Thursday, March 20, 2008

• THE CROSS AND MY TOOLCHEST

  The Cross of Jesus Christ requires that I have a tool chest handy! 

  "Take up your Cross and follow me."  "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live. . . "

  The best tool in the tool chest for crucifixion is a hammer. Get it out. You will need it for this experience!

  I honestly carried a 'hammer' around for years . . .trying to find a way to crucify myself to the Cross spoken of in the Bible.  Jesus died on one. I was supposed to die, too.

  Have you ever tried that?  Take out your trusty hammer. Find a big nail!  Get a good grip on that tool of great skill in previous times and see how it works. 

  Lay your hand on the cross (obviously on the ground where you are lying on top of it!) Put your hand where a good nail can get into the place where your hand will hold and not rip when the weight of your body has to hang on it.

  Now take that nail and poke it a little ways into the skin so it will stay while you hang on to the hammer to pound it in all the way.  Forget the agony of the pain. It is nothing compared to dying on the Cross.  The best is yet to come when it comes to intense pain!

  Take the hammer firmly in your hand and get a good grip on it. . .for you HAVE to hit that nail very hard the first time or you won't be doing it again. The pain will be too agonizing.

  Got it?

  Not swing it with all your might -- wait, wait, wait! ( I might suggest that if you have not yet done this and are just reading the instructions that you use the hand which is not your writing hand to put against the wood of the cross. The hammer should be in your hand that has the most dexterity. You do not want to miss the nail. . .and if you are right-handed you will want the nail to go into your left hand, the hammer in your right hand to swing accurately in pounding in the nail.

  Still not got it?

  If you prefer, you could simply stand the wooden cross againt a building, propping it there while you nail yourself to the cross. It will work either way.  You choose.

  The maximum moment of stress comes when you realize you are hanging by one hand and the other hand which is supposed to help with the nailing of the hand left is already stuck to the cross and you are not even fixed to the foot piece with nails, let alone the other free hand. 

   

  How on earth is one supposed to complete this bloody process?

   

   

  I really do want to obey the Bible and do things I am told to do.  But, honestly now, how does one crucify himself?

  I nearly killed myself trying to do that!

  Spritual vitality can drain out of you --forever -- if you miss the whole point of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

   

  There was this "once-and-for-all" crucifixion on a Cross in Jerusalem, Israel. It happened 2,000 years ago. It is the moment of crisis which divides all history. The God of the Universe, the One and Only Creator God, was put to death on that wooden Cross standing on the roadside outside the city walls of Jerusalem. He looked like an ordinary man, one of three crucified that day.

  It was a public place of execution. The crosses were close enough for people to spit on the crucified. They could pluck out the beard of the one on the cross. There was nothing but scorn, disgrace and shame in this kind of death. It was a Roman thing to do and the soldiers who put the victims of the death sentence there were really making sport of the criminals being crucified.

  Yet, there was somehthing about that day that gets lost in the story of the famous man on the center cross. How do we know he was on the center cross. . .because the Bible speaks about criminals on both sides of him speaking to him about their situation.  The middle man had to be the most important one hanging there.

  A known thug, or criminal had been released instead of the middle man on the cross. Barabbas was his name. That name was on the lips of people in Jerusalem after that mob scene before Pilate. The crowd had cried, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" 

  A casual observer would have thought Barabbas was about to get the Cross at the cry of the mob. 

  But the crowd was not calling for Barabbas's crucifixion. They were calling for the crucifixion of the Jewish man standing there silently before Pilate.  The mob screamed their taunts louder and louder until Pilate gave in.  The Romans released Barabbas and they took quiet man to prepare for his crucifixion.

  Once the three were on the crosses, the mocking crowd subsided and the few mourners left gathered around the cross of the center man. 

  Jesus, the Son of God, looked down from that Cross in the center of that street scene.  The mobs were now satisfied. The scourging of Jesus left him bloody and in agonizing pain. The death watch would not be one any would want to view. . .unless it was because it was your son or your leader who actually hung there.

  That could be the only explanation for the fact of Mary, Jesus mother, hanging around to watch the blood drain out of Jesus body.

  It was the sudden expulsion of blood and water that brought agonizing cries from Jesus.  The final cry, "It is finished" took your breath away as you watched Jesus die on that Cross.

   

  If it were only Jesus on that Cross, that center cross, we would be eternally grateful. For He took our sins in His own body on the Cross. He, being God incarnate, paid for the sins against Himself -- the sins of all humanity for all time.

   

  That is not the whole story. The Cross of Jesus Christ had more than just one man hangin there.  There also was in His body  the sin of the whole planet.  But there was also the fact of the sinners of the whole planet. 

  Jesus had to die in order to take us all to the Cross in His Body -- His sinless Body.  He took us with Him to the Cross in order that we die to sin as sinners.  Without crucifixion, we cannot please God. For it is the shedding of Blood by a sinless sacrifice which cleanses all our human sin.  We must accept Jesus' sinless sacrifice and place our faith in Him as Savior which gives us reconciliation with God.

  But what about our nature to sin. . that tendencey which we cannot tame or bring under subjection to right doing?  What do we do about that problem we all have. We are sinners -- self gratifying creatures with no ability to restrain from sinning, no hope of ever becoming our own sacrifice for sin.

  Even if I could crucify myself and die for my own sin, my own death will not justify my sin in God's sight. It must be by a sinless lamb -- which Jesus was.

   

  Jesus took me and you to the Cross in order that the power over us which sin held would be broken by our death with Him.  We are given the right to not only die with him, but to live with Him.

  The Resurrection of Jesus Christ was our resurrection as well. We died with HIM because we were in Him, in His loins, so to speak, as people to be born by His Spirit through faith in His death as our sinless sacrifice.

   

  Only in His crucifixion and my being "in Him" when He died  can I ever hope for an end to the power of sin which has ruled over me -- that is, until Christ now is Life within.

   

  Resurrection Life is what I have received through faith in Christ's death on the Cross.

   

  I don't have to carry a hammer with me to try to kill my body every time it wants to sin. That was done for me on Calvary.  I have only to trust in Christ Jesus and receive Him as the Savior for my sin, for dying in my place and taking me with Him to His Cross.

   

  Next Sunday I will celebrate Resurrection Sunday -- the day Jesus brought me out of death and into eternal life . . .I was in Him when He died, was buried and rose again.

   

  Because of this, I say with the Apostle Paul, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless . . .I Live!

   

  More later. . . After Resurrection Sunday --

  We Call it Easter Sunday.  

  P.S. I forget where that trusty hammer is. . . Don't need it any more!  The Roman Soldier used His. . . that did it for me, too.

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