Good Friday 2020

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This weekend, yesterday, a group of people gathered in a synagogue in Pittsburgh to worship God is like we're doing here. And a gunman who said that he hates Jewish people came in and by latest reports killed 11 of them. One of them was 97 years old. And in addition to very important questions that are sometimes raised in polarizing ways these days about the need for armed security or death penalty or gun control. And so there are other questions that are more timeless and I think more troubling because they remind us that in our common humanity, we are up against something that human ingenuity and politics and ideology cannot seem to fix. An author named Fleming Rutledge put it like this, something is wrong with the world and needs to be set right. And we wonder when stories like this gain our attention, which they do periodically. Where's God? And we wonder if life can be snuffed out so suddenly and with so much hatred and so unfairly then does life actually mean anything anyway? And will there ever be justice really? And how should we respond? And for people who follow Jesus. Such questions always lead oddly to the cross where Jesus died to this place where we believe somehow suffering and God and death have met.

The Symbol of the Cross

By Chris Santasiere

- Thank you for joining us from your homes -

And thank you to the Perkins for welcoming us in to their home, single sisters for welcoming us into their home, Zillmans into their home, Shelleys into their home. -

People have died every day, ever recorded history, and yet one death stands out in a way that is quite unique. One day a man died, and ever since then time has been divided up into the people who live before him and the people who came after him. The life of every human being now is dated from the death of that one man. Every day in our world, people die about two every second, 105 every minute, 56 million a year, every way imaginable. Death, violence, disaster. Old age. Last year 154 people died of selfie related accidents, but one day a man died for you. A good man, very good man. The best man

Summary: For Christians, the cross is not a symbol of pain and death, but of love and life.

A hard death, very hard death, the worst death out of love for you, a very great love in our day. There's a big question about whether we live in a story, whether our universe has any meaning or is just kind of a cosmic accident, whether you were made by a God and the object of his self sacrificing love, or whether that idea is just folly. One day the apostle Paul was writing to the church at Corinth. We're looking at this letter as the church and he put it like this for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Paul here divides all humanity into two groups of people. He says there are those who are perishing and there are those who are being saved and you understand this is not kind of a crude threat just to get people to endorse a particular religion. It is not a call to manipulate people to make some kind of an emotional commitment. It is an observation that you are an unceasing spiritual being and you will either move toward God and all that is good and noble and Holy or you will move the other way.

Believe it or not, Easter is this coming week! • Our Good Friday service will be happening this Friday evening at 7:30 PM • Then Easter worship service, one week from Today, at 10:30 AM - Excited to announce that all of our sister churches in the RMR will be joining us online - Also, we all have created a unique way to spread some joy and encourage our neighbors and friends this week, while also inviting them to our Easter service • Visit denverchurchofchrist.org and click on our BLOG. Then scroll down and click on ‘Want to egg someone’s house?’ for details - You can find out more details about these events, as well other events this week, like our Thursday noon prayer time, on our website at denverchurchofchrist.org • While there, don’t forget to check on the BLOG tab - Daily, new, inspiring content is arriving there: - Finally 2 items folks have been asking about: • Due to COVID-19 our Marriage Retreat weekend was cancelled - We wanted to let you know we are currently preparing a special online marriage workshop on that same sat, - April 25 - morning • This event will be FREE and friends are welcome! • Details will be posted soon our church website. • Also due to COVID-19, we have decided to push our missions collection from May back to September - Wanted to make you aware for your own planning purposes - As we wrap up • We know folks are hurting, may need a listening ear, someone to talk to, someone to pray with - If that’s you, please text the word HELLO to 720.571.8979 - And we will be sure and connect you to one of our ministry staff members.• And typically, we linger in fellowship long after service ends - Since we can’t do that physically now, we have set up a virtual fellowship zoom room - If you’d like to have some extra fellowship time, you can find a button to join that time on our dcc homepage - On behalf of the entire Denver CoC staff, we miss you and love you and are praying for you continually • And we look forward to seeing you online next week for Easter service!

It’s amazing how people, countries and companies are defined by symbols. For instance, the United States as is most countries is symbolized by our flag; red, white and blue; stars and stripes. The Nike Company is linked to the “swoosh” symbol. As soon as you see it, you know that it’s Nike. They’re inseparable. A few years back, the rock musician Prince legally changed his name from Prince to a symbol he drew up. He wanted that symbol to become his identity.

