May30
There are so many beautiful things in this world that warm our hearts and shock our eyes; things that inspire us and things that we marvel over. The Rocky Mountains in Colorado are one of the most surreal landscapes I’ve ever seen. Their sheer mass is staggering, but their beauty is staggering still. To look upon those snow capped peaks is to witness the splendor of God. These things do not change in character, or value, yet after some time, surely because of a fault in us, the mountains lose their luster. Their ability to mesmerize us fades into clichés, and the awe once inspired in us becomes mundane and common place. Sadly, for many of us, such is the case in the death of Jesus Christ. The powerful truths, made so by God, are reduced to tracks by men. “What Would Jesus Do?” “Love the Lord.” When we review these words it’s easy to see that they’re watered down and simplified for the busy Christian. “Jesus Died for you”, “Redemption.” And we wonder why these once mighty words don’t warm our hearts. Why don’t these words have the power to move us anymore?
To really understand the true message of the cross we have to begin with what should be known as the Great Dilemma in Christianity. This seems to defy the very character of God. God’s nature is Holy and just and he is the perfect creator of all things. God is righteous in his will; for it is the will of God that all men are saved from his wrath. God is love, and in Him there is power and grace and mercy. God is perfect in all his attributes. But in his righteous love there is hatred. Hatred for the wicked and for the vile and for sin and for perversion. But this is no hatred like the hatred of men. There is no reckless, egotistical, self centered, uncontrolled fury. It is the pure calm awareness of his justice and what must be done against those who are vile. If God loves those things that are Holy in his nature, then in his nature he must hate those things that are unholy. If I love righteousness I must hate that which is unrighteous. If I love children I must hate abortion. The Great Dilemma is this: If God is Just, He cannot forgive you. How can God be just and at the same time the justifier of wicked men? God, to be Just, must condemn wicked men. A Just God cannot simply pardon your sin. There must be Justice; therefore the wicked must die under the Holy wrath of God. In Proverbs 17:15 the Bible teaches that acquitting the guilty is detestable to the LORD. When we see a person acquitted of a crime that we know they committed, something even in you demands justice. And the judge who pardons the crime, we deem more wicked than the men he sets free. But how is it that the Gospels teach that God is the justifier of the wicked? Someone must interpose. The debt of sin must be paid, and it must be paid in full. Justice must be satisfied. And God, in his immeasurable love for his children, has provided a substitute. Not an angel, not a holy man, not a million angels, not a million holy men; But Jesus Christ. God in the flesh; sent down to live among the filth and wretchedness and sin of earth as a perfect man to redeem his people.
The perfection of Christ is almost too difficult to explain. It’s so deep, and pure and vast, this language falls far short of communicating it. Let’s look at the life of a Christian. A true believer and follower of Christ. In their life, they have never, not ever, for even a single moment, given God their heart, soul, mind, and strength. Even to lay his life down as a martyr for the Holy trinity, he could still not declare himself to have loved God as God deserved to be loved. Not a single moment in any man’s life does he love God with his heart, soul, mind and strength, and love Him as He deserves to be loved. Now, let’s look at the life of Jesus Christ. In his life, he has always, at all times, in every single moment, loved His Father God, with all his heart, mind, soul and strength. In every moment in His life, Jesus loved God as God deserved to be loved. Jesus spent His entire life doing what no man could ever do for even a moment. What a standard men must be compared to. These are the standards by which we must be judged. Can the standards of men reach the mark set by the deity of Jesus? We may profess to be good men and judge ourselves on our own actions, but every idle thought will be judged. What rotten immoralities lay within the hearts and minds of men? Where is the hope for the depravity of our souls?
Let’s go now to the Garden of Gethsemane, and the prayers of Jesus. In Mathew 26:39 He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” In this verse, we see Jesus agonize over a cup of suffering. He so fears this cup that he prays to his father three times to show him a way out, but if there was none, he would do as his father willed. If there was ever a time when a man felt agony, it was then in that garden. There are many teachers and preachers who speculate as to what was in the cup? What did the cup contain? What, in that cup, put Jesus in on his face to pray a means to avoid the drinking of it? Was it the roman whips, the beatings, the crown of thorns, the nails of the cross? Was it the cross itself? Was it the pain of the flesh? Many people view the crucifixion and the pain inflicted by the Romans and the Jews, to be the real meaning of the cross. I don’t want to undermine the vicious, bloody and violent ordeal that Jesus endured; it is crucial, it is important, it had to be a bloody sacrifice; but are the wounds from the Romans and the betrayal by the Jews the meaning of the cross? No.
