Work so diligently behind the scenes.
I guess the best thing to do would
be to quote Ruth 2.12. The Lord
recompense thy work and a full reward be
given thee of the Lord God of Israel
under whose wings thou art come to trust.
This morning I'd just like to read a
single verse of scripture.
There's enough in here for the meditation of
a lifetime.
Luke 23.33. Luke 23.33. And
when they had come to the place called
Calvary, there they crucified him.
I'm just going to stop there.
When they had come to the place called
Calvary, there they crucified him.
Harold St. John said, the cross of Christ
will never mean anything to you until it
takes your breath away and becomes the most
important thing in your life.
The cross of Christ will never mean anything
to you until it takes your breath away
and becomes the most important thing in your
life.
When I heard that, I thought, hmm, take
your breath away.
Breathless.
Most important.
I said, okay, I'm going to go and
read the gospels, and I'm going to look
at those adjectives expressing amazement and at the
superlatives that are found in the gospels.
After all, you need words like that, don't
you, to describe the person and work of
the Savior.
But I couldn't find the word amazing.
I couldn't find the word astonishing, astounding, awesome.
That's a great word today, isn't it?
Awesome.
Awe-inspiring.
I thought, well, I'll look for some others.
Breathtaking.
Wasn't there.
Dazzling.
Extraordinary.
Fantastic.
Greatest.
Couldn't find it.
Apparently these words weren't in the vocabulary of
the gospel writers.
Incredible.
Magnificent.
Marvelous.
Mind-boggling.
Miraculous.
I looked for the words remarkable, sensational, startling,
staggering, stupendous.
Not there.
Super.
Superlative.
Surprising.
They're not there.
In other words, the most important person and
the most important event in the history of
the universe, and they're handled without superlatives or
without adjectives really expressing amazement.
The Spirit of God handles them not the
way a modern journalist would handle them.
I, as a journalist, could get a hold
of a story like that.
He handles them with supreme simplicity.
And this is one of the marks of
divine inspiration.
And if you've never thought of that, let
me quote a writer on the subject.
The pen of the gospel writers is firmly
held by the Spirit of God simply to
record Christ's wondrous life without a single note
of adoration, admiration, or even appreciation at the
wonders that flowed from their pen.
Such is the marvel of the Word of
God.
I submit that it would be impossible for
any pen not so restrained to write the
life of such a person without constant expression
of wonder and amazement at the character that
it unfolds.
But what was forbidden to them is granted
to us.
And no restriction need be placed upon the
expressions of our worship when Christ is its
object.
I like that.
In fact, we ought to punctuate our worship
with them, with that vocabulary that I read
to you a little while ago.
Think, for instance, of the incarnation.
It boggles the mind to think of the
eternal Son of God coming down to this
planet as a little baby.
One of the less-known Christmas anthems says,
Come see your God extended on the straw.
And that's exactly right.
Come see your God extended on the straw.
And Charles Wesley said, Our God contracted to
a span, incomprehensibly made man.
And yet you look down at that baby
there in the straw and in him dwells
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
It's really hard to take it in, isn't
it?
It's just hard to take it in.
Why did he do it?
He came down as a baby to grow
to be a man so that as man
he might give his life for you and
for me.
Imagine God who fills the universe choosing to
confine himself in a human body.
It's marvelous when you stop.
There I go, using those adjectives again.
The union of God and man is, in
one person, is just more than our minds
can take in.
In him most perfectly expressed, the Father's glory
shines.
Of the full deity possessed, eternally divine, worthy,
O Lamb of God, art thou that every
knee to thee should bow.
I like to remind myself that his birth
borrowed nothing of the glory of this world.
I think when some of you had your
first baby, you repapered the room and you
got a lovely bassinet and all new little
blankets.
I mean, it was quite a scene of
glory when that baby came home from the
hospital, wasn't it?
It wasn't anything like that with the Lord
Jesus.
He was born in a cattle shed with
a manger for his cradle.
