What Happened From the Cross Pt 3: Persecution, Temptation, and Triumph

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Good morning. Welcome to Victorious Faith. I am Cherri Campbell. Today I’m going to continue sharing with you the message that I’ve been sharing with you for the last few broadcasts that I preached in one of our Victorious Faith services called What Happened from the Cross to the Throne. So join me now in our live service for part three of What Happened from the Cross to the Throne. It doesn’t say the suffering of his body. Most people only look at the suffering of his body. But it says after the suffering of his soul. Where was the suffering of the soul? It began in the Garden of Gethsemane, Luke 22. Let me back up. There’s a scripture in Romans 8 that if we would share in his sufferings, we will also share in his glory. Romans 8. If we share in his sufferings, we will also share in his glory. Okay, now a lot of Christians think that the suffering of Jesus that we share in is sickness. Is that true? Disease? Is that true? How about poverty? Those are not the sufferings of Jesus. He did not ever suffer sickness except on the cross where he bore it. He did not ever suffer poverty except on the cross where he bore it. Those are not the sufferings of Jesus. Let me back up and show you the sufferings of Jesus that we are supposed to share. There is a difference between his sufferings in his death, which was the price for our redemption. And there’s a difference between the sufferings of his life and ministry. And we are to share in the sufferings of his life and ministry, not his death, because his death was what he paid for us. He did it for us. We could never do it. But what he did in life, what he did in life was for our example. What he did in death was for our substitution. Got it? His life was our example. His death was our substitution. So there were three sufferings in his life that we read about. And the sufferings in his life are basically one is persecution. We know he was persecuted. Two, it says in Hebrews that he suffered being tempted. Well, you don’t suffer giving in to temptation. You suffer overcoming temptation. Resisting. Right. He didn’t succumb. He didn’t give in. He overcame. He resisted. He said, no, that was suffering. So he suffered. Hebrews chapter two is where I believe it is. Hebrews two. And he suffered being tempted to 18. He himself suffered when he was tempted. Hebrews 2.18. So he suffered being tempted and resisting, not succumbing, but resisting and overcoming and being victorious over temptation. Two, he suffered being persecuted. And three, in the garden of Gethsemane, he suffered in dying to self-will. Not my will, but your will be done. That’s an easy thing to read, and it’s another thing to do. And to say, Lord, not my will, but your will be done. And to die to self-will. And surrender, not that we can’t have our own choices, but we do have our choices, but we yield our choices to the Master. and say, your will be done in my life. So those are three things that if we share in those, if we share suffering, temptation, and resisting, and being victorious over temptation, if we share in persecutions in this life, and if we share in dying to our self-will and saying to the Father, not my will, but your will be done, then we will share in his glory. That’s what qualifies us for glory, isn’t it? Isn’t that what qualifies us for glory? So we will share in his glory by sharing in those sufferings, not in what he did on the cross, because that’s what he did for our substitution. All right. So he started his suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he prayed Luke 22 verses 41 to 44. He prayed more earnestly and his sweat was like great drops of blood. There are some people who have read that and have even denied that’s not even possible. It is possible. It has been medically proven possible, but it is very rare. It is such extreme intense pressure that the blood vessels of the forehead burst. And so he suffered in his soul in the Garden of Gethsemane, knowing what was ahead of him, knowing not only the physical, but the spiritual, which we’re going to talk about later. but also the physical that people don’t even fully understand. And we still don’t fully understand, but we’ll try to talk about it. But there was a depth of suffering. Unlike any human being ever has gone through and never will and never could that he knew he was facing. And so he suffered in his soul in the garden of Gethsemane, knowing what was ahead of him, knowing all the sufferings, even of hell itself. And, and saying to the father, not my will, but your will be done. So he started with the suffering of his soul. Then he went to the trial, the tribunal, and was found guilty and went to the Roman soldiers and was taken to the whipping post. And well, even before that, you know, you saw the story in the play. They stripped him and they whipped him and they put a crown of thorns. You know, there’s tons of thorns. They said the thorns would be like three or four inches long. And they would actually jab it down into the head. So it went three or four inches deep. And there’s punctured holes into the skull and blood dripping down from the head. And then it goes to the whipping post. Now, this is the part I’m going to read to you out of Geike’s Life of Christ. He describes Christ’s scourging as this. And then also we’re going to look at some of the early church historians such as Eusebius. And what was a scourging like? Because most of what you see on Sunday on television, on movies was not correct. Even as great as the passion of the Christ was, it didn’t quite get it. And actually, even the best we could do, we’ll never get it. But let me give you, this part was not even shown. They couldn’t put this in a movie. Victims condemned to the cross first underwent the hideous torture of the scourge. Jesus was seized by some of the soldiers and was stripped to the waist, bound in a stooping posture, his hands behind his back to a post or a block. He was then beaten at the pleasure of the soldiers. Now, some people get the idea of the 39 lashes because that was a Jewish custom. 