When God Seems Distant

Good morning! Show of hands, how many music lovers do we have here? You would say you're a music lover. Okay, well you're in the right place. I want to play a game this morning that I like to call "Finish the Lyrics." I am going to start with the first line of a song that you probably know, and if you can finish the lyric, whether you are here in the auditorium or watching over in venue or back in the choir room or one of our other video locations, I want you to just shout out the rest of the lyric. The actual lyric, not some fake lyric that you learned in junior high school. The actual lyric of the song that's very important. And it doesn't matter if I hear you, because this is all about impressing the people that are sitting around you in church.

Okay, now I'm not going to sing the song, I'm just going to say the lyrics on most of these, because I love you and have mercy on you, and you don't want to hear me sing. Okay, ready for this? This is a deeply theological lyric to start us off here in church. Here we go. Some people call me the space cowboy. Some people call me the gangster of love. Some people call me... I can sense this as a sophisticated crowd this morning. Steve Miller Band, the Joker, okay, what about this? Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song and I'll... I'll try not to sing out a key, it's impossible for me, but I'll try not to. A little help from my friends, that's the Beatles of course.

Okay, Santa Cruzin should know this, let's go surfing now, everybody's learning how, come on a... Safari with me, that's right. Now, those were all baby boomer hits, those were pretty much number one top ten, charting songs, but how about this next one? This is a song that, to my knowledge, has never been recorded. Not even once. It's not on iTunes, its lyrics have never been written down, nobody even knows who wrote the song. And yet you will be able to finish the lyrics to this entire song more easily than you could any of those chart-topping hits. Here we go. Jingle Bells, Batman Smells, Robin. How do we even know that song? I cannot remember my current cell phone number and I know this one.

Verbal history, songs learned in childhood linger, they're just lodged somewhere permanently in our head and they cannot be dislodged. And let me just give you a... I don't even have to show you these lyrics on the screen because there is a long, it's like a three-hour movie and you guys probably know every word to every song in the entire movie and I'm just gonna kinda demonstrate it this way, shout it out if you can finish the lyric. How do you solve a problem like, I am sixteen going on, doh, a deer, a, there are thousands of these up here. And if you grew up in church, there are thousands, not only up here but down here too, in the heart, coupled with a lot of emotion.

Finish this. What can wash away my sin? What can make me whole again? There's just something about music lyrics, right? We remember them but they also send us back to a time and a place and they bring back some emotion. Well, that very phenomenon happened in the Bible. I want to show you this morning how Jesus played, finished the lyrics with his disciples. Let's continue our series in the Psalms, Soul Food. Grab your message notes out of the middle of your bulletins. We conclude this series today, Palm Sunday. Music was a big part of Holy Week which is started by Palm Sunday.

From the very first, the people as Dan mentioned to us today, they were singing a psalm as Jesus came into Jerusalem, specifically Psalm 118:26. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." But Holy Week also ended with a psalm from the lips of Jesus Christ himself. I took our church staff to a conference a few weeks ago and one of the speakers, a man named Len Sweet, challenged us all to try to remember something, to do something. He said, "Try to remember images of Jesus singing." He said, "When in the Bible did Jesus Christ ever sing?" Did he ever sing? You tell me. When did he sing? At the Last Supper, that's one of the times.

A few days after Palm Sunday, he met with his disciples at the famous Last Supper. And the Bible says, "The last thing they did there was they sang a hymn." There's something about music, you know, when it comes to emotional times in our lives. Do you ever turn on the radio when you're feeling emotional and it helps you through a blue time or a down time? Well, that's just a human thing to do. But there was another time after this, there was a time that you could say that Jesus sang a solo. When? It is when he is on the cross.

You say, "What are you talking about, René?" I believe it was when Jesus said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" You ever wonder why he said that? When I was in college, I had an atheist professor who had studied for the priesthood. And then because of some suffering in his family, he tragically had a sister who passed away of cancer. And he left the priesthood and left the faith, left Christianity at large. And it was a speech class, I'll never forget, Professor Mulvey. And for some reason, during the speech class, he said, "Any religious students here? Any Christians? Catholic, Protestant, whatever? Raise your hand." A few of us raised our hands, you know, three or four of us.