And Paul says that those who are being saved are being saved, not by themselves, but by God, by the power of God, but that that power comes unexpectedly through a cross, through the cross. It's a measure of the significance of Jesus, his death, that we would never refer to other means of death that way we would never talk about the gun or the knife or the gallows because nobody would know which one that you mean, but if anybody says the cross, even though countless thousands of people died on countless thousands of crosses, everybody knows exactly who's cross you're talking about this. Jesus was a good man. I know hardly anybody who had argued about this. A lot of what we have come to admire in our world about humility or about the virtue of forgiveness or about a GAAP, a love, particularly love for the marginalized, for the vulnerable, for the leper, for the beggar, for the sinner comes to us primarily through this man's life and teaching. He was not political. He was not even really religious in the conventional sense, but his message of devotion to God was threatening to both institutions as he knew it would be,

And ironically, it was Rome Earth's greatest form of government that elected to crucify him. Rome was very good at teaching people how to die, but this is crucial. All four gospels record this. Jesus himself insisted the crucifixion was not something that anybody was doing to him, but rather it was something that he himself chose. You said, no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This command I received from my father, nobody has ever said things like this.

He was executed on a cross by the Romans on a Friday and that was the end of his story until three days later when it was not and word got around that Jesus had flunked death and his followers began to go back and think about what he had taught and how he lived and they began to reexamined those Hebrew scriptures that we share with the people in that synagogue in Pittsburgh and they began to ask God for guidance and it began to Dawn on them that the cross, which of course at first looked like disaster failure, humiliation. The end was instead kind of like the missing piece of a puzzle. It pulled everything together. It made sense of everything in an odd way, nobody could have ever predicted it and yet once you got it, it was inevitable

;

In his own life and teaching Jesus was what might be called the great reversal. Blessed are those that the world thinks is unblessed the least or the most, the poor or the rich, the first or the last. You got to die in order to live in weakness, his strength in serving his greatness. And now his cross becomes kind of the great exchange where this reversal happens, where it can happen for any human being. I come here and I exchange my guilt for his innocence and my woundedness for his healing and my weakness for his strength and my brokenness for his wholeness and my death for his life. The cross says the message of the cross, that something is wrong with this world and needs to be set right and only God could do it. And he does it strangely above all at a cross. Now we're beginning this series called cross examine. What were we trying to examine our life and our world in our faith. And so in light of the cross, and today, all I want

September 2, 2001

To do is to tell you the message of the cross as best I can. One of the songs that we sing that we just sang called the passion that I love as a number of phrases right out of the Bible about the meaning of the cross. And I want to just try to walk through as best I can, what some of them mean. And then I want to invite you to make the great exchange.

I want to invite you today to come to the cross and to give your life to this man, to lay it down, to let it go, to follow him with everything you have so that you may be one of those who are being saved and not one of those who are perishing. Here then is the message of the cross, the meaning of the cross at the cross. Our Guild is declared pardoned. Jesus, his friend Peter, who knew all about guilt and knew all about the cross says this about the crucifixion when they hurled insults at Jesus. He did not retaliate when he suffered. He made no threats. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness

By his wounds. You have been healed. We all know about guilt. We don't like thinking about it. We all know many years ago we had moved from California to live in Chicago and I was going to go speak at our new church for the first time and this was a big deal. There would be a lot of people there. I was eager to try to do as well as I could and I prepped a little too long so I was a little late when I left our house to drive to the church and I was only about six blocks from the house when I saw flashing red lights in the rear view mirror of my car. I'm a way to the church where I work to preach the gospel and I was in a big hurry so I pulled over quickly. But the officer just sat in his squad car for awhile like they do sometimes and I was in a rush so I thought I would get out and go talk to him, save him the trip to my car.

Introduction

They kind of don't like it when they, when you do that and he got on his loudspeakers that get back in your car. So I did and waited for it felt like a long time. And finally he walked slowly over and I said to him, officer, I'm a pastor. I work at a church. I got a breach there soon. I'm running late, so let me save you some time. I'm guilty. I know I'm guilty, you know I'm guilty. We both know I'm guilty. So whenever you got to do, do it quickly cause I'm guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. And he said, Oh, this is very interesting.

