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One who had been crucified, we can understand afresh how brutal the scene of crucifixion was.

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It was gory and it was bloody.

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It was a scene that was horrific for anyone who watched it, but all the more so for those who had sympathy for one being crucified.

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Of the eleven apostles who were left of Jesus, only one came to the scene of the cross that we know of.

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But there were numerous other people there who had been followers of Jesus.

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They were a number of women who had followed with the disciples, had cared for their needs, and had supported them, in the case of some, out of their financial ability.

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All of the Gospel writers tell us of the group of women who were there at varying distances from the cross, apparently.

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John gives us the list of those who had eventually moved in closest to the cross.

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He says, near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.

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When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, that of course being John, who was Jesus' dearest friend, and more as we'll see in a moment,

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he said to his mother, Dear woman, here is your son, and to the disciple, here is your mother.

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From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

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And so we see the names, or the identities at least, of four women who were near the cross as Jesus was dying.

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One of them was Mary, his mother.

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Another was her sister, whom we presume to be Salome, the mother of James and John, and the wife of Zebedee.

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Now if you're thinking with me, you understand that the John who was his apostle and who wrote this book,

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and who is identified in this very story as the one whom Jesus loved, was also Jesus' cousin therefore.

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If this assumption is true, Mary and Salome being sisters, then John was Jesus' cousin.

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In addition, there was one there named Mary, the wife of Clopas.

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She was a writer in the second century in Palestine by the name of Hegesippus,

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who tells us that this Clopas was the brother of Joseph the carpenter.

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Now we have no evidence to prove it other than his statement 150 years later.

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It's reasonable, is it not, that were this Mary, the wife of Clopas, the aunt of Jesus, and the sister-in-law of Mary,

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she would have been there in support of Mary.

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And then there is another Mary who is mentioned, this one called Mary Magdalene, Mary from the town of Magdala.

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She was the one whom Jesus delivered of seven demons.

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We have no information as to how she got into that predicament, only that she was demonized.

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And during his ministry, Jesus cast out the seven demons.

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From that time forward, she followed Jesus and his disciples,

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and apparently out of her earthly goods helped to support them in their itinerant ministry.

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By the way, she is not the immoral woman who is mentioned in Luke chapter 7.

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There is no evidence that Mary was an immoral woman, but she had been demon-possessed, as we sometimes call it,

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and Jesus had delivered her.

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And so you can see that most of these women who were close by the cross were related in some way to Jesus,

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and certainly with the apostles.

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And they were among the most loyal and brave of all of Christ's followers.

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Standing with the four women whom we've identified was John.

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But immediately our attention focuses on one person in this little group at the foot of the cross,

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and that one person is Mary.

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Can you begin to understand the anguish and the grief in the heart of Mary?

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The stories that must have been hers, and the horror now of seeing her son not only dying,

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but executed in such a brutal fashion.

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It is one thing to lose a child, and some of you have had that experience,

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and to lose an adult child, but to lose one to execution that he did not deserve, and which was so cruel.

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She must have wondered how she could ever be the same again.

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She must have wondered how life could go on.

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She must have asked herself how her heart could ever be consoled from this time of sorrow and grief.

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Perhaps you've asked yourself that same question.

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How can my life continue?

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How can I ever be the same again?

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Wherever can I find comfort for the hurt that I feel?

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Well, I have good news for you.

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At the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is comfort for those who are unconcealed.

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And we see that in Mary.

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Perhaps your grief is different than Mary's today.

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Certainly it is.

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But nonetheless, there is disappointment that you feel or sorrow.

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Perhaps it is loneliness or worry that eats away at you inside,

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and you say, how can I ever get through this?

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How can I ever be comforted?

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How will my life go on from here?

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I want you to notice that life went on for Mary.

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Because at the cross, she found the comfort she needed.

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And that comfort came from three assurances that we see in our text.

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The first assurance she found, which we can observe, is that the Savior feels the anguish of your heart.

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He did hers.

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We have suggested how she might have felt, what emotions must have been coursing through her mind

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as she stood there at the foot of this cross and looked up at her son.

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But for just a moment, try to put yourself in Jesus' place.

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As he looked down in the midst of his agony, and John says,

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he saw his mother there.

