Congratulations! You have won a wonderful prize! The holiday of a lifetime. Celebrating exactly one hundred year since Captain Scott’s doomed expedition to the South Pole, Arctic Enterprises will take you and two friends on an all expenses paid holiday in the Arctic circle, for a whole month just a few miles from the north pole! You’ll see polar bears. You’ll see the Northern Lights. You’ll see snow. Quite a lot of snow actually

And you have won unlimited spending money! Although to be fair, there aren’t any shops in the Arctic so there won’t be anything to spend your money on! But it’s the thought that counts

So who will you choose to take with you on this holiday of a lifetime. You can have two members of your family, or your closest friends. Decide now for me – who are you going to take?

So there you are in the Arctic on your holiday of a lifetime. We promised you snow – but I am afraid you are getting even more snow than you expected. An Arctic blizzard is raging outside your igloo. You and your two friends are trapped inside. You have just got in touch with Arctic Enterprises. And there is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you have seven days of food for the three of you! The bad news is that is seven days of minimum rations. In that extreme cold if you don’t eat that minimum ration each day then I am sad to say you will die. And I have some more good news and bad news for you. The good news is that help is on its way! But the bad news is that the blizzard is so bad that the caterpillar snowmobile with more food will take ten days to reach you.

So what are you going to do? Help is ten days away. But you and your two closest friends have only seven days of minimum rations left. What are you going to do?

I first told that story almost thirty years ago. Rob answered first. He was a policeman, on the staff of the police training academy in Hendon. Rob had just been on the front line of the Brixton riots. Rob was a strong man. I asked the question – what would you do? Rob answered very honestly. “We all know what we ought to do – but how many of us would have the guts to do it?”

You probably know the story of Captain Scott’s polar expedition. Still 400 miles from safety, the party was suffering with frostbite, snow blindness, hunger and exhaustion. One of the group was Laurence Oates. He was struggling with an old war wound and almost unable to walk. To give his companions a better chance, on 1th March 1912 Laurence Oates walked out of the tent into the blizzard. His last words were, “I am just going outside and may be some time”.

Would you do it? Would you give up your life to save the lives of your closest friends? I’d like to think that I would. But if it came to the crunch, would I?

It was just as hard, at least as difficult and painful, for Jesus to give up his life for us as it would have been for you and for me. This is how we know how much God loves us.

Romans 5:6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

While we were sinners, while we were still God’s enemies, Jesus chose to die for us.
Jesus did not have to die for us. Jesus chose to die for us.

JOHN 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Let me say it again. It was just as hard, at least as difficult and painful, for Jesus to give up his life for us as it would have been for you and for me. And nowhere is that more evident than when Jesus prays in Gethsemane.
Jesus Prays on the Mount of Olives
39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. 40 On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” 41 He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” 43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.
45 When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. 46 “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

“Take this cup from me”, Jesus says, THREE times – I don’t want to suffer, I don’t want to die!
Sweat like drops of blood!
So intense an experience even Jesus needed an angel to strengthen him!!! So deep, so sorrowful, such a sacrifice that even the Son of God needed an angel!!!

All alone – disciples asleep – Jesus abandoned!
“Yet not my will but yours be done!” Think of all the times we have said the opposite – done what we wanted instead of what God wanted – taken the easy way out – but Jesus does not. He is obedient unto death, even death on a cross!

This is how much God loves us!

ANY OTHER WAY (by Dave Sewell)

If there’s any other way, Father,
To bring the world back to you and to give men freedom,
If there’s any other way, Father,
Please tell me so!

If there’s any other way, Father,
But to take all the sin of the world on my shoulders,
If there’s any other way, Father,
Please tell me so!

For I know that the cross will be hard to bear
And I know I will have to be strong.
And the jeers of the crowd and the heat and the thirst
And the pain will go on and on.
But it isn’t the pain of the cross that will be
The worst thing I’ll have to bear.
But to know as the sin of the world rests on me,
That for the first time in my life, You won’t be there!

So if there’s any other way, Father,
To bring the world back to you and to give men freedom,
If there’s any other way, Father,
Please tell me so!

If there’s any other way, Father,
But the cross and the shame and the pain and the dying,
If there’s any other way, Father,
Your will be done. Your will be done.

ADRIAN SNELL – GETHSEMANE