The Cross
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Good morning, Gateway!
Good morning, Gateway!
Scripture
Prayer
Intro
Good morning, Gateway Chapel!
If we haven’t met before, my name is Chris, and I’m the pastor of Gateway Chapel, the church that gathers here in this building. We are a church on mission to plant churches and make disciples who hear, love, and obey Jesus.
We are continuing in our Year of Biblical Exploration…it’s a year long broad overview of the biblical story. As Christians, we follow Jesus, and Jesus was a full blown Bible nerd. We want to love Jesus and live our lives through the lens of Scripture like he did. So maybe you’re reading through the Bible in a year doing about four chapters a day. Maybe you started that last year and now you’re in Isaiah still trucking along, awesome. Maybe you’re slowly reading Jonah with a commentary saying, “I want to get this book because there is so much here from the whole story!” Some gals meet on Sundays to read Scripture together a couple times a month. Lately I’ve been taking my dog Norman on walks and listening to Psalms and Proverbs. Consider other creative ways for the Holy Spirit to minister to your soul through Scripture.
Last week we began a series “The Symbols of Easter” and we said how symbols are powerful…like the uniforms of your favorite team, the American flag, a mask symbol on a door. Symbols carry significant meaning, they tell stories, they unify…and as we lead up to easter, four main symbols of our faith can help guide our hearts towards Easter Sunday.
The Water
The Water
The Meal
The Meal
The Cross
The Cross
The Empty Tomb
The Empty Tomb
Each of these can be symbols of Christ’s love for us. The water of baptism reminds us of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The meal of communion reminds us that Jesus is the passover lamb, broken and poured out for our sins so we can be a part of his family.
Today is Palm Sunday. The beginning of Holy Week, the final days leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection. Today we’re not going to talk about palms, but we will about another kind of tree…the cross. The most significant symbol in Christianity, and regardless of your faith, the most significant and powerful symbol in the world.
On the surface, the cross is a very basic symbol. A logo of sorts for Christianity. One that can be worn, tattooed, put on a website, on the side of a road to symbolize an accident, all over the place. But for Christians we proudly display crosses because for us it symbolizes Jesus!
But 2,000 years ago, the cross was less of a logo and more of a threat. It was a means of oppression by the Roman government against those who would rise up against it. It’s hard for us to fathom the obscenity of crucifixion. Roman citizens could not be crucified. It was reserved for outcasts: slaves and foreigners, the worst criminals. It was not only execution, it was torture. It was not only brutal, it was shameful, publically displaying the victim naked while strangers mocked them.
So how did a symbol of tyranny, torture, shame, and humiliation…become for us a symbol of love, hope, grace?
This picture is ancient graffiti. It’s a drawing from the early Roman empire of someone on the cross with the body of a man but the head of a donkey. And there is a man next to it, worshipping it. And the caption reads, “Alexamenos worships god.”
Someone is making fun of Christians. “How stupid can you be?” Mocked the gentile Romans. And the Jews said…”You claim this to be a mighty act of God? Hasn’t the OT predicted the Christ would come in glory and victory? Surely the Christ can’t be crucified, it says in Deut that anyone who hangs on a tree is cursed!”
How is it that the cross, of all symbols, is ours? Or cause us to sing songs that say crazy things like, “When i survey the wondrous cross...” How is Jesus’ death his victory?
Today we’re going to look at Luke 9:23, and ask a couple simple questions: How did Jesus view the cross? How might we respond? Before we look at Luke 9:23 together, let’s pray.
Pray
How did Jesus view the cross?
23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
In this section of Luke, Jesus is addressing what it means that he is the Messiah, the promised King, the chosen one if you prefer. Peter has just correctly identified him as the Christ. Then Jesus says in Luke 9:22
22 saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
And then we get to our verse that if anyone wants to follow his particular kind of kingship, they must deny themselves, and take up their cross daily.
A way of life
A way of life
As a part of this way of life, Jesus says you must deny yourself.
To deny oneself is to refuse, disregard, denounce, or even disown.
The word ‘deny’ is most commonly used to talk about the story of…Peter. Denying he even knew Jesus three times.
So how do we deny ourselves?
I remember sitting down with a friend in high school who asked me, “So if I follow Jesus, what kinds of fun things do I have to give up?”
I remember not having a good answer. The tone of his question suggested what many people feel about God, that he’s kind of a killjoy. I like hanging out with my friends, God would prefer I sit silently in church. I like playing sports, God prefers I read the King James Bible. Deny fun things, follow Jesus.
But I think what Jesus is getting at is not that following him means you can’t do things you like anymore, or that you don’t matter. Because Jesus also said I came to give abundant life! What he means is as the true King, he gets the final say in our lives.