I haven't said anything. I haven't even told you why it is that I pulled you over. And all I can say before I say a word, all you can say is I'm guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. Why are you so eager to confess, pastor? What is it that guilty off? And I thought this is great. 10,000 police in Chicago and I get Colombo

As an officer. I'm on my way to church. I got a priest there. I'm a pastor. So when I said, well, I'm guilty, I was speaking theologically, you know, I'm guilty, you're guilty. We're all guilty. Really. When it comes right down to it, don't you think officer. And he asked to see my license that I showed it to him cause I had just moved from California. He said, Oh you're from California. I might have known. The reason I stopped you is there's a stop sign behind this. When you came to it, your car only slowed down. Didn't stop. It just rolled right on through. Now I don't know what they do in California, in California, maybe that's okay. But this is Illinois and in Illinois stop

It’s also amazing to me, that of all the symbols Christians could choose from to identify themselves with, we have chosen the cross. Think of the other symbols that Christians could have chosen over the ages. We could have chosen the Bible, a dove, a crown, a manger, or an empty tomb. But Christians have chosen the cross.

Means stop. And I said, you must be so proud of your state. And we had a very interesting conversation about political corruption in the little Island. The whole thing didn't go well from there and I ended up moving back here to California.

[Inaudible]

Y'all know what that's like when you look in the rear view mirror and you see those flashing lights and it doesn't just happen when you drive. The message of the cross is something is wrong with this world and it needs to be set right. But that something is not just outside of us. It's not just or even primarily something that economics or political politics or ideology is not primarily technological or biological. It is wrongness and ill will and moral failure inside me and you, and we know this and it's not just ms. Stop signs is this scene turning a blind eye to the poor, day after day, bad parenting, cruelty, lust, gossip, judgment, racial injustice, hate, and it's in here. It's not just out there,

This choice is even more amazing when we consider the horror and torture with which crucifixion was regarded in the ancient world. Crucifixion was invented by barbarians, but taken over by the Greeks and perfected by the Romans. It has been regarded as the cruelest method of execution ever practiced because it delayed death until the maximum torture had been inflicted on its victim. It was possible for the victim to hang on the cross for days before dying very slowly of asphyxiation. The Roman Empire considered crucifixion such a heinous form of execution that they did not allow any Roman citizens to be executed in this manner except in extreme cases of treason. Cicero once said this about crucifixion: “To bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him is an abomination, to kill him is almost an act of murder: to crucify him is – What? There is no fitting word that can possibly describe so horrible a deed.” (Stott, p.24-25 The Cross of Christ) Crucifixion was so painful and such a horrible way to be tortured and killed that a new word had to be created to describe it. The word “excruciating” was invented to describe the pain and agony of the cross. The word “excruciating” literally means “out of the cross”. (Strobel p.197-198 The Case For Christ)

But also the message of the cross is that in Jesus on the cross, God had done something. Nobody could ever have expected. Followers of Jesus notice something as they puzzled over the cross. When Jesus was crucified, everybody was guilty. Pilot was guilty of great injustice. The Pharisees were guilty of envy. The soldiers were guilty of cruelty. The crowds were guilty of mockery. Even the disciples were guilty of cowardice and denial and betrayal. Everybody was guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, and Jesus was the only innocent one. But if he'd avoided the cross, if he to led the crowds in some great revolution or simply run away and they'd all gotten mad and revolt and Romo to come down with an iron fist, there would've been blood everywhere. And so instead he went to the cross, he allowed himself to be judged guilty so that the blow would fall on him alone. And over time they came to see that this had staggering implications that in the cross we see the vast guilt of human sin, ugliness, violence and injustice and hatred. But we also see God's determination in Jesus to offer mercy and forgiveness and ultimate cost to himself when he's dying to the people that kill them.

And if you come to the cross and make this great exchange, you don't have to go through your life anymore or your death. Maureen, about fashion lights in the rear view mirror, Paul said there is therefore now after the cross, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. One day a man died for you. This is the message of the cross in the cross. Jesus, his blood gives us life. His friend John wrote these words. If we walk in the light as he is in the light,

Yet, with the horror of the cross and crucifixion, knowing that Jesus died such a death, Christians chose the cross as a symbol to identify themselves with. John Stott writes that, “It seems certain that, at least from the second century onwards, Christians not only drew, painted and engraved the cross as a pictorial symbol of their faith, but also made the sign of the cross on themselves and others.”

