At The Cross
TCF Good Friday Sermon
April 6, 2007
1 Corinthians 1:17-25 (NIV) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel--not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. 18 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. 19 For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." 20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.
Do any of you ever eat at a restaurant, and so much of what’s on the menu looks good to you, that you can’t decide what to order?
But wait, some restaurants bail you out by giving you the choice of a combo meal – two or maybe three different choices in one meal.
I was faced with such a dilemma this week as I pondered the many choices of direction for a sermon on Good Friday. Though the theme of Jesus’ death on the cross is pre-determined by the day on the calendar, there’s so much to think about when it comes to the cross, the events of the day, what it means to us as followers of the One who went to the cross on the original “Good Friday,” that I found it very difficult to focus on one thing, especially with such a challenging topic as the cross of Christ. It didn’t help that I read a very thought-provoking book by a guy who’s becoming one of my favorite authors, John Fischer. His book "On a Hill Too Far Away" is about putting the cross back into the center of our lives.
I have to give credit for some of the ideas in this sermon tonight to this book – which is a tremendous book to read devotionally during the Lenten season prior to Holy Week.
It also doesn’t help when you consider that the cross is described, as in the passage of scripture we just read, as foolishness to those who are perishing, that is, those who haven’t accepted the saving grace freely offered by God through Christ. The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, says 1 Cor 1:25.
But even though this passage also says that to those who are being saved it is the power of God and the wisdom of God, the cross and all it means is still a vast topic that we can never seem to fully exhaust.
So, as I ponder the cross, as we ponder the cross together tonight, we’re faced with this reality – it’s hard to grasp, or to fully understand all that it means to us, and it’s hard to accept as a means of saving the world, because it seems so irrelevant to the world we live in.
Maybe it’s the historical distance that makes it seem irrelevant to the world. Maybe it’s the turning of the cross into an art object or jewelry, instead of what it really was – a cruel instrument of death. Yet, the cross is, indeed, to be at the very center of the lives of those who follow the One who hung there, and bled, and died on this horrible means of torture and painful death.
That’s because to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Notice it doesn’t say, “was” the power of God. It is the power of God. That power echoes, that power resonates, that power penetrates the centuries to this very day. It’s to be the center of our lives, because, as Paul wrote to the Galatians in
Galatians 6:14 (NIV) 14 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.
If the world has truly been crucified, nailed to the cross, put to death, to me, and I have been crucified, put to death, to the world, then the cross is still relevant, still present, in my daily life. And if these things are not true of me, and if we’re honest, they’re not always true or completely true of any of us, then the cross should still be relevant, important to us, because we still need to remember it to put our sin nature completely to death.
Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew
Matthew 16:24-25 (NASB77) 24 … "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 "For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it.
If we’re to take up our cross, if we’re to lose our lives by denying ourselves, by taking up our cross, then we must ponder how the cross is, or isn’t, at the center of our lives today.
Back to the combo meal idea. There’s so much we could look at, but this evening, I want to take just a few moments to ponder three things, because I couldn’t choose just one for tonight, but let’s think together about three things related to the cross of Christ, that instrument of execution that was used to put Jesus to death on that first Good Friday. Tonight’s really more of a meditation on the cross than a sermon.
The first thing I want to look at is related to a hymn we just sang. The lyrics were:
There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
I don’t know about you, but really thinking about the lyrics to this hymn, these words certainly brings to mind some awful mental images. A fountain filled with blood?! Sounds like an image out of a Stephen King horror movie. Blood from the veins of a specific person, in this case Jesus, sounds even more horrific.
Most of us feel pretty fortunate if we don’t ever have to encounter the sight of blood. Some people are so skittish that the sight of blood makes them faint – I’ve known people who would faint dead away if they saw me cut my finger and bleed even a little bit.
Then, there’s the idea of a sinner, that would be me, plunging into that fountain, beneath that flood of blood, for the express purpose of removing the stain of my guilt from sin. Now, in this image we’re thinking of this evening, think for a moment of completely dunking yourself in a fountain filled with blood. You’d be a mess, wouldn’t you? You’d have blood all over you, staining your clothes. And blood is sticky, too, so your skin would be sticky, your hair would be all matted with blood. Why should we even think about such a thing?
Because sacrifice is a bloody business. It always has been. Jim looked at the significance of blood last night as related to the Passover. But, as long as human beings have practiced animal sacrifice, or even human sacrifice, it’s been a bloody mess. Even the God-ordained sacrificial system of the Jews, of which the Passover was a significant part, and remember, Jesus was a Jew, even this system was a bloody mess.
