The Power of the Cross
Matthew 26:26-28
I wanted to start out by reading that familiar text from the upper room
As sort of a back drop for what we are going to study this evening.
You know I’m not really a fan of topical approaches
But it is true that sometimes it is very fitting for us
To sort of scour over the pages of Scripture and be reminded of certain truths.
And this evening the truth I want you to rest on is
“THE POWER OF THE CROSS”
You know that it was on this very day that our Lord was actually crucified.
It was during the Passover that Jesus was put to death.
And so the reasons for coming to worship tonight are obvious.
But where I want to get started actually occurred on Thursday night,
The night before the Lord was killed.
I won’t get into why Jesus and His disciples
Were taking the Passover on Thursday instead of Friday
Except to point out, some Jews measured a day from sun-up to sun-up.
Others measured their day from sun-down to sun-down.
And that means that “twilight on the fourteenth day”
(when the Passover occurred) for some of the Jews
Would have been Thursday and for some would have been Friday.
But none the less, we have here Thursday night
And Jesus and His disciples in the upper room
Doing what every Jew understood and normal practice.
They were taking the Passover.
Exodus 12 prescribed that on the fourteenth day
Of the tenth month every Jew was to partake in the Passover.
It commemorated God’s deliverance from Egypt.
They ate bitter herbs – symbolizing their bondage
They ate unleavened bread – symbolizing their separation from sinful Egypt
They ate roasted lamb – the blood of which they had painted on the door frame
And as they ate, they were To eat with their loins girded,
Their staff in hand, and To eat it in haste,
Thus symbolizing their certain belief in the deliverance of God.
And every year Jews returned to eat the Passover
As a memorial of God’s great deliverance from Egypt.
To the Jew, the Exodus was the greatest deliverance
God had ever performed.
• 10 plagues
• Pillar of fire
• Parting of the Red Sea
• Drowning of the Egyptians
• Manna from heaven
• Water from a rock
• Shoes that never wore out
And so Jews routinely celebrated the Passover
To remember God’s great deliverance.
But on this night Jesus was about to reveal something to the disciples.
THE EXODUS IS NOT GOD’S GREATEST DELIVERANCE
For as He partook of that meal, notice what He did.
“While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.”
What Jesus did here is absolutely astounding,
And the claim He is making is second to none.
He declares that He is about to perform
A greater deliverance than the Exodus.
“Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”
In other words, stop eating this bread and thinking about the Exodus.
You think of “My body”
And He did the same with the wine.
“And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.”
It isn’t the lamb’s blood that was powerful,
It is “My blood” that is powerful.
It was a mandate from Jesus that they change the symbolism of the meal.
Luke 22:19 “And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
Jesus said “do this in remembrance of Me.”
DO WHAT? The Passover
Jesus said the next time they come to partake of the Passover,
They don’t need to do it with the Exodus on their mind.
Instead, they must partake with Jesus on their mind.
He emphatically declaring that the deliverance I am about to bring
Is even greater than the deliverance of the Exodus.
And with such a statement by our Lord,
I thought it only fitting to take a little time this evening
And examine the power of the cross.
(and like I said, this is topical, so we are going to bounce around a little here)
#1 THE SINNERS IT REACHED
If you want to talk about the power of the cross,
One of the first ways we see that power is in the reach of the cross.
It is absolutely amazing who the cross was and is able to reach.
• It was not as though Christ was only interested in a certain quality of sinner.
• It is not as though Christ was looking to help those who would help themselves.
We just learned last Sunday morning what Jesus said:
Matthew 9:12 “But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick.”
The cross reached all the way down to the sick.
The cross reached all the way down to the most vile.
1 Timothy 1:15 “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.”
Paul clearly saw himself as the worst sinner that ever lived.
• For not only was he a murderer who killed Christians.
• We also know him to have been covetous.
• We know he had selfish ambition.
• And we also know he swore falsely in the name of the Lord, as one who pretended to love God, but did not really.
And when Paul took inventory of his life he was amazed that Christ would save him for he knew himself to be the worst of the worst.
Romans 5:6-8 “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Perhaps Paul wouldn’t have thought it strange if Christ had come
To save the religiously moral, or the bad person with good intentions.
But the fact that Christ came to save the most vile
Was absolutely astounding to him.
And yet that is the power of the cross.
