Jack Jurgens's Ministry Library

Gospel tent meeting with Peter Ramsay and Kory Crawford.

[0:00] Now, we’re going to read in the New Testament in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 23.
Luke’s Gospel, chapter 23.
I have a little thought that has been running through my mind and I’ve perhaps mentioned it one other night, but just knowing about Christ takes no one to heaven.
Just knowing about Him takes nobody to heaven.
But just receiving Christ, just receiving, embracing Christ takes anyone to heaven, no matter who you are this evening.
This may be your first gospel service.
Takes anyone, just receiving Christ. You know how to receive a gift.
You just claim it for yourself. This is for me. It’s mine. Thank you very much.
That is a transaction that happens between you and your God.

[1:07] The moment you receive God’s son as your savior, that is the moment when you will be forgiven of your sins.
You will become a possessor of eternal life.
So what I want you to think about for the first part of the meeting, people say, well, what is your agenda?
You know, this is sort of our agenda.
We have one question.
Will you, as you sit here, will you embrace Christ tonight?

[1:42] Oh, I don’t know about that. Why? Why don’t you know about it?
What do you think, is Christ gonna harm you? Is Christ gonna cramp your lifestyle?
Is Christ gonna make you miserable?
We’re glad you’re here, we’re gonna talk about Christ tonight.
But the question is very personal, it’s not just a lecture, where you go home and mull it over in your mind.
In this very tent this evening, the question is being posed, Will you personally embrace Christ tonight?
If not, why?
Why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you want Christ tonight? So we’re gonna read in Luke’s gospel, chapter 23, and I wanna speak about an historic location that’s mentioned in the Bible.
It’s very important to many of us. It’s a special place that we will never forget unless we get dementia or Alzheimer’s overtakes us.
But Luke chapter 23 and verse 33, When they were come to the place which is called
Calvary, there they crucified him and the malefactors.

[3:08] Or the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left.
We’re just reading that one verse.
When they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified him.
I’m very aware that some in the tent service tonight may not be reading from the King James Version.
You may be reading from the Revised, you may be reading from Darby, you may be reading from ESV, CSB, NASB, NIV.

[3:40] I believe it is only the King James Version that retains the word Calvary.
All the other translations will say skull, place of the skull, or words to that effect.
Don’t be overly concerned about that because that’s exactly what Calvary means.
The original Greek word was skull or cranium.
The skull is often used as a symbol of death. Calvary is the Latin word.
Just to put your minds at ease, Calvary is the Latin word for skull.
The Aramaic word for the same place is Golgotha.

[4:30] But tonight I’m just going to call it Calvary. And it’s the only reference, that’s the only time you read about Calvary as that word, the Latin word.

[4:43] And I want you to think about what happened. Why would we speak about that one place?
Now, I was over, we were over to Israel in 2015, my wife and I, and very remarkable, I was impressed with the antiquity. When we find something in North America that’s 800 years old, we think we have found a treasure.
But when you go to the Middle East and you see things that are 3,000 years old, and you walk in a tunnel underneath Jerusalem that you read about in the Old Testament that it was built 3,000 years ago, you wonder how the engineers ever designed it underneath the city of Jerusalem.
They didn’t have any of the, and yet they built, started from this end and that end with no seismic testing equipment.
And they built, they built like 3,000 years ago under the old city of Jerusalem.
And you see just where it didn’t quite join up. There’s just a little bit of a twist.
So there are a lot of memorable things to see in Jerusalem.
Quite frankly, I wasn’t very impressed with what the tour guide said, this is Calvary.

[6:03] They said, if you look closely at the rock, it looks like a skull.
Well, I looked and I couldn’t, my wife thought she could see perhaps something of a skull in the rock, but I couldn’t.
I am glad that I’m not dependent on a tour guide and I’m not dependent on my visual, And I see with my eyes, I can open the Word of God and see what happened at Calvary.
And that’s what I want to talk about at the first of this meeting.
I want you to think about why Calvary, Golgotha, the place of the skull, why it is so special.
Why would we open a Sunday night service talking about a geographical location on planet Earth called Calvary. Well, it’s a place, what you need to know, it is a place of love, highest expression.

