Winston Salem church of Christ

The Mystery of the Cross^[1]

INTRO:A. Illustration: George Berkeley’s Falling TreeMost people believe that Philosophy is boring, useless and weird. That is probably why I majored in it in College. I therefore find a little self-satisfaction in knowing that the word philosophy simply means love of wisdom. Therefore, borrowing from my syllogistic training in logic, I therefore conclude most people think wisdom is boring, useless and weird. I feel vindicated!And yet, although most people know very little about philosophy, there is one quote that transcends the ignorance and apathy of the masses; Descartes’s metaphysical conclusion, I think therefore I am. Like Descartes’s metaphysical conclusion, there is also a universally known philosophical question that mixes both metaphysics and epistemology. “The eighteenth-century Irish philosopher George Berkeley believed that to exist meant to be perceived (Exactly the opposite of Descartes’, “I think therefore I am” – PDH). He was the first to postulate that if a tree fell in the forest and there was no one there to hear it fall, there was a question as to whether it actually made noise when it fell or not. This seemingly silly question started a major epistemological (i.e. the study of knowledge) debate by a number of brilliant minds as to the validity of the sounds of falling trees in the forests of the world. Berkeley’s ultimate conclusion was that the falling tree did make a sound even though no one was there to hear it because, in fact, God heard it. God hears everything.

B. Two thousand years ago, a man on a tree fell. The question is, did His fall make a sound?

C. The term mystery is often used in the NT to refer to a mystery that is revealed1. Eph.6:19; Col.1:26 – …pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel….that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints.2. The mystery of the gospel, a salvation by grace for Jew and Gentile is revealed, but there is another mystery. One that is explained, but impossible to totally seize in understanding. It is the mystery of blood and love.3. Yes, the mystery of the effects of the cross have been revealed, grasped and understood – our salvation. But the mystery of the love of the cross, although revealed, is something we spend a life-time striving to grasp, never fully understanding, and longing to imitate.

D. Are we willing to hear the sound of Jesus on the cross?

BODY:I. A FALLEN MAN ON A STANDING TREE

A. There was another tree outside of the ivory towers of philosophical harangues, but this other tree did not fall. Instead, it embraced – through nails – a man that fell.1. He did not fall into sin; but fall He did into the hands of sinners. He did not fall into sin, but He fell into the trap of sin – death.2. This standing tree held a fallen man. Was there anyone around to hear Him fall?

B. Go back with me to the night where this God-Man started to fall.1. All Jesus’ disciples flee (Mt.26:56); some return to follow at a distance (Mt.26:58; Jn.18:15); only one returns to His side at the cross (Jn.19:26-27). John 16:32 NASB “Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.

2. But did John understand the sound of Jesus falling? Or did John only see a friend dying as so many others have before? Did John only see the hope of his misguided misunderstanding of an earthly kingdom die on the cross with Jesus? What did John see fall? John saw a man fall. John saw a friend die. The only sound John heard was the sound of death.

C. Broken, His mother sat at the bottom of the cross.1. While affixed to the bloodied ground outside of the city of hope, I am confident her mind turned back in time as she remembered the prophetic words of Simeon who said, “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed – and a sword will pierce even your own soul – to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” (Lk.2:34-35).2. But did she also remember that Simeon also prayed, “Now Lord, You are releasing Your bond-servant to depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples, A Light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.” (Lk.2:29-32).3. Scripture reveals Jesus’ earthly parents were amazed at the things which were being said about Him (Lk.2:33).4. A few years later, when Jesus had stayed behind at the temple, and His parents, still not understanding, had searched for Him three days, He responded to His mother’s chastisement by saying, “Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Lk.2:49). Luke further records, But they did not understand the statement which He had made to them (Lk.2:50).a. Being in His Father’s house meant doing His Father’s business. On the cross, Jesus was still in His Father’s house.a. What did Jesus’ mother understand at the foot of the cross? What did she hear? She heard death.

D. Sitting at the bottom of the cross, hearing the sounds of the crucifixion, do you think any of them then understood? I don’t. They were too attached to their own ideals. They were too attached to Jesus the Man, the Friend, the Son. None of them understood the mystery of love and blood.