And he said, "I've got a challenge for you." He told us his story and he said, "Not only did I lose my faith, but I now realize Jesus Christ lost his faith." And we're going, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "I can prove it to you, because why else would Jesus have yelled out on the cross, 'My God, why have you forsaken me?'" He said it was in that moment that the man you call your Savior lost his faith. Otherwise, why would he have said that? How would you answer it? Why did Jesus say that? This is really such an uncomfortable phrase for Christians to imagine Jesus Christ saying that most of the time, we try not to think about it.

You know, we kind of move on to some other saying, and that's too bad, because Jesus was saying, or perhaps singing, I think that's even likely, singing the first line of a song. And he hoped his disciples would finish the lyric. What lyrics? Well, this is the first line of Psalm 22, which is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Now, what makes this even more intriguing, that in those days, the Psalms did not have numbers as their title. They weren't referred to as Psalm 22 or Psalm 23. In those days, the Psalms were always known by their first line. That was the title. Psalm 23, for example, wasn't called Psalm 23. It was called, "The Lord is my Shepherd." And Psalm 22 was called, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Jesus is yelling out a song title and the first lyric.

Now, why would Jesus do that while he's dying on a cross? Have you ever read Psalm 22? It's a little freaky. Open to Psalm 22 if you have your Bibles with you, and if you don't, that's why we put those TLC Bibles right in your pews. You can open those up to page 391. That's where Psalm 22 is in those, 391. And you can also see some of your verses on the notes that look like this. Now, some historical background here. Psalm 22 was written, "1000 Years Before Christ" by King David. Your bulletin says 3000 B.C. at the top of the column on the left, but that's a misprint. It was 3000 years ago, which is 1000 years before Christ.

So, pop quiz, Psalm 22 was written, how many years before Christ? 1000. 1000. Yet, something eerie happens when you crack open your Bible and you see it. Do you remember a few weeks ago, there was kind of a viral video that was going around, and the email, if you got it, was labeled, "Evidence of Time Travel." I don't know if you got this one, and it purported to be a scene from a 90-year-old Charlie Chaplin movie. Did you see this? It was going around all over the country. And there was somebody strolling in the background that looked like he was on a cell phone. And it was like, "Well, that's freaky seeing somebody that looks like he's using a cell phone in a 90-year-old movie." Well, something like that happens when you open Psalm 22 and realize this was written 1000 years before the crucifixion.

Because there are eerie parallels to what was happening to Jesus Christ on the cross. It only starts with his first line. Other verses like this one, Psalm 22:16, describes the scene in detail. Look at this. Dogs have surrounded me. Now stop there for a second. You know we've only found one set of remains from a crucifixion, even though there were thousands of victims? Why? Feral dogs and birds usually ate the bodies. Dogs were all around the scene of a crucifixion. Now keep going in verse 6. "A band of evil men has encircled me. They have pierced my hands and my feet." A thousand years later, what happens? They crucified him. They pierced his hands and feet.

But here's the really amazing thing. This reference to hands being pierced and feet being pierced is an anachronism. Crucifixion had not yet been invented when David wrote Psalm 22. And nothing like this ever happened to David. His hands and feet were never pierced for any reason. He died of old age in his bed at home. One thing is happening here. He's prophesying about Jesus Christ. And it gets even more specific. Verses 6 through 8. "All who see me mock me." This was written a thousand years before the crucifixion. "They hurl insults, shaking their heads. He trusts in the Lord, they say. Let the Lord rescue him. Let the Lord deliver him, since he delights in him." Fast forward a thousand years. What happens at the crucifixion of Christ? Matthew 27 says, "Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him." The exact same words.

One parallel after another. In Psalm 22 it says, "My mouth is dried up like a potchered and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth." Extreme thirst was part of the agony of crucifixion. That's why Jesus said, "I'm thirsty." And it gets even more specific. I mean it just keeps going. Back in Psalm 22 verse 17 it says, "People stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment." Matthew 27 says, "When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots." It's eerie, isn't it? Psalm 22 verse 14 says, "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." You know, Jesus died much too soon for a crucifixion. Most victims of a crucifixion took two days to die. What killed him? Literally his heart burst.

John 20 says, "One of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water." This is a very important detail because this puts to rest any rumors that Jesus did not die on the cross. He only fainted. He was just revived by the cool of the tomb. Modern doctors know what happened to have this happen was that his heart burst, filling his chest cavity with blood and fluid, which came out when he was speared. For that to happen, he had to be dead for sure. There's so much more we could say, but I want you to put yourself in the disciples' shoes or sandals for a minute. We know that they finished the...we know that they knew the lyrics to this song. One historian that I read said Psalm 22, Psalm 23, and Psalm 24 formed what you might call a messianic trilogy, one that virtually every Israelite knew by heart.