Okay,

We have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son purifies us from all sin. Now it's kind of a strange image for us. I know the new Testament, if you know much about the Bible is filled with references to the blood of Jesus, the writer of access that the church was bought with his blood. Paul says that we have been reconciled to God and each other through his blood. The writer of Hebrews says that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin and we live in a pretty bloodless world. We stay pretty far away from butcher shops and so and so in our day. People will sometimes find that image read to be gruesome or distasteful and I understand, but the ancient world was the bloody place. They knew all about blood and people were vividly aware that it was through death, through the eating of dead animals or dead plants that living creatures were given life, that life came through death. They were very aware of this. And so the practice of sacrifice offering these sacrifices that were going to be eaten to the gods was universal in the ancient world

It’s been this way since the beginning of the church, Christians have identified themselves with the cross. For Christians, the cross doesn’t represent pain, torture, and death. The cross symbolizes God’s love for us and the new life we can have through Him. Leave it to God to turn something as ugly as the cross into a beautiful symbol of love and life.

And one of the striking teachings that came through Jesus's people through Israel, through the prophets was that this ritual of sacrifice was not at its heart what God really wanted from the human race. The Psalmist says, you do not delight in sacrifice or I would bring it, you do not take pleasure and vert offering my sacrifice. Oh God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. God will not desire. That's what God wanted most of all, and that's what on the cross Jesus somehow offers on the cross. Jesus, when it says he shed his blood, it means simply he gave his life, he offered the sacrifice that would end all sacrifices on the cross. He became the lamb that was slain on a sacrifice comes life. We have a friend named max who was a medic during world war II and he would have to go into battlefields where soldiers lay and try to save them often with blood transfusions as they lay there dying medics like match.

We're charged to do this not only with allied soldiers from the U S and so, but also to save the lives of soldiers who are fighting for Nazi Germany that were dying, but they devised a system. Max told me about this once I thought it was quite clever. They would save blood that had been had been given to them by donors with a Jewish name, and when there was a Nazi soldier dying from loss of blood, max would say, you can be saved, but only if you are willing to receive blood from a Jewish donor. And he said, sometimes the soldier in his stubbornness and pride would say, no, I'd rather die. And they'd let him pass out and then they would save him. Anyway, Jesus' followers as they reflect, another cross came to realize that his blood poured out. That is his life poured out was God's own sacrifice, God's own very costly promise to forgive and to cleanse. And it was as a matter of history, in fact, the spread of the message of the cross that stopped the practice of the sacrifice of animals throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. One day a man died for you.

Our Scripture text this morning is , and picks up at the point where Jesus has been led to place of execution along with two other criminals.

This is the message of the cross through the cross. The grave is overthrown. Part of the message of the cross is that there is a great battle going on in our world amongst vast powers and in our hearts somewhere. We know this good and evil, guilt and redemption, love and hate, heaven and hell, and one of those powers is death, deaths and awful thing. There was a study done a few decades ago of sympathy cards. Often when somebody dies, we will send the family a sympathy card. When someone dies and we send a sympathy card, guess what word has never used on the card?

”Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals- one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. The people stood watching, and the rulers sneered at him. They said, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.’ The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, ‘If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.’ There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and save us!’ But the other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said ‘since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’…It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ When he had said this, he breathed his last.”

Death

Never says, I'm so sorry that this person died because it's just too ugly a word. We'll find a way of saying it. We all know in our hearts, death is too much for us. Another power is named by the viable sin. Sins often trivialized in our day, but we saw it yesterday in Pittsburgh. The writer, Lance Morrow has a fascinating essay on the difference between two words, wrong and evil. True confession for a moment. How many of you have ever told somebody, friends, sibling, parents, boss, somebody, you're wrong. Anybody here? How many of you have ever told somebody you're evil? Don't raise your hands on that one. I don't even want to know wrong. Suggest an error that can be fixed or computer goes wrong. Toaster goes wrong. Evil is different. Computer on go evil. Only people do that. Evil is too much for us. The word evil tells us, reminds us of what we know. We live in a universe where we are not in control. What happened in that synagogue yesterday was not just wrong, it was evil

As we look at the cross this morning, we will see three things that the cross symbolizes. Three things that show the love of God and the new life we can have in Him.