He held the highest place above, adored by
all the sons of flame.
Yet such his self-denying love he laid
aside his crown and came to seek the
lost.
And at the cost of heavenly rank and
earthly fame, he sought me.
Blessed be his name.
And we should never forget that he didn't
have to do it.
He didn't have to do it.
Sometimes we just lean back in our chairs
and say, yes, it was very nice that
he would come and die for me.
It was astounding.
He didn't have to do that.
He could have stayed in heaven in unperturbed
bliss there and unperturbed fellowship with his father
and the object of angelic worship.
And he would have been just as much
God as he had done it.
What an amazing thing that in all the
universe, his delight should have been with the
sons of men.
It's really enough to cause sensory overload in
each of us.
But we've only begun in the catalog of
marvels, largely unrecognized and certainly unappreciated.
He walked the lonely paths of this world.
You know, I feel I need a hammer
to be hitting my head all the time
and reminding me it's God.
It's God walking those lanes of Nazareth.
It's God rubbing shoulders with the people of
Samaria.
Because I forget he's so beautifully human as
a man down here on earth.
It's just hard to remember that it's the
creator being pushed around by his creatures.
It's the architect of the universe being shoved
aside.
Absolutely amazing.
Just think of the creator and the sustainer
of the universe, the architect of creation.
And he could say, foxes of holes, birds
of the air have nests.
The son of man has nowhere to lay
his head.
When you read the Bible and you read
that the disciples went to their home and
Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
Listen, it was God who slept there on
the Mount of Olives, wet with the dew
of heaven.
Too easy to forget it, isn't it?
Too easy to forget it.
And yet, absolutely true.
He allowed himself to be jostled and pushed
around and ridiculed and some thought he was
crazy.
Some thought he was an idiot.
And I think I mentioned last week twice,
I think I was reading in John 8
the other day, twice in the Gospel of
John you find people saying to him, you
have a demon.
How do you like that?
Here's people whom his hands had bathed.
And they turn on him and they say,
you have a demon.
I tell you, it's awesome to me just
to see this all happening before the eyes
of faith.
And yet, he was unperturbed by it all.
He went around doing good and giving sight
to the blind and hearing to the deaf
and causing the lame to walk and restoring
the limbs of the maimed and healing those
who were oppressed by the devil.
And yet, all of that didn't change the
heart of man toward him.
He was in the world and the world
was made by him.
The world knew him not.
He came unto his own and his own
received him not.
Punctuated with a gas.
Incredible as it seems, he was despised and
rejected of men.
A man who knew really what sorrow was
like no other man has ever known it.
He came from his blessed throne salvation to
bestow, but men made strange and none the
long for Christ would know.
But all my friend, my friend indeed, who
at my need, his life did spend.
His was the only beautiful, truly beautiful life
ever lived upon this earth.
He never sinned.
He never had an evil thought.
He never violated his conscience.
He never spoke an idle word.
And this is exactly why men didn't want
him around.
His life was too convicting.
You know, I used to think it must
have been a wonderful thing to be with
the Lord Jesus when he was here and
be one of the disciples, you know, and
you go walking along and everything is so
lovely and you hear the swish of their
long garments and all.
I tell you, I think it was a
terribly convicting thing to be with him.
I think it was being like being dipped
in hot oil, a perfect life like that.
And me walking with him.
Don't tell me, don't tell me that would
be comfortable.
His life revealed us exactly as we are.
That was the true light which lightens every
man coming into the world, shows him up
for what he is.
That's not very comfortable.
Yeah, what a wonderful story of that life
lived here on earth.
Thoughts of his sojourn in this veil of
tears, the tale of love unfolded in those
years of sinless suffering and patient grace.
We love again and yet again to trace
the Lord Jesus knew loneliness in a way
that you and I could never know it.
There were things in his life that nobody
could enter into.
He taught the disciples to pray, but he
never prayed with them.
There were emotions and experiences in his life
that none of the disciples could ever enter
into.
