Journey To The Cross

JOURNEY TO THE CROSS

John 19:16-18; Gal. 6:14

INTRODUCTION

A. HUMOR

1. It’s not real fun to get old, but you can make the best of it.

2. Knitting is a passion for a woman named Elizabeth, who is a caregiver for the elderly. When she brings her clients to doctor’s appointments, she knits while she waits.

3. Recently she showed a friend a beautiful scarf she had made. Her friend asked, “How long did it take to make that?”

4. She answered, “One stress test and one colonoscopy!”

B. IMPORTANCE OF THE CROSS

1. Os Guinness tells of a Jewish man who was imprisoned 15 years by Russian authorities for political dissidence, who became a Christian while in the terrible Gulag.

2. He was sustained throughout that long ordeal by His faith in the Savior and by the memory of his 4 year old son he hoped to see again one day.

3. When he was finally released, the man anticipated the reunion with heart-pounding excitement. How thrilled he was to notice, as he hugged his son, that his son was wearing a Cross!

4. He asked his son, 19 years old, just what the cross meant to him. His heart dropped at the answer, “Dad, for my generation, the cross is just a fashion statement.”

5. It’s a temptation for Christians today to try to fit the Cross into Society. Paul wasn’t ashamed of the Cross; he chose to make it front and center – all his hopes and affections entwined about it.

6. God forbid that we should ever view -- with a passionless eye or lethargic soul -- the sweet wonders of that Cross on which our Savior loved and died.

C. TEXT & THESIS

1. “So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. 17 Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle” John 19:16-18.

2. “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” Gal. 6:14.

I. WHY THE CROSS WAS SPECIAL

A. AN EMBARRASSMENT

1. Paul did NOT say, “I’ll not glory save in the DEATH of Christ,” but rather, “I’ll never glory, save in the CROSS of Christ.”

2. The term “Cross” would grate on the refined ears of the Galatians – it was like adoring the hangman’s gallows, the electric chair of execution, or the injection gurney of capital punishment.

3. It was connected to criminal disgrace. A family normally shrinks if one of its members has been executed for a crime.

4. ILLUS. The children of a prominent family decided to have their family history written up into a book. They hired a professional biographer to do the work. They warned him of the family’s “black sheep” problem: Uncle George had been executed in the electric chair for murder.

5. The biographer assured the children: “I can handle that situation so there will be no embarrassment. I’ll just say that ‘Uncle George occupied a chair of applied electronics at an important government institution. He was attached to his position by the strongest of ties and his death came as a real shock!’”

6. But Paul doesn’t try to soften or cloak Jesus’ shameful death; instead he “gloried” – (diff. trans.) “bragged, boasted, rejoiced, was proud” about it!

B. WHY WAS THE CROSS PRECIOUS? BECAUSE IT WAS JESUS’ CROSS!

1. Not just any old cross was precious, but that one that Jesus, Immanuel, died on! In Gen. 1:11, Jesus made the trees; He created them. Rev. 13:8 says He was “slain from the foundation of the world.” Thus, He was the One who fashioned the tree He was to die on. He caused His rain to nurture it and His sun to shine on it – knowing He would someday be impaled on it.

2. Jesus, of course, formed the iron ore that would used to make the nails and hammers. There was nothing used in the crucifixion that He did not have a hand in making!

II. CHRIST’S CROSS: 1ST TIME CARRIED?

A. THE TIMELESS CROSS

1. So when the Bible says that Jesus took up His cross, does that mean it was the first time He’d ever taken it up? No! He had borne that cross from all eternity! Hear the scripture again, “the Lamb SLAIN FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD!”

2. So was He first slain 2,000 years ago? No! EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE WAS LIVED WITH THAT GREAT EVENT IN MIND.

3. 1 Pet. 1:11, “the Spirit of Christ in them...testified beforehand to the sufferings of Christ.” It was a done deal, already entered into the tapestry of Christ’s life. See Ps. 22:16.