It is a wonderful opportunity we have to meet on Gods Holy Day. Someday soon, if you are in a prison or a cave, you will look back to this moment, I hope, with great pleasure and joy. Every Sabbath to us is a token of the eternal rest that God is going to bring very soon to His children and a deliverance out of this evil world.
When Jesus was here, the focal point of the religion of the Jewish people was the law of God. If you study the Jewish ceremonial system, their sacrifices, their sanctuary, their priesthood, the focal point of their entire religion was the law of God and how to obtain forgiveness of sin and atonement, if you had broken the law of God. But if you have your Bible, look at what Jesus told them about their condition with the law in John the seventh chapter, John 7:19. He said, "Did not Moses give you the law, yet none of you keep the law? Why do you seek to kill Me?"
Now this is a paradox, is it not? That the focal point of your religion, the central point in the sanctuary was where the Ten Commandments were inside the ark. That was the focal point of everything. Yet, the center or the focal point, you do not keep it, you do not abide by it. It is just a, well, what is it? It is a profession but no reality and, friends, did you know that we are in a very similar condition today? Now the law of God is not the focal point of our religion.
When I was visiting a few years ago, I visited more than once actually, the Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs, the chapel has three sections. There are three churches actually all in one building. On the main floor of the chapel, there is the Protestant Chapel and in the Protestant religion the pulpit is in the center in the front of the worship service and there is area-son for that because our religion focuses on the Word of God and the proclamation of the Word of God is to be central in our religion.
You go downstairs and there is another place just as big and that is the Roman Catholic Church or chapel of the Air Force Academy. But then off to the side there is the third place for a worship service and that is for the Jewish, those that are of the Jewish faith. It is interesting that in the Jewish chapel up in the front, do you know what they have? They have the Ten Commandments. They have the symbols of the tables of the Ten Commandments. That is the focal point of their religion.
But in the Protestant chapel, what do you suppose is up in front? Is it the Ten Commandments? No, it is the cross. The cross is the focal point of the Christian religion. If you go around, you will see crosses on churches all over Wichita. If you look, you will see crosses dangling from the rear view mirrors of peoples cars. Have you not seen them? If you look around again when you are downtown, you will see crosses hanging from peoples necks, a necklace and a cross at the bottom.
So, the cross is a symbol or a focal point of our religion. But the Jews we see here in John 7:19, the focal point of their religion they were not even keeping it. So what? Now let me tell you something. You know, and I just want to say this as kindly as possible, but them are millions of people that profess Christianity and they have seen the cross in churches and they have seen it on top of the outside of the churches and maybe they have even worn it around their neck and they have got it on the rear view mirror of the car and they do not even know what it means.
They do not know what it is about. It is the focal point of their religion and they do not even understand it. Concerning this, Ellen White has something very interesting to say. She says that in the final judgment when all those who have professed Christianity that are the lost.. . By the way, the Bible makes it very clear that the majority of people that profess Christianity will be lost. The Bible makes that very clear. Jesus Himself said so in the Sermon on the Mount and other places.
When they come to the final judgment, you know what God is going to do? He is going to present the cross. I want to tell you that when He presents it and people see what it means they will not have one excuse. The Bible says they will be speechless. You see, to people today the cross is like a charm or it is a symbol but they do not understand what it means. Do you understand what it means?
Now some people think that if you were in a Christian church, the cross would be one of the easiest things to preach about. Let me assure you if you understand what it means, it is not the easiest thing to preach about at all. It is one of the most difficult subjects to present--if you understand what it means. Do you know why? One reason is that people are going to get unhappy, they will get angry.
People do not understand what the cross means and when you tell them, they do not want to find out. So much so that Ellen White said on one occasion, "The cross has been almost lost sight of." Our High Calling, 46. Well, that does not mean that people are not seeing the crosses on the churches or around other peoples necks or on the rear view minor of the car. They are seeing all those things but they do not really see what it is about or what it means, that is what they do not see. They do not see it.