And he went on and he said, "As children, they would learn these things." And what did we just learn about songs that are learned as children? They just kind of get lodged in your head. They knew this song from childhood. It was like a song from Sound of Music for You. Jesus says or sings the first line. And suddenly, just imagine, they're remembering lines from an ancient song that describe what is happening before their very eyes. They're piercing his hands and feet. There's dogs around him. They're casting lots for his clothes and dividing his garments among them. They're saying the exact same thing in the line of that song. Several commentators I read said they even wonder if Jesus sang the whole song hanging there on the cross.

Now, why would they think that? Well, what's the last phrase that Jesus says on the cross? "It is finished." Guess what the last line of Psalm 22 is? "He has done it," which can also be translated, "It's finished." In fact, that is the way that the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, does translate it. And so, again, let me just say this because it's mind-blowing. Jesus was singing the lyrics of a 1,000-year-old song, a song that is already ancient to him, that the disciples all knew from childhood. And he says at least the first and the last line, and they're putting the pieces together. And it describes what is happening while it is going on. It is mind-blowing. It's like a Twilight Zone episode or something.

But beyond blowing the minds of the disciples, why would Jesus do that? Why would he quote Psalm 22 while he's being crucified? What was his angle? Well, I can think of four reasons, and you might want to jot these down on page 2 of your notes. In quoting Psalm 22 on the cross, I think that Jesus is saying to you and me, number one, "I understand your pain." "I understand your pain." I think Christ really did feel forsaken on the cross. Psalm 22 predicts that he would feel this way, and he did. Sometimes we get this idea that when Jesus was here, he was Superman, right? He was God! He was God-man! And some bullets just bounced off his chest, and nothing fazed him.

But the Bible teaches Jesus was not only 100% divine, he was 100% human. He felt tempted. He felt tired, disturbed, angry, sleepy, grief-stricken, hungry, abandoned. He felt pain. He felt thirst. And here he feels forsaken. Now, theologians have argued for centuries and centuries over, "Well, was he, you know, sort of, did God's spirit in some way, for the first time in the history of the Trinity, depart from the Son because he couldn't look upon Him anymore because He became sin for us?" Well, I don't know. Theologians go back and forth on what exactly happened here precisely. What matters for our point here is that Jesus Christ certainly felt this way.

He went through this grief and pain. This cry on the cross reminds you there's no place so low that God has not been lower still. There's no place so low that God has not been lower still, whether you're grieving a loved one, which I know many of us have been through, and there's a point there where the grief, it goes beyond emotion. It becomes something physical. It feels like the marrow of your bones is crying. It literally physically aches. Jesus gets it. Losing a job betrayed by friends at your wits and in the depths of despair, Jesus has been there. God sympathizes.

A lot of people say that the worst pain in life is the pain of being betrayed by somebody that you thought loved you. Divorce or abandonment or abuse. Do you understand that this is the pain Jesus is feeling on the cross? All those who insisted that they loved Him had split. And now He even feels forsaken by God. And what I love is He says this out loud, along with all the things He says out loud at the Garden of Gethsemane about this. In other words, Jesus Christ wants this recorded. He wants you and me to know that He felt like this. Why is this important? Well, you might be from some sick religious background or family background where you are somehow taught to pretend everything is always okay. That's the spiritual thing to do. I'm cool. I'm not mad at God. Everything's fine. I totally trust Him. I'm relaxed. It's all copacetic. Jesus didn't live like that.

When He was upset, He let it fly. Here in the Garden of Gethsemane, He's very candid. God, this hurts! And if you hurt, that means that God can take it. You can be totally honest with Him. But also, I want you to know this. Sometimes people come to me and they go, "René, I hurt so bad that I literally cut myself." Or, "I hurt so bad I'm killing myself by slow suicide through drinking or drugs or using in some other way." Can somebody who hurts this bad be accepted in church where everybody looks like shiny, happy people to me? You're not only accepted here and welcomed here, but we serve a God who wants to envelop you with His love, not just out of pity, but out of empathy.

