Crucifixion: Whose Idea was That?

       Before I start I need to get something off my chest.  I almost didn’t come up here to preach today even though it’s Palm Sunday.  I was “that close” to walking out.  I clearly specified that the water by my chair should be exactly 65 degrees.  I’m sure it was 70.  And it wasn’t Pellegrino. There are churches out there that know how to treat the talent.  I deserve better.  I’m entitled. 

       I’m not alone. 

        How about the outlandish demands made by musicians in their contracts with concert promoters? One of the most notorious came from the band Van Halen. (picture)  Each contract insisted that "a bowl of M&M's be provided backstage, but with every single brown M&M removed." If the band arrived and saw that the bowl had any brown M&Ms in it, they were free to cancel the concert and receive full payment.

       There are things that seem pointless to us.  But we later learn that there’s a purpose. As we will see, even the removal of brown M&Ms had a purpose.

       We are in a sermon and small group series on Hard Questions and Great Hope.  Last fall people wrote questions about the Christian faith.  Several questions asked about the cross – why it had to happen or even if it had to happen.  Here are some of the questions that inspired this sermon. 

Read Questions

        A man writes: “I had often heard my religious friends say, "Jesus died for our sins" or "Jesus died to save the world." I could see how the good example of Jesus' actions might possibly influence some men and women to live better lives, but it was inconceivable to me that anything done by one man nearly 2,000 years ago could have a direct effect on how we live today. And I certainly couldn't see how Jesus' death no matter how noble or unselfish, could possibly make up for all the evil in the world.

       He continues, “In my opinion, if God existed, He would either have a loving and forgiving nature or He would not. If He wasn't inclined to forgive people’s shortcomings, I didn't see how Jesus' death could change His mind, and if God was a forgiving sort, I couldn't see why He would need a human sacrifice to prove it.”

       1 Timothy 1:15 says that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."   I’m grateful for that because I’m a sinner.  But did Jesus really have to die to save me. Couldn’t He have just given me a really good talking to?  Did it really take the cross?

      I mean, think about the cross.  We can become so comfortable with the cross as art that we forget what it was used for.   But suppose we had an electric chair mounted on our wall here? Or suppose church steeples had those tables for lethal injections mounted on top?  We would be much closer to the First Century impact.  No matter how we dress it up the cross is not quiet or gentle.  

       God knows that too.  As we talk about whether or not the cross was necessary, we need to start with God.  If redemption could have been been purchased at a lower cost, God would have chosen it. Jesus explored this possibility in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He fell to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me." Luke adds, "And being in anguish, Jesus prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” 

       It is possible to sweat blood although it is very rare.  The condition is called hermatidrosis.   It happens when the blood vessels around the sweat glands constrict during times of great stress.  When they release from this pressure they expand until they rupture.  The blood molecules enter the sweat glands and mingle with the sweat.

       That doesn’t happen without tremendous physical and emotional stress.  So whatever was going on in the Garden wasn’t play acting.  Jesus didn’t want the cross.  If God could have done it differently, He would have.  So we have to know that there is something in us and something in God that somehow made the cross the only cup Jesus could drink and accomplish what He came to do. 

       Let’s start with what is in us.  Sin.  

       Yes, I said the S word.  Because we need to recognize that whatever the cross means, it means that we are much worse that we think we are – that we really are in worse shape that we could have imagined. 

       When I look at sin in my own life I tend to see it as made up of isolated events – occasional departures from my normal perfection.  It’s like a flash of lightning across the sky.  (picture).

But when God looks at my life He doesn’t see my sin as something isolated or occasional.  He sees it as part of a pattern.  (picture).

       When Jesus looked at the human heart He saw the pattern.  He saw us as sick, needy, weak, sinful, blind and lost. He saw us as desperately in need. He saw our lives as not working. He saw us not living in fullness or living out the goodness He created us for.  And, He saw us at risk of dying -- eternally separated from Him -- never to experience eternal life.  He saw our anger and hatred.  He saw our impatience and hurtful remarks, and actions.  He saw us as cut off from Him by our sin. And He chose to meet our need no matter what it took.

        But what would it take?   Well we don't live up to the goodness God created us for.  We don't even live up to our own standards, let alone God’s. When we are honest, we even disgust ourselves at times.

        If we disgust ourselves at times, what would a perfectly holy God see?

        He sees things He cannot possibly tolerate.

