Cross

Be Overwhelmed

Chris Tomlinson — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 09:00:00 -0800

You remember the passage in Genesis 18 where Abraham petitions God over and over? God has come to “see whether [Sodom and Gomorrah] have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me,” and He hangs behind as the two angels go down towards Sodom. This is where Abraham approaches Him to inquire:

“Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”

And God responded:

“If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

This goes on and on, with Abraham petitioning God five more times, until the point where God has promised that He will not destroy the city of Sodom if only ten righteous people are found within its walls. Of course, you know the rest of the story, that not even ten are found, and in His mercy, God saves Lot and his wife (for a time) and his daughters, and that these two great cities are completely destroyed.

As I consider this passage, a few observations come to mind:

God’s foreknowledge does not preclude His listening, and even responding to, His people whom He knows. In fact, His foreknowledge enables it. God knew that not even ten would be found in the city, yet He permitted Abraham to petition Him six times on the city’s behalf, in order to show Abraham, and us by observation, something about His nature, such that…

...God’s love overcomes His wrath. Our perfect God is just to show His wrath on sinful people like us who have not kept to His perfect standard. Yet His mercy overcomes. His mercy overcomes so much that God was willing to spare an entire city, full of people who were long in rebellion to Him, if only to be merciful to even ten of His people. That’s because “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials,” (2 Peter 2:9), because…

...There is a kind of righteousness that comes in believing God. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness (Romans 4:3).” And Lot believed God as well through Abraham, as he went with him to this distant, promised land. Even though Lot was a man of mistakes, some quite grievous, he knew enough about God so that he was “greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard)” (2 Peter 2:8), which reminds us that…

...“God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

So when you feel overwhelmed by your own sin, be more overwhelmed by God’s mercy and love, which we see most clearly at the cross. He listens, and rescues, and gives us His righteousness, and loves us more deeply than we know.

Question: Do you experience a lot of guilt about your own sins?

No Excuse

David Swanson — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 05:36:10 -0700

I’m not sure if you have noticed this or not, but it seems like people make up a lot of excuses these days. No one is ever at fault. They always have an excuse. Winnona Ryder, after being arrested at Saks Fifth Avenue with $4700 worth of clothing stuffed in her bag, said “I was told I should shoplift. My director said I should try it out.” Even in the midst of the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP executives said they were unprepared for a spill of this magnitude because of faulty data they had received from the U.S Government. Apparently, 2004 projections said that any oil spilled in the gulf would rapidly evaporate or get broken up by waves or weather. In other words, they said, “How were we supposed to know the oil would come ashore – you said it wouldn’t!”

It is this cultural trend that makes Romans 1:20 all the more jarring: "..so that men are without excuse." When it comes to our lives and how we live them, because of God's faithful revelation, we have no excuse. None. We should know better.

Now, sure, we'll try to come up with some, but that's often based on a cultural creation of the God we want, not the God who truly is. We mold God into our image so that our excuses work. Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw this in the German Church during the days of Hitler's rise. He said “If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find Him, must go to the foot of the cross…”

As I think about the call God has placed upon my life - and yours - my desire is to answer that call as purely as I can. There is no excuse for me. All I can do is throw myself at the foot of the cross, humbly relying on His Spirit to empower me to live as He has commanded. I do not shape Him - He shapes me - so God, keep me still and pliable in your Hands.

Resurrected Jesus, Resurrected Us (5 Days in 4 Gospels: Bonus Easter Post)

John Barry — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 06:00:00 -0700

When Jesus is resurrected, we are resurrected. He overcame death, so that we may do the same. He died so that we may live sinless lives, not go on sinning. With Jesus, we can be restored to right relationship with God. We can be new creations.

Here’s the back story: Resurrected Servant Prophesied.

“Yet Yahweh was pleased to crush [the servant]; he afflicted [him] (with sickness). If [Zion or Jerusalem] places his life a guilt offering. He will see offspring, he will prolong days and the will of Yahweh in his hand will succeed. From the trouble of his life he will see light. He will be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:10–11, my translation).

Here’s the front story: Resurrected Jesus.

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.’ And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened” (Luke 24:1-12, ESV).

Here’s the now story: Resurrected Us

“Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father [so that] we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:4–5, ESV).“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ [they are a] new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:17–18, ESV, adapted).

May Jesus resurrect our lives. May our suffering servant make us new creations.

