Text:\u00a0 Romans 5: 6-8<\/p>\n
We put our cross up on the front lawn of the church last week. It\u2019s big, meant to be noticed.\u00a0 \u00a0I wonder how many people walk past it or drive past it each day.\u00a0 Probably quite a few.\u00a0 I also wonder how many give it much thought.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to know.\u00a0 But I suspect that most who are not Christians notice it, maybe think it odd or different, then think of it no more.<\/p>\n
What about us?\u00a0 Tonight and in the weeks to come we want to give you more than a drive by reminder of what God had done for you.\u00a0 For the next five Wednesday evenings, we will gather with this focus.\u00a0 Facing the Cross.<\/b><\/p>\n
We sometimes sing Were you there when they crucified my Lord?<\/i>\u00a0 We weren\u2019t.\u00a0 But the gospel writers put us there.\u00a0 They put us at the foot of Jesus\u2019 cross.\u00a0 What would we see and hear? \u00a0Terrible cruelty and suffering.\u00a0 All kinds of reactions.\u00a0 From sorrow and sneering, to a dying man who confesses his faith.\u00a0 Then Jesus\u2019 words from the cross as he suffers and then finally dies.\u00a0 The darkness, an earthquake.\u00a0 What could we make of it all?<\/p>\n
Thanks be to God the Holy Spirit we don\u2019t have to figure it \u00a0out for ourselves.\u00a0 God\u2019s Word brings it together for us.\u00a0 And tonight as we stand:<\/p>\n
FACING THE CROSS
\n<\/b>God\u2019s Word helps us to see:
\nI.\u00a0 We see one so \u201chelpless\u201d
\nII.\u00a0 We see a remarkable love<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The word powerless<\/i> jumps out at me here.\u00a0 The word means weak, unable to help yourself.\u00a0 Helpless.\u00a0 Some pictures come to mind?\u00a0 A new born baby<\/b> in a hospital where I once lived.\u00a0 A woman dressed up as a nurse. She came into the nursery and took the child away.\u00a0 Of course, the baby could do nothing.\u00a0 He was powerless to resist or fight back.\u00a0 \u00a0He was helpless.<\/p>\n
Then I think of an accident scene I once got called.\u00a0 A couple was drunk and wrecked their car<\/b>. \u00a0They were trapped inside, crying out, afraid.\u00a0 We had to extract them.\u00a0 They were helpless.<\/p>\n
Here Paul speaks of you and me as helpless.\u00a0 While we were yet powerless,<\/span> but facing the cross tonight,<\/b> that word sure seems to apply to another.\u00a0 Think of the night before.\u00a0 Jesus was arrested and led away.\u00a0 His friends desert him.\u00a0 He stands trial before the High Priest.\u00a0 It\u2019s a farce.\u00a0 False witnesses accuse him.\u00a0 Finally they condemn him as worthy of death.<\/p>\n The next morning they brought Jesus before the Roman governor.\u00a0 He had him brutally flogged.\u00a0 Then he was brought out before the crowd.\u00a0 They shout crucify him.\u00a0 The governor acceded to their wishes.\u00a0 The soldiers then made him carry the heavy cross to the place where you now stand.\u00a0 They stripped away his clothes, laid him down.\u00a0 Drove the nails through his hands and feet and lifted him up.\u00a0 And now people come by.\u00a0 You\u2019ve heard them.\u00a0 They taunt him.\u00a0 Come down from there if you are the Son of God.<\/i>\u00a0 Then this tormented cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me<\/span>. \u00a0Then he dies and they take his body to be buried.<\/p>\n If ever there was a scene of helplessness, it would seem this one, this man suspended before you.\u00a0 This man bleeding and dying.\u00a0 Facing the cross,<\/b> he seems so helpless. But helpless is not the word to describe him.\u00a0 He could have put an end to it all.\u00a0 But he would not.\u00a0 He would not because he was committed to do for you and me what we could not do for ourselves.\u00a0 So facing the cross, we see one so helpless.<\/b> \u00a0But that one is not him.\u00a0 It is me. He is there because we are weak and helpless.<\/p>\n And why? Think of Jesus\u2019 words to a man who asked him: what \u00a0must I DO to have eternal life.\u00a0 Jesus pointed him to God\u2019s will for our lives.\u00a0 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength and with all your mind.\u00a0 And love your neighbor as yourself.<\/span>\u00a0 Then Jesus told the man:\u00a0 Do this and you will live.<\/span> \u00a0But we don\u2019t do this, do we?\u00a0 Too often, we sin. We fall terribly short of what we owe God and one another. Instead of being godly, we are ______ (ungodly). Instead of deserving life, we deserve to hear God say, Go away<\/i> and don\u2019t come back<\/i>. \u00a0And you and I were powerless to turn that around. We were like that couple trapped in the car, the fault all their own.