        Almighty God will not be in the presence of sin. He hates sin and won't be around sin, nor will he allow even a single evil to be in heaven. Of course He is not going to let anyone into heaven who is dragging sin along with them. So God had a problem and the problem was this.  He loves us and wants us to be with Him.  But how are you and I going to be with the Father, since we spend a great deal of our lives doing the very things that disgust Him – things He cannot tolerate and be a holy God?

         Paul deals with that question in a theological way in Romans 3:26 – how God can be both just – that is true to His own holiness – and at the same time forgive sin – justify those who have faith in Jesus. 

         The answer is the cross.  On the cross God demonstrates the total seriousness of sin.  Sin is not something that can be overlooked or simply handled with a good talking to.  It’s something that has to be died for.   If God's love outstripped his holiness, then why send Jesus to the cross? If love trumps holiness, then why not dispense with the Crucifixion altogether— especially since Jesus asked for this very thing? 

       But holiness and love work hand in hand.  God's holiness and love combine at Calvary in the only way possible to forgive sin and still satisfy God's perfect nature. 

       How can God remain just and consistent with Himself and yet set aside our guilt so completely?  The answer, Paul says, is "through His blood." That is how is happens. All through the Scriptures you find that there is no forgiveness from God apart from the cross.

       In the words of Oswald Chambers, “We trample the blood of the Son of God if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation for the forgiveness of God and for the unfathomable depth of His forgetting is the death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the outcome of our personal realization of the atonement which He has worked out for us. It does not matter who or what we are; there is absolute reinstatement into God by the death of Jesus Christ and by no other way, not because Jesus Christ pleads, but because He died. “

       Sometimes we need to know what is going on or we think that something is pointless when it is actually essential.  For the band Van Halen those missing brown M&Ms weren’t the crazy demand of a bunch of rock divas. They were actually a matter of life or death. The M&Ms were a trip wire to see if people had actually read and honored the contract. 

       Lead singer David Lee Roth revealed in his memoir the story behind the M&Ms.  He explained that Van Halen played in markets that weren’t used to bands with so much gear.  He writes: “There were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn't support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren't big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a … Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function." So just as a little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider, would be Article 126, the no-brown-M&Ms clause.   Roth writes, "When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl, well, we'd line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you'd run into a problem." The mistakes could be life-threatening.”

       No brown M&Ms.  The cross.  Both look non-essential.  But they are essential. 

       However with the cross it is not just possibly a matter of life and death.  It is life and death.

       But why the cross?  If Jesus had had a heart attack would that have paid for our sins?  Or is there something about the cross?  Well for some reason I do not completely grasp, it had to be death by the shedding of blood. 

      The cross is not a pleasant thing. It does go against our modern sensibilities.  Blood is not pleasant. It is sticky, messy, sickening. And this whole business of a bloody Savior is offensive to most people, because they do not understand why God insists upon blood before there is forgiveness.

        And yet there is no other way. Scripture is unanimous in its testimony.  Leviticus 17:11 says that it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul   Hebrews 9:22 states that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."  

       Why? Because it is the blood that underscores the reality of our guilt. Jesus died because we deserved to die. And we really do deserve to die; that's the whole point!

       Jesus died because he took our place. That is what the Scripture announces.

       He was not merely a substitute.

       It is always difficult for us to understand how an innocent person can die for a guilty one. But the Scriptures do not really teach that Jesus was only a substitute, in that sense. There is an identity involved. What Scripture says is that Jesus actually became us: 2 Corinthians 5:21 says "He who knew no sin, was made sin for us." And when He became what we are, God put Him to death, because that is what we deserve.

      For Jesus the physical pain of the crucifixion was bad enough.  But just imagine this sinless God, who knew no sin, but who now had every single sin that was ever committed or that will ever be committed, placed squarely upon his back.  Then try to imagine how horrible and how terrible He must have felt. Think of the internal pain that the knowledge and awareness that each of those sins brought him. Jesus was experiencing the pain and grief of each and every murder committed all through human history. Every child that was ever sexually abused, every wife beaten by her spouse, every period of drunkenness, every abortion, every robbery, every lie told and all of the hurt, pain, and sorrow inflicted on the many friends and family members from each of those sins. They were all being experienced by this sinless Son of God as He hung in terrible pain on that cross, because it was Jesus who was paying the penalty for each of those sins.

       No one who sees the cross of Jesus can ever argue that God takes a light view of sin. In that entire bloody, gory episode, there is marvelous testimony to the whole world that God will never, ever put up with evil. But the cross argues for us, that there the price has been paid on our behalf.  Jesus took our place, paid the full price, and therefore we are free. God fully accepts me.  I can look my guilt in the face and acknowledge it, admit the whole stinking mess, and point to the cross, and say, "That has fully taken care of it.  The cross has settled it. I'm no longer what I once was because of that." And God treats me in that way.