[7:02] You know, when I was asking Joy to marry me, it was pretty primitive.
We just sat out under the old, I don’t know, elm tree in her parents’ driveway, before she went into the house. And I posed the question and I pulled out the dime and there was a, I don’t know, like I just hadn’t read any books about how to do it properly.
And I hadn’t seen any YouTube videos of the way other people did it.
I mean, they get a farmer in Iowa to inscribe a big heart, cut all the corn down into the shape of a heart.
And then they take the one that they love up in a little Cessna plane, and they get the pilot to fly around the field.
And he says, dear, look out the window.
Oh, will you marry me? Oh, yes, dear, I will.
And it’s what an expression. They’ve gone to a lot of work to say, I love you.
Let me tell you, there’s no place on earth, there’s no place in the universe where, love was expressed more highly and profoundly than at the cross.
If you ever doubted whether God loved you, look at the cross.
This is how much I loved you.

[8:27] Hands spread upon a cross, blood flowing from his head, his hands, his feet.
People talk about ultimate sacrifices being made.

[8:39] God is love, friend, and he gave his son a sacrifice for our sins.
I don’t know what you think of the God of the Bible.

[8:52] You may think he’s a mean-spirited, capricious God, but the God of the Bible is a God.
Well, 1 John says God is love.
God is love. Not just God off love, but He is love. John says it at least twice. He said, we know love and we are able to love because He first loved us. It’s amazing. God, who is love, created us with the capacity to love and to be loved. John 3, 16, for God so loved the world.
Just think of the character of the love of God, that he gave his only, one and only son, or his unique son, or his begotten son, that whoever, like I have met some pretty miserable whosoevers in the world, they’ve been in trouble with the law.
I had a young guy in our old Toyota Camry and we’re driving down the road, I was driving and we’re in Canada, where we have the RCFP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and I was just driving down the highway and all of a sudden, Todd switched off his seat and he crumbled up like this underneath the dash.
I said, what’s going on? He said it’s the police!

[10:21] He just plowed his fist into a police officer the weekend before.
Little wonder he was afraid when he saw the police car. Oh, but here’s what the Bible says.
Whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
What kind of love is this? Consider Calvary, the shame, the pain.
God knew it all was going to happen. He didn’t say, oh, look what they’re doing to my son.
God knew in advance that his son would be treated like that.
And yet, because he loved you tonight, he went to the cross and willingly died for the sinner.

[11:13] Here’s what 1 John 3, verse 16 says, hereby perceive we the love of God Here is how we know, this is how we see the love of God, because he laid down his life for us.
Calvary, what’s so special about Calvary?
It’s the highest expression of love of any kind. God’s love was displayed in its fullness at the cross.
Romans 5, verse eight says, “‘God commended,’ or God demonstrated, “‘his love toward us.’ in that while we were yet sinners, still sinners, Christ died for us.
1 John 4, verse 10 says, herein is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation or the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
So my first point is Calvary, what’s so special about Calvary?
It’s the place of love’s highest expression.

[12:19] Does it mean anything to you?
Did you ever find it in your heart to say thank you for such love?
Thank you for giving your son? How many years have you lived?
And you’ve never said thank you to God? You thank somebody for your birthday present, Christmas gifts, but you yet have never personally thanked God for the gift of his son.
The next thing I want you to think about Calvary is it’s a place of humanity’s truest colors.
When they were come to the place which is called Calvary, what happened?
There they crucified him.
Calvary was a place where we showed our true colors. What was really in our hearts?
If there was ever any question about whether or not We harbored hostility against God or towards God.
Calvary settles that question once for all.

[13:29] We try to put our best foot forward all the time, in front of our family, in front of our friends, our coworkers, but have you ever seen the dark side of yourself?
Did you ever notice that inside There’s a, you have a dark propensity towards evil, and you have to hold yourself back.
And you wouldn’t want to have some of those things that rage in your mind.
You would not want to have those things exposed.
You would be running out to the parking lot and you’d never want to see these people again.
If only a couple of things that went through your mind today.

[14:15] Was a big writing across this tent wall. Have you ever faced that reality inside?
Do you know that just below our nice exterior.

