A CALL TO DIE BOOK - Day 18

DAY 18: ARE YOU BEYOND IT?
DAY 18: THE CROSS: ARE YOU BEYOND IT?
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that
whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John
3:16)
Sometimes I hear people say, “We need to move beyond Jesus dying
on the cross to `deeper’ things.” Like what? What is “deeper” than the
God of the Universe becoming a man and showing his incredible love
by dying to rescue you and me from eternal damnation? The cross of
Christ is not only the source of our salvation, it is our highest motivation,
our clearest example of obedience, and it draws us to rich intimacy
with one who loves us that much. I believe we never “get beyond”
the cross. We only go deeper into our grasp of what it means in every
relationship, every desire, every goal, and every decision.
Jesus is a king whose reign had one purpose: to demonstrate his love
for us by sacrificing himself in our place. We deserve death; he took
our place. But we often yawn at the gospel. We see Bible verses spraypainted
on highway overpasses, and we drive by without a thought.
We see “John 3:16” signs waved at sports events, and we wonder
why somebody would be willing to look so silly in public. We wear
silver crosses as jewelry, but we’ve forgotten about the real blood on
the real wood of Jesus’ cross. Not long ago, I even saw a guy selling
crosses that you activate by twisting them so they glow in the dark.
The cross seems to have become trivial and irrelevant.
A few years ago, our family went to Paris, and we went to the Louvre,
the second largest museum in the world. My brother Benjamin went
with us. The Louvre has some of the greatest pieces of art and artifacts
of history in the world-and lots of them. It would take years to see it all!
I was really excited about seeing Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. We weaved
our way through room after room of incredible paintings. Benjamin
was right there wit ;us, jammin’ to music on his Walkman. By the time
we got to the room where the Mona Lisa hangs, I turned around to say
something to Ben. He was gone! Somehow we lost Ben in the labyrinth
of rooms in the Louvre! I looked everywhere for him, but nobody
spoke my language. I went to room after room, past thousands of
people. I looked everywhere, then I remembered that a while back
we had passed a huge painting of Jesus on the cross. I ran back to
that painting. There was Benjamin. He had pulled up a chair in front
of the painting of Jesus hanging on the cross, and he was weeping.
Benjy didn’t care about the Mona Lisa or the French Impressionists or
Picasso. All that mattered to him was the cross of Jesus Christ.
A lot of us think, “I’ve done that. I became a Christian when I was
five ... or fifteen ... or fifty five. I’m looking for more now.” If that’s your
attitude, you have no idea what the cross is about. we need to think
about the cross of Jesus every day of our lives.
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DAY 18: ARE YOU BEYOND IT?
We never get any deeper than the cross. Everything we say and do
needs to be filtered through the sacrifice Christ made on the cross.
At every crossroad in life, the question is not necessarily, what would
Jesus do?”, but more accurately, “What has he already done on the
cross?” and “Will my decision honor the cross?”When you read Paul’s
letters, how often do you see the cross described as the foundation for
the broad scope of what he writes about? All the time! It defines our
identity as children of God; it explains how we can be disconnected
from sin; it gives us hope that we have a future resurrection; it gives us
the example of how much to obey the Father; it shows us how much
we are forgiven and how much we can forgive those who hurt us;
and it measures the depth of God’s great love for us. (There’s more,
but that’s enough to make the point.) Do we choose not to sin only
because we don’t want to get caught? Hopefully there’s a higher,
more compelling motivation: to please the one who laid down his life
for us.
The great English pastor, Charles Spurgeon, said, “If you sin boldly
every time you sin, you are saying that sin is worth more to you than
the cross of Jesus Christ.” Spurgeon was certainly not advocating
sin, but he recognized that those who are very aware of their sin can
become very aware of God’s great forgiveness. If we sin boldly, we
will be slapped in the face with the absurdity of what we are choosing
in light of what Christ did on the cross. Some of us need to be slapped
in the face.