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Let me ask you, if you were being executed, would you want your mother there?

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If you were dying on a cross, would you want your mother standing there watching you in such agony?

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He looked down and saw his mother there.

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And even in the great agony of his own soul and body, he nonetheless had sympathy in his heart toward her suffering.

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The Savior felt the anguish that was Mary's and had compassion on her.

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And I want you to know today that whatever your predicament and circumstance may be,

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he likewise feels the anguish of your heart.

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As Mary stood there, undoubtedly the words of Simeon came to her mind.

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She and Joseph had walked into the temple with their little baby in the arms,

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and Simeon greeted them with words of joy and blessing.

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And then, turning to Mary, he said, and a sword will pierce your heart also.

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What strange words at the dedication of a baby.

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Mary did not understand that, but Luke tells us that she remembered it, she treasured it in her heart,

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she stored it away, and now on this day,

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the sword is there, and it has pierced her heart.

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And Jesus knows it. He knows it.

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Frank Grafe wrote the words, Does Jesus care when my heart is pained too deeply for mirth and song?

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As the burdens press and cares distress and the way grows weary and long, oh yes,

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He cares, I know He cares, His heart is touched with my grief.

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When the days are weary, the long nights dreary, I know my Savior cares.

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He cares for you in the midst of your night, in the midst of the long weary day you're walking through right now.

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He cares. He feels the anguish of your heart.

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Come with me to the book of Hebrews in the second chapter to a very significant paragraph

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that tells us that God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, became one of us.

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He became one of us in our humanity, in flesh and blood, and He became one of us in the experiences of life.

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Hebrews 9 of Hebrews 2 says, But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels,

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now crowned with glory and honor, because He suffered death, so that by the grace of God

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He might taste death or experience death for everyone.

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Bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.

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Someone says, wait a minute, I thought Jesus was already perfect. I thought He was already sinless. Indeed He was.

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When the writer says that Jesus was made perfect through His sufferings, he is saying that Jesus was made equipped,

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that He was completed in every necessary detail to be our Savior.

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It wasn't that somehow He was made more perfect or sinless than He was. You cannot improve perfection in that sense.

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But what it's saying is that He became fully equipped to be our priest, our high priest,

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because He fully experienced what we experience in this world.

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Not only because He is God does He understand your pain, but my friend, He knows your pain because He has been there.

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He has suffered. And because He has suffered, He has been made fully equipped to identify with you, as it says in verse 17.

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For this reason He had to be made like His brothers in every way in order that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest.

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The word merciful means sympathetic. The Lord Jesus Christ is sympathetic with your pain and your loneliness and your disappointment.

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How do I know that? Because He suffered. He knows it because He has experienced it.

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And someone says, well, but He doesn't know the temptations that I face. Yes, He does.

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In chapter 4 it says that He was tempted in every way, like as we are, but without sinning.

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He knows every temptation you face in your suffering.

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Look again in chapter 5 of the book as the writer presses home this point, verse 7.

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Burning the days of Jesus' life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death.

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And He was heard because of His reverent submission.

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Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and once made perfect.

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That means completely prepared to identify with us in our sufferings.

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He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

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In other words, our Lord Jesus Christ today feels the anguish of your heart.

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There is no sense in which He is blocked or limited.

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There is no way in which only as God does He know, as man He understands your suffering.

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And it was as man as well as God that He hung on that cross and looked down at His mother and saw her there and understood

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and felt with her the anguish that was in her heart.

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The second observation I make is that the Savior understands the nature of your need.

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My, that can be an assurance when you need comfort.

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To know that not only does He feel with you what you feel, but He knows what you really need.

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He understands that.

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Now Mary may have thought that her need at that moment was to get up there and pull those nails out of His hands

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and that nail out of His feet and lower His body to the ground and stop the bleeding and save His life.

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Wouldn't that sound reasonable to you?

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Through my son on the cross, that's what I thought I would think the need would be.

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But Jesus understood the nature of Mary's real need.

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Maybe that's what she wanted, what we've described, but Jesus knew the real needs that she had.

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In the first place, what her need was, was to have another perspective on her sorrow.

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You see, as she looked at Him, her sorrow was that of a mother for her son.