John Fischer said he first got a glimpse of the horror of it all when he considered the Old Testament sacrificial system from the viewpoint of the priest who had to carry out these sacrifices.
He wrote: Imagine the stench, the sight of all the blood, the flies, the mess. And most of all, imagine that it never stops. A priest just finishes one bull, and someone comes up to him with another one and says, “Would you please sacrifice El Toro here? I just had an affair with my neighbor’s wife.” If I were a priest, I’d want to take my knife to him instead. “Why didn’t you think of that before you started fooling around?” I would be tempted to say. After all, what does this guy’s personal life have to do with this poor innocent bull (or dove, or goat, or whatever’s being sacrificed?)
The people kept on sinning, and the priests kept on cutting into warm flesh. Sinning and ripping open and sprinkling and burning, and sinning and ripping open and sprinkling and burning. Don’t you think at some point one of (these priests) might have raised his sticky hands and shouted over all the moos and the bleats and the cooing: “Will you people please stop all this sinning?”
The point is that we miss something of the significance of the cross of Christ when we forget that blood was involved – not just a little bit of blood either – blood has always been at the center of sacrifice.
Fisher writes: Sin and blood have always been tied together in the mind of God. My sin has to have a payment. Either I pay for it with my own blood, or someone else has to pay for me – a bull or a lamb or a dove, over and over. But the final, perfect Lamb came, the sacrifice Lamb.
But no one - you don’t, I don’t - no one gets to walk, without someone bleeding. Life is in the blood, and somehow, my sin makes Jesus bleed. Think about this for a moment.
Though Jesus only died once, my present sin, even sins I haven’t yet committed, make their own contribution to his bleeding and death on the cross 2,000 years ago. I don’t claim to fully understand this, but I believe it’s true – it’s a present tense connection with this past event.
Romans 5:8-9 (NASB77) 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.
This brings us to the next thing I want to consider for a moment. My sin. Last night during our Communion service, we sang the hymn, It is well with my soul.
One part of the lyrics went like this:
My sin – oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, praise the Lord Oh my soul.
Why did Horatio Spafford, the composer of this hymn, think this thought so blissful? Why did it cause him to want to praise the Lord? He says twice, sandwiching the phrase, “Oh the bliss of this glorious thought” - He says two times, My sin.
The cross is where my sin was nailed. What a relief! It can be a relief when we finally admit, finally figure out, that something’s wrong with us, and we know what it really is.
As tough as it is to hear from a doctor hard news, related to an illness or disease we might have, it’s usually still a relief compared to when we’ve got symptoms, but nothing to call it – not knowing what we’re up against. We all want to know what’s wrong with us, and it’s harder not to know than to know, even if the cure is difficult.
In life in general, My sin is the problem. We don’t easily admit to it being the problem, but it is the problem. The world thinks that all we need is education, all we need is evolution to a more enlightened state, all we need is love, all we need is just to be nice to each other.
To answer the famous question Rodney King asked in the early 90’s, when the city of Los Angeles was rioting after his very famous videotaped beating by local police – remember his question: “Can’t we all just get along?” Well, here’s the answer: NO!
We can’t all just get along, because of my sin. That’s the problem.
But, sin has an antidote, a cure. Something has already been done to take care of it. The cross is the cure, and in a way, it helps me face my sin, because I can know in advance that I have to accept the reality of my sin, before I can accept the cure.
If you don’t believe you’re sick, you won’t take any medicine for that sickness. In the economy of God, sin is ultimately connected to forgiveness. God is not only the judge, but the one who has obtained, at great personal cost – the cost of the blood of His Son Jesus on the cross- He has obtained a pardon on my behalf.
Admitting my sin is the only way to get forgiveness. And we can’t take the easy way out – like saying, Jesus died for the sins of the world, which is certainly true. This is where it must get personal. Jesus died for My Sin. My sin has brought me to the cross, looking for the cure. The cross has brought me to Jesus. My sin, that incurable thing that has messed me up, has ruined my life, has become my only hope through the cross of Christ.
But again – it can’t be just the generic, “Jesus died for sins.” It must be “He died for My Sin, and I need the cure, I need His forgiveness, purchased for me with His blood.
Again quoting John Fischer:
Regardless of my knowledge of biblical truth, my years of service to God, or my religious devotion to study or piety, a relationship to God cannot go any further than the realization I have of myself as a sinner, including of course, those sins at which I am an expert. These things have real names, like lying, cheating, coveting, lusting, being a lover of self rather than a lover of God.
