Text: 1Peter 2:24<\/b><\/p>\n
The young couple visited the church.\u00a0 The wanted to know more so they enrolled in the pastor\u2019s Bible information class.\u00a0 Early on, the pastor found out they were living together and not married.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now the pastor could have told them right off, that\u2019s wrong.\u00a0 You need to repent.\u00a0 But he didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Instead he waited for the Word to work.\u00a0 In his lessons, he taught them about Jesus, brought them to His cross.\u00a0 He showed them in God\u2019s Word what God had done for them there. \u00a0\u00a0He didn\u2019t shy away from teaching God\u2019s will for our lives.\u00a0 But never without holding up Jesus and his saving love.<\/p>\n
One day they came to the pastor.\u00a0 We have something to tell you. \u00a0Pastor, we\u2019re not living how God wants us to.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to get married and while we wait, we\u2019re going to live apart.<\/i><\/p>\n
What had happened?\u00a0 What moved them to make such a change in their lives when so many are unwilling. \u00a0\u00a0What made them want to live a new life?\u00a0 Not shame, not someone telling them that\u2019s wrong.\u00a0 No, what changed them, what moved them was something we see in this Word now facing the cross.\u00a0 Listen again:\u00a0 24 <\/sup>He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.<\/span><\/p>\n Today: \u00a0\u00a0Facing the cross – we see a kind of power \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>Ever go backpacking when you were a kid.\u00a0 If you were like me, you brought too much stuff.\u00a0 Stuff that got very heavy on the trail.\u00a0 Of course, there may have been times when your dad taught you a lesson by making you carry what you brought.\u00a0 But there may have been another time when your shoulders were aching from the heavy load, your legs, feeling kind of rubbery.\u00a0 Then you heard a voice that said:\u00a0 Here son, let me carry that for a while<\/i>. — Thanks dad.<\/i> I know now you carried far more than that for mom, my sister and me.\u00a0\u00a0 If only I would have appreciated it more.<\/p>\n Well tonight we want to appreciate what we see facing the cross of Jesus.<\/b>\u00a0 There Jesus took more than a load from our tired shoulders.\u00a0 He took from us a crushing burden on our soul.\u00a0 We sometimes forget that.\u00a0 We don\u2019t take it so seriously. So from time we need to stop and sense what a crushing burden it was.\u00a0 We need to go out to that Garden of Gethsemane where we see it begin to bear down.\u00a0 Listen as Jesus as\u00a0 prays in great anguish and\u00a0 drops of blood come from the pores of his skin.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s the next day, Good Friday, where we really need to stop and sense that crushing burden.\u00a0 We get a glimpse of that in the gospels.\u00a0 But it\u2019s Psalm 22 where the Holy Spirit reveals to us the thoughts of Jesus.\u00a0 There we sense that crushing burden, the burden of our sin.\u00a0 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint, my heart has turned to wax, it has melted within me.<\/span>\u00a0 (Ps 22:14)<\/p>\n The hymn writer says \u00a0it well:\u00a0 If you think of sin but lightly Nor suppose the evil great\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here you see its nature rightly, Here its guilt may estimate.\u00a0 Mark the sacrifice appointed.\u00a0 See who bears the awful load\u2026.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>Not me but him.\u00a0 Not me, the one deserves it many times over.\u00a0 But Jesus. 24 <\/sup>He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.<\/span><\/p>\n He himself did.\u00a0 The very Son of God.\u00a0 In his body.\u00a0 A body than not once in his life was given over to hatred or lust or self-centeredness.\u00a0 Yet he took our guilt on himself and let his body be hung on the wood of a tree. For there he took our place and suffered God\u2019s curse, the crushing burden our sins deserve.<\/p>\n And by his wounds, you have been healed.<\/span>\u00a0 That gapping, festering, infected wound of our guilt has been healed.\u00a0 There\u2019s not even a scar for God to see and remember.\u00a0 In Jesus, God forgives and forgets every one of our sins.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been healed.\u00a0\u00a0 For Jesus took our crushing burden on himself and died for us.\u00a0 And why?\u00a0 Not just that we could be forgiven.\u00a0 Also so that you can take up a new life<\/b>.\u00a0 There\u2019s that power at the cross.<\/p>\n Let me tell something about Jerry, my kidney recipient.\u00a0 About twenty years ago, Jerry became very sick with kidney disease.\u00a0 He was put on the transplant list but it so is very long.\u00a0 Well at that time there was terrible car accident down in National City which killed a family.\u00a0 Jerry received one of their kidneys.\u00a0 When that happened, it wasn\u2019t just his kidney that was changed.\u00a0 It was also his heart.\u00a0 From someone\u2019s death had come another chance at life.\u00a0 Jerry made a promise to God that he would make a difference for him.\u00a0 And he did until he became sick again.\u00a0 As a chef at Sea World he and another man raised over a million dollars for charities.\u00a0 He and his wife took in a foster child whose mother was on drugs.\u00a0 Finally they decided to adopt her so she could escape that life for another.<\/p>\n Think about that.\u00a0 We are more like Jerry than we might realize.\u00a0 From someone\u2019s death has come life for us.\u00a0 But that death was no accident.\u00a0 It was a gift, a sacrifice, an awesome act of love for you and me by the very Son of God\u00a0 So facing the cross, we see a kind of power and purpose for our lives.\u00a0 24 <\/sup>He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.<\/span><\/p>\n We Die to sins.<\/b>\u00a0 What\u2019s that mean?\u00a0 When someone dies a relationship comes to an end. We don\u2019t want death to bring our relationships to an end.\u00a0 But with sin, it\u2019s a different story.\u00a0 As God\u2019s people we want to die to sin.\u00a0 Like that couple I mentioned, we want to put an end to those things in our lives that dishonor God and go against his will.\u00a0 So we confess those things and repent of them.\u00a0 We die to sins.<\/p>\n And we live for righteousness.<\/b>\u00a0 Let\u2019s make sure we understand.\u00a0 In Christ, that\u2019s what we are.\u00a0 The good news is that God has covered our sins with a robe of righteousness.\u00a0 We are justified by faith in Jesus and his redeeming blood. And so now, we want to live for righteousness.<\/b>\u00a0 We want all the more to be the kind of people that God would have us be.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s a struggle.\u00a0 It will be as long as we live on this side of heaven.\u00a0 How blessed we are then to face the cross.\u00a0 How blessed we are to turn to this Word and see what God shows at the Cross.\u00a0 A love that took from you a crushing burden.\u00a0 A love that empowers you to live a new life.\u00a0 — dying to sin, living for righteousness, we seek to honor him who has blessed us so.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Text: 1Peter 2:24 The young couple visited the church.\u00a0 The wanted to know more so they enrolled in the pastor\u2019s Bible information class.\u00a0 Early on, the pastor found out they were living together and not married.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now the pastor could have told them right off, that\u2019s wrong.\u00a0 You need to repent.\u00a0 But he didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Instead he waited for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent","category-sermon"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions\/429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI.\u00a0 Jesus took from you a crushing burden
\nII.\u00a0 So that you can take up a new life.<\/b><\/p>\n