5 Things Jesus Taught Me on the Cross (5 Days in 4 Gospels: Day 5)

John Barry — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 08:30:00 -0700

The cross is more about life than death. Jesus teaches us how to live life in his last moments. He teaches us what it means to be godly—to love those who hate you, even in the most painful circumstances. Here are the five things Jesus taught me on the cross:

1. Forgiveness is about us, not them. Forgiveness is not dependent upon other people’s actions. Luke’s gospel records Jesus looking down on the men who beat him and crucified him, and saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Jesus doesn’t ask God to forgive the men who crucified him, and the crowd who mocked and beat him, because they deserve mercy, but because they are ignorant. They are anything but deserving. Jesus forgiving those who killed him shows us more about him than it does them. He was right with God, even when people had done wrong by him. We should forgive others because God forgave us when we didn’t deserve it.

2. Fulfilling your call is the most important thing of all. It was part of Jesus’ vocation to suffer. He was called to suffer like the suffering servant prophesied 500 years before he was born. Hence why Jesus says to Mary, “Woman, behold, your son!” (John 19:26). In other words, “Behold, I am fulfilling my calling.” If God has called us to do something, it is our duty (our obligation) to fulfill that calling—no matter what the cost.

3. It’s never too late to be saved. When one of the criminals who was crucified next to Jesus says, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”, the criminal being crucified on the other side of Jesus rebukes him and says, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” He then says to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus then replies, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:39–43). It’s never too late to come to Jesus, but never too early. All we have to do is commit our life to Christ. The moments following that commitment may be short, but God will still accept our commitment. That doesn’t mean we should delay, though, because we never know when we won’t have another chance. (We could all get hit by a bus.)

4. Pain can be holy. In Jesus’ last moments, he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34). (These are words echoed from Psalm 22:1.) Then, according to Luke, Jesus says, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46). And just before dying, Jesus echoes Psalm 22:31 (“he has finished it”), when he says “It is finished” (John 19:30). Jesus is quoting the first and last line of a Psalm, which is how rabbis in the ancient world cited biblical passages. In citing a psalm about deep, painful lament, Jesus is saying: “I am the ultimate lamenter. I am that man.”

5. Sometimes the earth has to shake for us to get “it.” All the prophetic signs were in place, but no one got “it.” So what does God do? Shake the earth after Jesus dies. Would we get “it” if we were there? I doubt it. But after the earth shakes, and everything comes crashing down in our lives, we have a tendency to see things more clearly. After the earthquake, it’s not a Jewish priest, or an expert in the Bible who gets “it”: it’s a Roman soldier. He remarks, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39). According to Luke’s Gospel, he also remarks, “Certainly this man was innocent!” (Luke 23:47). Like Jesus, we can lament in a godly way. Pain can be holy. We just have to follow the guidance of psalms like Psalm 22.

Jesus died for us on the cross. But he also taught us about life on the cross. Now it’s our obligation to live it. May the man who died for your life teach you to live a godly life.

The Cross and the Tomb: Good Friday

Holly Ordway — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Christ is risen! On Easter, we raise our voices in praise and thanksgiving, celebrating the victory won for us by Our Lord, our new life made possible in His new life.

And rightly we do celebrate – but before we do, wait a moment. Paul writes in Romans that “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom 6:5 ESV). How easy it is to jump ahead, in our eagerness to be united with Our Lord in a resurrection like His own mighty resurrection. Stop for a moment. Stop and think on Paul’s words: “if we have been united with him in a death like his.” A death like Jesus’ death. What does that mean?

We cannot come to new life without death. We cannot find the Risen Lord without the Cross; we cannot reach Easter any way except through the agony of Good Friday and the emptiness of Holy Saturday.

Good Friday

Our Lord leads the way – from triumph and hosannas as He entered Jerusalem on Sunday, through the lonely watch in the garden of Gethsemane. Mark tells us that in the garden, Jesus “fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will’” (Mk 14:35-36). Our Lord Himself was distressed and troubled, yet constant in obedience to the Father. How easy it is to proclaim Christ when we anticipate that His will is peace and prosperity. Yet Christ calls us to come and die. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom 6:3).

Would you die for Christ? Here in America, we are unlikely to literally die for Christ at all, and certainly not as Our Lord did – in agony, His scourged body stretched across the wood of the cross, struggling to breathe. Put it differently. Would you be willing to lose your job for Christ? Would you let go of God’s good gifts to follow God Himself?

Christ calls us to share in His death, that we may share in His resurrection. “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). We will, soon, glory in His resurrection – but first comes the cross.

The crowd shouts, “Crucify him, crucify him!” (Jn 19:6). We are in that crowd. Pilate offers to release Him: the crowd shouts, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend.” (Jn 19:12). What accommodations have we made with Caesar? What do we worship instead of the One True God? We must face the darkness in our own lives as we make our way toward the light of Easter.

