Introduction – The Answer to Every Question
Stand at the foot of the cross and look up.
A rough wooden beam against a dark sky, a dying man between heaven and earth.
It may seem like defeat, but here—right here—is the pivot of all history and the answer to the deepest questions every heart asks.
Why is there evil if God is good?
Does my life matter?
Can the guilt I carry ever be lifted?
At Calvary God speaks His clearest yes.
As Paul wrote:
> “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:6)
That is not poetry; it is reality.
Something happened on that hill that secured your place in heaven’s life and verdict.
Hundreds who saw the risen Christ were still alive in Paul’s day (1 Corinthians 15:6).
No empire could silence their testimony.
No persecution could quench the news.
The cross and resurrection explain why.
When the early church proclaimed that the One whom men crucified now reigns and intercedes, they weren’t selling a metaphor.
They were announcing a fact that overturns despair.
If Christ is alive and interceding, then the gospel is true, sins are forgiven—past, present, and future—and believers are already counted as seated with Him.
That is where this message begins: Calvary is God’s heart on display, the glorious answer to every question.
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1 – Answer to Our Questions
Why has this story endured when empires collapsed?
Why did a handful of fishermen overthrow centuries of idol worship?
Because the cross is more than a tragedy; it is a triumph of love and justice.
If Christ is alive and interceding for us in the heavens above, then His gospel is true. All believers have had their sins forgiven… and are joyful possessors now of eternal life and the verdict of the Last Judgment.
Here is the good news:
You do not wait until the end of time to know God’s verdict.
At Calvary and the empty tomb that verdict was rendered.
Eternal life is not merely promised; it is present.
The believer already lives in the reality of heaven’s acceptance.
This is why Paul exults,
> “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
Calvary is not an isolated event.
It is the axis on which the universe turns.
It is the place where history’s riddles—evil, suffering, guilt, death—are gathered into Christ and answered with blood-sealed mercy and unstoppable resurrection.
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2 – Old Testament Heroes Pointed to the Cross
Centuries before Good Friday, God was already sketching the cross in the stories of His people.
Isaac on Mount Moriah
Isaac, the child of promise, walked for three days under a death sentence, carrying the wood on which he was to die.
In the end God provided a substitute.
Now Christ, the true Isaac, has come, and to show that, He is offered at the same site, the hill of Moriah.
Noah and the Ark
Long before Isaac, Noah stepped from the storm of judgment and offered a sacrifice beside the saving wood of the ark.
That sacrifice symbolized a new covenant with a new world.
So at Calvary the fierce storm of divine wrath fell on the One fastened to the tree so it would never fall on us.
These stories are not coincidences.
They are God’s previews, declaring that salvation would come through a representative who bears the penalty of sin and turns judgment into refuge.
Every altar, every Passover lamb, every scapegoat and serpent lifted on a pole whispered of a greater sacrifice.
And notice the difference between human wrath and God’s wrath.
God’s wrath is holy and healing, “the inevitable reaction of holiness against evil,” never selfish or ungovernable.
The cross shows wrath and love perfectly joined: God against sin, God for sinners.
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3 – The Cross: More Than Forgiveness
Forgiveness is central, but Calvary is deeper still.
> “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement… to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the One who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:24, 26)
If we want to understand the Cross, we need to understand that it is not just about forgiveness. It is also about the holiness of God… God Himself could not forgive sin until its penalty was paid.
All our sins, he said, “are but a grain of sand compared to the mountain of His forgiveness,” a single dewdrop lost in the ocean of His mercy.
Yet God’s holiness required that sin’s penalty be borne.
The cross satisfied that justice so mercy could flow freely.
The cross is a microcosm of the universe:
It reveals God’s heart—against sin but for sinners.
It reveals humanity’s heart—so twisted it would destroy its own Creator.
It declares that pain and death are not the final word: “There’s more to come—resurrection and glory!”
Stand before Calvary and you stand before the deepest truth about heaven and earth, past and future.
Every mystery of existence finds its ultimate explanation there.
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4 – Calvary Has Given Us the Tree of Life
John’s Revelation pictures the redeemed walking beneath a tree whose leaves are “for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2).
That tree of life is no accident of paradise.
It is Calvary fulfilled.
The very wood of the cross, an implement of Roman torture, becomes in God’s plan the tree of life for a healed creation.
Every promise of new creation is rooted in this reality.
The Lamb “slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8) is the One who now welcomes the thirsty to drink freely (Revelation 22:17).
The nails that pierced His hands become the open door to the city where no nail, no thorn, no tear will ever enter again.
It means that the story of Scripture is not a circle of despair but a river of redemption.
Genesis begins with a garden barred by a flaming sword; Revelation ends with a garden opened by a bleeding Savior.
Calvary has given back to humanity what Adam lost—life, fellowship, immortality.
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5 – Steady Your Soul at the Cross
Life can feel like a sea in storm—health crises, political unrest, personal losses.
An hour at the foot of the cross steadies the soul as nothing else can.
This is not sentimental comfort; it is theological ballast.
At Calvary we learn that God’s love is not fragile optimism but blood-tested reality.
The cross assures us that nothing—neither death nor life, angels nor rulers, things present nor things to come—can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38–39).
Amy Carmichael, missionary to India, grasped this truth in a life of chronic pain.
She wrote that even when God does not explain suffering, He gives something better: Himself.
That is why Paul could boast,
> “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:14).
Spend unhurried time at Calvary and the frantic questions of the mind give way to the quiet worship of the heart.
The cross is not just where salvation was purchased; it is where courage is renewed.
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6 – The True Center
Philosophers debate the center of reality—atoms, energy, mathematics.
Scripture answers with a hill outside Jerusalem.
Calvary is not an afterthought but the center around which the universe was built.
Everything before the cross pointed forward; everything after flows from it.
Creation itself was designed as the stage for redemption.
At the cross God demonstrated the unthinkable:
He is both just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus (Romans 3:26).
Holiness and mercy met and embraced.
This center holds when every other center fails.
Political empires rise and collapse.
Economic systems expand and implode.
Even the stars will burn out.
But “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
The cross anchors all history, all hope, and every human life that trusts in it.
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7 – The Day You Died and the Life You Live
Calvary is not only Christ’s death; it is our death and resurrection too.
Paul’s testimony is startlingly personal:
> “I have been crucified with Christ and 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 and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
At the cross your old record was cancelled, your old self sentenced and executed.
And when Christ rose, you rose.
The death of Christ was the second death for every man. The resurrection of Christ is the pledge of every believer’s eternal life.
That means Christian obedience is not trying to improve an old life but living a new one already joined to Jesus.
As Paul wrote,
> “The love of Christ compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.” (2 Corinthians 5:14)
The gospel is not “try harder.”
It is “live risen.”
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Conclusion – God’s Heart on Display
Step back and see the whole panorama:
The seed promised in Eden, foreshadowed in Isaac, Noah, and every sacrificial lamb.
The incarnate Son bearing sin’s penalty and displaying God’s holy love.
The risen Lord interceding even now and promising a renewed creation.
This is Calvary: God’s heart on display.
The cross shows that the universe is ultimately friendly because at its core is self-giving love.
There’s more to come—resurrection and glory!”
That “more to come” is not wishful thinking.
It is as certain as the empty tomb.
Today the invitation is clear:
Trust the One who died your death and lives your life.
Let the cross steady your soul and shape your days.