       It’s not enough for God to give me a good example because I already don’t follow good examples.  I need forgiveness.  The debt is more than I can ever pay.  My sin is too horrible and too costly to be handled by a good talking to.  I need transformation.  I need the cross. 

       The “better, quieter, gentler way” asked about in the question ultimately suggests a gospel that is impotent to deal with people like me: a helpless, broken, selfish sinner. It suggests a gospel that accepts me but makes no promise to change me. It suggests a gospel that has no intent to deal with the profound brokenness in my life. It suggests a gospel that has no power to set me free from the enslaving addictions and selfish inclinations of my heart. It suggests a Jesus who welcomes and includes but who offers no vision and power for transformation and liberation to newness of life.

       That is a gospel without the cross, a gospel that in the end is about Jesus' love but has no need for his horrific death, no need for a Savior who dies for our brokenness and rises because we have been set free.  That rising because we have been set free is what we’ll talk about next Sunday which is Easter.    

      We are at the beginning of Holy Week.  Jesus was not surprised when Palm Sunday turned into Good Friday. He knew what He had come to do and what would be done to Him.  He chose that willingly.  For in the gospel, we discover two things.  We discover that we are far worse off than we thought. We also learn that we are far more loved than we ever dreamed. 

       In the 1993 film In the Line of Fire, Clint Eastwood played Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan. Horrigan had protected the life of the President for more than three decades, but he was haunted by the memory of what had happened thirty years before. Horrigan was a young agent assigned to President Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas in 1963. When the assassin fired, Horrigan froze in shock. For thirty years afterward, he wrestled with the ultimate question for a Secret Service agent: Can I take a bullet for the President? 

       In the climax of the movie, Horrigan does what he had been unable to do earlier: he throws himself into the path of an assassin's bullet to save the chief executive.

       Secret Service agents are willing to do such a thing because they believe the President is so valuable to our country and the world that he is worth dying for. Obviously they would not take a bullet for just anyone.

       At Calvary the situation was reversed. The President of the Universe actually took a bullet for each of us. At the Cross we see how valuable we are to God.

       Could you have done what he did?

       Consider what God did. He gave up his Son to die a horrible death. Would you do that? Would you offer the life of your child for someone else? I wouldn't. There are those for whom I would give my life. But ask me to make a list of those for whom I would kill one of my sons.? The list would be empty. I wouldn't need a pencil. The list would never, ever have any names on it.

        But God had a list, and your name was on it. In fact God's list contained the names of every person who ever lived. For this is the scope of His love. And this is the reason for the cross.    

       But as we approach the cross, we must approach prepared to admit our need. That’s the essential first step.

       There is an old preacher story about a prison, which was being visited by the governor of the state. As the governor talked with each convict, each told him a sad story of how he had been convicted on false evidence, framed, or otherwise falsely imprisoned for crimes which he had never committed and had never even thought about committing. Each one hoped that the governor would take pity on him and grant a pardon. At last the governor came to a man who did not tell the governor a sad story of being an innocent man falsely imprisoned. Instead he said to the governor, “I committed the crime for which I was convicted. The judge was fair and the jury was fair. I’m in here because I am guilty.”

      After he left the prison, the governor sent this man a pardon and an immediate release from prison with the note, “We don’t want an admitted criminal like you in there corrupting all of those good, honest men.” But actually the governor knew a very important fact. Because the man was capable of admitting his own responsibility and confronting his own guilt, he was already well along the road to rehabilitation.

      As long as we insist that we are clean we cannot be made pure. If we confront the cross still insisting on our own guiltlessness, we can go no further. But for those who admit their need there is a paradox to the cross. The cross which condemns is also the cross which saves. In the crucifixion, Christ was a judge condemning our sin. Then He took off His judicial robes -- stepped down from the bench of law and onto the cross where He took our place. The cross is a place of condemnation. But it is also a place of salvation.

        You can pray right now. You can stop trying to be your own Savior and let Jesus save you. You can say, “What Jesus did on the cross, He did for me.” That takes humility. It’s hard to stop trying to be your own savior, But you wouldn’t be here this morning if Jesus wasn’t calling you.    

       If there are those who don’t know Jesus, but who want to know Him, please pray and then talk to me or Janet after the service. Come and talk.