You know, the more holy a person is,
the more repulsive sin is.
And you take an elegant lady, a lady
of character, and you take her down to
a skid row mission.
Think of what it was like for the
Lord Jesus to be here on earth.
It was a lonely path he trod from
every human soul apart, known only to himself
and God with all the grief that filled
his heart.
Yet from the track, he turned not back
to where I lay in sin and shame.
He found me blessed be his name.
He didn't come on a search and destroy
mission.
Actually, he would have been completely justified if
he had done that.
But that wasn't his purpose in coming.
He came to seek and to save that
which was lost.
Imagine God coming down into the world to
seek and to save that which was lost.
It leaves me spellbound.
To think of him, the good shepherd, ninety
and nine in the fold, and he goes
out over the desert to seek that one
sheep that was lost.
And as we sit here this morning, I
think each of us can say who that
sheep was.
It was I.
And you can say it was I too.
What was his reward for that life of
unselfish service to others?
Well, he was hounded by men who were
little more than snarling dogs.
Pardon me, that's what they were.
He was betrayed by one of his close
friends.
He could say my own familiar friend has
lifted up his heel against him.
He was denied by one of those who
was closest to him, denied three times with
cope with odes and curses.
He was arrested.
I can't believe it.
They came out with ropes and staves to
take him.
He hadn't done anything wrong.
I mean, daily he had taught in the
temple, and there was no uprising against him
then.
And now they come out as if he's
a felon of the first degree, with all
those ropes and staves and all the rest
to take him to arrest him.
Imagine.
And who is it?
It's the one who gave them breath.
It's the one who designed their hands that
are now used to capture the Son of
God.
And we need that voice saying to us
all the time, who is it?
Who is it describing?
The Lord of life and glory.
Then he was tried.
What a farce.
Imagine, the judge.
The judge of all mankind.
And he's taken and tried by the guilty.
What a comedy of errors, huh?
Ridiculous.
That's the way it was.
And he opened not his mouth.
That is a lamb to the slaughter.
The sheep before her shearers is dumb.
So he opened not his mouth.
Condemned.
Innocent, yet condemned.
Pilate had to say repeatedly, I can't find
any fault in this man.
And he delivers him over to be scourged.
Talk about justice.
And who is it?
It's the sovereign of the universe.
That's who it is.
It's one who is both God and man
in one person.
Dear friends, if you're not breathless, it's because
you've forgotten who we're talking about.
You think he was just another man like
ourselves.
But he was not a mere man.
He was the maker, the Lord of life
and glory.
Poet said, the maker of the universe.
I like that.
The maker of the universe as man for
man was made a curse.
The claims of law which he had made
unto the uttermost he paid.
And then the astounding climax.
We've already sung about it this morning.
The astounding climax.
He died.
God died?
Charles Wesley.
I love those lines of Charles Wesley.
Tis mystery all.
The immortal dies.
Who can explore his strange designs?
You know, immortal means not subject to death.
What a paradox.
There he is hanging on the cross of
shame.
I look up and I see my God.
And it's nothing less than that.
The God-man hangs between heaven and earth.
An unfathomable paradox.
The source of all life.
Take a breath.
It's the one who gave us that breath
that's dying there on the cross of Calvary.
Not subject to death.
He dies on that shameful.
I tell you, the angels must have gasped
when they looked down and saw what was
happening.
Never any doubt in their mind who he
was.
They knew him from ages past and they
saw him leaving the glory of heaven, laying
aside, emptying himself of all of that position
of equality with God.
Not person, position of equality with God.
And they saw him taking that tremendous scoop,
coming down to this speck of cosmic dust.
And dear friends, if this world, if this
earth is a speck of cosmic dust, just
think how big you and I are.
That's what he did.
He came down.
The angel watched him do it.
And now they see him uplifted by creatures
whom his hands had made.
They see him dying there on that cross
of shame.
I bow at his feet.
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.
I think J.
Sidlow Baxter captured something of the amazement of
it all.