Christ is crucified.

Not for a vague and unspecified “humanity,” nor for a general idea of “sinners” which we so easily interpret as “other people.” No – on the cross He hung for three bitter hours, bleeding, thirsty, listening to the mockery of the crowd – for us. For me who writes this, for you who are reading this, for all the individual human lives that have ever been and ever will be. And with Christ was crucified all our sins. “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin” (Rom 6:6-7).

Why the Cross Matters Most

Chris Tomlinson — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:57:39 -0800

Is it possible to talk too much about the cross?

I ask this question only because some preachers and writers and teachers seem to talk about the cross a lot. Some do so almost continually. We can understand why they might carry on in this way because we know the primacy and weight of Calvary. But there are still times this thought crosses many of our minds: “Great, so I understand the cross is important. But can’t we move on to the next topic?”

We say this sort of thing when we feel our faith is about more than Jesus. And in one sense, we can say this is true. Our faith is about God’s glory, and our joy, and loving others, and meeting the needs of the oppressed, and being made holy, and sojourning through life, and laying up treasures in heaven, and all sorts of other things. In this way, we are saying the expression of our faith is about many things.

But in another sense, the entirety of our faith is about Jesus. God’s grand, redemptive story begins with a foretelling of the coming Seed. His chosen servants foreshadow His mission. His prophets herald His arrival. As history progresses onward, we begin to see the entirety of God’s revelation to humanity as pointing towards the advent of the Messiah. This is perhaps why Paul says, “All the promises of God find their Yes in Him” (2 Cor 1:20). In this second kind of way, we are saying the purpose of our faith is about one thing: Jesus.

So when we find the purpose of our faith is about Jesus, we have to ask ourselves the question: why is this so? What is it about the person of Jesus, the mission of Jesus, the work of Jesus, which makes Him the reason for our faith? And this is what leads us to the cross.

Here’s why the cross matters: It is at the cross that we see God most clearly. If history were the vastness of space, the cross would be its brightest star. We see the fullness of God’s being most clearly at the cross. We see the fullness of His active purposes most clearly at the cross.

At the cross…

…We see God’s sovereignty—reigning with absolute control over humanity’s greatest sin.

…We see God’s purpose—making known the mystery of His will prepared before time.

…We see God’s plan—to unite all things, on heaven and on earth, in Him.

…We see God’s judgment—requiring recompense for guilt.

…We see God’s holiness—demanding the perfect sacrifice.

…We see God’s power—crushing the Son of God according to the purpose of His will.

…We see God’s wrath—punishing the wretchedness of sin.

…We see God’s sorrow—wailing as only a forsaken son can.

…We see God’s mystery—the Son, as God, separated from the Father, committing His Spirit to God.

…We see God’s compassion—pleading to the Father to forgive the ignorant.

…We see God’s gift—His one and only Son, bruised and broken on our behalf.

…We see God’s mercy—making unrighteous sinners righteous.

…We see God’s love—Christ dying for sinners.

…We see God’s rescue operation—delivering us from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of His Son.

…We see God’s proposal—pledging Himself to His bride forever.

…We see God’s revelation—the Word of God speaking His last so He might speak on behalf of many.

…We see God’s victory—disarming His enemies, putting them to shame, and triumphing over them.

…We see God’s glory—the name of the Father being magnified for the sake of all peoples.

But seeing God most clearly is not an end to itself. If it were, then the point of all history would be our own clarity of sight. But that is not history’s purpose. Everything exists for Jesus, so that in everything He might preeminent. We study the Scriptures to know more of God. We look forward with great hope to the day we will see Him face to face. But in the here and now, we know God most fully when we look upon the person and work of Jesus on the cross.

It is only when we behold the Son of God most clearly that we can magnify Him most fully, acknowledging His preeminence in all things, which reflects more brightly the reality of His glory. This is why one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, because on that day, all will see Him as He is, either toward our greatest joy or our greatest sorrow.

So if you preach and teach about the cross, remember that we, as your people, need the lens of your preaching to continually focus our hearts on the crucified Son of God. And if we hear or read about the cross and wonder what is next, that we’re ready to move beyond it, let us remember that the cross matters for our yesterday, and our today, and our tomorrow.

And let us always hold the best of our hearts, the fullness of our hearts, for the One whose scars will testify for eternity to the glory and horror of that day that made possible the one day we will enjoy with Him forever.

U2 and the Unfashionable Cross...

