his son. Talk about being reduced and brought lower. From the glory of heaven to an animal stall. I'm sure the stall was probably even relatively clean. Joseph probably neatened up a little bit and made a place for Mary when he realized this is where she was going to give birth. He probably took a pitchfork and cleaned up the manure and threw it out the door in a pile where it would go. Probably laid new hay out to cover up the mess. Not trying to overemphasize these conditions, but even in a clean stall, there's the remnant of a mess. I used to sit in the stall with our goats when they were little. I didn't sit in filth, but I certainly wouldn't have sat in that same spot with my Sunday clothes on. It would have ruined them. I sat on the floor on relatively clean hay, and I wore my dirty work clothes. And this is where Jesus entered the world, in a low condition, without any honor. He and his mother didn't receive any medical attention either. They didn't even receive a clean room in the inn. And that same night, a peasant laid his head in a room next door while the Son of God was born in an animal stall. That's a low condition. That's humiliation. Jesus was reduced and brought low. And this isn't just in the Bible for us to feel sorry for Jesus and Mary and Joseph. It's here for us to understand our own condition. Jesus came to earth to reveal our condition to us. We have been brought low, reduced almost as low as the animals because of sin and the fall. There's a level of humiliation that we, as fallen men, need to understand in order to be saved. Think about the society we live in. Think of Western culture today. And I place myself alongside it. We are brought into this world in a sterile hospital. We often live an entire life treated with medicine and pain relievers and antibiotics, all combating the curse. And we're almost insulated from our own humility, aren't we? But think clearly with me. Without a constant struggle against the world and disease, We would all die young. It's true, isn't it? And yet we are deceiving ourselves into thinking we are amazing and strong. Other than Bible-believing churches, where do you find, in our culture, where we're taught about our lowliness? Nowhere. We are exalted. We are strong. We are technologically advanced. We are brilliant. But are we? Are we really? I think we're deceived and I think Jesus coming in his lowly way illustrated the true condition of man. His birth, the rejection of his parents at the inn, that is what we deserve, all of us. We're not special and we're not good and we're not worthy of being treated well by others. We deserve nothing and Jesus came to show us that. It's not a popular view. That's not the way society teaches us to think of ourselves. But how else do we come to Him as a child, bringing nothing? How else do we begin to mortify the flesh, and embarrass the flesh, and humiliate the flesh, and destroy the exalted nature of the flesh? That's what that means. Allow yourself to be embarrassed for your condition. That's the only way to live, and that's the beginning of salvation. When I was first saved, I remember my constant prayer was for humility. I saw my biggest problem as pride. I saw myself as a proud person for the first time ever. I remember that clearly. Or maybe I just saw my pride as a bad thing for the first time, and that's probably more accurate. But that's what salvation does, right? The power of God in Christ is that we're brought low because he was brought low. We're finally able to see ourselves as we really are. And so in our own eyes, we're brought low, we're reduced. which is the very definition of humility. So Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born and that in a low condition. Then we see that he is also made under the law. Think about that for a moment. The law itself does what? It publishes God's perfect moral character, right? It reveals God as the supreme and perfect moral being and places his creation under that same standard. Now the catechism tells us that Christ was born and made under the law. Galatians 4 and verse 4 says, but when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made under the law. This is kind of interesting to think about as I was preparing. John Gill writes in his commentary on Galatians 4.4 that Christ was under the civil and judicial law as a Jew to which he was subject. Think about that word, subject. He was made a slave to the civil and judicial law. And as a son of Abraham, Gill says, he was made under the ceremonial law, was circumcised the eighth day, kept the several feasts of tabernacles, the Passover, et cetera, and which was proper, since he was the principal end of it, in whom it centers, and for whose sake it was made, and that he might completely fulfill it, and by so doing put a period to it." Kind of wordy, but let's think on this. What Gil is laying out for us is that Jesus was born in a time when the Jewish people were still a nation, which was absolutely necessary. It was important for the Messiah to come at a time in history when the Jews were still an ethnic nation. Israel was still ruled by the law of Moses, and a nation who were still the natural descendants of Abraham, celebrating the very religious feasts which pointed to him. That's the timing of Christ's coming. He came to earth in the final moments of Israel's history, allowing him to obey and be the subject of the old covenant and its whole system including the law. Which he did perfectly by the way. He