He said, think of the fact that he
died.
That in itself is a strange marvel.
Remember, he's God the Son.
He had to become human in order to
be capable of death.
I like this.
It's a mysterious wonder that God the Son
could die, still more than he should die,
still more than he would die, still more
than he did die.
Let me say that again.
It's a mysterious wonder that God the Son
could die, still more than he should die,
still more than he would die, and most
of all, that he did die.
His death was unique, just like his birth
and his life were unique.
I said that his birth borrowed none of
the glory of this world, neither did his
death.
I was lying in bed last night thinking
of death today, and how the body is
placed in a, well first of all, it's
laid out there in the funeral home, and
it's in a casket with shiny metal and
all kinds of frills inside the casket, you
know, the glory of death.
There was none of that connected with his
death, and there was no other death like
it.
No man took his life from him.
He said, I have power to lay it
down, and I have power to take it
up again.
It was a unique death.
Even nature seemed to react to the enormous
significance of what was taking place there at
Calvary.
We sang it, well might the sun in
darkness hide and shut his glories in, when
Christ the mighty maker died, the man, his
creature of sin.
The cross of Christ will never mean anything
to you until it leaves you breathless and
becomes the most important thing in your life.
And it was a horrible death, if you
don't mind my saying so.
Every torture and indignity that the mind of
man could conceive was heaped upon him.
Imagine that.
Who?
God.
That precious body was beaten beyond recognition, bruised
and pierced.
They covered his face with their filthy spit.
Who?
God.
Their God.
They plucked the hairs from his cheek, and
prophetically he says that his back was plowed
like a plowed field.
Can't you see the furrows in his back?
And the crowd stood there, and do you
know what they thought?
They thought, hmm, he must have sinned terribly
to be suffering like this.
They thought him stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgression.
He was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him,
and with his stripes we are healed.
It wasn't just the physical sufferings.
Worse than the physical sufferings were his sufferings
at the hand of God.
When God took all the guilt of my
sins and your sins, and all the sins
of the world, and he laid it on
him there.
None of the ransomed ever knew how deep
were the waters crossed, or how dark was
the night that the Lord passed through.
There he found the sheep that was lost.
Well might we sing, oh, make me understand
it.
Help me to take it in, what it
meant to thee, the Holy One, to bear
away my sin.
Even as we talk, we're apt to forget
who it was who was suffering there on
the cross.
It was not a mere man, but the
brightness of God's glory, and the express image
of his person.
It was the Jehovah of the Old Testament,
the one whom Isaiah called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty
God, Prince of Peace, the Father of Eternity.
He's hanging there on the cross.
And of course what makes it most staggering
of all is that he was dying there
for me.
Dying there for you.
Not for good people, but for outrageous sinners.
Christ died for the ungodly.
It blows me away.
For his enemies.
Amazing grace.
No truer words were ever spoken.
Amazing grace that the Creator would die for
the people whom his hands had made, and
who had turned out to be no good.
Many hymn writers try to capture the wonder
of it all.
It's interesting to me that they abandon prose
and resort to poetry in order to capture
it.
But was it for me?
For me alone, the Savior left his dazzling
throne, the dazzling splendor of the sky.
Was it for me he came to die?
It was for me.
Yes, all for me.
Oh, love of God, so rich, so free.
Oh, wondrous love, I'll shout and sing.
He died for me, my Lord and King.
I tell you, it passes understanding that he
should have had you and me in mind
two thousand years ago, when he hung upon
that cross of wood.
Now, how appropriate it was that we should
sing.
And when I think that God, his Son
not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce
can take it in.
That on the cross my burden gladly bearing,
he bled and died to take away my
sin.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to
thee, how great thou art, how great.
And I want to tell you something, dear
friends, this morning.
If you'll think about it for a minute,
you'll have to agree that the price he
paid was too much.
You and I weren't worth it.
We weren't worth it.
The God of sons should have ever come
down and die as a substitute for us
and pay the price of his own precious
blood.
