Latest / Breakthrough Church Podcast / The Cross and The Heart of God
Transcript
- Breakthrough Church: Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Breakthrough Church Podcast. Glad to be with you. ⁓ excited for this weekend ⁓ at church. We meet Saturday nights at five PM. Would love for to join us and we're having our first baptism, and that's that's just so exciting. ⁓ first baptism, I guess, not technically, but first on Saturday, ⁓ at during service. And I just believe the Lord is gonna to move and work on Saturday. I'm I'm excited about what that means for us and what ultimately what that means for for the Lord and his kingdom. And so ⁓ this this about this this baptism came about because I with a a friend of mine we were on ⁓ UTD's campus last year and ⁓ we're as we were walking to our place where we shared the gospel and witnessed to people to people about Jesus and and prayed for them, ⁓ on our way there we saw this guy Oliver and ⁓ he was reading his Bible and we were just like, Hey, what you reading? It was kinda like the Ethiopian eunuch, you know, like, Hey, what you reading? And ⁓ and I said, ⁓ ⁓ he he we talked a little bit. I Hey, follow me. Let's go and and do this thing. And so we we ⁓ he actually joined us and started praying. And we met up again, ⁓ so a couple of months later and I shared the gospel with him and there was another guy with us as well, and it clicked. It just clicked and ⁓ and and ⁓ we we kept meeting and and it's just been so cool. He's he's already influencing his friends for Jesus and ministering to them the love of God and ⁓ it it's so special and so cool. So he's gonna get in the waters on Saturday and ⁓ give his life to Jesus ⁓ publicly and and ⁓ renounce the world, the devil, and himself and give ⁓ give himself over to Jesus. So very exciting, very exciting. ⁓ I want to share just a few few thoughts I have right now ⁓ about the accomplishment of the cross. I think a lot of us think about the cross and what it accomplished, and it has accomplished a lot. ⁓ Jesus on the cross said it is finished, and finished means like there's some work that had to be done that he accomplished, that he finished the work. And and among among many, I mean, here's just a few of those. ⁓ adoption as sons and daughters, right? He he became forsaken that we might be forgiven and welcomed in as his sons and daughters. The son of God was forsaken and killed outside of the city, so that we who were outsiders might be welcomed in as a part of the family of God. That's what Jesus accomplished on the cross. What else did he accomplish? Well, Genesis three, it says that the offspring of the woman was going to crush the head of the serpent, and the head of the serpent was going to bruise the heel of the offspring of the woman. What does that mean? Well, at Calvary we see he's he dies on a hill called Galgotha. ⁓ that means the place of the skull. And so underneath the feet of Jesus that are pierced with nails and bleeding is a hill named after the skull. Well, what's happening? Prophecy is being fulfilled. He's crushing the authority of Satan. He's crushing the authority of Satan. How? Through death. He's conquering death through death. That's Hebrews chapter 2. He's conquering death through death, so that those who are afraid of death might be free and delivered from the one who holds the power of death, which is Satan, and he no longer holds the power of death. Jesus does, because he went through it and came out of it. unscathed. Woo, man. This will change your life. That that that Satan has no authority over you because Jesus crushed his authority, his head on Golgotha when he died on the cross. Okay, I could keep going. Literally. There are so many other things. He okay, here's what he did. He p paid the bridal price for his bride. Back in that day, if you were going to get married, you'd get engaged and you would pay a price to the the bride and her family saying, Here's my pledge of marriage, I'm going to give you This amount of money. ⁓ then the bride would, bridegroom, would go away, prepare their room, ⁓ get ready for the wedding day, and then a year later would come back and they would officially get married, consummate the marriage, move in together. So in in the in the cross of Jesus, he is he's paying the bridal price. And and what happened after he died is he was pierced in the side. And what was the piercing of the side? What came out? Blood and water. Well, what's what marks the church? The church is marked by the blood of Jesus. We've been brought in by the blood of Jesus, and we're now experiencing the life of the Holy Spirit that is the water. What else came from the side? Think about Adam and Eve. Right? Adam, from his side, came a rib that produced Eve. From the side of Jesus comes his bride, you and I. Powerful is what he accomplished. He accomplished a bride. He purchased for himself a bride on the cross. So We could keep going for days and days and days. And you should go into scriptures and you should ask the Holy Spirit, reveal to me what Jesus did on the cross. Okay, but here's what I've been thinking about: that the cross isn't just an accomplishment. If if I if you if you give me a problem to solve and I go solve the problem, I mean, that's great, problem solved. But there's something else going on there. That problem that was solved by me. Is actually revealing my character, who I am. Right? Beyond or underneath any accomplishment is a revelation of the type of person behind it. It's the same thing with Jesus. Him accomplishing the cross is revealing what kind of God he is. So, what does the cross reveal to us about the kind of God he is? John 3 16. The most famous Bible verse in the history of mankind. For God so loved the world, say it with me, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. John three, sixteen. What's interesting, I don't know how you read that. There was a time in my life where I read it like, For God ⁓ so loved the world that or or God gave his son so that he could love the world. I used to think about the work of Jesus on the cross, what he accomplished was making me lovable again. ⁓ man, God sent, okay, God hated me and then he sent Jesus and now he loves me. And so I think about people talking, saying stuff like, Well, I'm loved because I'm in Christ. That's actually not true. It's not true in the sense of you had to be in Christ for God to love you. John 3 16 says, For God so loved the world that he gave. For God so loved the world. You know what the Greek is? It says, in this way or in this manner, God loved the world by sending his only son to die on a cross, by gave his only son, gave up his one and only son, surrendered, did not withhold his