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And that's deep.

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And there's no way that you or I can really fully understand that.

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Because we've not experienced what she did.

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You see, what she really needed was to have another perspective on that.

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And so when Jesus saw her there, He said to her,

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Dear woman, notice He did not call her mother.

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Had He uttered that word, the sword would have been driven only deeper into her soul.

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She needs to gain another perspective.

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She needs to understand that while this is her son on the cross, it's also her Savior.

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And so Jesus uses a word that is a word of dearness.

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It is a word of affection, but it's a step back from mother.

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He says to her, Dear woman, that must have caught Mary's attention.

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It had to, as He spoke to her that way.

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And perhaps it did bring to her in that instant a new perspective.

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And she realized that this one on the cross was not only her son, but it was her Savior.

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And that as He was dying for the world's sins, He was dying for her sins too.

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Jesus understood the nature of her real need.

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She needed the Savior.

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And even then, in the word that He chose, He was trying to get her attention away from the mother-son relationship to the Savior-servant relationship.

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And then she had a need at that moment for the assurance of future care.

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She had other children with Joseph.

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Brothers and sisters had been born to their family before Joseph apparently died.

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These were up in Galilee, for all we know.

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The text doesn't tell us.

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But they were not with her.

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Other family members were gathered around, but the children were not.

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Jesus wanted to assure her of future care.

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What an example He sets here for all of us.

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As He looks at this one who had born Him and nurtured Him, and He says to her,

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Here is your son.

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Now how He did that, we don't know.

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His hands were nailed.

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Maybe it was a glance, a movement of the head.

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In some way, He made it clear to Mary as He was speaking to her,

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Here is your son standing beside you.

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He knew her need.

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The Lord Jesus feels the anguish of our hearts in the times of suffering.

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The Lord Jesus understands the nature of our need.

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There may be times when you have prayed and said, Oh God, do this for me.

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I'm hurting, and God has not done that.

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Why?

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Because He knows what our real needs are.

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He answers our prayers much more wisely than we usually ask them.

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Mary may have prayed, Oh God, get my son off that cross.

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God couldn't answer that prayer the way that she wanted Him to.

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He answered it in a much more glorious way so that this one who died became Mary's Savior.

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My friend, God understands the nature of your need this morning.

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And if God seems far away or if He seems uncaring to you or He hasn't answered the prayer that you've prayed,

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please trust Him.

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He knows what He's doing.

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But there's a third observation that gives us assurance of comfort at the cross.

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It is that the Savior provides the resource for your deliverance.

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He did for Mary.

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He said to her, Dear woman, here is your son.

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And then turning to John, this disciple whom He loved, He said, Here is your mother.

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And so He provided for Mary what she needed at that moment, the arm, the strong arm of her nephew around her.

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And again, the text doesn't say this, but the language could lead us to this understanding that John at that moment,

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Jesus having spoken those words, John put his arm around her and led her away from the cross.

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She didn't need to be there anymore.

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And He took her to that place where He had rented as a lodging in Jerusalem.

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My friend, the Savior who died on the cross provides for you too all of the resources you need for deliverance.

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From the hurts and the pains of the past or the present, the fears, the anxieties of the future, He provides what you need.

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It all comes from Him.

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He not only cares and understands, He provides, He gives.

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Ephesians 1, 7 says, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us.

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You say, but you don't understand my sin.

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I don't, but God does, and He's the one who said, Sin may abound, but grace much more abounds.

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Sin, cover the bottom of your cup, God's grace overflows the cup.

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Is your sin up to here?

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God's grace is over your head.

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God's grace is like a flood.

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It comes from Calvary to you and to me.

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It is the resource that provides for our needs.

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Dr. F.W. Borum used to tell the story of a sailor, the name of Sam Duncanen.

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Sam had retired from his work and decided that he would spend out his days working at the little mission where he had been converted some years before.

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He determined that one of the things people in the neighborhood needed was a little joy in their lives. They were very poor.

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And so, besides sharing the Savior with them, he decided to collect pictures.

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And he would put a little motto or a scripture verse on the picture and give it to someone as a gift so they could put that up in their impoverished home as a piece of joy and delight.