The movie, Saving Private Ryan, was a graphic display of World War
II soldiers’ courage in the face of death. These men obeyed orders
to move forward under heavy fire. Friends were blown apart next
to them, but they kept moving forward. Thousands of these brave
men shed their blood for our freedom, yours and mine. Many people
consider this movie, probably more than any other movie out there,
a realistic portrayal of how much we owe these men for what they
did for us as American citizens. Their sacrifice was great. Freedom and
courage weren’t theories to them. They were blood and guts and raw
obedience when everything in them said, “Hide! Go back!” They went
on. They paid a high price to preserve our freedom.
The sacrifice these soldiers made for our physical freedom made me
think of the price Jesus paid for our spiritual freedom. Everything in
him wanted to hide and run away because he knew exactly what
he faced. Yet he went on. The whip tore chunks of skin and left his
flesh exposed and bleeding. The nails ripped through real muscle and
tendons and bone. It wasn’t antiseptically clean. It was dirty, and it
took hours, all to “demonstrate his love for us” beyond a shadow of a
doubt. He paid a price, and we owe him everything.
One of the errors people have made about Jesus over the years
is to say that his death on the cross is primarily a man’s “wonderful
example” to us. Well, yes, it is a wonderful example of his obedience,
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DAY 18: ARE YOU BEYOND IT?
but he is not just a man. He is the pre-existent immutable, holy God.
He is the Creator, who chose to stoop to become a man to do what
no one, not even the greatest example could do for us: pay for our
sins.
We get a better concept of Christ when we think of him as both Savior
and Creator. All that we see, and all that exists far; beyond what we
can see, didn’t “just happen.” The vast scope and the incredible
complexity of the Universe required a purposeful Creator. The scope of
creation is illustrated by a few facts:
-there are 2.5 million galaxies,
-there are 25 sextillion stars, -the nearest galaxy is 750,000 light-years
away, -our Sun is only 93 million miles, and -the Sun is 3.5 million times
bigger than the earth.
The complexity is illustrated in creation’s incredible precision:
-if our Sun were 10% closer to the Earth, we’d fry.
-if it were 10% farther away, we’d freeze.
-the Earth travels around the Sun at 70,000 mph, 19 miles a second. If it
traveled more slowlywly or more quickly, the seasons wouldn’t provide
change for life as we know it to exist.
-our air contains 22% oxygen, just the right amount for life to exist.
”But,” some people complain, “Christians are so arrogant.
they say Jesus is the only way.” No, it’s not arrogant for God to
“ humble himself to become a man and die a horrible death to pay
for the sins of everyone who ever lived and then to say, “My
forgiveness is yours if you want it.” If there was another way, then God
was cruel to have his Son die. If that’s true, then he died for nothing.
Muslims say Jesus was a prophet and a man of truth, but Jesus said “I
am THE way,” not just “a way” (John 14:6).
Don’t take the cross of Jesus for granted. Don’t trivialize it by wearing
it as a token without feeling intense gratitude for what it means. Don’t
reduce Jesus’ death to only an example to follow. It is more. Much
more. Our entire lives and all of our eternity will be spent trying to grasp
the power and the depth of what the cross of Jesus means. There is
nothing deeper.
-Be still. Listen to what God is saying to you.
1. Read Luke 7:36-50. Describe the woman. What did she do? Why did
she do it? Describe Simon the Pharisee. What was his response to the
woman? Why? Paraphrase the parable Jesus told Simon:
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DAY 18: ARE YOU BEYOND IT?
What does this passage say about gratitude and indifference?
Which are you more like, the woman or Simon? Explain:
2. How can the cross shape:
-your identity?
-your motivations?
-your goals and desires?
-how you relate to other people, especially those who have hurt you?
3. Is it healthy to dwell on the gore of the cross? Why or why not?
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DAY 18: ARE YOU BEYOND IT?
4. Should a Christian wear cross jewelry or t-shirts? Why or
why not?
5. Read John 3:1-21. Think about each paragraph, then use it as a
guide as you pray.
Memorize: Write Psalm 115:1, 17-18 three times.
Lord, today you are calling me to die to selfish desires by:
You are calling me to obey in these areas:
You are calling me to intimacy with you by:
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