The Day God Died: “Crucified, Dead” Hebrews 9-10

There’s a joke told about Jesus that may be in bad taste but illustrates exactly what I want to talk about this week:

After Christ rose from the dead he was on a stroll with some of his disciples. One of them said, "Say Jesus, do you mind showing us how you walked on water?"

Jesus said, "Well, these were miracles, not exactly parlor tricks. But you know what, I don't mind." (Another disciple asked, "What's a parlor?")

Jesus and the disciples go down to a nearby river. Jesus takes a few steps out but halfway through starts to sink and immediately falls in the water. Jesus reemerges, laughs it off and decides to try a different part of the water, but unfortunately he falls in again after a few steps.

Jesus emerges and tries once more in a different part of the river but as expected, he falls right in. After coming back on land, the disciples are stunned. They can't believe their prophet has failed at a miracle.

One of the disciples says, "Jesus, why weren't you able to stand on water as you did before." Jesus replies, "Well, it was a lot easier before I got these holes in my feet."

Most of the time we gloss over the tremendous suffering, injury, and pain Jesus suffered when He was crucified. It was real, it happened, and real people got hurt, but lives were changed afterward.

The Creed contains four phrases that refer to the death of Jesus Christ:

Crucified, Dead, Buried, and Descended into Hell.

If you think about it, this may seem a little too harsh, particularly when you think how hard it is for us to talk about death particularly in our nice cave like churches.

Add in a Creed where the entire Christian faith is presented in approximately 110 words. Why are six words used to describe the death of Christ when one would have told the story—"dead.”

Why doesn’t the Creed simply say “suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, on the third day he rose from the dead?” What additional truth is added by the piling up of phrases relating to his death? Consider the first three phrases: “crucified, dead, buried.” Repeat that out loud several times:

Crucified…Dead…Buried. 

Crucified…Dead…Buried. 

Crucified…Dead…Buried.

If you say it rapidly, it sounds like a hammer nailing the lid of a coffin. It’s meant to sound that way so that we will pause to think about what actually happened to our Lord. Since the Creed uses four phrases to describe the death of Christ, we’re going to take our time to consider what they mean. Today we’ll consider the first two words: “crucified, dead.”

Next week we’ll look at just one word: “buried.” Then in two weeks we’ll discuss the most controversial phrase in the entire Creed: “descended into hell/hades.”

But for the moment let’s ask again why the Creed describes the death of Christ in four different ways.

If you study the history of the Christian church, you discover that from the very beginning, there have always been critics and skeptics who attacked Christianity by claiming that Jesus never rose from the dead.

The claim is made in various ways; one of them being that Jesus was never really dead. While that may sound odd to us, in the early church a group of people called the Gnostics claimed that Jesus never really died in the literal sense. They said the Spirit of God entered Jesus at his baptism and left before his crucifixion. They concocted this theory because they couldn’t conceive of the Son of God literally dying on the cross.

Hundreds of years later the prophet Mohammed gave birth to the religion of Islam, which teaches that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. The Koran supposedly states that Jesus only appeared to die on the cross. This of course means that since he didn’t really die, he didn’t really rise from the dead.

Muslim scholars differ over what exactly happened to Jesus. Some say that at the last second, another person took his place on the cross—perhaps Judas, perhaps Simon of Cyrene.

They even suggest that God cast a spell over the enemies of Jesus so the switch could take place without them knowing about it. That’s a clever idea with absolutely no basis in historical fact.

In 1965 a man named Hugh Schonfield wrote a widely-read book called “The Passover Plot” that was made into a movie in 1975. He claims that Jesus never really died on the cross. He fainted or swooned or passed out from the beatings and the crucifixion so that the disciples and the Jews and the Romans all thought he was dead when his body was taken down from the cross.

Later when his body was placed in the cool tomb, he revived, regained his strength, cleaned himself off, and then somehow rolled the massive stone away.

Jesus then walked out f the tomb on Sunday morning, looking fresh, healthy, strong, revived, and totally recovered, “obviously” risen from the dead.