I wonder if to deny myself means asking questions like, “Jesus, how do you want me to use my money?” “Jesus, I really don’t like that person. How do you want me to respond to them?” “Jesus, I feel jealous when I see the success of others. How do you want me to think about them?”
To deny yourself is to receive Jesus as the true king.
The second part of this way of life involves taking up your cross daily.
This is a vivid illustration for his listeners. They would have stark memories of people from their hometowns picking up a heavy wooden cross, walking through the street beaten and defeated. They would remember watching that shameful one-way journey. It’s the most acute symbol of suffering and death available to Jesus.
Jesus says…that’s what following me is like. Huh?
For the Christian, the cross symbolizes in part that suffering, loss, and weakness are not evils to be avoided, but a daily opportunity to see Jesus.
Matthew 16:21-23...
21 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
Pete Scazzero in his book, Emotionally Healthy DIscipleship, comments on these verses by saying:
“At this point, Peter understands only half the gospel. Like so many of us, he is Christ-centered, but not cross-centered. Peter has a high view of Jesus as the Messiah. He is captivated by him as the miracle working, triumphant Savior. Peter truly wants to follow Jesus - in fact, he’s left everything to follow him. But he wants to follow a Jesus who avoids, not embraces the cross.” Pete Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship
For Jesus, the cross was a symbol of a way of life for us. It symbolized denying ourselves, receiving him as the true king. It symbolized a daily journey of embracing that weakness is the way to life, and not success, wealth, or impressing others.
What’s something in your life that makes you feel weak? Helpless? You don’t know what to do? Maybe if I asked you your five year financial plan you’d throw up in your mouth. You don’t know what to do about money. Maybe you’re in it with kids right now, and you don’t know how to deal with a behavior, personality, or you just thought this whole parenting thing would be easier. Maybe you’ve got someone in your life who is so different than you it’s infuriating. Jesus reminds us that these moments and others are not evils to be avoided, but a daily opportunity to follow him and experience his presence.
A second way Jesus viewed the cross was he saw the cross as a symbol of...
The way to life
The way to life
How does Jesus dying lead to life? Why did Jesus have to die, and especially by death on the cross?
Like I said earlier, Jesus was a huge Bible nerd. The story of the Bible drove Jesus’ life. And he believed the whole culminated with him on the cross. The cross symbolized the way to life as a climax of the biblical story.
What do I mean by that?
Turn to Luke 24:44-47
44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
Jesus rises from the dead, appears to his disciples, and gives them a Bible study. “Don’t you get it?” he says. “The whole Bible is written to show that the Christ, the promised king, should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.”
And we say, “It is? I’ve read David and Goliath a ton…not sure how this points to the cross. I’ve read that story about the talking donkey, how does this point to Jesus on the cross?”
This is how Jesus viewed his Bible. To Jesus, if you read your OT correctly, you finish it, stare out the window for a while, take a slow sip of tea, and say, “We need a savior. He must die in our place, and be raised to life, so there’s hope for the world. ”
So what is Jesus seeing that maybe we’re not?
I can’t do this justice in 3ish minutes, but here goes.
Turn back to the beginning of your Bible to Genesis 3.
God makes the world. It’s good! He makes humans to rule his creation on his behalf. They’re very good! But wait…the humans listen to the serpent rather than God, and they unleash the consequences and curse of sin on God’s creation.
But right after this horrible loss, we see hope.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
God is promising that one day, a descendant of Eve will come and bruise or crush the wicked serpent’s head but in the process, be wounded themselves. That person will lead God’s people back to life, like it was in Eden before sin. So as we read the OT, our antennas are up. Who will this promised snake crusher be?
A few leaders pop up in the OT. Could it be...
Moses
Moses
Moses is a prophet and a priest. The one who saves God’s people from Egypt. Is he the snake crusher? Like Adam, he too is deceived by the snake, he disobeys God in anger and pride the wilderness by striking the rock rather than speaking to it. He’s not the one.
David
David
A man after God’s own heart. The king! He defeats the Philistines, a snake like man named Goliath…is he the one? No, he disobeys God in adultery and murder. He’s not the one.
But…God promises to bring the snake crusher through the line of David. So then we meet David’s son Solomon.
Solomon
Solomon
He enlarges Israel’s borders, builds a majestic temple for God, brings amazing piece to God’s kingdom…is he the one? Nope. Loves the ladies, and gives his love to them and their gods, rather than the true God.
So we’re reading the OT going, okay God you promised you’d send somebody, but all these leaders who seem like they could be the one keep failing…who could it be?
And as we’re reading, there are these moments that give a silhouette not just of Jesus, but of the cross.
Abraham nearly sacrificing his only son Isaac as Isaac carries wood on his shoulder up a hill to be killed.
