Episode 13 - The Crucified Lord

0:02 Welcome to the Jesus Podcast with Michael Kulianos. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Jesus Podcast. It is a true joy and honor to be with you. These are very special to me, and I want to thank everybody for their support over the last few weeks. I pray that these podcasts have been a blessing to you, that the Lord Jesus has been exalted in your heart, and that He's revealing Himself to you as you watch.

0:33 These have really become a blessing in my own life, and we love hearing from you. Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you for your feedback. Let's begin today's podcast with prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to help us and to reveal our blessed Lord Jesus to us. Wonderful Lord, we we give you all the glory and all the honor and all the praise.

0:55 So, Holy Father, we thank you. We ask you to fill us with your Holy Spirit again, that our eyes would be opened and that Jesus would be glorified in us and through us, and that you would heal our blindness, that we would see his beauty, that our hearts would burn like those on the road to Emmaus, and that we would see our crucified and risen Lord, and that he would be the obsession of our lives.

1:21 I pray that you would encourage and strengthen every person watching, every person listening in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Well, it's an honor to be with you. I'm joining you from the property where the new church building is being built. And for us, this is very, very holy ground. So it's a real joy and honor to come to you from a place that has been lathered in prayer and in worship and in much preparation.

1:48 We've had some precious times with the Lord Jesus here over the last few years as a special place for our team and for everybody at Jesus' image. And I just pray that that blessedness would be communicated through this podcast and that your life would be genuinely set on fire by the Holy Spirit to love Jesus more.

2:08 Uh, I have some dear friends called the Sisters of Life who uh I had the joy of meeting last year at a church unity gathering in Franklin, Tennessee. I actually went up there with um Andy Byrd and Francis Chan, and um there were a few others that was primarily a Catholic gathering. And I think the maybe there were about five of us there who were not Catholic, maybe six to seven, but it was a beautiful, beautiful time.

2:36 And I had the joy of meeting these sisters. One of them, Sister Bethany Madonna, who's actually from, I think, Melbourne, Florida, of all places, who actually went to UCF, which is the university here in Orlando. We actually use their arena for our end of the year event. So Jesus 26 will be there at UCF.

2:56 So make sure that you register for that. But I I got the chance, really the privilege, to spend time with them and talk to them about the Lord Jesus there. And we've had the honor of staying in touch over the past few months. And she sent me a really sweet little gift that I wanted to read to you, especially those of you who are walking through a difficult time.

3:17 This is called the Litany of Trust. And uh begins with, Jesus, I trust in you. From the belief that I have to earn your love, deliver me, Jesus. From the fear that I am unlovable, deliver me, Jesus. From the false security that I have what it takes, deliver me, Jesus. From the fear that trusting you will leave me more destitute, deliver me, Jesus.

3:40 From all suspicion of your words and promises, deliver me, Jesus. From the rebellion against childlike dependency on you, deliver me, Jesus. From refusals and reluctances in accepting your will, deliver me, Jesus. From anxiety about the future, deliver me, Jesus. From resentment or excessive preoccupation with the past, deliver me, Jesus.

4:04 From restless self-seeking in the present moment, deliver me, Jesus. From disbelief in your love and presence, deliver me, Jesus. From the fear of being asked to give more than I have, deliver me, Jesus. From the belief that my life has no meaning or worth, deliver me, Jesus. From the fear of what love demands, deliver me, Jesus.

4:26 From discouragement, deliver me, Jesus. That you are continually holding me, sustaining me, loving me. Jesus, I trust in you. That your love goes deeper than my sins and failings and transforms me. Jesus, I trust in you. That not knowing what tomorrow brings is an invitation to lean on you. Jesus, I trust in you.

4:48 That you are with me in my suffering. Jesus, I trust in you. That my suffering united to your own will bear fruit in this life and the next. Jesus, I trust in you. That you will not leave me an orphan, that you are present in your church. Jesus, I trust in you. That your plan is better than anything else.

5:08 Jesus, I trust in you. That you always hear me and in your goodness always respond to me. Jesus, I trust in you. That you give me the grace to accept forgiveness and to forgive others. Jesus, I trust in you. That you give me all the strength I need for what is asked. Jesus, I trust in you. That my life is a gift.