I want to tell you, if you take the cross away, it is just like taking the sun out of the heavens. Everything is lost. Without the cross you cannot have a connection with your heavenly Father. You can have no union with Jesus. You cannot have any hope of a welcome reception when you choose to return to the Lord without the cross. You can have no hope that in the Day of Judgment you can be acquitted. And there is no means provided for you to overcome your sins without the cross. In fact, every hope that you have for the future is based on that if you understand it.
I want to study with you from the Scriptures today for a few minutes about the cross and more especially what it means and what will happen to us if we come to it and get close. For our first text I would like to invite you to open to Revelation the first chapter. Revelation 1:4-6. It says, "John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the Faithful Witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the Ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen."
The first thing that we understand when we come to the cross is that it is a pledge, a promise, a guarantee of the boundless, infinite, unmeasurable love that God has for you. Remember, Jesus said in John 10, He said, I do not have to do this. We as human beings get into situations where we cannot help ourselves. We get into situations from accidents, sickness or suffering and we cannot help ourselves but Jesus was not in that situation. He did not have to come down here and He did not have to offer His life upon the cross.
It describes this in The Desire of Ages. Do you remember Matthew 26 where Jesus prayed to His Father and said, If it be possible, allow this cup to pass from Me? Do you remember that? But then He said, Not as I will but as You will. Do you realize that in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was suffering that agony, that He could have decided to just wipe the bloody sweat from His brow? Luke said that it was so awful and His sufferings so great that He sweat as it were great drops of blood that dripped on the ground.
But He could have wiped the bloody sweat away and said, I am leaving. And He could have. He could have gone back up to His Father in heaven where there were people, there were angels that adored Him. He could have. But if He had, there would have been no way that you and I could have been redeemed from our sins. Because He loved us, what does the text say in Revelation 1:5? "To Him that loved us." He did it because He loved us. He loved us enough to make a way so that He could wash away, take away, our sins.
What was the price to take away our sins? His blood. That is the mystery of the Christian religion. The One that died to pay the price for your sin is One who was not under the law. An angel or another human being could not die to take away your sin. They were all created under the law. They were subject to the law. All angels, all created beings are subject to the law of God.
But upon the Son of God no yoke had ever come. He was above law and it was His life and His life alone that could satisfy the claims of Gods broken law. Do you realize, friends, that Gods law is so holy that He would not do away with it or change the slightest particle, even to save the angels around His throne (some of them left).
If you have your Bible open, I invite you to turn to our second text that explains more what this is talking about. It says in Revelation 1:5 "To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood." I Corinthians 15. The cross describes to us, is a proof to us that there is Somebody, friend, that loves you more than your mother, more than your father, more than your sister or your brother or your wife or your husband or anybody else. There is Somebody that loves you with an everlasting love, that is what you call it.
He loves you so much that He was willing to suffer in order to save you. Why did He have to go to the cross to suffer to save us? Look what it says in 1 Corinthians 15:3. "For! delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures."
The first thing that we learn from the cross is that God loves you with a love that is infinite. The second thing we learned from the cross was that Jesus died for our sins and it changes my mind completely about sin. I want you to think this through. It is very important if Jesus died for my sins, is sin a terrible thing? Is it?
By the way, what is sin? Transgression of Gods law, 1 John 3:4. If Jesus died for my sins, sin is a terrible thing. Do you believe that? Most people do not believe that. It is so terrible, if I understand how terrible it is, I would rather die than get involved in it. Just think it through a little more. ff1 choose to sin, what am I choosing to do? I am choosing to do the very thing that sent Jesus to the cross.
Do I understand the cross at all if I choose to sin? Not at all. Unless I have decided that I openly hate the Lord. Now if you have decided that you hate the Lord and you are not going to follow Him, then you are free to choose to sin. But if you choose to sin, somehow you do not understand the cross because sin is what sent Jesus to the cross. Is that what the Scripture says? That is what it says.
When you come to the cross and it starts to go through your mind and you ask yourself, Why? Why? Why did this have to happen? It is so awful. It had to happen because of my sins. And so it changes my mind about sin. A person who has never been to the cross loves sin. Oh, he may not love all kinds of sin. You do not have to love all kinds of sin, one is enough. How many sins did Adam and Eve have to commit in order to bring the flood tide of evil and iniquity unto the world? How many sins did they have to commit? Just one.