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Borum says that one night, Sam was in a service at the mission, and they were singing a hymn that was popular at that time.

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And one of the lines said, Have you on the Lord believed, still there's more to follow?

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You can almost hear the lilt in the tune, though I don't know what the tune is.

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Have you on the Lord believed, still there's more to follow?

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And that phrase got his imagination going. He said, I'm going to use that.

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And so the next morning, he went to his collection of pictures until he found one that he thought would be appropriate for the phrase.

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And he found one of Niagara Falls.

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He pulled that one out, beautiful photograph of Niagara Falls.

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And then at the bottom of it, he put the phrase, he pasted it on the picture, and it said, More to Follow.

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If you've ever been to Niagara Falls, you know there's a whole lot more to follow.

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The millions of gallons that pour over the falls every second and more to follow.

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A few years ago, you may remember that they diverted the river up from the falls so that they could dry up one side.

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I think it was the American side, if I remember correctly.

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The rock was beginning to crumble and the falls were being destroyed.

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It was about to become a rapids.

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And so they dammed up the water, and that side of the falls was bone dry.

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Pictures of it were shown in magazines.

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And then one day, they opened it up again, and the water began to flow once more over the falls.

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Well, just in your mind for a moment, in the fancy of your imagination, if you've been there and you have heard the thundering roar of the falls,

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and you felt that mist cover your body, just imagine for a moment that the water was all cut off.

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And that all of Niagara Falls was just dry.

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There were just cliffs of rock that were there.

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No water coming over it at all.

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And then, suddenly, you begin to hear a noise.

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It's off in the distance, but it's getting closer and closer and closer, and it's a roar.

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It becomes a loud roar.

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And finally, you see this wall of water gushing down the riverbed and coming to that cliff and falling over it.

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And suddenly, Niagara is Niagara the way it's supposed to be.

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My friend, when the Lord Jesus Christ died on that cross, he started the waters flowing.

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The waters of God's grace begin to cascade toward humanity.

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And through the centuries, God's grace has poured forth, and there's more to follow.

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Throughout all of eternity, a vast, measureless store of grace toward those who come to the cross.

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This Savior, this one that we've talked about this morning,

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provides all the resources you need for your deliverance.

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Whatever your circumstances, whatever your situation in Him,

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you'll find all you need, and there's more to follow.

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Let's pray.

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The Lord Jesus looked down from His cross.

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And after addressing the whole multitude and saying, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,

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in His succeeding statements, He began to narrow His focus.

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Until finally, in this statement, you see Him speaking to those right at the foot of His cross.

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And then He concludes His time of suffering, speaking just to the Father,

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into Thy hands I commit my spirit.

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It is finished.

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And friend, when He died, the grace of God burst forth.

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And in this Savior, there's all you need.

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As He looks down from His cross, as it were this morning, He looks beyond Mary and the others,

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and He sees that other one at the foot of His cross.

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He sees you.

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And you're the focus of His vision. His eyes look upon you.

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He waits for your response.

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Will it be to trust Him, to love Him?

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Oh, how can you do anything else?

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Is it to give yourself to Him? Of course.

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Does He not deserve more than that?

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Give Him your heart this morning.

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Let Him care and understand and provide for your needs.

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Oh Father, may the hearts that are broken, that are weary, that are sinful, that are tired, that are oppressed,

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find at the cross today what they need for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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I invite you to take your hymnal and turn with me to a closing hymn as we sing about the Lamb of God

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and the fact that our faith looks up to Him, the Lamb of Calvary.

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And if today you would trust the Savior as your own,

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and receive Him into your heart to forgive your sins and to bring to you the gift of eternal life,

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would you slip out from where you're seated and come?

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Our elders and staff will be here waiting to pray with you, to talk with you.

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Maybe your need lies elsewhere than salvation.

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Perhaps as a child of God, you're in need today of someone to pray with you regarding that burden you've borne.

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Or your heart is aching and lonely and distressed.

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And oh, if someone could pray with you, there are people who will be here to pray with you this morning.

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We invite you to come quickly at the very first word and the first verse.

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Slip out from where you are. Pay attention to no one but to Jesus.

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As we sing about Him, let your faith look up to Him, the Lamb of Calvary. Come now.

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