Hello, thank you for joining me today for Give Him 15. I want to let you know right up front that we will

partake of communion together at the end of the post. So you may want to pause the recording and get

your bread and juice wine ready so we can do that together as I finish.

The title of our post today is Passion Week, The Winner.

God was well aware that the violence and pain of Calvary would be dreadful beyond description, dreadful beyond description.

Creation itself would hide its eyes, and the very foundations of the earth would shake.

God's heart would break, the angels would watch and shock and horror,

and the Son of God himself would cry out in anguish.

But in history's greatest irony, this violent death would also be Love's crowning act.

The dying man on the cross was also a seed. Millions of God's kids were in Christ's

womb, waiting to be born. Until the resurrection at Pentecost, his words in John 1224 were not fully understood.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,

it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Christ was the grain of wheat. We are the much fruit. Christ was the grain of wheat.

We are the much fruit.

Most people are confused about Christ's words.

It is finished uttered by him on the cross.

Hollywood's typical depiction of him, barely whispering with his last bit of strength,

it is finished, is inaccurate. The producers, of course, see this statement as Christ

announcing his death. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In the first place,

those were not his last words spoken on the cross. This was Christ's next to last statement.

His final words were, Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.

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