Now my reading tonight comes from 1 Corinthians
chapter 1, and we're going to read from
verse 18.
1 Corinthians chapter 1, reading from verse 18.
For the preaching of the cross is to
them that perish foolishness, but unto us which
are saved it is the power of God.
For it is written, I will destroy the
wisdom of the wise, I will bring to
nothing the understanding of the prudent.
Where is the wise, where is the scribe,
where is the disputer of this world?
Had not God made foolish the wisdom of
this world?
For after that in the wisdom of God
the world by wisdom knew not God.
It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe.
For the Jews require a sign and Greeks
seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.
Unto the Jews a stumbling block, unto the
Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of
God and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than
men and the weakness of God is stronger
than men.
For you see your calling brethren, how that
not many wise men after the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble are called.
But God hath chosen the foolish things of
the world to confound the wise, and God
hath chosen the weak things of the world
to confound the things which are mighty.
And these things of the world and the
things which are despised have God chosen, yet
things which are not to bring to naught
things that are, that no flesh should glory
in his presence.
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus,
who of God is made unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
That according as it is written, he that
glorieth let him glory in the Lord.
And I brethren, when I came to you
came not with excellency of speech or of
wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.
For I determined not to know anything among
you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.
I was with you in weakness and in
fear and in much trembling.
And my speech and my preaching was not
with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in
the demonstration of the spirit and of power,
that your faith should not stand in the
wisdom of men, but in the power of
God.
And we all know that God will bless
the reading of the Bible.
One very religious lady, after hearing the message
on the cross, stayed behind and she had
a problem.
She said that she belonged to a particular
church, and the name of it I will
not mention.
But she said, I could never understand why
Jesus said on the cross, my God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Then she turned to me and said, would
you forsake your son when he was dying?
I said, definitely not.
Why did God forsake his son when he
was hanging on the cross?
I could never understand.
Now my dear friends, with that in mind,
I want to preach on the cross tonight
and answer that question.
The way I'm going to deal with the
subject will be quite simple.
First of all, I want to show you
how he died.
Then I want to get a little closer
to the cross, who died, the dignity of
the cross.
Then we will get right to the heart
of that question, the profundity of the cross.
Why did he say, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?
And then we're going to finish by asking
the question, the mystery of the cross, for
whom he died.
First of all then, how he died.
Now, if we imagine that the Lord Jesus
died just as a martyr, may I say
kindly, we have misunderstood the cross.
Peter tells us in his first letter that
he was a man slain before the foundation
of the earth, that meant before God created
anything.
Right in heaven on its blueprint was the
cross of Christ, and therefore the cross was
always in the mind of God.
It's central in the economy of God.
Immediately sin found its birth in the human
heart.
God actually predicted the cross four thousand years
before he came.
In the presence of Adam and Eve and
Satan himself, he said something like this, I
will put enmity between thee and the woman,
between thy seed and her seed.
It shall bruise thy head, thou shall bruise
his hill.
In other words, through a woman, a man
child would be born, that would bruise the
head of Satan.
And whilst bruising the head of Satan, he
too would be wounded.
And that was made four thousand years before
he came.
An old man was climbing Mount Moriah with
his son, and they were going to the
peak for the purpose of worship.
When they almost got to the summit of
the mount, the son who was about 21
looked and said, father you've got the bowl
of fire and the sacrificial knife, I've got
the wood, but where's the lamb for a
burnt offering.
That old man stood on his toes and
looked toward Calvary and he prophesied, he said
my son, God will provide himself a lamb.
Now those who know your Bible know it
was a ram for Isaac, but he was
speaking of the Lamb of God.
About a thousand years before Jesus ever came
into this world, a king was writing probably
on a primitive form of skin.
And he wrote words that were so amazing,
I don't think he fully understood the details
of the words that he was writing.
He was writing under divine inspiration.
And this is what he wrote, my God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me.
In other words, he was actually prophesying the
very words that the Messiah would say after
he had completed being the great sin offering.
A thousand years before he came.
Roughly about 800 years before the Lord Jesus
came, a man by the name of Isaiah,
one of the world's greatest poets, received a
mighty revelation of Calvary.
And right in the midst of a wonderful
sonnet on the passions of Christ, he wrote
these amazing words.
He was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities, and the chastisement of
our peace was upon him, and with his
stripes we are healed.
800 years before he came.
Zechariah was perhaps the last man who predicted
the cross.
Almost 480 years before the cross actually took
place.
And as he saw Calvary he wrote these
amazing words.
Awake O sword against thy shepherd, against the
man that is thy associate, smite the shepherd
and the sheep shall be scattered.
Speaking of Jesus Christ as the slain shepherd.