5:29 Jesus, I trust in you. That you will teach me to trust you. Jesus, I trust in you. That you are my Lord and my God. Jesus, I trust in you. That I am your beloved one. Jesus, I trust in you. How beautiful. And I felt that that would be a real strength to so many of you as you're watching. You know, oftentimes we believe that, especially when we're walking through a challenge or suffering, that we need something from God.

5:57 And at the end of the day, foundationally, we don't need something from God. We need God Himself. We need the Lord, who is the treasure chest of every blessing. The scripture says in Ephesians that we've been blessed with every heavenly blessing in Christ Jesus. Paul begins to speak of the kingdom of God, and he says that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy.

6:22 Where is it? In the Holy Spirit. Again, Paul preaches while he's preaching the gospel and says it is in him, in the Logos, we live, we move, and have our being. And there's been so many times in my life where I felt like I needed a specific answer, a specific direction, a specific bit of advice. And then all of a sudden, the Lord would come and touch me.

6:46 He would touch me with his presence. He would come and offer what some of the fathers, church, the fathers of the church would call a consolation, where the Lord would fill me with the Holy Spirit once again. And all of a sudden, the specificity, what I thought I needed, it would dissipate in the light of his glory.

7:05 And I'm convinced that the devil is wanting to complicate life. That's what he loves to do. He he wants us to be busied in the soul. He wants us to embrace a complicated Christian life. I don't want to say that the Christian life is easy because the Christian life is not easy. And behind me, you see a crucifix that the evangelical sisters of Mary, our dear friends, in Canaan, in Darmstadt, you will see a crucifix that one of them actually made by hand.

7:35 And so recently I've been asked, why do you point people to the cross? Why are there crosses when you film? Why are there crosses throughout the new church building? Why is there a cross on the platform at church? Why is there a cross on the retreat grounds? Why do you carry a cross when you take just about every platform?

7:53 Why the cross? Well, the cross, the cross is the great emblem and symbol of our faith. Before it is anything, uh before anything else is, the cross is what Christians have been pointing to for 2,000 years. And I would argue the cross has been preached since the book of Genesis. If we look at the scriptures properly, God has been preaching the cross himself.

8:17 We look at Genesis 3.15. In fact, why don't we go there? I hope you have your Bibles. Or maybe not, you don't have to take your Bible out if you're driving. Let's not do that. But if you can, take your Bible out. And let's go to Genesis 3.15. And we have the joy and honor of actually hearing the Lord Himself preach the gospel.

8:36 And this is post-fall. Remember, Adam and Eve choose to eat in a disobedient manner. They listen to the serpent, which is one of the first failures. Let me just say that. Why engage conversation with a serpent when you can speak to the Lord and walk with him in the cool of the day as they were? This is where the entirety of this sin journey really begins.

8:57 It's the moving and the shifting away of attention to engaging in another conversation. And I wonder how many of us do that. How often do we take our attention away from Jesus and engage in another that is serpent-like without even knowing it? And so they they fall. The cosmos feels the effects of the fall, they feel the effects of the fall.

9:17 Creation itself feels the effects of the fall. Soil feels the effects of the fall. The entire universe feels the effects of the fall. And now the Lord steps in. And in verse 15, he says something very powerful. He begins to speak to the serpent. And he says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.

9:38 And that letter S there in seed is capitalized. And now he teaches us what this enmity will look like, or how this victory will take place over the serpent. He shall bruise your head, or that word, it could read, he shall deal a fatal blow, or a crushing, a destruction to your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

9:58 And here the gospel is preached for the very first time by the Lord Himself. And the fathers of the church called this passage the proto-evangelion. Proto meaning first. It's where we get like the word prototype. So the first evangelion gospel. That's where we get the word evangelist or evangelism. So this is the first gospel message that the Lord Himself preaches.

10:23 How glorious is the gospel? Well, who's the first to preach it? The Lord Himself. This is a phenomenal truth. The gospel is unmatched. The preaching of the gospel is unmatched. God Himself so values the gospel that he is the first to preach the gospel. Wow, this is incredible. Absolutely, absolutely incredible.