The price was too high.
We're not redeemed with corruptible things such as
silver and gold, but with the precious blood
of Christ as of a lamb without spot
and without blemish.
But you know that should make us worshipers
for all eternity, shouldn't it?
I tell you, should make us worshipers for
all eternity.
We should be overcome with gratitude, dumbfounded with
thanksgiving.
I'm telling you, the poet hit it right
on the head when he said, wonder of
wonders, vast surprise.
Can greater wonder be that he who built
the starry sky once bled and died for
me.
Amazing, startling sacrifice.
Here are the adjectives coming in.
Amazing, startling sacrifice, confounding all our thoughts.
Stupendous, staggering purchase price, which our redemption bought.
Another poet struggles with a thought.
Oh, can it be?
Upon a tree, my savior died for me.
My heart is filled.
My soul is thrilled to think he died.
Oh, it's wonderful.
So very wonderful that he should care for
me enough to die for me.
Oh, it is wonderful.
Wonderful to me.
Here might I stay and sing no story
so divine.
Never was love dear king.
Never was grief like thine.
This is my friend in whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend.
But we must move on to the tomb.
Picture the loving hands of Joseph of Arimathea
taking that precious lifeless body and laying it
in his own new stone carved sepulchre.
Makes me think of an experience I had
years ago, some years ago when one of
our fellows was stricken with melanoma and died
and I got a call at three o
'clock in the morning that he had passed.
They'd gone in to see the king in
his beauty.
And I rushed over to the house to
be with his young widow.
And we waited there until the undertakers came.
And I'll never forget an emotion that went
through my soul as they were wheeling out
the body.
I knew that he was with the Lord.
I knew the body was just the shell,
just the house in which he had lived.
But I wanted to say to the undertaker,
you take good care of that precious body.
I didn't say it, but I felt it.
And I wondered if that went through Joseph's
mind.
As he handled the body of the Lord
Jesus.
I wonder if he realized it was the
body of God.
Makes me think of another experience I had
years ago up in Portland where an eminent
servant of the Lord had died and the
family had gathered.
But one daughter had to travel across the
country and she came late.
And she wanted to get out in the
funeral home.
And so I said, well, I would go
down with her.
And when we went in and she just
moved forward to the casket and she stood
there by the casket looking down on the
body of her dear father.
And she paid the most eloquent tribute I've
ever heard.
She looked at his hands and she said,
Daddy, she said, I think of those hands
and all their loving work for us and
for all the people of God.
Your lips now silent were constantly sounding out
the gospel and ministering God's word.
Your eyes were full of compassion looking for
people whom you could help.
And there by the casket of her father
she paid a most eloquent tribute to a
great man of God.
Maybe something like that went through the mind
of Joseph of Arimathea as he prepared the
Savior's body for burial.
It seems almost ironical that the one who
had known nothing but poverty in his life
is buried in a rich man's tomb.
They made his grave with the wicked, but
he was with the rich in his death.
They planned to throw that body down the
valley of Gehinnom where it would be either
consumed by fire or eaten by the foxes.
But God said, no, you've done enough.
God permitted him to be his body to
be buried there in Joseph's new tomb.
He wasn't in the tomb, of course, just
his body.
He was in paradise with that thief to
whom he had said today, thou shalt be
with me in paradise.
And then, of course, on that Lord's Day
morning his spirit was reunited with that body.
Death could not keep his praise.
Jesus, my Savior, he tore the bonds away.
Jesus, my Lord.
What we must do is when we go
to the gospel narratives and we read about
the wondrous life, death, burial, and resurrection of
the Lord Jesus, we must constantly be asking
ourselves, who was it?
And just remember, it wasn't a man like
ourselves, although he was perfectly human.
The wonder of it all.
May the wonder of it all never leave
us, not even for an instant.
And may we worship him in spirit and
in truth.
Our brother is going to lead us in
a closing hymn and then we'll look to
the Lord in prayer.