Audio Messages:
Pastor Wade Burleson

---

Who Killed Jesus?

Hear in Real Audio format

Download free Real Player G2
Or right click WhoKilledJesus.rm and select "save link as" to direct download the file (3,618 KB).
You will then need to open it in Real Player.

---

Isaiah 53:7 (KJV)

7. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

There is a raging debate around the world over the question, "Who killed Jesus?" Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion, brings this question to the forefront of many minds. This film unambiguously portrays Jewish authorities and a Jewish mob as the ones responsible for the decision to crucify Jesus" Abraham Foxman, National Director, Anti-Defamation League. However, most Christians would say, "My sins killed Jesus." "There is not a scintilla of anti-Semitism to be found anywhere in this powerful film . . . my sins put Jesus to death" Keith Fournier. Though this common response to charges of anti- Semitism sounds good, it is both illogical and unbiblical.

The Scripture is clear that God killed the Christ. The prophet Isaiah said, "It pleased the Lord to bruise him (the Messiah); he hath put him to grief" (Isaiah 53:10). How do we know this for sure?

1. God appointed the precise moment at which Christ died.
   Christ died on the 14th day of Abib, A.D. 30. This is the Jewish Day of Passover. Passover commemorates the day God delivered Israel form the bondage in Egypt by a lamb's death. "I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and I will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt; I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over your" (Exodus 12:12-13).

   The Christ could have died on no other day as the Lamb of God who takes away our sins. "So they were seeking to seize Him; and no man laid his hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come" (John 7:30). "These words He spoke in the treasury as He taught in the temple; and no one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come" (John 8:20). "Thou could have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above" (John 19:11).

2. God appointed the precise means by which His Son died.
   Hanging on a tree has always been God's symbol of condemnation for sinners. God informed Moses that if a person in Israel was "stubborn and rebellious, and would not obey my laws; but was a glutton and a drunkard, all of the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die. And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, thou shalt hang him on a tree . . . for he that is hanged is accursed of God" (Deuteronomy 21:22-23).

   "They fix a beam in the earth, and a piece of wood goes out of it (near the top of it) and hang him; the hands are spread, and one hand is fastened to the one part of the cross- beam, and the other to the other end" Rabbi Jarchi.

   "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree" (Galatians 3:13). "Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani."

3. God appointed the precise mission for which His Son died.
   "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
   "For God hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (II Corinthians 5:21).
   
   Christ bore on the tree the sentence for me!