10:46 And what is the gospel according to God? That a man is coming who is absolutely fully God and fully man, and that the skull of the enemy, the head of the enemy, will be crushed via a specific method, and that is through bruising. And so the cross is hanging behind me to remind us, the cross is here on this desk to remind us that the Lord Jesus defeated death, trampled death down by death.

11:17 Through his own bruising, he destroyed the head of the enemy and crushed the very power of the serpent through bruising. And when we lose a vision of the cross, when we lose a vision and a value for the cross, we actually lose sight of God's method of destroying the powers of darkness. And this is very important.

11:40 So then, you know, I'm often asked, uh, if God is real, why do bad things happen to good people? Well, I've heard it said, and I love this saying, there's only one person who is ever truly good who had bad things happen to him, and that's the Lord. So we have to define good. And the scripture says only God is good.

11:58 Number one. Number two, we should ask people very lovingly and kindly when we're asked a question like that, what God are you looking at? Do you have a definition of God and therefore a definition of the Christian faith that is void of suffering, that is void of challenge and pain? Because if you do, I humbly submit to you, that is not the Christian Lord.

12:21 That is not the Lord Jesus Christ. He has not only achieved an indescribable amount of blessing and bounty through the cross, but beyond the achievement, the cross is an absolute revelation of who our God is, to He is. We serve the crucified and risen Lord. So when we see the Lord rightly, we begin to see the faith rightly.

12:48 So our view of Christianity must flow from our view of Christ Himself. Jesus Himself is the faith. And as it pertains to, you know, division and unity and the church coming back together, this will only happen when Jesus becomes more preeminent in our thoughts than every ism, than every ism. If we are defending an ism with more faithfulness than the Lord Himself, as defined in the scriptures, then we we need to realign our hearts and ask ourselves, have we engaged in conversations that aren't needed when I could be engaging the Lord?

13:26 And so the reason I bring this passage up is post-fall, this is a massive situation. There's so much suffering that we still experience today because of the fall. Now, the fall did not take the Lord by surprise, but that doesn't mean it didn't grieve him. And so think of every war, every sin, all division, every family that's been broken, every divorce, pain after pain after pain after pain, battle after battle, all gossip, all backstabbing, all of this is finding its epicenter in this moment.

14:00 So this moment unleashed complexity, this moment unleashed complication at a level that's immeasurable for generations, for generations, line after line after line, in every single family, in every human, challenges and suffering, finding its epicenter in what happened here in Eden. And so you have this massive amount of complexity.

14:24 And what is God's answer? What is God's remedy? A seed is coming. The God man is on the way. In other words, regardless of the amount of problems, God only has one answer. And that answer is enough today. And that's why I read this litany of trust. Notice Jesus is mentioned on every line. And friend, regardless of what we face today, whether it's sickness, Jesus is the answer.

14:51 His stripes heal us today, as Isaiah writes, by his stripes we are healed. And Peter repeats the same verse. And the church has been calling the Lord Jesus the great physician of souls and bodies for hundreds and hundreds of years. He's the healer of the broken mind. Isn't that what the crown of thorns is all about?

15:15 As we look into his holy passion, doesn't the crown of thorns tell us that we can receive the mind of Christ and that God can heal not only the content of my thoughts, but the order in which I think and how I think. He has given us, the scripture says, the mind of Christ. When I look at the wounds on the Lord's hands, his wounds, his nail-pierced hands, those precious hands, purify my works.

15:45 If I'm struggling with my walk and struggling to walk in victory, where should I look? But to the feet, the feet of the crucified Messiah, whose wounds cleanse and empower my walk, to walk in victory, as Psalm 91 says, to tread upon lions and cobras and crush the head of serpents. What a promise, what a promise.

16:09 And notice that when the devil tempts the Lord Jesus in the wilderness, he perverts Psalm 21 and he twists it. And the devil's still doing that today. He's using scripture as weaponry. He's he's, I should say, deceiving the church to use scripture as weaponry against one another. So he's still trying to pervert the point of scripture.

16:29 The point of scripture is to reveal the Lord Jesus. It is not to be right and prove that you're wrong. No, no, no. The scriptures according to Jesus, and he is a good authority. The scriptures speak of me, he said. So when the devil tempts Jesus, he uses Psalm 91 and he says, Hey, the scriptures say that your heavenly Father will keep you from even dashing your foot against a stone.