Then there came into this world, and how
I praise God for him, a man who
was made of steel.
John the Baptist, the greatest of all prophets.
And he was telling the Jewish nation that
they had to repent because of their evil
ways, for the Messiah was going to come.
And obviously some of them were mocking, saying
John they told us that years ago, but
he hasn't come.
And one day, and I like to think
with tears in his eyes, he saw the
Messiah.
And he introduced him to the world.
And what did he say?
Behold the King?
No.
Behold the Lamb of God, that beareth away
the sin of the world.
And immediately Jesus Christ commenced his ministry.
He was heard to say, as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so
must the Son of Man be lifted up.
Now can you see?
Four thousand years of prophecy.
Ninety-nine direct prophecies found in the Old
Testament concerning the cross.
Now I want to challenge you.
Do you know of any other person in
history that was prophesied to die like that?
And this makes Jesus Christ totally unique.
But his death was painful.
I believe personally that the Lord Jesus suffered
physically more than any other man.
I cannot go into his spiritual sufferings, nor
could I go into his mental sufferings, but
I'm thinking now of his physical sufferings.
He was buffeted.
We don't use that word today.
It means punished.
And if you read the narrative carefully, you
will find this.
He was assorted by herald soldiers, by the
temple police, and by the Roman soldiers.
And probably thirty-nine men walked forward, all
weighing over fourteen stone, and heaped upon the
face of the Lord Jesus their heaviest punishment.
And the word said his face was marred
more than any man.
Secondly, after the buffeting, he was scourged.
I wish really I had a scourge here,
at least a Roman scourge, and you could
see it.
A long piece of leather studded with lead.
And if I brought that scourge across this
platform, it would splinter in all directions.
The Lord Jesus was tied to a whipping
post, and soldier after soldier heaped again their
heaviest whipping mark on his back, until his
back was like a ploughed field.
And after the buffeting, after the awful scourging,
they crucified him.
Now all I'm going to say about crucifixion
is this.
It was the worst form of torture that
man has ever invented.
It defies description, and the one that made
heaven and earth was the one that was
suspended between heaven and earth in total disgrace.
For that was the meaning of crucifixion.
The man was not fit for heaven, the
man was not fit for earth, so they
suspended a man between heaven and earth.
And they did that to the creator, his
physical self.
But we must never imagine that the cross
of the Lord Jesus was marked by defeat.
When he had been on that cross for
six hours suffering before men, and then those
three awful hours when he suffered before God,
there were three outstanding miracles.
The first was this, he bowed his head.
Now I'm quoting from Mr. Vine, and Mr.
Vine makes it very clear that the word
bow there in the Greek doesn't mean that
he dropped his head.
Now I do not want to have humor
in this meeting tonight, but if you did
fall asleep in this meeting because your back
is in an upright position, your head would
drop.
When normally a man died on the cross,
his head would drop lifelessly.
The Lord Jesus actually bent his head right
back.
When you go to sleep tonight on your
bed, you don't drop your head.
The day is finished, the work is done,
you pillow your head.
And when the Lord Jesus had finished the
work of redemption, hallelujah, he put his head
back.
He finished the work.
What a saviour.
And then he cried with a loud voice.
Now we all know that when a person
is dying, and if the death has been
painful, and it's been prolonged, if he can
whisper it's a miracle.
When the Lord Jesus came to the ninth
hour, the hour of his death, he was
able to say with a very loud voice,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?
And immediately following one word, finished, done to
completion.
And that is totally miraculous.
And then he was able to do something
that none of us can do.
Human beings can die through natural causes that
we call death, or foolishly they can die
by suicide.
The Lord Jesus did not die by natural
causes, he certainly didn't die by suicide, but
when his work was done, his own life's
force was given back to God.
Father, into thy hands, I commend my spirit.
He said, I have power to lay it
down, I have power to take it again.
This commandment have I received from my Father.
No wonder we as Christians were singing, Hallelujah.
What a Savior.
Let's get nearer to the cross.
Who's I?
You know dear friends, the more I look
at the cross, and the more I see
the dignity of the cross, the more broken
I get.
I want to say it casually, but I
want you to grip it.
The man, the being, the creator that made
this mighty universe, was the one that hung
on that cross.
Lightfoot put it beautifully, it was not God
who died, but he who died was God.
And three men gave witness to it, or
two men, and a divine person gave witness
to it.
One was a malefactor, and I want you
to note his position.
His hands, his extremities were all crucified.
His feet were locked together, pierced by a
single spike.
Every movement of his body exaggerated the pain.
His body by this time would be swollen
twice its normal size, because it was gangrene,
or gangrenous.
Probably at this time he would have bronchopneumonia,
and would be gasping for breath.