Christ was promised as a sacrifice when they committed that one sin. That is in Genesis 3:15. So if l choose to sin, I do not understand the cross. I do not understand it at all, unless I have decided to reject my Lord and I have decided that I hate Him and I want to go on my own way. But if I profess to be a Christian and I profess to be following Jesus; if I profess His name and I choose to sin, there is something terribly wrong. I have never come to the cross; I have never understood it yet.
Do you see there are millions of people that claim to be Christians and they do not even know what the cross means. You cannot love something that caused Jesus to die and be a Christian and love Him. You cannot love sin and love Jesus at the same time. That is impossible. You see, if I love sin, I hate the Lord. That is literally the way it is. I can profess anything I want. I can go do church, but if I love sin, I hate the Lord and if I love the Lord, I hate sin. You cannot have it any other way.
You cannot love a person and at the same time love something else that brings torture to that person. That is impossible. You cannot say that you love your wife and hurt your wife at the same time. That is impossible. You cannot love the Lord and claim to follow Him and love something else that is torturing Him at the same time. Somebody says, Pastor John, you are getting emotional. Well, listen, it is something worth getting emotional about
In fact, of all subjects, this is the one subject that Christians ought to get emotional about because, friends, the cross is a revelation to our dull senses of the pain that from its very inception sin has brought to the heart of God. Now there are some people that are so mistaken in their understanding of Christianity, that they think that you can just go and sin and then come and confess; and then go and sin and then come and confess; and sin and go to confession; and sin and go to confession your whole life.
I want you to think something through. Did Jesus die on the cross so that you could keep sinning and going to confession your whole life? Is that the purpose of it? Let us read a few Bible texts on that. The apostle Paul talked about that very thing in the book of Romans. Look in Romans 6:1,2. He says, "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may about? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it."
Look at verse 15. "What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Certainly not." You insult, friend, the Holy Spirit if you deliberately sin and then confess and then go out and deliberately sin again and confess. You know, friends, today this has gotten so bad that there are people that are actually killing people and then they go to confession and then they go and kill more people and go to confession the next week in church. They call themselves Christians.
I want you to read something the Bible has to say about this. Look at Hebrews 10:26. It says, "For if we sin willfully (that is, deliberately) after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." There comes a time, friends, a person has abused the grace of God so long. They sin and they confess; but they go and deliberately sin again and then they confess. There comes a time when the Lord says, It is closing time. You have abused My mercy and My grace. There is no longer going to be a sacrifice for sin.
Oh, friends, the cross has a wonderful message for every sinner. But do not abuse the mercy of God. Do not play with it and say, oh, well, I can go and sin and confess the rest of my life because Jesus died on the cross and so I can be forgiven. Friends, do not abuse the mercy of God. Jesus died on the cross so you could be delivered from sin, not so you could just go on and sin and confess. The Angel said to Mary, "You shall call His name Jesus for He shall save His people from their sins." Not IN their sins but FROM their sins.
I want to spend a few minutes studying about the result, what will happen in your life, what will happen in your home if you come to the cross because it will have results. You will have consequences. You remember we started out by showing from Revelation 1:4-6 that Jesus is the One that loves us and washed us from our sins. He loved us and if somebody really loves you and he manifests his love, what could happen? What should happen?
It does not always happen but if somebody really loved you a lot and he started manifesting his love to you, what could happen? You might love him back. In this world we sometimes call that "falling in love." That happens because somebody is attracted to somebody else and they start saying and doing nice things to them because they have an attraction, they love them.
If you love somebody and you start doing something nice for them and speaking nice to them, there just is a chance that they might love you back. Now love is not something you can force. You cannot ever go to somebody with a gun and make him or her love you. It has never happened and it never will happen. It just does not work. You cannot go to somebody with a club or a two-by-four or a whip and make them love you. You can make them obey, but you cannot make them love you. It is impossible.
Love has to do with the heart. Love cannot be commanded. It cannot be forced. Do you know, friends, the only kind of service that God is interested in at all is from people that love Him and want to do His will? This is a strange idea to some people because they do not understand what God is like, but did you know that God is not the slightest bit interested in forcing you to do anything?