And this is why Paul says our struggle is not against flesh and blood. People keep getting this wrong. We think it is. Your enemy is not people. Whatever their race or creed or sexuality or color or behavior, something is wrong with the world and needs to be fixed. And the cross is the place somehow where the great destructive powers, sin, guilt, death sought to crush Jesus and all that is good through cruelty and hate. But they did not realize they did not realize that he, that carpenter, that rabbi could absorb all they had and triumph by loving and forgiving to the end. They did their worst and God defeated them. Not through course of power or mutual hatred, but with suffering, love. And so Paul says that Jesus, having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. There are forces in this world too much for any individual political systems, broken cultures, ideas, systems, the power of rampant addiction, which is simply demonic and the destruction that it yields. Idolatries spiritual forces that are real but hard to name, and they get people to throw away and dam their own lives in the most trivial ways.

Just [inaudible]

I. GOD’S GREAT SACRIFICE

Watch TV, use porn. No myself with drink, worship, money, tolerate deception, cherish bitterness, live cynical

Until you die, a gilded parody of who you were supposed to be and you never even though, but Paul says on the cross, these powers met their match. The Jesus has power to absorb suffering and still love was stronger than their power to inflict suffering, instill hate. None of the rulers of this age understood it for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Who could make this up? They could stop his lungs from breathing, couldn't stop his heart from loving. They didn't know. They didn't know on the cross really. Death died. Hate died. Sin died. Loved one. So at the cross I exchange all of my many defeats for this one. Great victory one day. Amen died for you.

One definition I like of sacrifice is to give up something of great value for the betterment of someone else. We don’t hear a lot about sacrifice anymore. In our society, everyone feels that they’re entitled to everything without having to sacrifice, without having to give up anything. The one place that we commonly hear about sacrifice though is on the baseball field. Players are asked to sacrifice themselves as an out to move a runner from one base to another or get a runner from third to home for the betterment of the team. More and more that’s becoming an “old school” philosophy because individuals want the glory and attention with hitting the big home run or getting the big hit. If you watch a baseball game and you see someone sacrifice themselves for a teammate, that person will get just as many congratulations as the guy who hits the home run.

This is the message of the cross on the cross we see the measure of God's love for us. We all love stories. Just part of what it means to be human and the story we love the most. The one that keeps coming back is the story that one day a man died for, somebody else died for somebody he loved very much. And that's the story of saving private Ryan and Les Miserables and a tale of two cities and the thousand other stories when our children were very small, we were in a long car ride once and they were getting sleepy. And my wife was glad cause she was home with them full time in those days. And if they all went to sleep, it meant we could have a few moments of peace and quiet in the car. And so to lull them to sleep, I told them a story, a story about a Prince who is brave and handsome but quite Hardy and his horse who is noble and humble and love that Prince way more than the Prince deserved. And it's a really good story. But I got a little carried away. And at the climax of the story, there was a great battle where there was an arrow headed for the Prince and it would've killed him. But the noble horse jumped in the way and took that arrow in his own heart, and the Prince realized at the end how good and noble his friend horse was. But now it was too late and the horse died in the Prince's arms and the kids were sobbing in the backseat of the car

And Nancy said, really? The horse died. Y'all had to make the horse die. I could have gotten a few moments of peace with the kids sleeping, but Oh no, no, you Mister, look at me. The story. Tell

Her you had to break their hearts by making a horse die. So the way the story goes and the message of the cross is the reason this story is in escapable. The reason that it is embedded in our literature is that it is embedded in our universe and it is embedded in our hearts. Paul said, very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die, but God demonstrates his love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus died for everybody.

The cross is where God’s great sacrifice took place. It’s the place where God the Father sent His Son, Jesus to die so that you and I could live. That’s the ultimate sacrifice.