When you were a child, and heard the stories about the crucifixion, did you feel sorry for Jesus? I know I did. I felt bad for him, having to suffer like that. But the value of the cross in our Christian lives is directly proportionate to my awareness of my own sin.
When I feel sorry for Jesus, rather than sorry for my sin that contributed to His death, the cross loses its meaning to me. I am a completely unworthy, utterly despicable sinner. Yet, because of the cross, I am completely, utterly and gloriously saved from the eternal consequences of my sin.
The blood of sacrifice, and the reality of my sin, lead me to the third and final thing I want to ponder for a moment on this Good Friday.
The cross at the center of my life.
Now, the cross is a very visible symbol, even in our culture which has completely lost its spiritual foundations, in so many ways. I looked around my house, and found four crosses of various types. Here’s a very decorative cross, a gift to me from my parents, made of lead crystal. Here’s a cross made of nails. I got this cross when I was in college. Here’s a cross that was in Laura’s room, with lilies painted on it. Here’s a crucifix, a Catholic cross, with a figure of Jesus hanging on it – I’ve had this since I was a teenager, that, of course, was just a few years ago. This pulpit is shaped in the form of a cross.
Nothing wrong with these symbols, these representations, but they’re lacking in some significant ways, even the crucifix, which presents a more vivid reminder of what the cross is all about.
For the most part, these crosses are all kind of pretty and artistic in some way. They’re smooth, not rough. As art, they can fade into the background, they can become just another decoration, whether they hang on a wall, sit on a shelf, or hang around my neck.
But this cross on stage is a little bit different. It’s not really pretty at all. It’s rough. You rub your hands across it and you’ll likely get splinters. And it’s huge. It’s not the kind of art object we’d have in our house. In fact, the only time we even have it up here in church is during these services during Holy Week and on Easter Sunday.
Now, again, nothing wrong with artistic representations of the cross, but can you see how sometimes familiarity breeds contempt? This cross onstage is a cross you can’t avoid. This is a cross you can’t forget. You have to do something with it, mentally and emotionally. You have to decide how you’re going to encounter it. The decorative crosses we’re used to seeing have the potential to lose their meaning. Not inevitably, but likely, nonetheless.
These other kinds of crosses have become ornaments with sentimental value. More like a charm on a bracelet, than this huge, inconvenient reminder that we encounter during Holy Week.
When that becomes true of the crosses we have in our jewelry collection, or the crosses we have decorating our homes and our churches, we’re in danger of forgetting that in the middle of the gospel we proclaim – the good news of our redemption in Christ, stands a cross a lot more like this one – this huge, rough one on stage - than like this, a pretty piece of art.
We forget that it is an instrument of execution. Can you imagine having a little gold electric chair hanging around your neck? Would you have an artistically-represented crystal needle on your mantle, to remind you of lethal injection?
If we did that long enough, even the little gold electric chair might lose its meaning…it might not serve as the reminder we want it to be originally.
The cross is not a good luck charm, or a piece of art. Again, I’m not knocking these things, because they can indeed serve as a reminder to us. But let’s be always mindful of what it’s reminding us of. It’s reminding me of my sin. It’s reminding me of my absolutely helpless state of existence, which sent Jesus to the cross in the first place. It’s reminding me of God’s inapproachable righteousness, and holiness, His character that required such a bloody, horrible sacrifice, for my sin. It’s reminding me of those many unpleasant realities, including the unpleasant reality about myself and my sin.
Fischer writes:
The cross has a leveling effect. It puts us all on the same plane. Teacher/student, performer/audience, pastor/congregation. The usual distinctions fall away in the presence of this visual aid. Suddenly we are all in the same boat. No matter what side we are on, the cross always reminds us of our sin, the equality of our guilt, and our only hope.
And the truest hope of the gospel is that forgiveness is available for all, because we are all sinners of comparable merit. We are, all of us, experts at the subtleties of sin and equally good at cover up. A cross (like this huge one on stage that we can’t miss) in the middle of everything blows our cover. It’s difficult to be haughty and proud when a hard physical reminder of what that pride cost the Savior casts a shadow in your own personal spotlight.
Such a cross in our midst makes the truth of Christianity self-evident. No human being would have ever come up with dying on a cross as the way to save the world.
Earlier, we read 1 Cor 1:21, which says “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached (– that is, the message of the cross –) to save those who believe.
This kind of a cross forces us to ask these questions: Why was it necessary? What is its purpose in my life today?
Let’s ponder these things as we close this evening. Let’s think about these things are we look upon this cross. Pray