[14:30] There is what the Bible calls sin, just lurking below the veneer of our niceness.
There’s an ugly part of every human being on the earth. From the preacher to the pastor, to the priest, to the pope, no matter who we are, apart from Jesus Christ, there is an ugly side to every human heart.
You know, a study conducted by The Wear Magazine, that’s a tourism magazine, it’s not a Christian magazine, an international city guide published the results of a study.
The top items stolen from hotel rooms was the subject of the article.
The top items stolen from hotel rooms, towels, soap, shampoo, bathrobes.
Sometimes you can take soap and shampoo. That’s all they expected to take that.
That’s for marketing. So you’ll come back to our brand again.
But bathrobes and.
Here’s what they’ve stolen in New York City, just down the street from you, bathrobes.
That’s the favorite thing to steal of a hotel room in New York, Manhattan, Las Vegas, bed linens.
Paris, and other parts of Europe where there’s still smoking, they steal ashtrays from hotel rooms.

[15:57] These are human beings. They’re not locked up in a maximum security prison.

[16:04] Why do people do stuff like that? A Miami-based hotel manager said, when people check into a hotel, they do things they would never do at home.
People who don’t drink get drunk.
The faithful husband cheats. The most honest people steal, Richard Millard’s spokesperson suspects.
People feel they are invisible in a hotel and so they are not accountable.
If they’re invisible, they’re not accountable.
Where is that coming from? In every one of our hearts. And if you’ve ever wondered, where did it manifest itself fully? At Calvary. At Calvary. Beneath the veneer of civility, respectability, there’s a deep-seated hatred in the human heart towards God.

[17:01] Have you ever faced that reality? I don’t know whether there’s anybody here 81 or more. 81?
I’d better not look at faces because you’ll think I’m serious, but then you would be offended, but there must be someone here 81.
But if you are 81 or more, this happened in your lifetime. And it was in 1942, an elegant mansion, manicured, beautiful lawns in a suburb of Berlin.
15 men in business suits, swinging their leather attache cases, walked into this beautiful boardroom, the Wannsee Mansion.
They had a 90 minute meeting and out of the imagination of their hearts, they come up with the final solution.
And here’s what was recorded in the minutes. Comb all of Europe and round up 11 million Jews, and exterminate them.
Those were the minutes recorded on January the 20th, 1942.

[18:09] They look like honorable, respectable engineers and business people dressed up in business suits carrying attaché cases, but where did that come from?
The human heart, my heart, your heart, we’re all the same. We all have the same capacity.
The vilest crime of the ages was when Creatures attacked the creator at the cross.

[18:34] That’s what we did. Who did that?
We did that. Human beings did that. Extraterrestrial beings, Martians, they didn’t land here and crawl down there the steps of their little spaceship and go and capture Jesus.

[18:51] Was it the animal kingdom that crucified Jesus, that spit in his face?

[18:59] It wasn’t the result of a natural disaster that took place at Calvary.
We left a big footprint, human beings left a big footprint at the cross, at Calvary.
We did it. So it’s a place of humanity’s truest colors. Love’s highest expression, humanity’s truest colors. That’s who we really are inside. Have you ever faced that reality?
The Bible says if you’re ever going to be in heaven, you will have to repent of your sins.
Have you ever faced the fact that I am a sinner?
It’s a place, Calvary is a place of the heaviest, history’s heaviest load.
I don’t know whether we have engineers, I’m sure we do in an audience this size.
We have a few engineers probably here this evening.
And the ones that specialize in load-bearing capacities for structures and for buildings and bridges, or some of you work with engineers.
I looked up the tallest structure, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, tallest structure.
It sits on top of 110,000 tons of concrete and a steel foundation buried 160 feet deep.
The load of that tremendous building.
But you know that no engineer could ever calculate the load that was placed on Jesus at Calvary.

[20:26] Here’s what happened beyond the spit, beyond the blood, beyond the nails, beyond the crown of thorns.
Our human eyes couldn’t see this, nor can our minds comprehend it.
But here’s what God did at the cross.
God reached backward to the very beginning of time, to the very first sin, and he stretched forward in time to the very last sin and your sin, my sins, and he compressed them into some incalculable load.
And in a way that my mind cannot understand, he placed them on Jesus, the innocent one, his beloved son. Then, all the wrath that my sins and your sins deserve, he funneled his righteous wrath down, the judgment funneled it all, upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

[21:31] What a load Jesus took on himself at the cross. The Bible says, the Lord laid on him, on him, the iniquity of us all.
First Peter 2.24 says, who his own self bear our sins sins in his own body on the tree. Does that mean anything to you? Are you going to keep trust out of your life for another night, another 24-hour period? Or, can you say, if he did that for me, the least, like I was a guilty offender, he died for me, I will embrace him tonight. Will you do that tonight? Finally, as I I sit down.
Calvary is a place of the sinner’s broadest acceptance. The sinner’s broadest acceptance.
No one is excluded.