Jesus died for those people who were shot in that synagogue yesterday. Jesus died for that man who shot those people in that synagogue yesterday. I don't understand that. Love, wherever you are, wherever you think you are on the moral scale of humanity, he died out of love for you at the cross. He exchanges his death for our life out of his love. One day a man died for you. Another unique thing about Jesus, his death is that it brings people to a decision, a crossroads like no other death. And and for 2000 years now, people have been hearing the message of the cross and then kind of unexpectedly offered it, faces them with a decision. How will I respond to this? What will I do? How will I live my life now? What will my posture be towards this man? And some people reject the message and call it folly. And some people procrastinate. Some people find ways to distract themselves. We're real good at that. But some people say yes, they come to the cross and they bend their knee and they give their heart and they surrender their lives to this man and I want to invite you to do that today,

To meet him at the cross to make the great exchange his life for yours. There's a little card that you got when you came in and you can pull it out. Now it just says, I have decided to follow Jesus and there's a statement that Paul made a couple of thousand years ago and this can be you. He said, I have been crucified with Christ and I, my ego, my selfish life. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me,

Two summers ago, I took a group of high school students to Los Angeles for a CIY Conference and then onto Ensenada, Mexico for a mission trip. We had our own church service that Sunday in Mexico. Instead of preaching a sermon, the people at CIY decided to show us a short video that illustrated God’s great sacrifice of Jesus on the cross:

Okay,

And gave himself for me. And this can be your crucifixion. With Jesus day,

It’s the story of a man and his family, specifically his son, who was just a small boy. The man had the job of raising and lowering the bridge that was part of the railroad system so boats could go through. The little boy was wide-eyed with excitement, and he clapped his hands with glee when the huge bridge went up at the beck and call of his mighty father. He watched with wonderment as the huge boats steamed down the river. Twelve o’clock came, and his father put up the bridge. There were no trains due for a good while, and they went out a couple of hundred feet on a catwalk out over the river to an observation deck. They sat down, opened their brown bag, and began to eat their lunch. The time whirled by, and suddenly they were drawn instantly back to reality by the shrieking of a distant train whistle. The man looked at his watch and realized that it was time for the next train to come through which would be carrying many passengers. He knew he had just enough time, so without panic but with alacrity he told his son to stay where he was. He leaped to his feet, jumped to the catwalk, ran back, climbed the ladder to the control room, went in, put his hand on the huge lever that controlled the bridge, looked up the river and down to see if any boats were coming, as was his custom, and then looked down to see if there were any beneath the bridge. And suddenly he saw a sight that froze his blood and caused his heart to leap into his throat. His boy! His boy had tried to follow him to the control room and had fallen into the great, huge gear box that had the monstrous gears that operated this massive bridge. His left leg was caught between the two main gears, and the father knew that if he pushed that lever his son would be ground in the midst of eight tons of whining, grinding steel. His eyes filled with tears of panic. His mind whirled. What could he do? He saw a rope there in the control room. He could rush down the ladder and out the catwalk, tie off the rope, lower himself down, extricate his son, climb back up the rope, run back into the control room, and lower the bridge. No sooner had his mind done that exercise than he knew--he knew there wasn’t time. He’d never make it, and there were many people on that train. Suddenly he heard the whistle again, this time startlingly closer. And he could hear the clicking of the locomotive wheels on the track, and he could hear the rapid puffing of the train. What could he do? What could he do! There were many people, but this was ... this was his son, this was his only son. He was a father! He knew what he had to do, so he buried his head in his arm and he pushed the gear forward. The great bridge slowly lowered into place just as the express train roared across. He lifted up his tear-smeared face and looked straight into the flashing windows of that train as they flashed by one after another. He saw men reading the afternoon paper, a conductor in uniform looking at a large vest-pocket watch, ladies sipping tea out of teacups, and little children pushing long spoons into plates of ice cream. Nobody looked in the control room. Nobody looked at his tears. Nobody, nobody looked down to the great gear box. He had sacrificed his son for the people on the train.

You simply make this commitment. I no longer am in charge of my own life. I identify with Jesus. I ask him to forgive me through the cross and become my guide and my companion and my friend. And you can do that today. Now if you have already done this, you do not need to do it again. In some churches, some people get anxious about God and they keep converting just to be on the safe side. You do not have to do that. It's kind of like getting married once is enough, but you may want to ask God's help today to renew your devotion and to renew your love and he'd love to do that. But it may be that you've never made the great exchange and today is your day.