E. “Jesus Christ’s death on a cross does not have to be ratified by anyone. It does not have to be understood to be true….The Son of God died on a real wooden cross on a rocky hillside in human history for the sins of the world. You and I were not there to see it or hear it, [those sitting at the cross saw with the physical eye, but did not truly see, - PDH] but God saw it, and therein lies its primary significance.”1. Like Berkeley’s conclusion, in the end, all reality is defined by God’s seeing. God heard the sound of the fallen man on the standing tree.

F. Whether we ever perceive the truth of that day; whether we ever understand the ugliness of that day; whether we ever see the darkness of that day, “the Son of God died on the cross like a tree falling in a forest when no one was around to hear the crash.”1. Even Satan didn’t hear. But Heaven heard. The only remaining question is, do we hear?

II. DO WE HEAR A FALLEN MAN ON A STANDING TREE?A. Within our society we have several realms, none of which truly hear the sounds of the cross.1. Atheists & Agnostics – Within our society are nonbelievers in every respect even to the existence of God. They cannot hear the sounds of the cross because they don’t believe there is a cross with the Son of God affixed to it. To them, there might or might not have been a cross. They might or might not believe there was a man named Jesus on a cross. But there is no mystery of love and blood. Only disbelief.2. Non-religious Believers – The non-religious believers are not true believers, but rather those that mentally agree that Jesus died on the cross. Even most Jews today believe Jesus died on the cross.3. Religious Believers – We who are “believers,” and I am not defining that term biblically, but as it is commonly used, because most of us were raised in a Christian environment – even if it was a doctrinally erring Christian environment – were raised with the belief of the cross so that it is as normal to believe in as Santa Claus. It is not foolishness, it is normal.a. Church Ads.4. Do we hear the foolishness of the cross (1 Cor.1:18-29)? Or has the cross become normal to us? The mystery lies in its foolishness.

B. “God has always preferred to put his messages at odds with the world. More often than not, he slants his messages counter-culturally. He works against the grain. He sets out to save the world through a remnant of cultural outcasts who never seem to be able to get their own act together, so much so that they kill off the very man for whom they have been waiting for thousands of years. Then God announces that his death, believe it or not, will save them and everybody else, too.

C. “All along, of course, God introduced this plan through a line of prophets who were never welcomed in their own day. And he even goes on to say that those who follow his message today will find themselves facing an equally hostile audience. Perhaps we are running against God’s intended purposes when we try and make becoming a Christian the exciting, culturally relevant thing to do. If becoming a Christian suddenly becomes popular, we have to wonder if this is the same Christianity Jesus was talking about.”1. People might ask, “But didn’t Jesus have huge followings?” Yes, and we can learn from Jesus’ methods to bring people to Him. But remember, Jesus’ constant crowds, which were so large He and His disciples could not even eat, were before the cross. How many believers were in the upper room after the cross? 120.2. People might ask, “But didn’t Jesus have huge followings starting on the day of Pentecost? Yes, and we can learn from the messages taught which emphasized the death, burial and resurrection to bring people to Him. But remember, this same message brought persecution, not popularity.3. People might think, “Those large congregations are large because they aren’t preaching the cross,” and then smugly think, “We are small which proves we are right.” Wrong – there is a difference between being smaller than a denominational church, or interdenominational church because they are preaching the wrong message, and being smaller because we are not preaching any message.

D. “Take the message of the cross – nothing could be more counter-cultural. But even this gaping scar on the hillside of history can, in the interest of making a more acceptable message to today’s audience, be turned into nothing more arresting than a precious moment.”1. Illustration: How much do you love me?’“I asked God, `How much do you love me?’ and he stretched out his arms on the cross and said, `This much.’ a. “This popular poster found in many churches and Christian homes is true to a point. But it is not the whole story. This lovely picture of Jesus dying for me is touching – but why is he doing this? Why is he up there in the first place? Why do I need somebody to die for me? I didn’t realize I was in so much trouble. Oh, a little dysfunctional maybe; I have a few addictions, but who doesn’t? I’m getting good therapy, and I’m even going to church. I listen to Christian radio all the time and I’m starting to believe in myself. So I’ll just put the poster up on my wall and feel good about the fact that God loves me so much that he would do something like this.”b. Friends, if Jesus on a cross only makes us feel good about ourselves, then we are missing the message of the cross. And indeed the cross is still a mystery to us.

