Each week it is my prayer that God would lead me to a message that He can use to touch our hearts, draw us closer to Him, and make us better servants of our Lord. I like simplicity. Things that are difficult or complicated often “boggle” my mind. But, I fear that we often oversimplify the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have heard preachers say, and I have said many times, “Jesus bled and died for us.” Well, while that is true, it does not fully set forth all that was involved in His sacrificial death. We talk about His crucifixion and consider that it began with prayer and ultimate arrest in Gethsemane and lasted until He “bowed his head and gave up the ghost” on Calvary, but it began before that. Listen to I Peter 1:18-20: “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; (19) But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: (20) Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you . . . ” What does it say? Jesus was “foreordained before the foundation of the world . . . ” to go to the cross. Before God ever created this world, in His heart and mind Jesus was already on the cross. Remember, with God everything is an eternal present tense. There is no past, present, or future. When Adam sinned, in the heart of God the price for sin was already paid, and He demonstrated it. Hear what God said to Satan (the serpent) in Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” This is the first promise of a coming Redeemer for all mankind. Then God demonstrated what He had just said in Genesis 3:21: "Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” I personally want to believe that God clothed Adam and Eve in the skin of a lamb. Do you know what this is? It is the innocent dying for the guilty. II Corinthians 5:21: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Jesus was and is the innocent Lamb of God who willingly gave Himself as the sacrifice for guilty mankind on the cross. But before we talk about the cross I want us to see some of the other aspects of the sacrifice of Jesus that we don’t often consider when we simply say, “Jesus died for the lost.” Look at Philippians 2:5-8. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: (6) Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: (7) But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: (8) And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

I. HE SET ASIDE EQUALITY -- VS. 6.

II. HE MADE HIMSELF OF NO REPUTATION -- VS. 7.

III. HE WAS MADE IN THE LIKENESS OF MEN -- VS. 7.

IV. HE HUMBLED HIMSELF -- VS. 8.

V. HE BECAME OBEDIENT UNTO THE DEATH OF THE CROSS -- VS. 8.

VI. HE WENT TO THE CROSS.