That video had a big impact on me. It put the reality of the cross and the sacrifice that God made for me so much clearer. It made me so much more thankful. But God the Father wasn’t the only who sacrificed. Jesus, made a huge sacrifice, willingly giving his own life. In as the written notice is fastened above Jesus’ head that reads “This is the King of the Jews”, it was the absolute truth. Jesus is the King of the Jews and the King of the Gentiles and the King over all Creation. Yet, he gave up his authority and power as the King to die on the cross for us.

And if you're making that decision, I want to invite you to sign on the dotted line and you can take this card home and keep it with you in your Bible someplace. And then gang, in a few weeks we're going to baptize folks. We're going to celebrate baptism and we're going to have a cross up like this at every one of our venues. Wherever you are listening to this, and we're going to invite everybody who's getting baptized to write down their sins on a piece of paper and before they get baptized, to pin them to this cross as an expression of the reality that in the cross our sin is forgiven and we have been set free and there is therefore now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. And so I want to invite you to make a great exchange right now. Would you bow your heads and pray together with me? And if you want to give your life to Jesus today, you can simply say words like these words, Jesus. Now, today I meet you at the cross. I Marvel at the cross.

I laid down my sin and my guilt and my burden and my old life at the cross.

, “Who, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death- even death on a cross.”

I laid down my sin and my guilt and my burden and my old life at the cross.

I confess and repent of my ego [inaudible]

, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

I asked you to forgive me and to heal my wounds. Jesus, I put you in charge of my life

And I will be your follower in this life as you enable me and then your friend forever and ever I pray in Jesus name. Amen.

The question we need to ask ourselves today in light of God’s sacrifice for us, is what do we need to sacrifice for God? Are we willing to sacrifice the thing we hold most dearly? Are we willing to even sacrifice our very lives? Are we willing to sacrifice for the advancement of the Kingdom of God? Are we willing to sacrifice so that others may come to know Christ?

Jesus told the disciples in , “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” The cross is filled with sacrifice. Are you ready to follow Jesus?

II. GOD’S HOLY SUBSTITUTE

What is central to the cross is that Jesus was taking our place, taking our punishment for our sins, when he died on the cross. Instead of it being you on the cross, Jesus was substituted in your place.

In the Old Testament, various offerings were given to God. There were daily, weekly, monthly, annual and occasional offerings. The book of Leviticus details five main types of offerings: burnt, cereal, peace, sin and guilt offerings. Excluding the cereal offering, the other four were blood offerings. In these blood offerings, the worshipper would bring the offering, laid his hands on it and killed it. The priest then applied the blood, burnt some of the flesh and arranged for the rest to be prepared for a meal. The animal being sacrificed was symbolic of being the substitute taking the penalty for the worshipper’s sin which was death by the shedding and sprinkling of his blood. The problem with animal offerings and sacrifices was that for a substitute to be effective, it must be an appropriate equivalent. Animal sacrifices could not atone for human beings because humans are more valuable than animals.

God didn’t need another person to be a substitute. He needed one person who could be the substitute for all mankind. He needed a substitute that was pure, innocent, sinless and blameless. The only being with those qualities is God himself. The only option for God then was to have His Son Jesus come and live as a man and die as a substitute for all men. It’s the only way that God’s judgment for sin and his mercy to man could be fulfilled. It is clear that Jesus met this criteria for even the criminals hanging next to him on the cross realized in vs. 41 that “this man has done nothing wrong.”

, “Day after day every priest stands and performs religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest (Jesus) had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.”

Using Old Testament terms, Jesus is our sin offering. , “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.” Jesus was substituted to take our place and our punishment for our sin.

History records that during the Civil War, many acts of violence were committed by both the armies of the north and the south. Once such act occurred in October of 1862 in the town of Palmyra, Missouri. According to W. E. Sutterfield, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Palmyra, the town was under military law at the time....occupied by one of the armies involved in this conflict.