Hundreds and thousands of Christians died upon crosses after the death of Jesus. Many of them singing hymns of joy, then to be crucified upside down, covered in tar and burned to light the streets of Rome. Yet Jesus is in a garden praying because he doesn’t want to go? Do you truly believe the captain of our salvation feared a whip? Jesus feared the wrath of God. The perfect justice of God cannot pass over sin and the perfect response to sin is the fierce anger and hatred, the wrath of God, poured out on the wicked. God will judge the wicked, and on that cross, Jesus bore our wickedness. The question is: How can anyone be saved? And the answer is the cross of Jesus Christ. Christ became a man, lived a perfect life under the law, hung on that cross and died the death of his people. And in doing so he satisfied God’s justice and appeased the wrath of God. We were redeemed!
Redemption; what other word has more power on earth? With this word, the debt of an eternity in Hell is paid. In this place you cannot die. In this place you must suffer. Suffer the agony of blistering temperatures that would turn the bones of a man on earth to ash. You must endure torturous, grotesque, hateful demons that tear open your body and shred the flesh from your bones. But you will never die. You will be engulfed in flames that melt your skin into ribbons that hang from your tattered muscle, never to die from it. You must breathe heat and rancid stench and poisonous sulfur that cause a perpetual sensation of suffocation. As though your mouth and nose were covered and your lungs drew no relief. Maggots will feast on you forever, never to fully devour you. You will feel more terror than you can ever imagine. Your trembles will cause your very bones to crack. There is such darkness in this place that you can feel it almost crush your body, and you fear to look at the light from the flames because there you will watch others burn. There is no end in this place. After a billion years you will be no closer to relief, and there is no salvation in this place. From here, we have been redeemed. And those who have not, are given a last sorrowful glance by God. What terrible hurt must God feel as he watches those whom he loves be cast into the pit? If we were to sample the smallest measurable amount of His grief for those who are lost, we would cry out with far more pain than we would find in hell.
God did not create Hell for men. It is his greatest desire to walk as a father with all his creation. The love of God for all men is seen here in the word “Redemption”, and it’s offered to them all. It will not only pay your debt, but it will also bring you to heaven, to seek the glory of God for all eternity. There is an immeasurable joy that will consume your soul every instant in heaven. The increase in joy every day spent with God will be compared to seeing him for the first time. Every day you will grow so much closer to the Lord it will be as if you had never encountered him before. And after a billion years you will still not understand the majesty of God. What have we been given? What have we been saved from?
And so from the garden Jesus went into Jerusalem and was betrayed. He was beaten, mocked and whipped, and a crown of thorns was laid upon his brow. And he was made to drag his own cross to the place of his death. Heavy nails were driven into his body to hold it to the cross. He was made a spectacle, and as he hung there, he pleaded on the behalf of those who rebuked him. Then Jesus cried out “Lord, Lord, why have you forsaken me?” Many have said that God looked down at his son and saw his pain and could not look upon him out of grief. What does this mean? What this means is that God, looking down from heaven at his son being crucified, didn’t have the moral fortitude to watch his son die. Absurd! God was watching His son drink the cup of His wrath. Someone had to die outside the favorable presence of God; outside of his love and grace, and in his wrath. Jesus Christ, the son of God, who knew, fully, the glory of God, was cast out and made a curse. Someone had to bare sin. Jesus bore those sins and what he had feared was now upon him. He became a curse, a worm, an object of wrath. The filth, the shame, the guilt that Jesus bore before his own father; for us! He was cut off from God and left to die without him. “Lord, Lord, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22:4-5 Jesus issues a complaint. Our ancestors trusted in you, and you rescued them. They cried out to you and were saved. They trusted in you and were never disgraced. Jesus is saying this: “There has never been a time in the new covenant of the people, when a righteous man called out to you and you did not deliver him, But I, your son, the messiah, I hang here on this cross, I have done no wrong, why have you forsaken me?” Here is the answer: Verse 3 you are Holy. Verse 6 But I am a worm.
To close I will take you to the testing of Abraham. Abraham was told by God to bring his only son, whom he loved, up a mountain. His son, submissive to the will of his father, followed him. He built an altar and laid his son upon it, and by the instruction of God, Abraham laid his hand on the brow of his son and raised a knife to sacrifice Isaac. At that very moment God sent word to Abraham that He had provided a ram for the offering in place of his son. Here ends Act 1 and the curtains close. Many thousands of years later the curtains re-opened and presented to us is the final Act. The blood of sheep and rams cannot forgive sin, so a body was prepared. And now, on this cross, God placed his hand on the brow of Jesus and took the knife from Abraham and slaughtered his only begotten son. Whom he loved and was well pleased. Isaiah 53:10 And it pleased the Lord to crush him… It is not that there was joy for the death of Christ, but it was the will of God that he may know you. That his justice had been satisfied. That you can stand before God pure. Are you beginning to see the meaning of the cross? Are you beginning to see the meaning of “Jesus Died for You”? The meaning of “Redemption”? When we hear these words, let them warm our hearts.
Derik Jenkins