fulfilled the sacrifices by being the sacrifice and he became the meaning behind everything in the temple and all of the feasts and all of the laws. Everything foreshadowed in the prophets and in the old covenant law was fulfilled in Jesus by him keeping the law. And so we can see that his timing in history was so important. Now we could argue whether the keeping of the old covenant law was necessary for our salvation. I don't think Jesus necessarily obeyed the old covenant to earn righteousness on our behalf. I'm not convinced that this was part of his actual purchase of redemption, but I do believe that it had to be done to demonstrate who he was. So did Jesus accomplish our salvation by being circumcised on the eighth day? I don't really think so. Did he accomplish our salvation by following the whole law of Moses? I don't think so. But he did reveal himself to be the very promised seed of Abraham, didn't he? He obeyed the spirit and the letter of the law of God perfectly and he did it unlike anyone who came before him because he truly understood it. He was the friend of God that Abraham pointed to. These laws pointed to him. That's what he demonstrated. And he demonstrates that when he obeys them and teaches from them. So did he accomplish redemption through keeping the sacrifices and the external laws? No. But he subjected himself to show them that he himself was a prophet and a servant of God. He would show himself to be the perfect specimen of a friend of God, as a man who perfectly submitted to God and his law. And so in obeying the external laws of Moses, Christ identifies himself as Israel himself. and as the seed of Abraham doing the work of God. That's the ceremonial and judicial laws. But what's more important is the moral law. The moral law is much greater than the old covenant laws. And this is the law that we needed him to fulfill for us. Listen to John Gill again. He says, he was also made under the moral law, both as a man and the surety of his people. and was subject to all the precepts of it, and bore the penalty of it, death, in their room instead, and thereby fulfilled it, and delivered them from its curse and condemnation." So you can see that it's Gill's interpretation that the moral law was the important one. This was the law that God placed in the human heart at creation, and so it supersedes every other law. Not only that, But because of this, every human being, Jew and Gentile alike, are under this law. And this is the law that Jesus fulfilled for us all, for salvation. We also see that it was the breaking of this law that placed Adam and his children, including all of us, under the penalty of death. Christ fulfilled the curse of death as well. So he is made under the law in terms of obedience, And he is made under the law in terms of the consequences of disobedience. He fulfills both of these things, the promises and the curses of the moral law on our behalf. I think Gil is right about this. I think it's more than eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Adam did. I think Adam violated the moral law when he ate that fruit. He disobeyed and dishonored God and he violated the first table of law. He followed Satan and made God out to be a liar is what he did. And that's what the real sin was that day. And that's why it's the moral law that Jesus had to fulfill. We also see humiliation. Think about a king on earth or an emperor. He makes laws for himself, I mean, for his people, but in most cases, the emperor places himself where? Above the law, right? Most sovereign kings put themselves above the law. And God could certainly do that if it wasn't for his perfect moral character. But that's not what we see at all. We see the Son of God, the lawgiver, obeying his own law and subjecting himself to every aspect of it. That's humiliation. That's being brought low or reduced to a lower position. The Emperor, Christ, is subjecting himself to the very same laws as his peasants. And he does that with the laws of Moses as well as the moral law. Next we see his humiliation consisted in undergoing the miseries of his life. And this is also an aspect of his humiliation. This is certainly an aspect of his suffering. Hebrews 12 and verses 2 and 3 says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls." What are we seeing here? We see an example of suffering in the life of Jesus, which has its pinnacle, or its climax, at the cross. The cross is where the final humiliations of Christ begin, and it's where every other aspect of his sufferings led him to. His entire life was a life of suffering. He was dishonored, he was shamed, he was belittled and ridiculed, and he was ultimately put to death, which of course is the end of all of us who live under the curse. His humiliation meant that he lived under all the curses that Adam was put under. Eating by the sweat of his face, struggling with thorns and thistles, sickness, heat, cold, and ultimately being overcome by death. This life for Christ was a life of suffering physically, mentally, and even spiritually. And at the cross in his life, he even suffered death. And this death was one of the most excruciating and awful deaths that the wickedness of mankind has ever devised. He was crucified on a cross. He was held down by guards and men drove nails into his hands and feet. And then he was hoisted into the air and the cross was dropped into the hole that was dug for it, tearing at the holes in his body when it came to a stop and he hung there. That's