No one was too wicked for the cross.
No one was beyond the reach of the atonement.
And we could spend hours with the illustrations.
• The Woman at the Well and her immoral living
• Mary Magdalene and her 7 demons
• The woman who wept over Jesus’ feet who sins were “many”
• Matthew, or Zaccheus and their greed
• Even centurions in their callous way of life
And yet it really didn’t matter how much sin a person had,
The debt was never too large for the cross.
But it isn’t just the vileness of the sinner that makes this impressive.
It is also impressive because there is no limit to who can come.
We think everything has a limit.
A limit to our days.
A limit to our water supply
A limit to our natural resources
A limit to our financial resources
We often suppose things to have a limit.
Either one person can have a whole lot, or a lot of people can have a little, but we all know that every resource eventually runs out.
And yet this is the power of the cross.
There is no end.
The flow never stops.
The redemption never runs out.
The cross can reach EVERY sinner regardless of the depth of their sin.
That is why we are blown away by passages like:
John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
John 12:32 “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”
Those passages reveal that there is a total sufficiency
In the atonement of Christ on the cross.
Every sinner can come, regardless of how much they owe.
And that is why we sing:
“There’s room at the cross for you”
“The blood will never lose it’s power…it reaches to the highest mountain, it flows through the lowest valley. The blood that gives me strength from day to day, it will never lose it’s power.”
The Sinners It Reached
#2 THE SANCTIFICATION IT PRODUCED
You are probably familiar with one of the great questions
That Jeremiah asked in the Old Testament.
Jeremiah 13:23a “Can the Ethiopian change his skin Or the leopard his spots?”
The obvious answer being, “No”.
You are what you are.
And we know what man is.
Man is a slave to sin.
Ephesians 2:1-3 “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
We come into this world only concerned about ourselves.
We are ambitious for the things we want, and those things aren’t God.
Titus 3:3 “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.
Paul nailed it there for Titus.
We were wicked people who never changed.
BUT
Titus 3:4-7 “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
And this is again the beauty of the cross.
It had the ability to change sinful wicked men into saints of God.
LOOK AT THE CHANGE
Paul from persecutor to missionary
Peter from coward to preacher
John from “son of thunder” to elder who loved
Or what about men like Nicodemus or Joseph?
Nicodemus was curious, but so afraid that he came to Jesus at night.
Joseph of Arimathea was said to be a secret disciple for fear of the Jews.
Yet
John 19:38-41 “After these things Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate granted permission. So he came and took away His body. Nicodemus, who had first come to Him by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.”
What a difference the cross made in their lives.
These two silent and secretive followers,
Confessed their love about as public as you could.
While the leopard can’t change its spots,
We have found that the cross can change anyone.
And the power is the transformed lives we see of people everywhere.
2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
Romans 6:4-7 “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.”
It is what Paul meant when he wrote:
2 Corinthians 5:21 “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
That is certainly more powerful than the Passover.
We all remember how righteous those who partook of the Passover were.
They barely made it out of Egypt
Before building a golden calf or grumbling against God.
The cross has the power to take willful hardened sinners
And turn them into dedicated saints of God.
That is the power of the cross.
The Sinners it Reached, The Sanctification it Produced
#3 THE SATISFACTION BROUGHT
And this one I find especially amazing.
The cross did something that no one or nothing had ever done.
The cross satisfied God.
Romans 3:23-25 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;”
1 John 2:2 “and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”
You probably know by now,
But that word “propitiation” means “appeasement”.
It was the sacrifice of Christ on the cross
That satisfied the holy requirement of God.
And this is amazing because when you read the Old Testament you very rarely find this.
In fact when you read the Law God is pretty clear.
• If you commit murder, you die. (Exodus 21:12)
• If you hit your parents, you die. (Exodus 21:15)
• If you curse your parents, you die. (Exodus 21:17)
• If you kidnap someone, you die. (Exodus 21:16)
• If you have a goreing ox who kills someone, you die. (Exodus 21:29)
• If you commit adultery, you die. (Leviticus 20:10)
• If a man lies with an animal, he dies. (Exodus 22:19)
• If you blaspheme God, you die. (Leviticus 24:16)
• If you willfully disobey God, you die. (Deuteronomy 17:12)
• If you worship idols, you die. (Exodus 22:20)
• If you work on the Sabbath, you die (Exodus 31:15)
Now of course God had the sacrificial system, but it doesn’t take long
For a person to realize that it must not be too effective.