[22:30] There’s no one in New Jersey, no one in the New England states, no one in this part of your country, no one anywhere in the world, no one is excluded from God’s love and what we’re offering to you this evening. No one, all can be accepted, no matter who the person is, no matter what they’ve done, regardless of their lifestyle. Every single one, it’s Calvary at the cross is a place of the sinner’s broadest acceptance.
God wants all to come and embrace his son. And he wants to wash away your sins and give you eternal life instead of your sins.
As you listen to Corey this evening, our prayer is that you will no longer keep Christ out of your life.
That you will accept him personally. Give him thanks.
Thank him. Thank him for that load that he took. Did he have your sins on him when he was there?
He had mine.
Did he have yours?
When he reached backward, when he reached forward and took them all and God placed them on him, Was it for everybody else except you?

[23:53] If you could discover it was for me, yes, all for me. Oh, love of God, so great, so free!
Wonders love, I’ll shout and sing.
He at Calvary died for me, my Lord, the King.
I’m gonna keep reading tonight, and just the two books over from where Peter has been reading, We’re going to read it in the book of Acts and chapter 8.

[24:22] Thanks again everyone for coming tonight somehow. This is round two and a different language, so, Thank you for those who have stayed as well from the Spanish gospel meeting, and despite the change of language, maybe, the message has not changed. And so we’re going to keep thinking about where even the place that we have been hearing already of tonight, Calvary we’re gonna read here of a preacher who preached to a man this same message and, And we’re gonna start in at verse number 26, and the verses before which we won’t have time to read, we read about an evangelist by the name of Philip.

[25:01] And at least for the third time here, he’s gonna preach to somebody and his message has not changed.
He doesn’t change the message based on the audience. And his message, as you would read more than once in this same chapter before, it says he preached Jesus to them.
And so we’re gonna read here of another encounter that he had where he preached Jesus onto them.
It says in verse 26 of Acts chapter eight, now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.
This is desert.
So he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace, the queen of Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning.
And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet.
Then the spirit said to Philip, Go near and overtake this chariot.
So Philip ran to him.

[26:08] Heard him reading the prophet Isaiah and said, do you understand what you are reading?
Maybe you’ve read the Bible sometimes and you read a verse and you would say, I don’t understand what it’s saying.
There’s some difficult books at times in the Bible. And maybe that would be your reaction tonight.
I do, and someone asked me, do you understand what you’re reading?
And he said, how can I, unless someone guides me, unless someone points me in the right direction. And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him.
The place in the scripture which he read was this, written some 700, 800 years before, in the Old Testament, in the book of Isaiah. This is what he was reading.
He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation, his justice was taken away. And who will declare his generation?
For his life is taken from the earth.” So the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you, of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself or of some other man?

[27:21] And you might read the words that we have read in Isaiah and say, maybe the prophet was speaking, about himself and that’s what he asked this man. And what was his reply?
Then Philip opened his mouth and, beginning at this scripture, preached Jesus to him.
There’s many famous Bible verses, well-known Bible verses, sometimes we put up in our houses, you know, the common one, you go and you see if you visit someone, maybe if they’re a Christian, they always ask for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. You know, any good husband, maybe that’s trying to gain points with his wife, he buys for his wife in the kitchen.
He who finds a wife finds a good thing, right? And we have the verses and we put them up. Not Not too many people I know have put up in the front door and come in the house in their living room.
There is none just, no, not one. Maybe you know someone, very uncommon, I would think.
We like verses that make us feel good, that bring joy, that encourage us, that give us that boost to start the day.

