INTRODUCTION
• SLIDE #1
• When I coached ASA Girls softball teams, the most difficult positon on the field to coach was the pitcher. I pitched in High School and I watched a lot of pitchers, but girls softball pitching was a totally different animal.
• When my youngest daughter Rachel decided at a young age that she wanted to pitch, I sent her to reputable pitching coaches, and I watched and listened.
• When Rachel started pitching who knew where the ball was going. She got tossed out of one tournament when she was 10 because she hit too many batters and at that point she threw hard.
• When a pitcher does not throw strikes there are reasons for that. They may have five things messed up with their mechanics, but there was usually a key issue that caused the other issues.
• I so wanted to have her pitching coach at the games because I could not pinpoint that in the beginning, so I felt helpless until I learned more.
• When we look at the world around us we see SEVERAL things that are messed up. But is there possibly one root cause from which all the other problems we see in our messed up world spring forth from?
• The Bible tells us YES!
• Jesus came to deal with that problem. Jesus went to the cross to correct the root cause of all of the problems we see in our fallen world.
• But the cross leaves us with some questions. I feel the biggest question is WHY? Why the cross, why did Jesus have to die?
• Today as we look at the contrasts of the cross I hope I can shed some light on the WHY question.
• Let’s begin by looking at Matthew 27:40-42
• In this passage, Jesus has been unjustly found guilty at the Kangaroo Court and He was beaten and placed on the cross, as He hung on that cross people were mocking Him.
• SLIDE #2
• Matthew 27:40–42 (NIV) and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.
• Let us look at our first contrast found in this passage.
• SLIDE #3
SERMON
I. The religious leaders hit the nail on the head!
• As I read the passage in Matthew 27 I am stuck by what the religious leaders were saying as Jesus hung on the cross.
• “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.
• According to those leaders, all Jesus would have to do in order to get these leaders to believe in Him was to come off that cross!
• If that was the case, then why didn’t Jesus just get off the cross? The religious leaders would have been won over to believing in Jesus and they could have spread the word about Jesus being the Messiah.
• Truth be told, I think people today react the same way. If Jesus was the Son of God, then why did He have to die on the cross?
• If God is all-powerful, then why could He not come up with a different way? The religious leaders mocking resonates yet today!
• Well, let’s give them credit for one thing, they actually got something right!
• The assessment of Jesus’ death on the cross was correct.
• SO WE SEE THE FIRST OF OUR CONTRAST-JESUS LIFE VERSES OUR LIFE!
• Jesus could not both save Himself and us also.
• This was not a super hero movie where the super hero when faced with the challenge of saving himself or the hot blonde finds a way to do both!
• Jesus could not do both, if He chose to save Himself, He would have left ALL of us in eternal jeopardy!
• Luke 9:22 is one of the many passages that shows this.
• SLIDE #4
• Luke 9:22 (NIV) And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
• Time and time again Jesus shared the path He was to walk in order to accomplish God’s will. It should have not been a surprise to any of them when it happened.
• The other choice Jesus had was to save us and lose His own life on the cross.
• SLIDE #5
• John 3:16 (NIV) For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
• This is the beauty of salvation, it is a gift from God! God GAVE, I did not EARN!
• God’s desire if for you to be with Him for eternity! He sent His son in order to make that possible!
• SLIDE #6
• 1 Timothy 2:3–4 (NIV) This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
• The system of God is that God restores life to the world by the death of His Son.
• Now this does not answer the question, WHY DID JESUS HAVE TO DIE IN ORDER FOR ONE TO BE SAVED.
• Let’s move to our next observation so that we can get a better understanding of the WHY Jesus died on the cross. WE can do that by examining…
• SLIDE #7
II. The two beams of the cross.
• I want use the imagery of the beams of the cross to explain this observation that will help us to understand WHY Jesus HAD to die on the cross for our sins!
• NOW WE ARE CONFRONTED BY OUR SECOND CONTRAST-
• The cross reveals both the holiness of God and the severity of sin!
• Let’s look at the first beam, for illustrative purposes, this would be the main beam of the cross that is planted into the ground.
• God being holy is a foundational truth of the Bible. It is presented from Genesis to Revelation.
• From beginning to the end, the Bible reveals God’s holiness!
