What Happened at the Cross
Minister: | Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: | 4/10/2020 PM (Good Friday) |
Text: | Luke 23:33 |
Psalters: | 110, 47, 92 |
- An utter rejection.
- First, consider the cross and its form of punishment.
- While some were tied on to the cross with ropes, Jesus was nailed hands and feet. This broke His body.
- The suffering of dying on a cross was a tasting of death in the full sense.
- The meaning of death by a cross.
- It was not a mistake that the chief priest cried that He be crucified, rejected as contemptable.
- First, consider the cross and its form of punishment.
- The cross was also God’s work and the men (Sanhedrin, Pilate, Herod, soldiers) were just His instruments.
- Looking at Calvary, one would see three crosses which looked alike, but there was an essential difference.
- God crucified Jesus.
- First, generally it is God who kills and makes alive (Deut. 33:39) so death is always God’s work.
- And the cross was God declaring that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself (II Cor. 5:19).
- Now look at the cross from the viewpoint of what Jesus did – He brought the perfect sacrifice.
- Jesus tasted the awfulness of sin’s reality, experiencing unspeakable sorrow because of the sin of His own.
- He was so filled with the sense of sin’s awfulness that He gave up Himself (Gal. 2:20).
- As divine, He could enter death, seeking it in obedient love for God.
- Having given Himself as the perfect sacrifice and tasting the return of light, Jesus could say, “It is finished.”
- Look at the cross in faith and see God’s sentence for your sin expressed especially in the three hours of darkness.
- With this faith see in Jesus on the cross giving the perfect sacrifice for us.
- Jesus tasted the awfulness of sin’s reality, experiencing unspeakable sorrow because of the sin of His own.