Richard Dahlstrom — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:58:20 -0700

It seems like everyone I know has been to, or is going to, hear u2 live in October. They're out on the west coast, doing a tour and so Christians between 20 and 40 are making the pilgrimage. Before I continue, I'll offer the caveat that I love u2. I just returned from running stairs and Bono was my companion because, after the 10th set of sprints it's true: I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Their music, lyrics, and leverging of fame for social good are all inspiring and exemplery. Still....

My concern resides in our age old tendency to reshape the gospel so that it matches our own personal ideals and passions. Right now social justice is fashionable. There's good reason for this, and it's a welcome swing of the pendulum from the old days, when missionaries would (at least according to missiological legend) hand out tape recorders, the Bible on tape, and tracts, before handing out food, "just in case someone perishes without knowing Christ." We've come a long way from that, but just as that was fashionable then, wells in Africa are fashionable now.

The risk we run, with any fashionable expression of the gospel, isn't that it becomes entirely untrue, but that it becomes a distortion. We might, for example, consider ourselves exemplary Christians because we have joined the One campaign, sponsor a child with World Vision, and skip lattes on Fridays, giving the money to economic development work in Africa instead. It's all cool, all popular, and has every risk of being cross-less, both in the sense that Jesus is moved from the center to the margins, AND in the sense that we've no practical expressions of self-denial. I'll explain both:

1. Jesus moved to the margins simply means that we take St. Francis word literally, to a fault. He's the guy who said, "preach always, use words only when necessary". I always want to add a third phrase to his timely remarks: "...and words will usually be necessary". This is because everything we do, we do supposedly as a means of heralding the arrival of a soon to come new government, with the new reign of a new king. How strange would it be to bring the ethics of the new king, and the blessings, but conspicuously, even intentionally ignore the CENTRALITY of that King's presence as the source of all hope. And yet this seems to happen all the time in the new and fashionable social gospel.

2. The cross lacking IN us means that we're running the risk of defining the outworking of the gospel in terms of things we'd do anyway. "Sure, I'll sponsor a child, buy fair trade coffee..." While that's great, and fits in well with U2's theology, what's missing is the reality that Jesus will also ask of each of us, in specific ways, acts of self-denial. Maybe our sexual ethic will need to change. Maybe he'll ask us to not just write a check, but move to Africa, or the inner-city, or South Dakota, and His calling doesn't align with our passions. Jesus said it pretty clearly: "unless you deny yourself and take up YOUR cross and follow, you can't be my disciple"

We like to talk about passion, justice, culture, relevance. It's the stuff, not only of Christian magazines and web-sites, but of billion dollar bands. But the cross? Other than the one's hanging around our necks, I fear it's fallen on hard times, both as a central message, and as an existential necessity for we who claim to be disciples.

That's all... except to say that Joshua Tree is still my favorite.

It's a Good Day

Brett McCracken — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:14:58 -0700

I always wondered why it was called “Good Friday.” I mean, Jesus was brutally tortured and hung on a cross. There were dark skies and earthquakes and torn veils. Seems more like “Bad Friday,” doesn’t it? Really, has humanity ever had a worse day? The one time the God of the universe was actually walking around in human form on earth, and what do we do? We kill him. That’s pretty bad.

Yet we call it Good Friday. And sure enough, it is a good day. In spite of the horrors of the crucifixion, in spite of the horrors of our own sin and depravity, it is a good day. Why? Because of the last words Jesus uttered before he gave up his spirit: It is finished.

These are words to remember.

In the darkest hours of the night, when nightmares and migraines and monsters keep us from sleep. When car crashes and hospital bills and blood tests make us fret. When sirens and helicopters and cancer loom in the background.

It is finished.

On the days when you don’t want to wake up because you know there is way more to do than can be done, when you feel like you’ll never make a dent in the checklist. When all that you wish you were is exactly what you cannot be. When you say the wrong things and love the wrong people. When you long for the good ole days. When scotch is the only way you can make it through. When you look at the world and it hurts your gut.

It is finished.

When it all comes crashing down: bones, taxes, therapy, pottery, dishonesty, Sunday School, workman’s comp, babysitters, yoga, coffee, car insurance, insecurity, vitamins, piano lessons, treadmill, facebook, failure, success, love, loss… remember that all the trouble we’ve seen has been seen before, every hardship endured on some other rocky road. Christ took it upon himself and assumed the burden. Friends: it is finished.

“In this world you will have trouble,” said Jesus on the night before he died. “But take heart!” he continued. “I have overcome the world.”

Overcome the world? You better believe this is a good day.