You come to a God who says, "Oh, I know. I felt just that way." You come to somebody who's not just the God in heaven, but who came to earth to be a fellow traveler who understands your pain. What a great Savior to have! But it goes beyond even that. That would be enough to know that Jesus empathizes. But the fact that He not only is quoting Psalm 22 and being very honest about His feelings, but also that He's quoting a Psalm that between its first and last line is so predictive of so many details about the crucifixion. I think that's the second reason that He quoted these lines from this lyric. He did it to show, number two, this is no tragic accident. This is no tragic accident. There is a purpose behind this.

I mean, imagine. He's referring the disciples to undeniable proof that details of what they are seeing as just sort of an absurd tragedy were actually all part of God's plan. And it just starts here in Psalm 22. You know, it's funny in the Gospels, you see the disciples as being so obtuse and not getting it. I tend to think that it was at this moment as they're piecing together the lyrics and they're going, "But all this was predicted." I think this is when the light starts to dawn for them. And then they started going not just to Psalm 22, but to other Hebrew Scriptures. And they kept saying, "Well, that was predicted too." And that was, and that was, and we know they started piecing this together because all throughout the New Testament there's references to all kinds of different Bible passages that Jesus Christ fulfilled.

In fact, Jesus Christ fulfilled 332 distinct prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures. Did you know that? Now, what are the odds here? What are the mathematical odds of all these prophecies being possibly fulfilled in the life of one guy? Well, it's pretty hard to compute, but according to one mathematician I read this week, here are the odds. One in 84 to the 97th power, that looks like this. That is in 84 with 97 zeros after it. And many of these prophecies are right here in Psalm 22. So why do you think Jesus quoted Psalm 22 on the cross? As one writer puts it, "He was laying one more plank on a sturdy bridge over which a doubter could walk." See, Jesus is not just concerned with your hurts. He is, but he's not just concerned with your hurts. Jesus is also concerned with your doubts.

And we don't serve a God who says like some tyrant, "Believe, just because I told you to." He says, "Believe with this evidence." This is no tragic accident. Here are the prophecies. Here is the proof. Here's the plan. Now, that begs the question, if there was a plan, what was the plan? Why was it planned? If there was a purpose, what was the purpose for all this? If it was predicted a thousand years before, if it wasn't a tragic accident, then what was it all about? Well, I think that's the third thing that Jesus was clearly communicating. Number three, "I'm doing this for you." And the key phrase there is "for you." "I'm doing this for you." Check this out, the phrase, "It is finished." In Greek, that's the word "tetelestai." Try to say that with me. Say it. "Tetelestai." Say it again. "Tetelestai." Now you learned a Greek word. Isn't your life changed this morning? All right, it will be, because get this.

This is a word that means it's done, it's finished, it's accomplished, but it's also a word that in Jesus Christ's day, accountants would write across the bottom of their ledgers. If somebody had paid a debt and they paid it off, they would write this word, which meant paid in full. Account closed. This one is finished. Jesus shouted from the cross, quoting the last line of Psalm 22, "Paid in full." Why? What is paid in full? Well, I want you to follow me here, and this point really takes some thinking here, so kind of put that thinking cap on tight. My wife's a world religion teacher, and we love to talk about some of the common threads of the way human beings perceive their relationship to God.

And it's interesting that in nearly every single major system of human religion, there is this concept that you could call sin debt. Sin debt. Something like the concept of karma, whatever you call it. Human beings have the sense that we have done bad things, which we need to pay off a debt for. I've done bad stuff, and it's weighing me down, so I've got to do some good stuff to outweigh the bad stuff. Good karma to pay off my karmic debt. And if I do not pay my debt, then I can't advance. I can't advance to heaven or enlightenment or the next wrong or the next life or whatever you want to call it. And I'm speaking now in very general terms here, but that's the basic idea, paying off a debt for the bad stuff I've done.

The problem is that while I'm paying off bad debt by doing good deeds, I'm piling up even more bad debt because none of us is ever perfect, not even one day of our lives. So it's a treadmill. It's like one step forward, two steps back. It seems impossible. And then Jesus shows up, and he pays off your debt. The Bible talks about this a lot, a lot. I like this verse from Galatians 3. Christ has, in fact, let's read this together. Let me hear you. Christ has redeemed us from the curse, becoming a curse for us. This is rich, that word redeemed, redemption. That's an important word in the Bible. What does this even mean?

Well, this is going to sound like a loose association, but there is a connection, so hang with me for a second here. I want you all to, again, just shout it out loud, impressing your neighbors. I want you to take a guess at something. Back in the 1960s, what do you think was the largest single publication, the best-selling publication available in the United States in the 1960s? Shout it out. What are some of your guesses? Okay, you're all wrong. In the decade of the 1960s, the best-selling publication, book, magazine, any kind of publication, I just read about this last week in a message online by John Orpberg. I never would have guessed, but I'll give you a hint. It was not a book, so now what are your guesses? Life magazine? No, what else? Not Reader's Digest?

