Sermons From Enemies - He Saved Others

Sermons From Enemies – He Saved Others is the final message in our Lenten sermon series from the passion accounts. Each Sunday we have seen one of Jesus’ enemies speak the truth!

We would be surprised and appalled if we flipped through the channels on TV and came across a new station on cable called ETV – Execution TeleVision. We would be horrified to learn that on ETV, in prime time, we could watch live references and videotaped highlights of people being put to death in the electric chair or executed in gas chambers or burned at the stake. We would be equally anguished if we were riding along the expressway some sunny morning and could view, from our cars, a firing squad taking aim at a lineup of convicts. We would think it atrocious to read in the local newspaper an announcement such as: “Public hangings will occur every day at noon in the grassy knoll adjacent to the county house. Concessions available.”

In twenty first-century America, we don’t consider executions as a spectator sport. In the first-century Roman world, publicly putting criminals to death was every day stuff.

So that makes us wonder, WHY would Jesus put up with it? No one but a fool would choose to die like that, right? That’s what the chief priests must have reasoned. If he could come down from the cross, he would, wouldn’t he? Who wouldn’t?

Of course Jesus could not save himself. Consider

The rain cannot save itself, if it is to make the flowers grow.
The sun cannot save itself, if it is to shine and give warmth to the earth.
The candle burns itself away as it gives us light.

Christ could not save himself because it was his business to come here and die to save others. The chief priests, without knowing it, had been right. He couldn’t save himself because he wouldn’t save himself, and he wouldn’t save himself so he could save us. They were right, He didn’t save himself. He saved others.

Want to hear more? Watch this week’s message taken from Matthew 27 – Sermons From Enemies – He Saved Others.