[28:27] And here we’ve read of a man who was reading famous scripture from the book of Isaiah.
You know, tonight, if we could put up a verse, There’s several verses here.
But if we could put up even a shorter part of Scripture, even just four words, we would say this, we preach Christ crucified.
Now there’s the story of an old church who had those four words placed out in the front, right on top of the building. So you knew when you arrived at that church, this was the message.
We preach Christ crucified.
But you know what, over time, and as man’s wisdom began to enter that church, there were some vines that were not tended to at the front of that church, and the weeds started to grow.
And so if you pass by that church, all you could see were the first three words, and it said, we preach Christ.
And you go in that church and the message had changed a little bit.
Now they preached Christ the pacifist. Now if we wanna be peaceful people, we need to be like Christ, Christ the pacifist.
Or they preach Christ the good teacher.
We have to focus on good things in life and following the correct way in life.
We preach Christ. And over time as man’s intelligence and man’s wisdom entered in and changed the teaching, more moss began to grow over that church.
And eventually all it said on front of that church was this, we preach.

[29:56] Nothing special about that. And inside that church, they would preach prosperity.
They would preach economics. They would preach in how to invest your money.
Nothing special about that. Friend, tonight the message of the gospel is this, four simple words.
We preach Christ crucified. And that’s what that evangelist preached that day to that man.
From Isaiah chapter 53, he would simply direct this man. He would say, how could I understand unless someone guides me, unless someone points me? And there in the middle of a desert in Gaza, it says this place was a desert place. In the middle of a desert, the man was leaving Jerusalem. He was heading in the wrong direction. He was heading away from the place called Calvary that we’ve been hearing of. And as he was traveling in that desert and as that evangelist came up beside him, no doubt he, as he preached Jesus to him, he would remind him, you look back to where you just came from. Because outside that city of Jerusalem where you just were, where you just worshiped, there was a place called Calvary. And there the son of God, the lamb of God, he died for your sin. A man in the desert, no doubt thirsty, no doubt wearied from the journey.
In the middle of that desert in Gaza, he was about to find the only one who could offer him living water, never to thirst again. Why? Because it says the evangelist, he preached Jesus to.

[31:16] Him. We preach Christ, crucify. And two just very simple things we encounter in the passage that we have read tonight. First of all, we read a man who was seeking, a seeking man, a, a searching man, a man who was not satisfied in the current state that he was in.
There was something in his heart, in his longing that he knew he lacked.
And I wonder tonight…
There’s no one here you could identify with this man.

[31:45] Despite maybe the facade, the charade, that the mask you have put on to maybe family or friends, your parents, your spouses, your children, that all is well, things are good with God.
That deep within your soul, within your being, there would be a longing for something else.
As if you’re in the desert yourself, and you’re thirsty, and you’re searching, and you need someone to come up alongside you like this evangelist did that day.
And he, in other words, he gave him the compass on which way he should be headed.
And really this man was heading in the wrong direction. He was heading away from the place that would remind him of the only one who could save him.
And maybe that’s you tonight, friend. And tonight, this is your purpose tonight, to attend this meeting in this tent and to never come again.
A friend that you would see.

[32:42] There’s only one who can save you. There’s only one who can give you everlasting life.
There’s only one who can quench the longing and the searching soul.
It’s the Lamb of God. The one who we’ve heard so much of this evening that died at Calvary.
And really here, this man was part of a kingdom of an Ethiopian, really Northern Africa, that the Romans had never been able to conquer.
And so they had made a treaty with him. And so they had free passage into Jerusalem and they would go there to worship and go there to no doubt debate and to learn and to educate themselves of the different teachings of the different intellects of the time.
And I wonder as this man in his chariot would leave Jerusalem after having been there worship, it doesn’t tell us what he was worshiping or where, but that he went to worship.
And as he’s leaving and as he’s heading back to the queen and to the kingdom that he’s come from, far away from Jerusalem, I wonder what his report would be.

[33:49] I wonder what he was maybe even writing down on parchment, what he would tell the queen of his time in Jerusalem.
Maybe many impressive structures, much architecture he could tell her of.
Maybe different temples that he had visited, erected, and on the outskirts of the city, maybe, even other gods, other temples that he had seen as he went about his journey, as he returned from Jerusalem.
And this man was from a far place. He traveled a far place to go to the center where Christ had spent his time.
And what I see from this man as he’s traveling away, even though he was from far away, very far from the center of where God had sent his son, God had a tremendous care for his soul.
He sent an evangelist all the way out into the desert. Why?