• The word “HOLY” means to be set apart, to be unique, to be set aside for a special purpose.
• God is totally and utterly different and ANYTHING that exists.
• WE tolerate and even participate in sin, we allow ourselves to be driven by the desires of the flesh. We really do not even take sin seriously anymore, we treat it like it is really no big deal.
• When was the last time you turned on the news and listen as they read to you the terrible things that happened for the day, and then hear them say, well the problem is sin?
• We hear about government, business, education, psychology, guns, parents and sociology. Not a word about sin.
• God is such that He cannot have sin in His presence. We all turn a blind eye to it, so therefore we do not see the real problem, and that is exactly what Satan wants us to do!
• Our God cannot tolerate evil because it is so contrary to who He is!
• SLIDE #8
• Leviticus 11:44 (NIV) I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves along the ground.
• We cannot relate to this mentality because we are so desensitized to the abhorrence to sin that God feels. Habakkuk 1:13 gives us some insight as Habakkuk asks God why He is allowing wickedness to continue. He appeals to God’s purity.
• SLIDE #9
• Habakkuk 1:13 (NIV) Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?
• In the book of Revelation chapter 3 when speaking to the church at Laodicea, God after looking at their works concludes something about them.
• They were not committed to Him enough to serving Him!
• SLIDE #10
• Revelation 3:16 (NIV) So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
• The phrase “spit you out” literally means to VOMIT!
• The second beam of the cross is the severity of sin!
• The Holiness of God does not allow Him to pretend our sin is a mental lapse or a booboo. He does not condone our sin in any way.
• He does not just excuse it as us being stubborn!
• God HATES sin and cannot turn a blind eye to it!
• SLIDE #11
• Exodus 20:5 (NIV) You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
• The passage is one of many that indicates to us that God will not compromise His holiness by indulging and overlooking our sinful behavior.
• So we see that Jesus died on the cross because of God’s holiness and the severity of sin.
• SO this leads to a final question that we will answer in the last observation this morning, why didn’t God simply start anew?
• Why doesn’t a holy God simply destroy that which is sinful and start anew?
• What is it about our God, who is holy that opens Him up to making a way for us to be cleansed and accepted?
• Let’s look at…
• SLIDE #12
III. The bedrock of God’s holiness.
• When the cross we set into the ground, the ground had to solid ground lest it would fall over.
• What is God’s holiness grounded in?
• THIS BRINGS US TO OUR THIRD CONTRAST!
• God’s stern holiness operates from God’s infinite love!
• The contrast we see is God’s holiness which demands payment for sin on one side and on the other side, His love which demands grace.
• God will honor both His fiery holiness and His tender love. God’s holiness and His love function together.
• IF God was holy without love, we would all be literally toast, if God was just love with no holiness, then anything goes.
• By the way as a parent, you too had to and have to exercise these two traits. The demand for holiness with no grace leads to being harsh and unfair, but all love and no holiness leads to anything goes, which is no way to raise a child!
• Put another way, Max Lucado states, “IF GOD WERE ONLY HOLY, WE WOULD BE DESTROYED, IF GOD WERE ONLY LOVE, A LACK OF DISCIPLINE AND CORRECTION WOULD DESTROY US!
• A parent who will not discipline a child is helping lead that child down the path of destruction!
• God’s holiness and love combine to do something that no one could imagine” God sent His Son to become a human!
• God as a human was sinless!
• SLIDE #13
• Hebrews 4:15 (NIV) For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.
• Jesus was to die in our place! Philippians 2:5-8!
• This is the great drama of the cross, God sending His Son to cross to pay our sin debt so we can be with God for eternity!
• Jesus was forsaken so that we could be forgiven and received by a holy God- this is the beauty of the cross!
• SLIDE #14
• 1 John 1:7 (NIV) But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
• Jesus took on the sins of the world!
• SLIDE #15
• John 1:29 (NIV) The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
• The sinless righteousness of Jesus can now be yours!
• SLIDE #16
• 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV) God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
CONCLUSION
• Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Why did He not save Himself?
• Because He loved you that much. You are worth it to Him!
• Also, since God’s holiness works in concert with His love, He needed both His stern holiness and His tender love to be satisfied!
• Jesus sent His Son to die in your place, are you ready to allow Him to wrap His loving arms around you?