Okay, I'll give you another hint. It was actually a catalog, a catalog published by who? You're all wrong. I would not have had any idea. It was a catalog in the 1960s, the best-selling publication, was a catalog published by a company called Sperry and Hutchinson, better known as what? S&H Greenstamps. Ever hear of them? How many of you remember S&H Greenstamps? Oh yeah! I had no idea they were so huge. Get this. S&H printed three times more stamps in the 1960s than the entire United States post office did. Just amazing. They published enough catalogs to more than circle all the way around the globe.

Now, how many of you remember how this worked with S&H Greenstamps? What you did was you went to, like, the gas station or the grocery store, and you got just a few stamps, right? A few stamps here, a few stamps there, and then you would paste them into what? Those books, right? How many of you ever pasted stamps, S&H stamps into books? Almost all of us did. And if you saved up enough stamps, you could get a coffee pot or something wonderful, right? Amazing stuff for your house. When I was a kid, I was thinking about this the other day. I'll take you, this is a tour of our kitchen when I was a kid in the 1960s. Our silverware was from S&H. Our glasses were from shell gas. Our plates were from Safeway, that plate-a-week promotion, and our toaster was from the bank.

If you worked it right, you could outfit your entire kitchen with nothing but promo wear, right? Do you remember those days? But you could get cool stuff with Greenstamps. For example, I just researched this week. Fascinating. There's a school in Pennsylvania back in the 1960s. The students saved five and a half million Greenstamps and bought two gorillas for a local zoo with Greenstamps. Now, if I had known when I was a kid that you could get gorillas with your Greenstamps, I would have been a little bit more diligent about saving them. But here's the thing, you could take your books of stamps, here's where we start connecting the dots, you could take your book of stamps to a special place called what? A redemption center. Ah, here's the connection.

And you would take those book of stamps to the redemption center and you would pay the redemption price and you'd get something in exchange for that book of stamps. You would set the coffee pot you wanted free because you had paid the redemption price. All right, follow me here. We think of paying the price for the debt of our sin and we think in very similar terms. We think of saving up a few good deeds here and a few good deeds there. And if we're really good, we might have enough good deed Greenstamps saved up by the end of our lives to redeem our souls when we stand before God. We even use the phrase, "I hope to redeem myself." But the Bible says you can never save up enough good deed Greenstamps on your own. Why? The price for your soul is too high. You're too precious.

And God loves you so much that God paid for your soul in one giant grace move. In fact, he looked at the human race and said, "I want to redeem you all because God paid the highest price that could possibly be paid in the universe." He said, "I will come down and I will lay down my life." No higher price than that. That pays the debt of everyone. And so now your relationship with God can be based on his act of generosity, not your pathetic good deed Greenstamps. Now we still do good deeds, but out of a response to his favor, not to earn his favor. Somebody put it this way, "He paid a debt he did not owe because we owed a debt we could not pay." Redemption.

Now, am I reading too much into this? Am I seeing something in Jesus Christ's death cry that's not really there? Here's something amazing. Go back to Matthew 27:46. According to this verse, shout this out. According to this verse, when did Jesus cry out? What time was it? About 3 in the afternoon. Why is Matthew so specific about the time? Remember this happened on Passover. In those days, lambs were sacrificed to cover the sins of the people for that year. Well, 3 in the afternoon, this was the time that the sacrificial lambs would be led into the temple. And at that exact same moment, the sacrificial lamb for all time was paying in full the sin debt for you and me. That is amazing.

He cries out, "It is finished, paid in full, and it gets better." How can it? Well, it does because the final thing he was communicating is this, "The best is yet to come." The best is yet to come. See, Psalm 22 does not stay bleak. Read it for yourselves this week. I hope you do because the first half contains all these bizarre predictions of the crucifixion. But at exactly the halfway point, there's a turn. The tone flips. And the last half of Psalm 22 is triumphant. It sounds like somebody who's come back from the grave. It sounds like somebody who sees all the way into the future, and it will be not only the case that he is resurrected, but that everybody is resurrected, and that there's a new heaven and the new earth.

