Why Jesus Did Not Take the Anesthetic at the Cross

We know that sin is to disobey God's commands, so I hope all of you know what is the greatest commandment in Scripture, the greatest commandment. We've disobeyed that, to love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength, everything that is in you. In other words, all of our being must be taken up with loving God, and that is the one commandment that all human beings have disobeyed.

And anyone who says he's a Christian should be seeking to come back to that place. So if you want to evaluate your life, that's a good way to evaluate and say, how much have I come back to obeying that first commandment. Dependent on that commandment, you'll be able to love others as we love ourselves, and we can't love people because we are not keeping the first commandment.

The second commandment is built on the foundation of the first one. If you don't love God with all your heart, you don't have a foundation. You're going to build on sand, and that's why we stop loving people.

But if you love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, you'll be able to love people who hate you. You'll be able to love people who disagree with you, and you will never go out of love. So Jesus came to teach us how to love, but we need a motivation to love the Lord.

And we read in 1 John chapter 4 verse 19, God doesn't just give us a commandment saying, love me with all your heart. The motivation for it, the thing that makes us, that will spontaneously, you know, you try to keep a commandment and it can be a burden, but to do it spontaneously, we got to base it on this, 1 John 4 19. We love him because he first loved us.

So then we go even deeper. He talked about loving others. That's based on loving God with all our heart, and even that is based on knowing how much he loved me.

So I believe this, because I discovered this in my own life, that the measure in which we love the Lord depends to a great deal on how much we have understood his love for us. And if you find yourself in some situation where you don't really love the Lord, and you're going to compromise in some situation and you're loving the world, I'll tell you one way how we discovered that we don't love the Lord. You love something in the world.

You love money, and you love something else. Those are all indications that you don't love God with all your heart. Or you find yourself very bitter against somebody who's treated you very badly.

The problem is not with that person. The problem is you don't love God with all your heart. If you love God with all your heart, you will love everybody like Jesus loved you.

You'll be able to forgive everyone without a problem, but that is based on we love him because he first loved us. So I've ultimately come to the conclusion that we don't understand fully how much Jesus loved us. And that is the root cause of all our problems.

Everything else is built on that. Now, I didn't know all this. I didn't even know the Bible well when I got converted.

But somehow when I got converted about 66 years ago, somehow the Lord drew me to meditate on the cross. And I've never given up that meditation on what the price Jesus paid to set me free. And the more I've meditated on that, the more I have learned to love him spontaneously, not because of a commandment, not because somebody tells me to, just meditating on the cross and seeing the depth of Jesus' love for me and what he experienced there on the cross, actual hell.

Not just what I will experience for eternity in hell, but what billions of people experience for eternity in hell was all concentrated into three hours on the cross. You try and meditate on that, and I'll tell you, love for Jesus will spring up in your heart spontaneously. It did in my heart.

And we don't have to understand so much about, I mean, it's good to understand scripture, to understand what justification by faith is and what it means to be redeemed and all these words in scripture. But essentially, the Christian message is very simple. I remember hearing a story.

You know, when the thief died on the cross, the Lord said, you'll be with me in paradise. This is a story. It's not in scripture.

The thief goes to the gates of heaven, and the angel says, how will you come here? Do you understand sanctification? No. Do you understand what justification by faith is? No. Do you know what the blood of Jesus is supposed to do for you? No.

He said, why have you come here? He said, well, I was hanging on the cross, and the man in the middle cross told me I could come. That's all. And I've come.

The man on the middle cross told me I can come. And he got to heaven. And what did he say on the cross when he was hanging there? Lord, remember me.

That's all. That was his salvation. So the Christian life is essentially simple, but it's based on love.

I believe that's why the Lord told him that he could be with him in paradise that day. So I was thinking about the love of Jesus for me on the cross. I've meditated on that for, no exaggeration, 66 years.

So one of the things I thought of was, have you noticed this if you read the scripture carefully? Matthew 27. It says here when they crucified him at Golgotha. Matthew 27, 33.

That's where they put him on the cross. And it says here, they gave him wine to drink mixed with gall. See, here he's hanging on the cross, and they lift up some wine, maybe soaked in some cloth or something.

And, you know, it was not only to Jesus. It was one of the acts of mercy that the Romans showed towards those people. Because, you know, crucifixion is such a painful thing.