The commander of the army ordered ten men shot in reprisal for the work of an informer in the town who leaked information to the enemy. Several men were being detained in Palmyra jail as prisoners of war at that time, and ten were selected from among them. One of the number was William T. Humphrey, the father of several children. His wife pleaded for his release because of the children and her poor physical condition. Because of this, the commanding officer struck Humphrey’s name from the list and chose the name of Hiram Smith, a young man without a family. Hiram agreed to take the place of Humphrey, stating that perhaps it was better for a single man to die than a man with a family.

The ten men were shot on October 17, 1862 in what has come to be known as the “Palmyra massacre.” At the Mount Pleasant Church cemetery, there is a stone erected at the grave of Hiram Smith by G. W. Humphrey, the son of the reprieved man. It reads: “This monument is dedicated to the memory of HIRAM SMITH, the hero who sleeps beneath the sod here, who was shot at Palmyra, October 17, 1862 as a substitute for William T. Humphrey, my father.”

The whole reason we need to have Jesus as our substitute is summed up by a Christian author when he writes:

“The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.” (Stott, p. 160 The Cross of Christ)

III. GOD’S PATHWAY FOR SALVATION

The mother of a nine-year-old boy named Mark received a phone call in the middle of the afternoon. It was the teacher from her son’s school.

"Mrs. Smith, something unusual happened today in your son’s third grade class. Your son did something that surprised me so much that I thought you should know about it immediately." That was not a particularly comforting thing to say to her.

The teacher continued, "Nothing like this has happened in all my years of teaching. This morning I was teaching a lesson on creative writing. And as I always do, I tell the story of the ant and the grasshopper:

"The ant works hard all summer and stores up plenty of food. But the grasshopper plays all summer and does no work.

"Then winter comes. The grasshopper begins to starve because he has no food. So he begs, ’Please Mr. Ant, you have so much food. Please let me eat, too.’" Then I say, "Boys and girls, your job is to write the end of the story."

"Your son, Mark, raised his hand. ’Teacher, may I draw a picture?’

"’Well, yes, Mark, if you like, you may draw a picture. But first you must write the ending to the story.’

"As in all the years past, most of the students said the ant shared his food through the winter, and both the ant and the grasshopper lived. A few children wrote, ’No, Mr. Grasshopper. You should have worked in the summer. Now, I have just enough food for myself.’ So the ant lived and the grasshopper died.

"But your son ended the story in a way different from any other child, ever. He wrote, ’So the ant gave all of his food to the grasshopper; the grasshopper lived through the winter. But the ant died.’

"And the picture? At the bottom of the page, Mark had drawn three crosses."

Salvation lies at the foot of the cross. The cross is not just a symbol of God’s sacrifice, or God’s substitute, but it is a symbol of God’s salvation. It was on the cross that our pathway to salvation was cleared. It was on the cross that our sins were cleansed. It was on the cross that our victory was won. , “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”

Like a bulldozer clearing dirt and rubble to make a road, the cross cleared a pathway between us and God. characterizes this when the curtain of the temple is torn in two. No longer is there any separation between man and God, the path has been made clear.

Conclusion

Sometimes even though we have a clear path, we fail to take it. When I left to go to college in August of 1993, my best friend and roommate left Virginia Beach, Virginia and headed to Lincoln, Illinois. We had a mapped out path to take. We had maps. But we veered off the path. We stopped wherever the mood took us. We looked at caverns in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia and West Virginia. We went two hours out of our way to find a dirt road that was located on the map in the mountains. We went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; a state that we shouldn’t even have come close to, to attend a Pirates/Cardinals baseball game. We drove around the state of Ohio looking for a monster truck show and ended up at a county fair. We visited the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis. We got lost who knows how many times and decided to have a diet only of Dairy Queen the entire trip. Our path was clear, but we failed to take it.

The cross has made our path clear to God and yet we fail to take it. We try many different routes to get to God. But the Bible speaks of only one route to God and only one route to salvation. That route goes through Jesus and through the cross.

The cross is the symbol that Christians have identified themselves with for centuries. It is a symbol of love and life. Today, we have seen that it is a symbol of God’s Great Sacrifice, God’s Holy Substitute, and God’s Pathway for Salvation. An illustration that is used often is that of the cross being a bridge that connects man to God. If you need to take Jesus as your Lord and Savior this morning, I ask you to walk down front this morning, walk across the bridge of the cross and give your life to God.

Good Friday 2020

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