That theory is both ingenious and preposterous. If you understand the brutal nature of crucifixion, you must conclude that it takes more faith to believe that than to believe than Jesus actually died and rose from the dead.

The Certainty of His Death - Isaiah 53—the greatest Old Testament description of our Lord’s death. That chapter emphasizes God’s activity in the events surrounding the crucifixion. It was the Lord who laid on Jesus the sins of us all.

Isaiah 53:10 says that the Lord was pleased to crush his own Son. I ponder that word “pleased” and wonder what it means. What sort of father would be pleased to crush his son? There are only two choices here. Either the father hates his own son and wishes to see him suffer, or the father understands that the suffering is necessary to gain some greater good that cannot come any other way.

In the case of Christ, the Father ordains the death of his Son in order that salvation might come to the world. And the Son willingly goes as a lamb to the slaughter.

He endures the cross and despises the shame, He enters the crucible of eternal pain because in the end, “when he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11 NLT).

It came to pass by God’s predetermined plan. He was crucified because God willed that his Son be crucified. He died because God willed it to be so. He was buried because God ordained that his Son be buried. He fully entered into the realm of death—not by accident but by divine design. The writers of the Apostles’ Creed understood this and that’s why they used four phrases to describe his death.

In the end we are left to know that the Romans were good at killing people. It was one of their specialties. They knew the difference between a dead man and an unconscious man.

The Significance of His Death - Let’s take a quick look at six verses from Hebrews 9 & 10 that reveal the true significance of Jesus’ death.

>No blood, no forgiveness. “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” (Hebrews 9: 22).

> Animal blood won’t do. “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” (Hebrews 10: 4).

> Jesus sacrificed himself for us. “But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.” (Hebrews 9: 26).

> His sacrifice takes away our sin. “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people.” (Hebrews 9: 28).

> There is only one sacrifice for sin. “But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.” (Hebrews 10: 12).

> His sacrifice makes us holy. “By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” (Hebrews 10: 14).

Ponder these verses and consider what they mean: No blood, no forgiveness … animal blood won’t do … Christ took away sin by sacrificing himself … His sacrifice takes away our sin forever … He died once to take away our sin … His sacrifice makes us holy. Thus we see the centrality of the cross. Start anywhere in the Bible and the result is the same—all roads lead inexorably to the cross.

The cross is God’s solution to man’s sin. And since sin is the ultimate problem of the human race, the cross is God’s ultimate answer. There is one sacrifice for sin—and only one.

That sacrifice was offered once for all time—never to be repeated. Jesus offered himself to take away sin—no one else could do what he did. His sacrifice solves the sin problem—there is no other solution. His sacrifice makes us holy—there is no other way to be holy.

The death of Jesus Christ is therefore the most important event in world history. 

Everything before it leads up to it. Everything after it looks back upon it. That’s the Christian worldview.

Let’s wrap things up with three statements of application:

>God only has one plan of salvation for the whole human race. There is one plan—and only one.

>There is only one way to heaven—Jesus Christ our Lord. There is one plan and one way—no other plan, no other way.

3) There is only one sacrifice that can take away our sin and make us holy.

One plan, one way, one man, one sacrifice. That’s the real meaning of these verses in Hebrews 9 & 10. That’s why the writer of Hebrews repeats it over and over again.

Jesus was offered once for all as God’s perfect sacrifice that takes away our sin. He alone can make us holy. In case we miss the point, Hebrews 10 even quotes a famous passage (famous to first-century Jews, at least) from Jeremiah 31, where God promises two wonderful gifts to his people:

“‘This is the covenant I will make with them after that time,’ says the Lord. ‘I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.’” Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” (Hebrews 10: 16-17).

Since this may not be as clear to us as it was to the original readers, let me lay it out this way:

Jeremiah 31 (written 500 years before the birth of Christ) is quoted in Hebrews 10 (written around AD 65) to help us understand what the cross of Christ (AD 33)
means in 2016.

Here’s a question for you:  “What can wash away my sin?”

I pray your answer is: “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

“What can make me whole again?”

Again the answer: “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

Oh, precious is the flow,
That makes me white as snow.
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

That’s why Jesus was crucified to death. Amen.