And this was some type of anesthetic, just like when you go through a painful operation, they give you an anesthesia, so you don't feel the pain so much. So they gave wine mixed with gall to all the prisoners, okay, to relieve your pain a little bit. Please take this.

This will make you, you know what anesthetics do, make you a little sleepy, and you won't feel the pain so much. And it says here in verse 34, he tasted it and he said, I don't want it. Why didn't he want it? Why did he want to suffer that pain? It was to relieve the pain.

I mean, if you're hanging on the cross, you'd take anything to relieve the pain. Have you noticed that Jesus did not want to take that? But after the three, six hours on the cross was over, then you read in John chapter 19, John 19. Now the six hours is over on the cross.

John 19 29, a jar full of sour wine was standing there, put a sponge in the sour wine and put a branch of his up and brought it up to his mouth. And now he took it. And immediately after that, he died.

It's finished. Do you read these things carefully? Do you read scripture carefully? Have you ever thought, when we read scripture, we must think, why did he refuse it earlier? At the beginning, that's the time he needed it. And why did he take it now, when he's about to die in a few minutes or a few seconds? And I thought about it.

And Jesus did not want to be sleepy on the cross. He did not want the pain to be relieved, because he wanted to be alert. First of all, to forgive the people who crucified him.

He had to forgive them, because they did a hurt to him. If somebody does hurt to me, it's not only God who has to forgive him, but I have to forgive him first. Then God will forgive him.

So Jesus was so concerned that these guys are killing me, should not be punished for what they did. This is a terrible sin they did. So I want to be alert.

So Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing. I believe his prayer was heard. But he would not have said that if he was sleepy or anesthetized.

He had to care for his mother. Imagine, there are so many children who don't care for their parents, don't value their parents. Here's Jesus hanging on a cross.

And there are 101 things he's got to think of when he thinks of his mother. He must have loved his mother tremendously. For all the shame she bore in the early days, thinking that people thought she was an unfaithful wife, etc.

He thought about his mother and said he had to provide for her. He had four brothers, but he knew that they wouldn't take care of his mother because they didn't believe in him. His mother believed in him.

His mother was a Christian and the others were Jews. So he provided for his mother, even though he had four brothers and two sisters. He said, John was his mother's sister's son.

John, I want you to take care of my mom. And mom, this is your son from now on. And he was also, he didn't know that as a human being, but the Holy Spirit prompted him.

Don't, don't take it. Because there was a sinner who had to go to heaven. The thief hanging on the cross.

He had to be taken to heaven. He couldn't afford to let him go to hell. That's another reason Jesus didn't want to be anesthetized.

It's amazing how much hangs on a little thing like this. I want to be alert to be available to the Lord all the time. Imagine the last moments of your life, you want to be alert to do some good.

All his life he had done good, but he wants to be alert even in these last moments of his life to do good. I say, Lord, make me like that. Make me like that, that even when if I'm in pain or suffering, ill-treated or misunderstood or criticized or abused, I want to do good to others till the last moment of my life.

To bring somebody into God's kingdom. To preach, go somewhere, no matter what I have to suffer, in order to bring somebody into God's kingdom. You'll become like that if you meditate on Jesus and see how he did, how he went that way.

And what, you know, we all sing so lightly, I want to be like Jesus. Yes, I want to be like him. This is what it means to be like him.

That you're so concerned for others that you will not allow yourself to be relieved of some suffering if that's going to hinder you from helping somebody. And so he could also bring that thief also to the cross, into God's kingdom. But I was thinking that, you know, we can understand so much in scripture, but ultimately, the first commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

I want to urge you, my dear brothers and sisters, meditate on the cross. I have discovered so many things meditating on the cross of what it meant. It'll make you love the Lord with all your heart.

It'll make you be willing to make any sacrifice in the world for him. I'll tell you another thing, it'll deliver you completely from the love of money, from the love of a comfortable life, from the love of so many other things. You'll be willing to deny yourself, sacrifice anything.

You'll love him because he first loved you. And you'll see, follow his example in this area. And you'll say, Lord, I want to be like that.

This is true Christianity. We can sing so many songs here, but I hope everything will lead us to love the Lord with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength and all our mind. Then from that, we will be able to love others as Jesus loved us.

Amen.