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the good news as we stand facing the cross.\u00a0 \u00a0You see at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly<\/span>.\u00a0 He took our guilt on himself and died for you and me.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The other day I was talking to someone after church.\u00a0 This is not the first time I\u2019ve heard this.\u00a0 This person said:\u00a0 when I think of Jesus dying on the cross, it makes me sad.<\/i>\u00a0 I can understand that sadness.\u00a0 When I consider it was my sins that made that necessary.\u00a0 That makes me sad.\u00a0 But don\u2019t stop there.\u00a0 Keep going.\u00a0 Facing the cross<\/b>, don\u2019t miss this.\u00a0 This Word helps us to look there and see a remarkable love.<\/b><\/p>\n Paul writes here:\u00a0 7 <\/sup>Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die<\/span>.\u00a0 Think about what Paul says.\u00a0 In a way it\u2019s like what Jesus says in gospel of John.\u00a0 Greater love has no man that this, that he lay down his life for his friends<\/span>.\u00a0 In other words, there are times when one person might sacrifice his life for others.\u00a0 Think of the soldier<\/b> who throws himself on the hand grenade to save his buddies.\u00a0 They are that important to him.\u00a0 He trusts that they would do the same for him.\u00a0 There is that kind of devotion to one another. Or think of the mother who dies protecting her children.\u00a0 Or the man I heard about years ago.\u00a0 When a thief pointed a gun at him and his wife, he stepped in front of her and was killed.\u00a0 Or the secret service agent who stops a bullet with his\/her body meant for the president.\u00a0 There is no greater sacrifice than that- to give up one\u2019s life for another.\u00a0 And people will sometimes do that for others they see as important or good or special in some way.<\/p>\n But facing the cross, God gives us to see an even more\u00a0 remarkable love<\/b>.\u00a0 His love for each of us.\u00a0 \u00a08<\/sup>But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0Let\u2019s try to get the full impact of what Paul writes here.\u00a0 That word sinner<\/i> is so often used.\u00a0 It\u2019s sharp edges can get rounded off and smooth.\u00a0 So let\u2019s put it together with some of these other words in these few verses.\u00a0 We come up with this. \u00a0Powerless, ungodly sinners.<\/span>\u00a0 Would you give up your life for a person described like that?\u00a0 \u00a0That\u2019s the point.\u00a0 God did that for you and me.<\/p>\n So facing the cross what do we see?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 God sets before us a remarkable love<\/b> that saved us, forgave us and made us His children.\u00a0 A love undeserved, but so rich and free.<\/p>\n When my daughter was small and I was at the seminary, my wife and I had a job cleaning a church.\u00a0 We would take little Katie along who would toddle around with us from room to room.\u00a0 One time her and I were in the fellowship hall which had a big cross on the far wall.\u00a0 Katie then asked me this question, daddy, what does that cross mean?<\/i>\u00a0 I was so glad for the question.\u00a0 But then I thought, How do I explain the cross to a little girl?\u00a0 Help!\u00a0 Well I paused for a moment and said this.\u00a0 You know what that cross means, honey.\u00a0 God loves you.<\/i><\/p>\n Some time later we were driving in a car with grandma and grandpa.\u00a0 We went by a church.\u00a0 A little voice spoke up in the car and asked.\u00a0 Grandma, Grandpa.\u00a0 Do you know what that cross means?<\/i>\u00a0 What Katie, they asked.\u00a0 God loves you.<\/i><\/p>\n May you see that love, God\u2019s love for you, each time you face the cross<\/b> of His Son, your Savior. \u00a0Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Text:\u00a0 Romans 5: 6-8 We put our cross up on the front lawn of the church last week. It\u2019s big, meant to be noticed.\u00a0 \u00a0I wonder how many people walk past it or drive past it each day.\u00a0 Probably quite a few.\u00a0 I also wonder how many give it much thought.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to know.\u00a0 But I suspect that most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent","category-sermon"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.livingwordpetaluma.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}