[34:46] Why? Because God is not willing that any should perish. And friends, I don’t know where you’ve come from, what it’s cost you, the journey you’ve taken to even just be in this tent this evening, maybe far from home.
And the message of the gospel is this, God cares about you tremendously.
He’s not willing that any should perish.
And God in his mercy has brought the gospel message to your very ears, to your very heart.
Like he did for this man. He was in the desert. He was thirsty.
He was in a far off land, just hoping to get home. And maybe when he got home, he would say, I’ll feel better. I’ll feel more fulfilled. I’ll feel a sense of comfort that I lack here.

[35:31] You know, if this man had continued on his journey and he had gone home and he hadn’t heard about Christ, that emptiness still would have been there.
He would have went about his life maybe till the day that he died, never finding true fulfillment.
But he searched it out. It says he was an important man and he controlled great wealth, controlled the treasury of the queen.
It says he was a eunuch. He had made a great personal sacrifice to serve the queen.
The eunuchs castrating themselves to serve. What a tremendous price he paid as a eunuch.
You say, you should hear what I’ve done for God, what I’ve done for my religion, what I’ve done in my life. I’ve made tremendous sacrifice. This man made tremendous sacrifices.
And yet, as he was returning from more service and more worship, he was still searching.

[36:28] He was a seeking man. He was looking. It said he was searching the Scriptures.
You know what? If you have questions, it’s good to come and listen to the gospel preached, but this is the place to search, and that’s why we preach the Scriptures.
That’s why we preach Christ crucified.
That’s where the answers are found. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
Friend, that’s where the answers are found today. And this man, he was seeking, and Jesus Christ himself would say, search the scriptures.
Don’t search men’s philosophies, men’s teaching, men’s ideas, that pastor’s opinion, that priest’s thoughts. It’s Christ himself.
Search the scriptures, for in them, you think you have eternal life, and they are them which testify of me.
And as this man is reading, I don’t know why he was reading Isaiah 53.

[37:21] But as he’s reading, it says he wants to know what they mean.
He says, tell me to the preacher. He comes and he says, explain to me, how will I understand them?
Unless one were to guide me.
You know, friend, tonight we try and preach a very clear and plain gospel.
And the questions that you have. To all the difficulties, all the struggles, all the pain and the sorrows and the burdens of life.
They can be summed up in this.
Christ carried them all. He bore our iniquities. He bore our sorrows. He suffered our afflictions.
In the very same passage where this man read, this seeking man, this searching sinner.
He found one who was the sufficiency.

[38:13] You can read throughout the whole Bible, and the only place you’re going to find peace in, is the sufficient saint, the one who we read about here in Isaiah 53, and there was a few verses they leave us with, but he speaks of the suffering of the Savior.
He’s reading about it here in Isaiah 53. He was led as a king to the throne. It, doesn’t say that. He was led as a celebrity to the place of prominence and No, it says this, he was led as a lamb to the slaughter, the suffering man.
He came into this world.

[38:57] Not to be served, not to be patted in the back, not to be put in the high place.
He did not come to be served, but he himself would say, I came to serve and give my life for ransom for men, the suffering men.
And as this Ethiopian eunuch, as this man of importance was reading this, he was led as a sheep to the slaughter.
And as a lamb before the shears is silent. He would have thought about who is this silent man?
Who is it one that would suffer, that would be slaughtered in silence?
Maybe even he had witnessed in Jerusalem some of the animal sacrifices.
And no doubt he would say, I didn’t hear a silent animal.
No doubt those animals cried out as they were slaughtered.
Those wails of pain.
And he would read, what could this man, what could Isaiah really mean when he said, He was led as a lamb, as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before his shears is done.
You know, Peter was a disciple of the Lord Jesus, and we’ve read much of Peter in the book of Acts.
And he would make a testament to what he beheld that day at the cross.
He was present there.
And he would say this of Jesus, the silent one, the silent sufferer, who committed no sin, nor was any guile found in his mouth.

[40:23] Deceit, who when he was reviled, Jesus Christ, when he was reviled, reviled not in return.
When he suffered, he threatened not, but committed himself to him who judges righteously.
What Peter observed that day at the cross was not one who hung there and threatened and reviled and cursed, he took it silently.

[40:52] Very few recorded words of Jesus Christ on the cross.
And as he would continue reading through Isaiah 53, he would come to this verse that we have read in verse 33 of Acts 8. He said, In his humiliation his justice was taken away, and who will declare his generation?
For his life is taken from the earth.