Moses and the bronze serpent…there are these snakes running rampant and if anyone looks upon this snake raised up high…they are saved. Jesus actually quotes this story in John in reference to himself.
Jonah in the belly of the fish for three days, emerging to new life.
1 “Come, let us return to the Lord;
for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
2 After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
The OT is meant to get your attention…we need a savior. Things are not alright. We cannot fix this ourselves. God, in his grace wants to restore his broken creation. But God is also righteous, and cannot let the generations of atrocities go on without justice.
And along comes Jesus…from the family of Abraham, from the line of David, knowing his Bible better than anyone who ever lived. He, like us, was tempted by the snake but unlike us doesn’t give in. And he looks at the cross and says, “That’s where I’m going.” Why? For Jesus, the cross was the culmination of the whole story. The climactic moment displaying God’s love and desire to restore his broken world.
44 It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, 45 while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. 47 Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!”
Ironically, it is a non-Jew, a centurion, one of the people imposing the cross on Jews who recognizes that the cross truly was the way to life.
The apostle Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, also viewed the cross as the way to life and a saving act of God.
Paul said the cross was the way to life in at least three ways:
It restored our relationships with
With God
With God
13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
We all participated in the mess of sin. Jesus is able to forgive us by his sacrifice on the cross.
With each other
With each other
16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
God creates a new family not through ethnicity but based on faith in Jesus and his work on the cross.
With creation
With creation
20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
Jesus viewed the cross as a way of life and the way to life, fulfilling the story of the Bible, restoring our relationships with God, with each other, and with all of creation. Taking us back to Eden, where it all started.
What is our response?
What does it say in Luke 9:23?
Follow me
Follow me
You may not know I wear contacts, and if I take them off, my life goes awry and I can’t tell Brad from Kathy. I don’t know what it’s like to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and see anything. That’s a foreign concept to me. My contacts are how I understand the world, how I see you, how I see myself when I look in the mirror.
In the same way, I think following Jesus means using the cross as our lens for everything.
I learn about God through the lens of the cross. That he is powerful and mighty enough to destroy sin and death.
I learn about others through the lens of the cross. That God loves all people enough to go to the cross. I am not above others, but we’re all on equal ground at the foot of the cross.
I learn about the world around me through the lens of the cross. God loves his creation, this world enough to suffer and die to restore his universe back to the way it was.
I learn about myself. I learn to take my sin seriously, but that no one took it as seriously as Jesus. And on the cross it is finished. As the old hymn says my worth is not in what I own, not in the strength of flesh and bone, but in the costly wounds of love at the cross.
Look at my marriage through a cross. It’s not about getting what I want, but about denying myself for the sake of my spouse.
Look at my parenting through the cross. Parenting reminds me that suffering is normal. Death happens.
Look at my job through the cross. Your failures at work are a better opportunity for you to represent Jesus than your successes.
Look at your own soul through the cross. Every heartbreak, failure, and sin are forgiven on the cross. Now our soul gets to follow him.
I don’t know what it looks like for you, but consider creative ways to see your life through the lens of the cross. Maybe you’ve got a difficult meeting this week, set a reminder on your phone before it happens with a note that says ‘remember the cross.’ Maybe as you’re driving around, look for crosses in nature, trees, telephone wires, structures as reminders. I was having a hard time preaching this message to myself this week, and I took a pen and drew a little cross on my hand to remind me “Weakness is the way. Trust Jesus.”
Another option to put before you,
You may have noticed the artwork in the hallway. Have you spent any time looking at it? It’s more than Christian art. It’s a very old Christian practice called “The Stations of the Cross.”
Thanks Tom and Theda Nguyen and Marissa and Fletcher Price for putting those up.
If you were raised Catholic, you might be familiar with the stations, if you were raised Baptist like me, you’re already triggered. Way back in the day, people took pilgrimages to Jerusalem to literally follow Jesus' path to the cross. But as the church grew this practice developed for creating artwork along some sort of path that represented Jesus’ journey to the cross.
The artwork we have displayed is by an artist named Scott Erickson or “Scott the Painter” as he goes by, and what I appreciate about his artwork is it differs from original stations of the cross artwork which just ended with Jesus dead.
But why is the cross good news? Only because Jesus is no longer dead!
The ancient graffiti artist is right, we’re really dumb if Jesus stayed dead. But he didn’t, on the third day he was raised to new life, and now if you trust Jesus the cross is no longer a symbol of death and shame, but it’s a symbol of life and hope and freedom and grace. And that’s what’s represented in the final picture on the stations is that Jesus is risen.
Do you want to follow Jesus? Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, view your life through the lens of the cross and see it as the way to life through Jesus.
Consider taking communion and going for a walk and observing the artwork, pondering Jesus’ love for you, pointing you ahead to the good news of Easter Sunday.
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