HE TOOK THE NAILS



"E'li, E'li, la'ma sa-bach-tha-ni?"  (Matthew 27: 46)



   With all of the attention we devote to church buildings, to having everything the way we want our buildings to be, with indoor toilets that smell good, to beautification programs, to mowing the grass and trimming the hedge, to annual cleanup projects such as painting and colorful wallpaper in the halls, to carpet floors, padded pews, and dangling chandeliers; and by making sure that we also look good and smell good when we enter at the front gate, perhaps our attention has been either diverted or even shattered, or maybe our minds have become crowded with our attention to football and baseball, television programs, politics, and by our own collection of houses and cars and busy schedules, is it reasonable to ask:   Is it possible---just possible---that we have inadvertently dedicated our buildings to ourselves instead of to the Lord?
   Have we become desensitized to the purpose that we gather together?
   Have we become desensitized to the pain and suffering of death by crucifixion? 
   Have we forgotten the price that Jesus paid for our salvation? 
   Or has going to church become a sacrifice of our own time? 
   Is my doing for the Lord more important to me than for Him? 
   Is my participation in rites and rituals and traditions and music more about me instead of more about Christ? 
   And do I leave church with more of me instead of leaving with more of the Lord?
   If my desire is for people to see me in church, was it me who died on a cross?
   Certainly not!
   Perhaps it good, then, for us to be reminded of the crucifixion from time to time to keep the focus of our attention on Christ, and not on ourselves.
   TO BEGIN, the Romans were Pagans.  They had no mercy, no grace, no love.
   To the Romans, killing people was no different than killing animals.
   To the Romans, killing was their duty to Caesar, their work, their profession.  And they were good at it---highly trained and highly efficient in producing pain and suffering in the deaths of people.
   To the Romans, killing one person was no different than killing another.
   Jesus was next.
   Before Jesus stepped foot in Jerusalem, however, he knew this would be his last Passover.  He had supper with the disciples, then he retreated to the garden to wait.  He was awake all day, praying to his Father in heaven, and dreading daylight, for he knew his future would be Golgotha. 
   Before Jesus came to earth, he knew the devil would kill him.  He knew he had entered Satan's kingdom, and he also knew that Satan's people kill people.  Why, even the king of Israel had attempted to assassinate Jesus when the boy was only two years old, and now the priests of Israel desired that Jesus should die.  Instead of asking God what to do about Jesus, they turned their faces to Rome and made a deal with the devil, saying to Pontius Pilate:  His blood be upon us, and on our children. (Matthew 27: 25)
   For Christians, we know and believe that the blood of Christ is for the cleansing of sin; but to the men that killed Jesus, the death of Christ was a blood sacrifice for Satan.
   The Romans nearly beat Jesus to death prior to arriving at Calvary.  He was battered, bruised, and bleeding.  The nails penetrated his hands and his feet, and the agony of death began.  The bleeding continued.  Gathering the strength to merely breathe was torture.  Even to speak is beyond our human comprehension when we consider death by crucifixion.
   To God, sin is a serious matter.  And when we look at the face of Jesus on a cross, he was taking the sin of the world upon himself.  He took the beatings, he took the mockery and humiliation, he took the nails, and he took the pain of extreme torture and suffering.
   Christ died that day in Jerusalem. 
   Had Jesus remained dead, we would have never heard of him and his life.  We would have never heard about the disciples and apostles.  The Gospel of Christ would have never been preached in all nations, for there would have been no Good News to tell.  The New Testament would have never been written, the Bible would have never been translated to multiple languages, and churches would have never been established all over the world.  And the United States would have never existed as a free nation. 
   In hell, people will pay their sin debt to God because they rejected the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.  They will experience eternal death, yet they will never die. They will never have a good day.  They will never sleep.  They will never see the light of day. They will experience the pain and suffering of death though death shall flee.
   In Jerusalem, the Creator of the universe died for sin, which means that our sins were nailed to the cross with Jesus, which should compel us as Christians to remember:
      I am crucified with Christ:  nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me:  and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
   Had it not been for Christ, this blog you are reading today would have never been written.
   This has been good for me to be reminded of the Lord's death by crucifixion.