The sacrifices keep coming.
Hebrews 10:2-4 “Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”
The sacrifices never stopped, so they couldn’t have been that great.
Furthermore God remained behind the veil.
There was a continual separation.
Obviously God was not satisfied.
If one did not know better you might even think that
It was impossible to satisfy God.
He almost appeared to be impossible to please.
His standard was too high.
His holiness was too great.
No one would ever be able to satisfy God.
And yet that is precisely what the cross did.
The cross of Jesus had the power to do
What the blood of 100 billion sheep never could.
Jesus satisfied God.
This, by the way, is what makes the resurrection so significant.
Apart from the fact that it proves that death is conquered,
The resurrection also proves that God was satisfied with Christ.
Romans 4:25 “He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.”
Christ was raised “because of our justification.”
He was raised because He was successful at justifying us.
The resurrection proves the cross worked.
Had Christ remained dead we would wonder if God was really satisfied.
But because He was raised we know God was satisfied.
This is also why the veil was torn.
For the first time access to God was granted.
It is just astounding what the cross accomplished.
The cross took the most vile sinners imaginable,
Turned them into righteous saints
And fully satisfied the wrath of God against them.
That is the Power of the cross
The Sinners it Reached, The Sanctification it Produced, The Satisfaction is Brought
#4 THE SECURITY IT ACHIEVED
And of course this one may blow our minds yet again.
So the cross reached to a vile sinner and made him right before God,
BUT WE KNOW HUMANITY PRETTY WELL.
Humanity is prone not only to mistakes,
But to repeat those mistakes.
So certainly Christ redeemed man once, but how many times will He have to do it?
And the answer proves just how powerful the cross really is.
Hebrews 10:10 “By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. “Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying, “THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART, AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM,” He then says, “AND THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE.” Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.”
“the offering of the body of Jesus Christ ONCE for ALL”
“having offered ONE sacrifice for sins for ALL time”
“For by ONE offering He has perfected for ALL time those who are sanctified.”
This is where the Catholics have it all wrong.
• They still have Jesus hanging on the cross.
• They believe at Mass Jesus comes down again to pay the penalty for all the sin they confessed to the priest.
This is to grossly misunderstand and insult the cross.
The cross of Jesus was so powerful that this one act by Jesus
Is powerful enough to atone for all sinners of all sin for all time.
The Passover never did that.
They had to take the Passover year after year.
And now you see why Jesus tells the disciples
To stop thinking back to the Passover.
From now on when you eat that bread and when you drink that cup,
You remember the deliverance of the cross.
Only the cross was powerful enough to reach vilest sinner,
Make him clean, pay his debt, and pay it forever.
“This the power of the cross, Christ became sin for us, took the blame, bore the wrath, we stand forgiven at the cross.”
And that is why we come here today.
This is the day when we would be partaking of the Passover.
This is the day when we would be remembering the great deliverance from Egypt.
But instead, on this day, we “Do This” and remember Jesus.
• We remember His atonement which was powerful enough to cover all my sin.
• We remember His atonement which was powerful enough to change my spots.
• We remember His atonement which was powerful enough to make God satisfied with me.
• We remember His atonement which was powerful enough to cleanse me for all time.
And the way we remember is to partake of the Lord’s Supper.
“While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.”
Now, as you know Scripture declares that before we partake we are to have a time of self-examination.
1 Corinthians 11:27-29 “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.”
And so that is what we do.
Examine your life.
• Have you turned from your sin to follow Christ?
• Are you trusting in Christ and Christ alone?
• And is your life characterized with the humility and gratitude that Christ’s follower should have?
I’ll pray, we’ll examine ourselves.
Then we’ll partake of the Lord’s Supper.
Pray
THE LORD’S SUPPER
• Deacons come forward and fold blanket
Colossians 2:8-14 “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”
• Give bread to deacons
• Deacon prayer
• Deacon’s pass out bread
Matthew 26:26 “While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”
• Take bread
1 Peter 2:21-25 “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.”
• Give juice to deacons
• Deacon prayer
Matthew 26:27-28 “And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.”
• Take Juice
• Deacon Prayer
• Closing Hymn