F. “The passion of Christ can be played out in front of people without putting demands on anyone as long as it is not tied to God’s holiness and our own personal sin. It becomes his tragedy at that point, not ours. Most people don’t like admitting that their life is a tragedy, but the ongoing success of soap operas suggests that most of us have no problem watching someone else’s pain. And to those who fail to face their own tragedies there, the cross becomes God’s unfortunate little drama.”1. And most of us never hear the sound of the fallen man on the standing tree.

III. THE MYSTERY OF THE FALLEN MAN ON THE STANDING TREEA. Illustration: Grape Juice SorrowDo you ever stare into the little containers of grape juice during communion, trying to imagine Christ on the cross and feel sorry for him, or for yourself? We preachers sometimes attempt to incite “sorrow by drawing out the physical aspects of the crucifixion – the thorns being pressed into his skull, his back being ripped open by whips with sharp objects in their tails, the nails going into his hands, the cross being lifted and dropped into his hole in the ground wrenching the joints in his body, the dehydration, the spear in the side, the blood, the water – and all of this gruesome pain and agony was dramatized as the fullest expression of love man has ever known.”1. “Love and execution. What strange bedfellows!”

B. Illustration: If Anyone Here Was Crucified…1. If any one of us was suddenly surrounded by a swarm of military personnel who rushed the room, nailed us to a cross, and dropped it down into the floor in front of the other with someone affixed to it, I doubt that the first thing on people’s minds would be how much the crucified victim loved us. It wouldn’t even be the last thing. The more accurate reaction probably would be, `What on earth is going on here?’”a. “The ones who knew Jesus and loved him were probably thinking the same thing on the day he was crucified: `What on earth is going on here?’ The ones who didn’t were probably thinking, `What a fool!’ I doubt there was one person at Golgotha hill that afternoon who felt loved in any way by this gruesome spectacle.”

C. In today’s world, we do. We think of love. But that is because the mystery is revealed. But if we forget the puzzle, if we can’t imagine the mystery unrevealed, we’ve lost out on the foolishness of the cross.1. Yes, when we sit in communion with one another and our Lord, we should think of His love for us, but we should also sit in awe – thy mystery of that love, the mystery of the cross, the revelation of humiliation.2. Illustration: Jn.3:16I am told when Martin Luther wrote a commentary on John, when he came to the chapter three and verse sixteen, he left it blank. God’s love for mankind was a mystery to him.

D. “The mystery shrouding the cross cannot be reduced to something we can completely understand as human beings. The truth of the cross is beyond and behind and before us, bigger than anything we can hold in our hands. Without this mystery, sacrifice turns into sentiment, and substitutionary death into drama. The hard cross softens into a mushy display of God’s love for me that doesn’t have much more depth than a Barry Manilow love ballad.”

E. “Yes, the cross is the ultimate expression of God’s love. But it is just that: God’s love. Not our love. This is a love that we do not understand. It is a love that is completely foreign to the way we operate. No popular song or expression can come close to it.”1. Rom.5:6-8 – For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.2 “This is God’s love. This is how it was demonstrated. We have no human counterpart for such a love, no words to express it. Unless our message comes through the cross, our need, and the sacrificial requirement of a holy God, it will be interpreted as something other than what it is.

F. But wait a minute. You might be thinking of all the scriptural analogies of the love of a husband and wife, and that of parents for children. Are these human counterparts of God’s love for us? Only as the O.T. tabernacle was a shadow of things to come.1. And yet, even this God-given illustrations fall short. They fall as short as any glorious description of heaven. They fall as short as any painful description of hell.2. And the reason for their inadequacy is that husbands loving wives, and wives loving husbands, and parents loving children, all involve one sinner loving another sinner. Our love is flawed.3. Do you want proof of our flawed understanding of God’s love?a. Parents excusing the sins of the children. Spouses siding with their loved ones against God and His righteousness. How can we say we have God’s love when we side with sin and weakness?b. Mt.10:37 – “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who love son or daughter more than is not worthy of Me.4. Pure love, divine love, is a mystery to us that we must spend an entire life trying to unravel. I understand it a little when I look at my wife. I understand it a little when I look at my children. I thought I understood pure love because I knew I would be willing to die for my wife and children. But I know know that pure love will always be a mystery. Why? Because I am not pure. I am a sinner.