God does not use force. God only uses one weapon in order to win you and to save you. And if that does not work, there is nothing else that He has in reserve. What is that weapon that He uses? Let us read first of all 1 John 3:16. "By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us." Now that is about the cross, that is what we are studying. "And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."
We understand what love is by the demonstration that Jesus made on the cross. It is the greatest demonstration that there has ever been made of the love of God. But notice what it says in 1 John 4:19. "We love Him because He first loved us." Love cannot be forced. You cannot make somebody love you and! say this reverently, even God cannot make you love.
But He has given the strongest attracting force in the whole universe to attract you to Himself and it is so powerful that if you do not resist, you will come to Him. And what is that attractive, magnetic force that thaws people to Him? Jesus said, "And, if I am lifted up from the earth, will thaw all (men) peoples to Myself." John 12:32. What is it? It is the cross. What about the cross is it? Because, friend, the cross of Jesus is the largest demonstration that has ever and will ever be made of the love that God has for those that He has created.
Did you know that even the angels in heaven study it? And those that are redeemed will be studying it throughout eternity. It is the greatest demonstration that it is possible to make. It would be impossible for God Himself to say, "I could have done more." That would be impossible. He has done everything that could be done. You just study the cross yourself. You study the story yourself and you ask yourself the question, Could He have done more? You ask yourself that question.
Now here is another question for you. Since that is the most that can be done to attract the sinner to the Lord, if that does not work, how are you going to be saved? Well, friends, you are not going to be saved because there is no reserve force. God does not have any reserve force to save you. If the cross does not attract you, there is nothing else. We love Him because He first loved us and this is one of the first results that happens when a person comes to the cross.
When you see the love of God, something happens inside. Have you been at the cross long enough so that something has happened in your heart and your mind? Or is it just a story? Do you understand that that was for you? Has the result or the consequence of coming to the cross happened in your mind and in your heart? Do you love Him? Would you allow me for about one minute to tell you something really, really plain?
If that consequence of the cross has not happened in your heart, all of your profession of Christianity, going to church, doing whatever works you do that are right and good, all of that is worthless. Your religion is absolutely worthless if that has not happened in your heart. If you have not come to the cross and if you do not love Him, it is worthless.
Paul said that if you had all faith and you had the gift of prophecy and you understood all mysteries and all knowledge and if you give all your goods to the poor and you gave your body to be burned. Like some of those young Buddhists did in Vietnam a few years ago. They dumped gasoline on their bodies and burned themselves up. If you do all of that and you do not have love, he says it is not worth a thing.
Do you love Him? Oh, yes, somebody says, I love Him. Of course, I love Him. I feel terribly sorry for what He did. I love Him. Well, look at what Jesus says in John 14:15. "If you love Me, keep My commandments."
There is one more consequence of coming to the cross that I want to study with you this morning. Let us review what we have already studied this morning.
First, we see an infinite, boundless, immeasurable love that God has for you and for me when we come to the cross. He provided for us another chance.
Second, we see that Jesus had to do this because of our sins. That is what it said in 1 Corinthians 15:3 and that means that sin is a terrible, terrible thing and that I can never love sin or engage in sin again, because I am choosing to follow Jesus and I cannot deliberately do that which sent Him to the cross. To love sin is to hate Jesus. To love Jesus is to hate sin.
Third, we saw that love cannot be forced and that we love Him because He first loved us. Unless that has happened in my heart, all my religion is worthless.
Fourth, we saw that if I do love Him, I will keep His commandments. That is what it said in John 14:15. If I really love Him, I will keep His commandments. It says the same thing in 1 John 5:2, 3. "This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome." If you love Him, keeping His commandments is not burdensome.
And now we are going to see one more and this one is a very important one, an important consequence of coming to the cross. John 3:16, one of the most well known texts in the Bible. Jesus was speaking to Nicodemus and He said, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but (might) have everlasting life."
I want you to especially notice the word whosoever. What does the word whosoever mean? Anybody; anybody in this room; anybody in this city or more literally, anybody I the world. Now when I come to the cross of Christ and I start to think through in my mind what it is all about. I realize that this was not done just for me. It was done for me because I am one of the whosoever. It was done for me, but it was not just done for me.