There's really no other way to explain the last half of Psalm 22. It contains descriptions of the other side of suffering when the earth is glorified. Verses like this, "Oppressed people will eat until they're full. Those who look to the Lord will praise him. May you live forever. All the ends of the earth will remember and return to the Lord. All families from all the nations will worship you." Now, where else is there a scene like this in the Bible? The Book of Revelation, where it describes people from every tongue, nation, and tribe, praising God as the new heaven and the new earth are restored. You see, Jesus is saying to disciples who are watching as their world seemingly collapses, "Boys, it gets better! In fact, it gets really good." Remember those lyrics, Psalm 22? That's what the world will look like on the other side of this. That's what the human race will be like thanks to what I am doing here.

The resurrection is just around the corner, not only for your body, but for the whole planet. In fact, go back to verse 26 for a second. This verse, like a lot of other verses in the Bible, by the way, about heaven, says, "One of the cool things about that new heaven and new earth will be that in our resurrected bodies, finally, everybody gets enough to eat." I love this because to me that sounds like heaven, just eating and eating for eternity. There are a lot of verses in the Bible that actually talk about that. I saw that and I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool to sort of anticipate this by bringing in food for second harvest at Easter, to do our best to help poor people eat until they have their fill?"

Now, in our lifetimes, on this corrupt world, we'll never be able to have this verse come into being perfectly. That's God's timing when he restores the new heaven and the new earth, but sort of in anticipation of this. We can do this joyously. We often do service projects around Christmas. Why not at Easter? Nobody ever does them at Easter. We're talking about the resurrection on Easter. It seems like it would fit. So next weekend, I really want to build the biggest pile of food ever for the hungry. Bring some canned food. Put it in the second harvest food bank bins. Let's just make a mountain symbolizing the plenty that will be in the new heaven and the new earth. Doesn't that sound good?

I really want to do this as a way to worship God in a physical, aware way as we all come to church next Easter. I really want to encourage you to be here and bring friends and pray for us that the good news really gets across. So the greatest song ever sung in the history of the world, pretty hard to argue that this Psalm 22, if it represents all of this, is the greatest song ever sung in the history of the world. And it's sung by Jesus Christ on the cross so that when God seems distant, when you feel like saying, "God, where are you?" Remember, he wanted to communicate that he understands the deepest depth of your pain, that his death was no tragic accident, that he did this for you as your substitute to pay the price to redeem you and to remind you the best is yet to come.

I talked about S&H Green Stamps. Did you know that S&H Green Stamps is still around? I found that out this week at Google Dom and you can go online too. They've got a website. You can still redeem your old S&H Green Stamps. I kid you not. This is the top question on their FAQ list on their online site because they say they get asked this all the time. They only have an online presence now. They don't publish their catalogs anymore. But they say everybody wants to know, "I've got like a half filled book in my attic. Is it worth something?" They said, "Yes, it is." S&H is still in the redemption business after all these years.

You just send in your booklet and you can get something in return. Well, guess what? God is still in the redemption business after all these years. Two thousand years later, and the offer still stands, because Jesus Christ has paid the price in full. He has done it. It is finished. And the only thing left for you to do is to turn to Him and receive it. That's really, really good news. And so let's do that together right now. Would you bow your heads with me and close your eyes? With our heads bowed, I really pray that you, that people all over this room, would just talk to God and say something like this, "God, I often have been living like the idea behind Christianity or the idea behind living a good life was to get good deed green stamps to show you and hope I've done enough to get into heaven. But now I see that the price is too high. I could never earn enough. So you redeemed me. You paid the price." Jesus, that's awesome. And I just want to tell you, I receive that, thankfully. And I want to live righteously out of joy for that. God, count me in.

Maybe you want to pray, "God, I believed that my whole life, but God, why have you forsaken me?" Maybe you relate to that cry because it's where you're at right now. You might even say in a metaphorical sense that you feel crucified. Know that God not only looks at you in pity, he looks at you in empathy. And he can put his arms around you and say, "I want you to know I love you and I understand, and it's okay to be totally, brutally honest with me. Just let it out." But know that there is a resurrection on the other side of the crucifixion. Know that those things seem gloomy now in the middle of the night. There will be a sunrise. God, help me, help all of us to cling to that hope when we too feel abandoned. And God, right now we just want to praise you. And we know, thank you that there is a Redeemer. Bring us to that place on the cross where we can relate to what Jesus went through for us and help us to be thankful for that this Holy Week. We pray this in his name. Amen.