His head would be literally spinning, and right
in the midst of all those terrible pains,
he gets a revelation.
That's a miracle.
When pain is in, wits around.
He listens to his friend blaspheming the Lord
Jesus, and then he looks at the Lord
Jesus, and a wonderful revelation came to him.
That the man that was dying there was
God.
The whole scene was one of irreverence.
But suddenly this man was ushered into the
sanctuary of God.
And he turned to his friend and said
something like this, Dost thou not fear God,
seeing you're in the same judgment?
God, we saw that in Christ.
Everyone in the Old Testament that realized that
he was in the presence of God, abhorred
himself in dust and ash.
This man now in the presence of God
said, we indeed justly the due rewards of
our disease at this earth.
We deserve to be judged.
Then he looked again and saw something that
was beautiful.
He looked at Christ.
He heard that prayer, Father forgive them, they
know not what they do.
And the Spirit must have said, the man's
perfect.
And he said this, this man hath done
nothing amiss.
Then he must have understood a little that
Christ was dying for his sins.
But more than that, somehow the Holy Spirit
revealed to him that the Lord Jesus was
going to be raised from the dead.
And would you believe it?
They had crowned him with thorns, but he
could see the moment when God would crown
him with glory and great honor.
And then he let out a wonderful prayer.
Look, hands pierced, feet pierced, couldn't be baptized,
couldn't take the communion.
All he had free was his heart and
his lips.
And this is what he said, Lord, remember
me when you come into your kingdom.
And the Lord met him immediately.
And this is what he said, today, what
prompted you?
Thou shalt be with me.
What companionship in paradise, what bliss, a dying
malefact.
There was another witness, and I love this.
It was the centurion.
Let me give you his background.
He had been before the great Caesar.
And like all centurions in his passing out
parade, he would climb the steps of the
imperial palace on his knees.
Then he would kiss the toe of Caesar.
Then he would kiss the scepter by the
side of Caesar.
And then he would swear blasphemy that I
can't do on this platform, because no one
must speak disparagingly of the almighty God.
All I can say is this, that he
called Caesar the almighty God.
Now note this, if any centurion swore his
allegiance to another deity, he was sacked immediately.
This man watched all the details of Jesus
on the cross.
He saw the supernatural darkness.
He heard the forgiving prayer.
He heard the forsaking prayer.
He drew near, and in the gloom saw
the head going back.
And he heard the mighty word, finished.
He saw him giving back his life to
God.
And he threw his job to the wind,
smote upon his breast, and said, truly this
man, son of God, the first man to
be saved was a Jew, the second a
Gentile.
But there's another witness.
God watched two men taking the body of
the Lord Jesus from the cross, and he
respected them.
He saw them laying the Lord Jesus, his
son, in a rich man's tomb, according to
the prophecy of Isaiah 53.
He waited one day, two days, he moved
into the third day, and then he under
Holy Spirit did something that's indisputable.
They went into that sepulcher, and they raised
the Lord Jesus from the dead, never to
die again.
And when God raised him from the dead,
he was saying this to our world.
I'm confirming all that Jesus Christ said.
I'm confirming all that he taught.
I'm confirming all that he did on the
cross.
I'm confirming that he is the Savior and
Lord and the coming King.
And he confirmed it by raising him from
the dead.
And tomorrow night, that's my subject, the evidence
of the resurrection of Christ.
And what a wonderful Savior that the man
who hung on that Roman gibbet was the
mighty Son of God.
But now I close.
Why did he say on the cross in
a loud voice so that all could hear,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?
If he had said it with a low
apprehensive voice, my God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?
There would be difficulty.
But no, it was loud, it was clear,
it was plain for all to see.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?
Now we shall never understand that cry until
we understand our place.
Every little baby that's born into the world,
it doesn't matter what color or what class,
every single baby that's born into this world
has within that body the potential to sin.
And therefore in the very conception of that
child, Psalm 51 makes it quite clear that
child was conceived in sin.
And it doesn't matter how cultured the mother
might be, there is no mother, no matter
where she is, in a palace or a
prison, who will stop that child from sinning.
And no one can deny that fact.
Secondly, God has given the human race 10
simple commandments.
And there has never lived a human being
apart from the Lord Jesus that's them.
And every time we break one of those
commandments, we sin.
And the average person violates the 10 commandments
no less than one million times.
When Adam sinned once, and God said to
him, the day that thou eatest, thou shalt
surely die.
The moment he disobeyed God, death came.
So one sin must be punished, the wages
of sin is there.
Therefore, this is what the Bible says.
The law was given that every mouth may
be stopped and that the whole world might
become guilty before God.
Now friends, this is the thing that frightens
me.
In the flat where we're staying, that almost
pulverized me today.