39 lashes. It was the law of the Jews that they could only give 39. He wasn’t beaten by the Jews. He was beaten by Romans. Romans did not have a limit. And not only that, but Romans were bloodthirsty. Think of the arenas where they fed people to the lions as sport and filled tens of thousands of people in the stadium to watch a lion rip a person apart limb by limb and eat it and devour it. And everybody in the stands stands up and cheers. Yay! I mean, that is a bloodthirsty culture. When they box with one another, they use nails in their boxing gloves to poke the person. And it was to death. And they would aim for the eyes to pull the eyes out first. They would be able to win over their enemy. I mean, this is for sport. So these were Romans. They were not Jews. And there was no law about how nice to be. And they were bloodthirsty. They used a cat and nine tails. And I say at the pleasure of the soldiers, meaning until they were tired or until they got bored. But if one got tired, they could pass it off to another for his turn at the sport. So there was no limit to how much they could beat. And so they used the cat-and-nine-tails, knots of rope or plated leather, armed at the ends of each whip. So it’s not just one where you see the lines on Jesus’ back really pretty. Not a little red stripe. A little stripe of, like today, if they used a leather whip, one at a time, and you’d see three stripes on their back, that’s not what happened. This had cat-of-nine-tails, like nine arms all at once, and the ends of each one had either acorn-shaped drops of lead or small, sharp, pointed bones. So they acted like teeth. They were teeth. This whip was like a tooth. And every whip literally grabbed, dug into the skin and tore it off. Grabbing with teeth like and pulling teeth and pulling and ripping flesh, skin, muscle, everything it could reach, pulling it off the body. So they were dismembering the body. In many cases, not only was the back of the person scourged, cut open in all directions. I mean, rip, rip, pulling the skin off until the flesh, the muscles, the sinews are laid bare and pulling those muscles off. But then as they were skillful, they could wrap that whip around the front. They wrap it around the head, grab the face, pull off the nose, knock out the eyes, knock out the teeth. wrap it around the chest, rip open the chest and pull it off. The breast was torn. The face was all ripped up under countless stripes to the point that the victims sank into unconsciousness and even in screams and convulsions and distortions. They would go into convulsions. and distortions into unconsciousness, and even sometimes died on the spot. It was often to the death right there at the whipping post. Died on the spot. Otherwise, they were taken away, now unrecognizable. Unrecognizable mass of bleeding flesh to find their deliverance in death. The scourging of Jesus would have been of the severest. The soldiers were glad to vent on any Jew. They hated the Jews. And then he was going to be crucified. So if you scourge harder, then the less time there would be at the cross to keep them waiting for his death. What you just heard was part three of a message that I preached in one of our victorious faith services called What Happened from the Cross to the Throne. And if you want to listen to this message in its entirety, you can go to my YouTube channel, which is under my name, Cherri Campbell, C-H-E-R-R-I Campbell, C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L. And there in the top category called radio broadcasts, you will find this message called What Happened from the Cross to the Throne. And if these messages are blessing you and encouraging you, I invite you to partner with us in supporting the radio broadcast airtime as we are continuing to believe God for more partnership support in this radio ministry and this radio broadcast. You can partner with us by going to our website at victoriousfaith.co, victorious like a champion, V-I-C-T-O-R-I-O-U-S, faith, F-A-I-T-H dot C-O, C-O like Colorado, and go to the giving page where you can give online by Zelle Bank Transfer, PayPal, credit card, or debit card. And if you are giving by Zelle and it’s your first time to partner with us or contact us, please give us your email address in the memo line, so that we can respond to you with our thank you and partner letter as Zelle does not give us that information. And if you would like a contribution receipt for your donation for tax purposes, please also give us your postal mailing address. Also, please let us know which station you are listening to so that your offering can go to the station you are listening to. Also, you can write to us by postal mail at Victorious Faith, PO Box 509, East Lake, Colorado, 80614. And as always, we bless your seed and we command it to be fruitful and multiply a hundredfold in Jesus’ name. And we agree with you for your victories, your breakthroughs, your answers to prayer and your harvest on your seed sown in Jesus’ name. Now have a blessed weekend and join me again next week. And remember, God loves you. You’re blessed and highly favored by the Lord.