Dr McNulty was our Sabbath speaker at our Spring 2018 camp meeting. The Lord blessed him to clearly summarize the purpose of our ministry and the predicament of our Lord. Closure for Jesus is a ministry focused on helping men and women understand the cost of our salvation. Jesus is still longing to bring sin to an end, and could if we would understandingly and lovingly cooperate with Him.

<p>Dr McNulty was our Sabbath speaker at our Spring 2018 camp meeting. The Lord blessed him to clearly summarize the purpose of our ministry and the predicament of our Lord. Closure for Jesus is a ministry focused on helping men and women understand the cost of our salvation. Jesus is still longing to bring sin to an end, and could if we would understandingly and lovingly cooperate with Him.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Closure for Jesus

Norman McNulty

Why Jesus Needs Closure

The title for the message this morning is Why Jesus Needs Closure.

You know, when I went to Loma Linda, I took a religion class entitled God and Human Suffering.

A lot of times we think about suffering on a human level, and there's no doubt that there is untold suffering that humans experience ever since sin entered into the world.

But we often don't think about the suffering of God.

We think about our suffering, we think about our friends who are suffering, and yet we think that God just must have it so perfect sitting up in heaven where sin is not present.

I want to take you to Zechariah chapter 13 and we're going to read verses 6 and 7.

Here the Bible says, And 1 shall say unto him, Were these wounds in thine hands?

Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.

Awake, O sword, against my shepherd and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts.

Smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.

Now we understand that this verse, especially verse 7, describes how Jesus was the shepherd, and when he was smitten, those who followed him were scattered at the time of his death.

And in verse 6, when he is describing these wounded hands, this is now in the heavenly kingdom when people are asking Jesus, where did these wounds in your hands come from?

And he will say, I got them in the house of my own friends, of my own people.

And there will be an eternal reminder of the suffering of God by the wounds in the hands of Jesus that we will see throughout eternity.

Is it possible that we are continuing to wound Him today by our naive or even willful ignorance of the way he was treated in the past and of the way we are treating him today.

All too often as we long for Christ's second coming To put an end to our suffering, we forget how He suffers and how He has been wounded and what enormous suffering The long delay has caused Him in all of heaven.

You know, Ellen White has a statement in Education page 263, we're going to spend some time on this paragraph.

Ellen White says here, those who think of the result of hastening or hindering the gospel, think of it in relation to themselves and to the world.

You know, I just turned 40 a year ago and I guess I've lived long enough now to start to see people that I've grown up with face sickness and death.

Just A few months ago, a young lady that I went to school with died from cancer.

She went to medical school and she had a lifestyle medicine clinic.

1 of the nicest persons you'll ever meet.

Her husband was a Seventh-day Adventist pastor.

I understand a thousand people came to her funeral.

And the natural thing of course, and it's an appropriate thing to think, of how she suffered and how her family has suffered and will continue to suffer and how the coming of Jesus will bring an end to their sorrow.

I see a story of 1 of my friends from college that I went to school with, just today he posted how his young daughter is in the hospital facing a serious illness.

I think of other examples of people who have died too young, of broken homes, of unspeakable of broken homes, of unspeakable sadness that we face.

And because we are human, and because by faith only we can see heaven and eternal realities.

We tend to think about eternal realities with respect to what it will mean for us.

How when we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be.

And it's going to be a day of rejoicing and if we look around us in this world that we live in, just was it yesterday or the day before, another 10 students die in a school shooting here in the United States.

There is suffering and sadness that is clearly going on as a result of the fact that we live in a world of sin.

And I can t tell you how many times I have heard someone say, I m so looking forward to Jesus coming because then we won t have to deal with this anymore.

But have you ever thought about how Jesus feels?

How all of heaven feels as they look down upon this world of sin ever since Eve tasted of the fruit and Adam participated in that sin with her.

Have you ever thought how all of heaven feels when they look down upon this earth?

And now we're 6, 000 years into this world of sin and suffering and it's been 2, 000 years since Jesus made a provision for sin and Yet here we still are.

And Elmo White says, few think of its relation to God.

Few give thought to the suffering that sin has caused our creator.

Do you realize that Jesus suffers as long as this world continues?

Which raises the question, why hasn't he come?

If he is suffering, not only are we suffering, and yes we have moments of happiness and joy, and if we follow the Lord we should have lives of happiness and joy.

We can have a peace that passes understanding.

And yet the reality is that we face trials and sadness and sorrow and we think of that with respect to ourselves, But few, if any of us, think about how this is affecting God.

The quote continues in Education page 263.

But that suffering did not begin or end with His manifestation in humanity.

You know a lot of times we think heaven suffered when Jesus was hanging on the cross, and the Father and the Son were seemingly separated from each other, and Jesus can't feel the presence of his Father, but that suffering that heaven has felt began the moment that sin entered into the world and Ellen White says that this suffering did not end with his manifestation in humanity.

So in other words when Jesus ascends up into heaven in Psalms 24, it paints this beautiful picture of Jesus returning into heaven and the angels singing his praises and singing who is this King of Glory, the Lord of hosts, the Lord strong and mighty and so Jesus returns victoriously and yet the suffering that God and all of heaven experienced did not end when Jesus stepped back into the heavenly realm.

Yes he had gained the victory over the devil, but the last 2000 years are clear evidence that Satan still has a foothold on this planet.

He's still staking a claim, trying to make it appear as if he is the ruler of this world.

And so the suffering of heaven did not end with his manifestation in humanity.

You know we say that we love Jesus, right?

Nobody's going to say, oh I don't love Jesus.

The easiest way I can illustrate this would be to say this.

In your family relationship, if you're married, the person you're closest to is your spouse.

If you're a child, the closest relationship you have is to your siblings and your parents.

When you love the people you are closest to you your goal is to not bring suffering to them, right?

Your goal is to bring them joy peace and happiness by the grace of God And you pray that by God's grace, the love of God will be in your heart so that the love you show to those that are closest to you will not bring suffering to their lives.

So shouldn't it be that if we love Jesus, our goal would be to bring an end to the suffering that he experiences because of the reality that sin is still present on this planet.

Now the next sentence in this paragraph is very familiar and famous and is worth our time and reflection.

The cross is a revelation to our dull senses of the pain that from its very inception sin has brought to the heart of God.

Listen, I happen to have a medical degree.

You might think that you are the smartest farmer in town or the smartest mechanic in town.

There are certain things that you can do that I can't do that I can do as a doctor that you can't do.

So we all have areas of knowledge and expertise.

The cross is a revelation to our dull senses of the pain that sin has brought to the heart of God.

And you know, you may say, oh, I'm just gonna live my life, and what I do affects me, and it doesn't affect anybody else, and I'm just gonna do what I'm gonna do, and inevitably, your poor choices affect the people that are closest to you.

I've had family members that have made bad decisions who've ended up in jail, and we've had to deal with the fallout of their 4 choices because they were just going to live for themselves and they weren't going to live for anybody else.

And what they did wouldn't affect anybody else but themselves, and they lived for themselves.

And yet the reality is your bad decisions affect the people that are in your life.

And the same is true with respect to God.

We can say I'm not here for anybody else but myself, I'm just going to choose to live the way I want to live and I don't have anybody close to me.

But at the end of the day, let's just say hypothetically you didn't have any family, your poor choices bring pain to the heart of God and that should matter to you.

You know, I remember when I was maybe 10 years old, my father made a statement that I've always remembered.

He's like, you know, if we're not careful, we can become numb to the power of the cross.

That's just like, oh yeah, Jesus died for my sins.

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Why Jesus Needs Closure

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