16:52 He conveniently left out that that same passage also says that we will tread upon lions and cobras and that serpents will be crushed. That wasn't the most self-serving scripture for him. So he left that part out. All that to say, our walk is empowered by our vision of the crucified feet of Jesus. And if you're wondering if you can have intimacy with Jesus, well, Jesus is the answer to that as well.

17:15 Was his side not opened on the cross? To of course bathe us in his blood and the water of the Spirit and introduce holy communion and holy baptism to us? Of course, of course, it speaks of that. But that wound is still there in his resurrected body, telling the church, telling you as you watch this, there is an open door into my heart forever.

17:38 And as Eve came from the side of Adam in the creation account, Eve, the new Eve, the church, was birthed as Jesus lay lifeless, and his side is opened, and this births, this births the new Eve, the church. Just as Adam lay in a deep sleep, and the Lord creates Eve from his rib. If you're lonely, there is an opening into the heart of Jesus today in his blessed side.

18:08 So here's my point. Regardless of what you're facing, if you have financial lack, look to Jesus. Look to him. He is our provider. Look to Jesus today. If you're lonely, as I said earlier, the scripture says he's a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Why am I saying all this? Regardless of what the need is, there is still one solution.

18:31 And I'm praying that the Holy Spirit liberates you today from complexity, liberates you from going to and fro, trying to find an answer. You don't need specificity as much as you need him. Remember, the train of his robe in heaven's temple fills the temple with what? With glory. In other words, wherever he goes, his glory fills that space.

18:58 You say, well, how could Jesus alone be my all-sufficient one? Well, Colossians says that in him, Colossians chapter one, in him all things consist. It's in Jesus that we find our every need. Ephesians tells us that he ascended and descended. Why? So that he might fill all things with himself. And when we look to God's method, to God's answer to every human issue, we simply see, and we say this gladly and boldly, we simply see Jesus.

19:36 Think about the nativity. Think about, and by the way, that word nativity means genesis. It tells us that Jesus is the genesis of all things. But think of the nativity. When God looked at humanity and it was time for Jesus to become man, whom did the Father send? Did he send something? But think about the world in that moment.

19:54 Think about everything the world needed: past, present, and future. Think about every sin, every sickness, kingdoms that had collapsed, kingdoms that were corrupt, major issues on every side. Decay had hit the earth. What's God's answer? A little baby in a manger, who is creator of all, the darling of heaven, and the wonder of all things.

20:16 That little baby was the Father's remedy to heal every deficiency and problem in all of creation. And so today, I want to tell you boldly that the Lord brought you to this moment because he loves you. And I want you to hear the words of Isaiah the prophet. Are you tired? Do you need rest? Do you need stillness and peace?

20:39 What did Jesus say? He's saying it to you right now. Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus is your answer. And I want to invite you today to call on him. Call on Jesus now. Let me pray with you. But don't merely repeat after me. May the Holy Spirit illuminate your heart right now, so that this prayer would come from the depths of your being.

21:01 I'll never forget when I first started ministering. I heard the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit say this to me. Michael, if you call the name of Jesus, he will come. He will look your way. And when he looks your way, he will begin to move. And he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Every good gift comes from our Father above.

21:21 Let's pray now and ask the Lord Jesus to reveal himself to all of us. Father in heaven, we thank you for your mercy, for your goodness, for your kindness. And we ask you, Lord, to grip our vision and deliver us, Lord, from scatteredness and complexity and distraction. And we ask you to still our souls once again.

21:41 And may the vision of Jesus and his beautiful cross and his glorious resurrection be our obsession. Capture, Lord, our vision today and teach us to walk with you and love you. Touch your people, Lord. Strengthen them and fill them in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you for joining me today. And uh we'll be back very soon.

22:02 Thank you. Make sure that you send this podcast out to your friends. Be sure to subscribe and like the video and stay connected with us. God bless you.

22:12unknown Bye-bye.

22:13 Thank you so much for listening to the Jesus Podcast with Michael Kulianos. If you enjoyed this episode, you can find online courses, books, and more at michaelculeanos.org. You can also join us in person or online every Sunday at Jesus Image Church. For more information on Jesus School, local and nationwide events hosted by Jesus Image and resources, visit Jesusimage.tv.