Text:  Romans 5: 6-8

We put our cross up on the front lawn of the church last week. It’s big, meant to be noticed.   I wonder how many people walk past it or drive past it each day.  Probably quite a few.  I also wonder how many give it much thought.  It’s hard to know.  But I suspect that most who are not Christians notice it, maybe think it odd or different, then think of it no more.

What about us?  Tonight and in the weeks to come we want to give you more than a drive by reminder of what God had done for you.  For the next five Wednesday evenings, we will gather with this focus.  Facing the Cross.

We sometimes sing Were you there when they crucified my Lord?  We weren’t.  But the gospel writers put us there.  They put us at the foot of Jesus’ cross.  What would we see and hear?  Terrible cruelty and suffering.  All kinds of reactions.  From sorrow and sneering, to a dying man who confesses his faith.  Then Jesus’ words from the cross as he suffers and then finally dies.  The darkness, an earthquake.  What could we make of it all?

Thanks be to God the Holy Spirit we don’t have to figure it  out for ourselves.  God’s Word brings it together for us.  And tonight as we stand:

FACING THE CROSS
God’s Word helps us to see:
I.  We see one so “helpless”
II.  We see a remarkable love

            The word powerless jumps out at me here.  The word means weak, unable to help yourself.  Helpless.  Some pictures come to mind?  A new born baby in a hospital where I once lived.  A woman dressed up as a nurse. She came into the nursery and took the child away.  Of course, the baby could do nothing.  He was powerless to resist or fight back.   He was helpless.

Then I think of an accident scene I once got called.  A couple was drunk and wrecked their car.  They were trapped inside, crying out, afraid.  We had to extract them.  They were helpless.

Here Paul speaks of you and me as helpless.  While we were yet powerless, but facing the cross tonight, that word sure seems to apply to another.  Think of the night before.  Jesus was arrested and led away.  His friends desert him.  He stands trial before the High Priest.  It’s a farce.  False witnesses accuse him.  Finally they condemn him as worthy of death.

The next morning they brought Jesus before the Roman governor.  He had him brutally flogged.  Then he was brought out before the crowd.  They shout crucify him.  The governor acceded to their wishes.  The soldiers then made him carry the heavy cross to the place where you now stand.  They stripped away his clothes, laid him down.  Drove the nails through his hands and feet and lifted him up.  And now people come by.  You’ve heard them.  They taunt him.  Come down from there if you are the Son of God.  Then this tormented cry, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.  Then he dies and they take his body to be buried.

If ever there was a scene of helplessness, it would seem this one, this man suspended before you.  This man bleeding and dying.  Facing the cross, he seems so helpless. But helpless is not the word to describe him.  He could have put an end to it all.  But he would not.  He would not because he was committed to do for you and me what we could not do for ourselves.  So facing the cross, we see one so helpless.  But that one is not him.  It is me. He is there because we are weak and helpless.

And why? Think of Jesus’ words to a man who asked him: what  must I DO to have eternal life.  Jesus pointed him to God’s will for our lives.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength and with all your mind.  And love your neighbor as yourself.  Then Jesus told the man:  Do this and you will live.  But we don’t do this, do we?  Too often, we sin. We fall terribly short of what we owe God and one another. Instead of being godly, we are ______ (ungodly). Instead of deserving life, we deserve to hear God say, Go away and don’t come back.  And you and I were powerless to turn that around. We were like that couple trapped in the car, the fault all their own.

But here’s the good news as we stand facing the cross.   You see at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  He took our guilt on himself and died for you and me.       The other day I was talking to someone after church.  This is not the first time I’ve heard this.  This person said:  when I think of Jesus dying on the cross, it makes me sad.  I can understand that sadness.  When I consider it was my sins that made that necessary.  That makes me sad.  But don’t stop there.  Keep going.  Facing the cross, don’t miss this.  This Word helps us to look there and see a remarkable love.

Paul writes here:  ⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.  Think about what Paul says.  In a way it’s like what Jesus says in gospel of John.  Greater love has no man that this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  In other words, there are times when one person might sacrifice his life for others.  Think of the soldier who throws himself on the hand grenade to save his buddies.  They are that important to him.  He trusts that they would do the same for him.  There is that kind of devotion to one another. Or think of the mother who dies protecting her children.  Or the man I heard about years ago.  When a thief pointed a gun at him and his wife, he stepped in front of her and was killed.  Or the secret service agent who stops a bullet with his/her body meant for the president.  There is no greater sacrifice than that- to give up one’s life for another.  And people will sometimes do that for others they see as important or good or special in some way.

But facing the cross, God gives us to see an even more  remarkable love.  His love for each of us.   ⁸But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.   Let’s try to get the full impact of what Paul writes here.  That word sinner is so often used.  It’s sharp edges can get rounded off and smooth.  So let’s put it together with some of these other words in these few verses.  We come up with this.  Powerless, ungodly sinners.  Would you give up your life for a person described like that?   That’s the point.  God did that for you and me.

So facing the cross what do we see?    God sets before us a remarkable love that saved us, forgave us and made us His children.  A love undeserved, but so rich and free.

When my daughter was small and I was at the seminary, my wife and I had a job cleaning a church.  We would take little Katie along who would toddle around with us from room to room.  One time her and I were in the fellowship hall which had a big cross on the far wall.  Katie then asked me this question, daddy, what does that cross mean?  I was so glad for the question.  But then I thought, How do I explain the cross to a little girl?  Help!  Well I paused for a moment and said this.  You know what that cross means, honey.  God loves you.

Some time later we were driving in a car with grandma and grandpa.  We went by a church.  A little voice spoke up in the car and asked.  Grandma, Grandpa.  Do you know what that cross means?  What Katie, they asked.  God loves you.

May you see that love, God’s love for you, each time you face the cross of His Son, your Savior.  Amen.