son, gave him up for the world that if we believe in him, we might have every everlasting life. What does this tell us about the kind of God is behind the cross? It's a God of love. Well, what is the way that he loves? Giving his son, by letting his one of a kind, one and only beloved son, the darling of heaven, the the prince of glory, the king of all creation, giving him up to die at the hands of sinners, so that we might love him. We should never, ever, ever, ever doubt the love of God. Why? Because love is not just something he does every once in a while. He has defined himself through the cross and said that love is literally who he is. Self-giving, self-sacrificial love. This is what comes out of God when you cut him. If you cut him, he bleeds sacrificial, unconditional love. What would your life look like if you really believed that? If you really believed that the cross didn't just accomplish things, it revealed someone. It didn't just accomplish something, it revealed someone. And that someone is the one God who created all things. I don't know how you think of God as like a wrathful, vengeful God. I don't know if you think of God as like, ⁓ no, I better not screw up or else He's gonna be disappointed in me or He's gonna retreat from me or He's not gonna bless me. So many of us walk around life thinking, like, I don't know, is God Are we good? I'm not sure if I'm really gonna get to heaven. I don't know. I'm I don't who is this God? And I'm telling you, this is the God of the Bible. This is the God who created all things. He is a God who puts on flesh and dies in the place of sinners. Why? So that they can truly see how much he loves them and that that love might change them from the inside out. This is who God is. When you stare at the cross, just go to John 19 and behold the Lamb. Behold the man, the king. Just go and read it and just read it again and then read it again and read it until God touches you. And Jesus Christ and the crucifixion is not just something God had to do at some point to make things right. It's the ultimate climax of creation. It's the whole point of the book of the Bible. It's why did Jesus say it is finished? Because everything prophesied about what he would do, what he would reveal, it's accomplished and finished at his death. This is not just, ⁓ man, we ⁓ shoot, plan B, Jesus, you're gonna have to go and die on a cross. No, from the beginning of time, God wanted to reveal himself as a God who lays his life down for his people, who never have to question and doubt whether or not he loves them, that their performance, their sin, their messing up, their righteousness, it does not change the way he feels about you. He feels a certain way about you and has revealed how he feels about you by going to a cross. And accomplishing what you and I can never accomplish. This is why Paul says I boast only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I have been crucified to the world. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna end there. I just I think it's food for thought. I think this is the pure, simple gospel, the cross of Jesus, the revelation of the Father's heart, that he truly is a God who dies, a God who bleeds, a God who lays his life down. It's it's not just something he did. It's who he is in his heart of hearts. When you cut God open, he bleeds sacrificial, unconditional love. When you go to the very heart of of God, what you're gonna find is the man with holes in his hand, a bruised side and face, a crown of thorns. And in John 19, I'll close with this. In John 19, you're you you you will see and read that the Roman soldiers are flogging Jesus. Pilate is asking him questions. He's trying to figure out what to do with Jesus. The Jews are yelling, crucify him, crucify him, but in the process there's two things I think are so noteworthy. It's and it's just lights me up. It says in verse two, and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews. And then later I want to read ⁓ Pilate, he puts the Jesus before them and he says, Behold your king. And they say, We have no king but Caesar. And then in verse seventeen, and he went out, bearing his own cross to the place called the place of a skull, which is in Aramaic called Galgatha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. Pilate also wrote on an inscription and put it on the cross. It read Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priest of the Jews said to Pilate, Do not write the King of the Jews, but rather, this man said, I am the King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written, I have written. Now that's so interesting. Why? Would Pilate write, This is the king of the Jews, or Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews? Why wouldn't he say, This man claimed to be king of the Jews? Because crucifixion, you were putting somebody on a cross, rendering them powerless and completely defeated. And as an example of you better not follow in this guy's footstep, this guy claimed to be a king. So why would you write, This man, Jesus of Nazareth, he is the king of the Jews? Well, yeah, it's in mockery, yeah. But but but the ones who were mocking him wanted Pilate to write, no, say this man said he was, and he didn't. Well, why? Well, I believe sovereignly and providentially, what's happening in this moment is that while they think that they are embarrassing a Jewish man, that that Jewish man is actually ascending his throne. That when Jesus is hung upon that cross, he has been enthroned on the cross. The cross is his throne. The crown of thorns is what he wears. Because this is the type of God he is. One who wears a crown of thorns, who leaves his heavenly diadem for a crown of thorns, who leaves his divine throne to take up a wooden cross. This is who our God is. This is who Jesus is. Please don't ever doubt how much he loves you. Don't ever doubt his rule and authority, for he has conquered death by death. He has taken the enemy captive. He has rendered princes and powers powerless. This is our king, the one who is reigning over all and will always be the king. So I pray that you would worship this God, the God who bleeds for you, the God who has sacrificed his own life for you, even when you don't deserve it, when you were his enemy. He gave his life up, shed his blood, and broke his body. So that you could have life and freedom and be delivered from the powers of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son. Amen. It's a powerful gospel. ⁓ thanks for tuning in. ⁓ I hope you come visit us on Saturday at some point, five o'clock, ⁓ yeah at Loft City Church in Richardson. We'd love to see you guys there. God bless you and walk with the Holy Spirit this week. See ya.