humiliation. Christ was reduced and brought low. He was stripped naked. He was disrespected and called a king in the most mocking way, with a crown of thorns placed on his head, the very thorns of Adam's curse. That's suffering and that's humiliation. The king and creator of the world is mocked. Imagine ourselves. Imagine walking into a prison as a righteous person and being called the worst of them all, and being treated as the worst of them all, and believed to be the worst of them all, and being led to death row so that they could rid you from society. And yet you know you're innocent. You're accused of something you never did. And you're looking at the death penalty and the courts are so corrupt that you'll never get a fair trial. We can hardly imagine that. We know that's what happened to Jesus and we hear about innocent people being put to death in the news. But can you even imagine that being you? Being led like a dog to be killed. Being treated like something dirty and despised. That's humiliation. That's being brought lower or reduced lower than you deserve. And that's the entire life of Christ. Isaiah 53, in verses two and three, we read this morning. For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness. And when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him, he was despised and we did not esteem him." Think about that. This is the Son of God, the creator of the world and the very image of God, full of glory, and he was destroyed from this earth, the earth that he had created, by the people he created, and he was accused of the most heinous sins and he was crucified for them. And people looked right straight through him like he was nothing more than a peasant. That's the humiliation of the king of the world. And then the Son of God, the creator of the world, and the most perfect and holy and sinless man to ever walk, was crucified for blasphemy. How much lower could he be brought? He is totally humiliated and disrespected and mocked. But it gets worse, doesn't it? The Catechism says he also bears the wrath of God. Everything that you and I deserve was placed upon Christ's soul when he drank the cup of God's wrath. Luke 22 and verse 44 is our next proof text. Jesus is in the garden the night before he's killed and it says, being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. Then his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. This again is our suffering servant. There are so many different interpretations of the sweat and blood that Jesus experiences, and I'll share a few of them, but all of them point to this immense agony. So what does this sweating of drops of blood mean? Some commentators that I read point to people in history who actually sweat blood upon hearing of their coming execution. Apparently that's a thing. I'd never heard of it. And they see this as a natural and physical reaction to this terrible event to come, which is certainly possible. That news is certainly agonizing, and I'm sure it has effects on the bind and the body. Others point out the bite from a certain snake that causes a person to die an excruciating death, and that's accompanied by sweating blood. This is another possibility, although there's nothing said about Jesus being bitten by a snake. They suggest that this is the hour that the serpent, Satan, bit Jesus on the heel, and this was the outcome. It's possible, I suppose. Genesis 3.15 promised a battle between Christ and the serpent one day, promised such a bruising of the heel. Others assume some unrelated ailment in the body of Christ, which under such stress caused him to sweat this blood. It's also possible. Still others suggest the comforting of the angels caused such a joy in the midst of sufferings that his blood was warmed and pumped outwardly with such force that his pores couldn't contain it all. His warmed blood freely moved throughout his body as joy battled with fear. It's certainly a different perspective. I'm not sure we can know the cause of his sweating of blood. But what we do know is that Christ, a man, full of sinless fear, and intense prayer to God for his deliverance, swept blood as he faced the final phase of his suffering on earth. He would submit to the cross and bear the sins of the world and the wrath of God on behalf of every saint. In that hour of fear, he swept blood. The one who knew no sin would now be utterly smothered by sin and darkness and pain. And that is a suffering he didn't deserve. That's really the difference between us and him, isn't it? His humility and suffering is undeserved. He's humble or brought low as one who deserves to be exalted. When we are humbled, we're brought to our proper position. When he was humbled, it was to a place beneath him by infinite degrees. And it's the wrath of God that he bears on our behalf. Literally, the anger and the fury of God that we deserve in eternal hell. is placed upon the sweet, innocent soul of the Savior. The soul who knows nothing but love and truth, who is full of grace and mercy, and known for gentleness, will receive the wrath deserved by murderers and thieves and rapists and liars and blasphemers. And again, this is the work of Christ which was so important for our salvation. The blessed, sinless Son took on the curse of sin for us. The one who had never known sin came to this earth and experienced the darkness and evil of mankind just to take the curse of that darkness and evil onto himself as if he deserved it himself. It's really an unbelievable thought. It's