Our Redeemer - pt. 2

Jesus took these sins and he nailed them on the cross. He hung on that cross for six hours (Mark 15:25,34) and the weight of the sin of the world pressed down upon him and he no longer felt the presence of his Father and he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
But when he had paid the price, he was not defeated. Luke and Matthew both say Jesus cried out in a loud voice (Matthew 27:46, 50; Luke 23:46). This is a man who hasn’t slept in two days; he’s been beaten so that his blood ran freely, forced to carry a heavy beam until he collapsed under its weight. For the last six hours, he’s been slowly suffocated and in excruciating pain. And yet when “it is finished,” when sin is gone, paid for, and he has glorified the Father, done his will, Jesus is victorious, not defeated. The bloody, broken, forsaken man sees his Father once again. With the voice of victory, he cries loudly, joyously “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
And he died. He truly died. His body was pierced in the side, right up into his heart and the living water and the blood of the covenant poured out from his pierced side. The blood and the water are now freely available because he died. He was buried.
But then Sunday morning, oh yes, Sunday morning came. Dawn came, the earth shook, the angel spoke, Mary cried, and the gardener wasn’t a gardener! He was the risen Son of God! And the power of death had gone the way of sin’s power. Defeated because Our Redeemer Lives!
But that’s not the whole story. Our Redeemer lived. The redemption started way before Jesus was taken in the garden on Thursday evening. Hebrews 4:15 tells us Jesus was tempted, just as we are, yet he did not sin. You maybe familiar with what we often call “The Temptation of Christ.” That’s when Satan came to Jesus in the wilderness and tempted him with his physical needs, tempted him to tempt God and tempted him to commit idolatry. But that wasn’t Jesus’ only temptation. His brothers mocked him and tried to get him to choose his own agenda rather than follow God’s will (John 7:3-9). Peter tried to get him to abandon the Father’s will – to which Jesus replied, “Get behind me you devil!” (Matthew 16:21-23) The religious leaders were always tempting Jesus to get out of the Father’s will – with threats to shut up or else (John 7:28-32) and with requests to show them a sign so they could believe (Matthew 12:38; Mark 8:11). They even tempted him on the cross, “Come on down here and we’ll believe you are who you say you are” (Matthew 27:41-43). His own flesh even tempted him sorely. As the time approached to go to the cross, the knowledge of the pain he would suffer had him weeping great drops of blood and begging the Father to show him a different way (Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42; John 12:27).
Jesus resisted all temptation because he stayed grounded in the Word and in the will of his Father. “It is written,” he told the devil in the desert. “I do what the Father tells me to do,” he answered his detractors. “Not my will, but yours Father,” Jesus cried when fear tried to swamp him in the garden. ...