What Happened at the Cross

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