so easy to just accept this nice story of Jesus dying for sins without really thinking deeply on his suffering. This is the holy, holy, holy God here. The one who knows no sin has become sin for us. And there's no way for us to truly understand what that means. Just think about the way that we feel when we're in the presence of darkness and the discomfort that causes us and multiply that discomfort by infinite degrees. Just hearing the Lord's name in vain makes us uncomfortable, doesn't it? So does the presence of blatant sin. And yet we are more similar in our natures and characters to Satan than we are to Christ. We are more comfortable with sin than we are acquainted with holiness. It's true. And yet unholiness to the saint is a burden for us to be around. We suffer in the midst of sin. Christ's suffering was infinitely greater. That's what Christ was subjected to. That's what he subjected himself to. And yet, more so by infinite degrees. And those are the sins that he was preparing to be punished for. Those are the sins that Jesus died for. The sins he had never committed and could hardly stand to be in the presence of. Imagine being that holy and knowing that you were entering the darkness and the presence of nearly infinite filth and evil. It's a profound thought. And this is what happened at the cross. And yet there was more suffering. Matthew 27 in verse 46 says, as Jesus hung on the cross, And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The Son of God, for the first time in his life, had the Father's back turned on him. Listen to John Gill here. He writes that Jesus was now without a sense of the gracious presence of God and was filled as the surety of his people with a sense of divine wrath which their iniquities he now bore and deserved, and which was necessary for him to endure in order to make full satisfaction for them. Now listen to this. For one part of the punishment of sin is loss of the divine presence. Imagine this wrath, and imagine the absence of the Father's presence in the midst of it. This, some speculate, will be the most horrifying aspect of hell. And that's what the Savior endured for us on that cross. He is brought low. He is reduced, once again, to the lowest place a soul can be. A place without the Lord. Philippians 2 and verse 8 says, And being found in appearance as a man, Christ humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. And again, even after death, his humbling continues. He is now to be buried in the ground like a common man. 1 Corinthians 15 and verses 3 and 4. Say, for I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried. Just like every other son of Adam, Christ was returned to the ground because of the curse of sin. In Genesis 3, 19, God said to Adam, In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return. And that's part of the curse that the Son of God endured on our behalf. That's humiliation. Sinful man returns to the dust because of sin, and Jesus is returned to the dust because of our sin. For three days, Jesus was returned to the earth. And this is the Son's humility and suffering on our behalf. Everything we have just read are things that we deserve and he did not deserve. And yet this was his ministry. As a servant, Christ suffered and died for us. So what is our takeaway? What is our application? I think the Apostle John helps bring this back to our faith. And I'd like to close with a couple of verses from 1 John 4, starting in verse 14. John says, and we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. Why do we love him? He first loved us. And what did that look like? It looked like a loving God suffering and dying for us. John says fear involves torment and we don't fear torment because Christ was tormented for us. We don't fear judgment either because Christ was judged sinful for us and we are now judged righteous because of Him. My question for us is this. Do we live as those who are loved by the sweet and gentle Savior? Do we obey as those who are loved by the Creator? And do we suffer as those who have a hope of resurrection and eternal life? If you answer yes to these, I think you can be encouraged that you have known the grace of God. And that's a wonderful, life-changing thing. that can transform the way we think about everything we do and everything we suffer through. The gospel is only possible by the suffering of Jesus Christ. And that's the love of God, and that's the thought I'd like to leave off on. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the love of God taught to us so explicitly in your word. And we thank you that you've taught us of the ministry of our Savior. And we thank you, Lord, that there is a promise of eternal bliss and eternal peace and a place without suffering and without death, with no more tears, a place in the presence of this wonderful Savior, the Lamb of God who was slain for us, the Lion of God who is exalted, and we will be exalted to a place beside him as his servants and as his people. And Lord, there's just so much wonderful imagery that we see in your word about our future and about the work that was done on our behalf. I pray, Lord, that these thoughts would allow us to further embrace the goodness of God and the love of God and that you would continue to move us in the direction of your holy and wonderful city that's found in heaven. And I pray, Lord, that you'd lay these things heavily upon our hearts and that you'd guide us all the way. And so we pray in Christ's holy name. Amen.