G. “Much of the crucifixion is a mystery that lies beyond us. Those bulls and rams and lambs and turtledoves and goats all charred and burning, sending their acrid smoke heavenward as a peculiar, sweet-smelling savor to the nostrils of God – all that was really necessary. And Jesus dying as the final Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world….”

H. “I didn’t come up with this. To be quite honest, I find the whole idea somewhat repulsive. But I notice that God didn’t ask my opinion first. He just did it.”1. “He sent his only-begotten Son to die on the cross and announced its importance throughout all the Scriptures from beginning to end, so that those who believe would be saved, just as all who looked upon the serpent that Moses raised on a staff in the wilderness were healed of their deadly diseases.”2. “Those who believe were healed. Not those who were moved to tears, not those who felt loved, not those who wanted to feel sorry for God, but those who believed – believed something they did not even understand, but believed it nonetheless. Believed it because they had no choice. They looked at themselves and saw a deadly disease, and they looked at the provision of God and were healed.”

I. “The fact that blood is necessary as a sacrifice for human sin, that it is required of God as a payment, and that Christ’s blood is enough to secure the transaction for the whole world, is not up to me to understand. It is not a tender moment to be cherished, but a fact to be believed, a currency required for entry into heaven. There is an exchange policy at work here. We turn over what we know of ourselves for currency foreign to us but required in the new kingdom we aspire to enter. Thus it is with the sacrificial blood of Jesus. I may not understand it, but I’ll gladly take it.1. As they hymn writer has so simply and profoundly put it:I am not skilled to understandWhat God hath willed, what God hath planned;I only know at His right handStands One who is my Savior.

I take Him at his word and deed:“Christ died to save me,” this I read;And in my heart I find a needOf Him to be my Savior.^[2]

J. “The cross was for God first before it is ever for me or anyone else.”1. God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ (2 Cor.5:19).2. God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son (Jn.3:16).3. God demonstrated his love for us by having Christ die for us while we were still sinners (Rom.5:8).4. “Even before Jesus died for you and me, he died for God. He did this for his Father because of what the Father wanted to accomplish through Christ’s death; to this end, Christ was obedient unto death, and in that obedience is his greatest glory.”

K. “This raises an important question: did Christ die for me because I was worth buying back, or did Christ die for me because he wanted to display his grace through me to the universe? If redemption hinges on my worth, then God is nothing more than a good businessman: he’s getting a good deal on his investment. But if redemption hinges on the display of the totality of God’s plan to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places, then we are not the point; we are simply part of a big plan to glorify God. His grace and his mercy as displayed through his church is the point. The point is to bring glory to God – to worship him with every knee and every tongue in the act.1. Eph.1:18-23; Col.2:152. Yes, I am worth something but only because I am made in God’s image. Therefore my worth has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with God.

L. This attitude is described for us in Philippians 2:6-11:1. “This description of the work of Christ on the cross does not mention anything about us except our knees (and our tongues - PDH); it has everything to do with God and his Son and what Christ’s obedience demonstrated about his attitude. We are the by-products of his work, and we will join in the worship. But in degree of importance, I believe Jesus Christ died for God before he died for me. God was foremost on his mind.2. “In other words, I was not the first reason why God’s Son died. His justice and his mercy, and the display of this part of himself to the entire universe, is closer to the first reason why God’s Son died than I am. I get to be a small part of a very big picture, and that is a fact I cannot take in all at once. It is a picture so big that much of it still remains a mystery to me. A picture that becomes a deeper mystery the more I look at it.

M. A man fell on a standing tree; I wasn’t there, but it was extremely important to the man, to the one who heard it in heaven, to history, to all the other men – and thus, finally, to me.

N. “God does not need me to respond to him in order to make all the trouble he went to worth it. What Jesus did is already worth it regardless of me or you, because the primary reason he died on the cross was to obey his Father in heaven. Any other reason pales in importance.

CONCLUSION:A. Questions:1. Are you ready to let God be glorified in you?2. Are you ready for lifetime of living out the mystery of love and blood?

^[2]Dora Green well, “I Am Not Skilled to Understand.