I looked across the sea and saw hundreds
of people enjoying themselves.
And this is what I said.
Every single one of those dear people have
been born in sin, they've broken the law
of God, and they're guilty before God.
But they don't know it.
Dear friends, can I say something that's hard?
But indeed love.
Because you were born in sin and you've
broken the law of God, you're guilty.
And oh dear friends, if you die with
that guilt, you will be eternally separated from
God.
Now immediately we are aware of our personal
guilt, then the cross will bloom with new
meaning.
Why did he say, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?
My dear friends, when he hung upon the
cross, the almighty God for the first time
brought the sin of the world together.
None of us can measure that.
Then meticulously he measured its judgment.
That's totally out of our depth.
And then not as a whipping man or
an angry God.
God was in Christ.
They were both together in it.
He brought sin and judgment upon his son.
And for three hours he went right to
the depth.
None of us can fully understand it, but
this is what the book says.
He who knew no sin was made sin
for us that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him.
This is what the apostle Peter says.
He bare our sins in his own body
on the tree.
And when the Lord Jesus had exhausted all
the judgment of God, he let out that
great cry, my God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?
Do you know why dear friends?
Because he loved you.
He loved you and was prepared to take
your sin and judgment.
Then he cried that amazing word and the
whole of heaven must have gone into jubilation.
Finished.
I can almost imagine the almighty God saying
we have traced it all the way through
the centuries.
And now he's done it.
It's finished.
I can now come to the human race
and forgive them on a just basis.
Finished.
The work was done.
And that's why he raised him from the
dead.
That's why he set him at his own
right hand.
And through that lovely man, the Lord Jesus,
we can experience forgiveness.
Now a preacher can say no more than
that.
You see, my dear friends, all I can
say is this.
When we preach the gospel, we must bring
the people to the cross and we must
tell them that Christ died for our sins
according to the scriptures.
That's all we can say.
But something else has to take place that's
beyond the preacher.
You see, Paul kept on using the word
called.
Called.
I can't call you.
You know, in my zeal and I'm foolish.
I wish I could, but I can't.
The spirit of God has to know.
And you say, well, what happens when the
spirit of God moves and we get the
call?
The cross becomes personal.
You don't see Christ dying for the world.
You don't see him dying for that select
group of people called the church.
There's the cross.
There's the Savior.
And there's you.
And you say this with the apostle Paul.
He loved me.
Gave himself for me.
Don't wonder, I can't do that.
Only the spirit of God.
And when you say that, my dear friends,
you get a terrible shock.
You say something like this.
Lord Jesus, as you hang on that cross,
bearing judgment, are you bearing the judgment for
my bad temper, my lies, my lust, my
jealousy, my deceit, my selfishness?
Yes, but more.
Are you suffering there because I've got this
evil nature?
Yes.
And you're bearing my judgment.
When that hits you, friends, something like this
will take place.
You will turn right away from a sinning
life and say, I'm finished with it.
And you will turn to God in real
repentance.
And then you'll look again and say this.
Lord, forgive my crudeness.
Forgive my reverence.
But are you saying on the cross that
you love me and you're dying for me?
I am.
And then you see the utter reality of
God's love.
There isn't a tinge of hypocrisy in it.
And he loves you unto death.
And when you've gripped that, you'll soon be
on your knees saying like one did in
the New Testament.
God on the grounds of shed blood be
merciful to me a sinner.
We were having meetings in Glasgow.
I shall never forget this, in a hut.
And a sister had invited all her neighbors
who were members of the Church of Scotland.
And may I say this, they were delightful
people.
And there would be in this room about
15 ladies and about five men.
And I took them through the gospel every
Wednesday morning.
We were having a month's meeting.
Then on one occasion, the elder of this
particular church and his wife stayed behind.
And I could see he was greatly moved.
And after some conversation, he said this.
Mr. Brandon, I've been helping the minister for
nearly 30 years as an elder to take
the communion.
I've taught boys and girls for about 15
years that scripture, Christ died for our sins.
And then he stopped.
And he swallowed.
And he turned his face from me.
And his eyes went all misty.
And he couldn't say a word.
And then when he composed himself, he said,
but I never knew he died for my
sins.
I said, do you know that now?
He said, Yeah.
And what have you done?
He says, I've knelt down and received that
forgiveness through the blood.
And what's happened?
He says, I've got paid.
And his wife butted in.
And she said, that's happened to me too.
That was divine revelation accepted.
But it can be rejected.
May it be tonight as you sit there.
And I'm praying this.
I'm not preaching this friends.
I'm praying this, that God will give you
a revelation, so that you'll be able to
say tonight and receive it, that Christ died
for my sins, according to the scripture.