It was done for every other human being in the world. Now, if I think that through in my mind, is that going to change my estimate of the worth of a human being? Is it? How much are you worth? God decided that you were worth the life of His Son. He was going to offer His Son. He was going to allow His Son to die to save you. That is how much you are worth. Now the more something is worth, the more careful we are how we deal with it.
For instance. Out of my driveway I have a bunch of rocks, many tons of them, many tons of rocks. I break them up and I scatter them around for my car to drive on. That is rock. But there are some rocks that you do not deal with a sledgehammer and a rake and a hoe. You do not deal with them like that. You find them down in the jewelers shop and when you look at them, they are in a case and there is velvet on the case. Here is a stone and it is lying on that velvet. That stone does not know anymore than the rock in my driveway. So why is it lying on the velvet? Because it is precious.
Some stones are precious and some stones are not precious. You deal with them with a sledgehammer, rake or the tractor or whatever you like. They are not precious. But there are some stones that are precious and you deal with them differently. One of the consequences of coming to the cross is that I begin to see how much one person is worth to God and that one person, by the way, includes my wife or my husband or my children. It includes the other people in my family.
Will that affect the way that I treat them? Will it affect the way that I talk to them? Will it affect the way that I treat them? Do you know what God designs for the family? God wanted your family to be a little heaven on earth. He did not want it to be like Purgatory or hell fire. He wanted it to be like a heaven on earth.
I want to read to you something that Ellen White wrote in 1892 in The Signs of the Times, November 11, 1892, and this will help you to understand in these last few minutes. I want you to see an advanced lesson on the cross that many people do not understand. If you really come to the cross, it is going to change everything in your home. Now listen to this. "If we are doers of the word, we shall daily bear the cross after Jesus, subdue self and thus bring harmony into the home life. The sweetest type of heaven is a home where the spirit of the Lord presides. If the will of God is fulfilled, the husband and wife will respect each other, and cultivate love and confidence. Anything that would mar the peace and unity of the family should be firmly repressed, and kindness and love should be cherished. He who manifests the spirit of tenderness, forbearance, and love, will find that the same spirit will be reflected upon him. Where the Spirit of God reigns, there will be no talk of unsuitability in the marriage relation. If Christ indeed is formed within, the hope of glory, there will be union and love in the home. Christ abiding in the heart of the wife will be at agreement with Christ abiding in the heart of the husband. They will be striving together for the mansions Christ has gone to prepare for those who love Him."
Now that is just about a two minute introduction to something that if the Lord wills, we are going to look at in more detail tonight. I want to tell you, friends, we are going to have to get in advance just some A,B,C lessons about the cross. If we do not take some advance steps and if we cannot figure out how it relates to the way we deal with each other at home, we do not understand the cross yet. Somehow there is something missing in our minds.
Among Christians today we profess to follow Christ and we profess to take up His cross and it is a shame to even mention it, but it is true. The divorce rate among Christians is about the same, in fact, in some Christian countries the divorce rate is even higher than in people that do not even claim to believe on the cross of Christ. What is going on? What is going on, friend, is that the cross is the focal point of our religion but we do not really understand it. We do not understand it. What is happening in our homes proves that we do not understand it.
Do you want the Holy Spirit to teach you what the cross is all about? I want to tell you, friend, it will change everything in your heart. It will change things in your home. It will change the way you speak to other members of your family You will start to treat people, not like the rocks in my driveway but like precious stones. I want to tell you when that happens instead of your home being like purgatory, the Lord would like to make it like heaven. Do you understand why I stated at the beginning that the cross was one of the hardest subjects to preach about and to understand it? It has very practical consequences.
If the consequences are not happening in my life, somehow I have missed something. I do not understand it. I have not internalized the message of the cross. Do you want to have a change? The cross, friends, is the great center of attraction. It is the thing that will change you on the inside and that is where we need changing, by the way, on the inside.
Do you want that change to happen in your heart and in your life? If you do, I want to invite you to kneel down with me and pray Let us ask the Lord that the meaning of the cross will take place in our lives.