[41:20] He was a man who suffered, he was a man who was silent, but as this eunuch, this man from Ethiopia would arrive at these verses, he would conclude this, there was a man who died.
His life was taken from this earth.
No doubt he would have wondered why. Why did Isaiah, why did he write these things?
Who is he talking about? Is he talking of himself? It says that.
I asked the evangelist, is Isaiah speaking about himself here or another man?
And as Philip came alongside him, I like to think he kept reading through Isaiah 53 with the man.
And these are the verses that follow, these very verses in Isaiah 53.
He was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgressions of my people, he was stricken.
And they made his grave with the wicked, But with the rich at his death, because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit found in his mouth, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him.

[42:28] When you make a soul an offering for sin, he shall see a seed, he shall prolong his days.
He shall see the travail, the labor of his soul, that be satisfied.
Tonight at the cross of Calvary when the silent suffer the Son of God the Lamb of God died for your sins on the cross it says this from the very book of Isaiah God saw it and was satisfied are you satisfied with God is satisfied he saw the travel he saw the labor of his soul and he says my righteous servant shall, justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities.” And as this man would read through Isaiah 53 with the evangelists, all Philip could do, he said, beginning at this scripture, I don’t know what other scriptures he read, well beginning at this scripture, he preached Jesus.

[43:28] Maybe he would recount the words of John the Baptist just back and that he would have, that had been spreading around as the gospel message would be preached, one of the first encounters publicly with the Lord Jesus Christ.
What was the message? Behold, the Lamb of God led to the slaughter.
Behold, the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world.

[43:54] Back in 1857, in Crystal Palace in England, there was a famous preacher by the name of Charles Spurgeon who went to the location where he was planning to preach the following night and he would always go and is said to check the acoustics of the area, to test what kind of sound.
No microphone system back then in the 1800s.
And so he would go and he would test the acoustics of the place.
And here he would go to this large stadium theater, this large building that would house at least 23,000 people the next day, come to hear him preach.
And as he was looking around the pulpit and checking out the place, he didn’t notice the man up in the very back balcony corner sweeping the jam.
And Charles Spurgeon got up and as he tested the acoustics, he decided just to proclaim the one verse he was planning to preach the following night.
And he said this, behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
And that preacher went home.
And that janitor went home.
And it was on his deathbed that that janitor would recount to his family the night of his conversion.
When he said, I heard a man one day.

[45:14] From very far away in the building that I was cleaning, And he proclaimed something about the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin in the world.
And I went home and I could not sleep till I found out who that Lamb of God was.
And when I found out the Lamb of God was Jesus Christ, God’s son, and that he died for me that very night I was saved.

[45:35] When Charles Spurgeon preached that in that building the next day to a crowd of 23,634 people.
He could preach to each one of them, no doubt. Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world.
But there was one man at least, who by himself the day before, hearing that message, he came to understand, behold the Lamb of God, who took away my sin on the cross.
And this man, as he heard Christ preached, and we don’t have time to get into it, He came to trust and believe and put his faith in the Lamb of Isaiah 53, which was the Lamb of John chapter 1, which was the Lamb of Luke 23 at Calvary, the Lamb of God.
The Silent One led to the slaughter, not for his own sins, but for my sins and for yours.
As that man would get back to the queen with his report.
You know, back in the Old Testament, you read of a queen from Africa who went to see a king.

[46:48] King Solomon, the greatest king that ever reigned on this earth, it is said.
And she would go and she would witness everything about him and she would come to understand his words and his wisdom and his wealth.
And she said, I heard all these things from afar.
But she said, however, I did not believe the words until I came and saw with my own eyes.
And the report of a queen, many years before Acts, the book of Acts was this.
I came and saw for myself and the half has not been told me.
And no doubt when that Ethiopian man, he came back and he reported to a queen many years later.
Maybe he told her. When I was in Jerusalem, there was talks, there was whisperings, there was debates of this man called Jesus.

[47:42] But when I received it for myself, I realized the half wasn’t told me.
I haven’t even come to comprehend the half of it.
And friend tonight, if you would trust this lamb of God, who has led to the slaughter for your sin.
You might not understand much about Christ tonight, and that’s okay, but you’d understand this.
The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
Well, tonight, friend, that you would behold the Lamb of God, the only one in whom the forgiveness of sins is found.
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Filed under: Gospel Series, crawford-kory, ramsay-peter