The Wonderous Cross Pt.2

Well, good morning, Cornerstone family. It's good to see everybody out here for our Sunday school. Couple of items here before we get into our lesson. if you could please log your attendance over here at the Sunday school table, you can sign up for our emails, or if you're watching online you can just send us an email to CFBCC that's for our secretary CFBCEC at Cornerstone Bible.org.

And and we'll keep you updated on what's going on with the class. Also remember our high school junior high classes start next week in the courtyard they're gonna be going through this book Living Life Backward and by David Gibson and so you can see Matt or Sierra Kaufman. for that, by the way, our adults, I'm giving away two free copies of this book to any of the first people that come up after the class that can tell me what the main theme of the book is. Without just looking at the subtitle, you have to tell me what the theme of the book is and you get a free copy of this book.

Also, children, during the lesson, or after the lesson, if you can come up to me and recite for me our main scripture passage, Romans 5:8. I've got about 10 of these coins, these cornerstone coins. I will give out one per child if you can recite to me the, the passage. But let's go ahead and pray and we'll jump into the lesson.

Oh Lord, we thank you so much, for the love of God that's been shed abroad in our hearts, through the Holy Spirit. we thank You, Lord, for, sending your son to die on the cross for us, to show us your love. We pray, Lord, that You would help us understand that in a deeper way this morning. We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen. Well, last week we mentioned that at the start of the 1961 football season Vince Lombardi came into the locker room and spoke to the Green Bay Packers and said one of the most iconic statements in sports history when he held up a football and said gentlemen, this is a football and in saying that what he was talking about was let's get back to the fundamentals. And that's exactly what we're trying to do in this particular course. there's a pastor that you may have heard of in Cleveland, Ohio, his name is Alistair Begg, pastor of Parkside Church in 2018.

In a sermon, he said this, why is the church in the world today? We're not in the the world today to reform the world. Our mandate in the world is not political, it's not social, and it's not economic. We have begun to be seduced by the idea that these are the issues.

But we were never invited to fix this and this and this. The calling of the church is to proclaim the gospel. And whenever that which is central, namely the gospel becomes peripheral, then that which is peripheral, inevitably becomes central. Alistair Begg goes on to say this.

He goes, I wasn't hardly in the doors of this church before I was besieged by well meaning individuals saying, it's your responsibility given the platform you have in the pulpit to take on the issues of our time. So they want me to address abortion, they want me to to address Supreme Court nominations. They want me to give out literature in support of various candidates for office. They want me to tackle the question of racism.

They want me to do all these things and as best that I've been able, I haven't done a single one of them. Why? Alistair Begg goes on to say. I want you to know that I care passionately about abortion.

I care passionately about racism, etc. However, at the end of the day, the real transformative work in our nation is the transformative work of the gospel. Similarly, the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:2, I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Well, last week we took a broad look at the cross under this theme, and we looked at First Corinthians chapter one, where we were taught to preach Christ crucified, knowing that it's a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others.

But to the called, those of us who are sheep that hear his voice, it's the power of God and the wisdom of God. This morning, we're going to talk about the God of the cross. And so let me read for us our text. Romans 5, we're gonna start in verse 5 down to verse 10, and we're gonna focus in on verse 8.

Let me start in verse 5, where Paul says, hope does not disappoint. But the love of God has been poured out. The idea is torrents, not just droplets within our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who was given to us. 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 a good man, someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And here's really where all of this paragraph is leading towards. Much more than having been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. That's the paragraph that we're going to discuss, particularly verse 8, as we talk about the God of the cross. this week I, I read an article in Psychology Today, on the top 10 ways to show someone that you love them. Some of those ways were notes, dates, listening, having fun together, holding hands, gifts.

And I want to show you a gift that my wife gave me when we were dating. Let's be very careful because this is ginger. This is a a frame, and there's broken pieces of dishes around this frame and the story behind this particular gift is when we were dating. Katie's dad said that I could borrow some dishes.

I went into the garage to get these dishes from a high shelf. When I pulled the box out, the bottom fell out. All these dishes went crashing down. Boy, what an impression I made on my father-in-law or future father-in-law.

One unbeknownst to me, Katie picked up several pieces of those dishes, and later in our dating relationship, she glued them onto this frame, put in a picture of us on one of our dates, and at the bottom wrote the word rejoice. This made quite an impression on me. It showed it was a demonstration of a growing love that Katie had for me, and I'll tell you, it caused my heart to well up in love for her. as we consider this passage, kids, I want you to ask your moms and dads at some point, how did they show off their love for each other when they first started dating?

How did they prove their love? And as we look at this text, how does God show off his love for us or to us? How does God allure us to himself? And I wanna suggest three thoughts as we look at Romans 5:8.

Let me just put this way very carefully so I don't bust it. Three thoughts from Romans 5:8, on how God shows off his love for us. First, and this is what you can fill in in your outline, God shows off his love to us through Christ, through a person. In fact, God continually shows off his own love to us through Christ.

Look back at our passage in verse 7. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man, someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love towards us in that, we're gonna focus on this part, Christ died for us. The but here is in contrast to what's come before.

even a, a s morally scrupulous person, somebody might die for that person. Maybe a really good person, you'll hear stories of people dying for a very good individual, but it's rare. But God does something well beyond that. And when Paul says God in this text, he's talking about the Father.

We know that if you look over at verse 10, where the Father and his Son are in concert with one another. So God demonstrates his love in concert with the Son, and in concert with the Holy Spirit. If you look back at verse 5, we say it's the Spirit that's pouring the love of God. Into our hearts.

And so there's really a a unification between the Trinity. So God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but with special attention on the Father, demonstrates, and this is a very interesting word. the idea here is that he shows, or he commands. Some of your translations say command, some of them say demonstrate, and it's a present tense.

The idea is it's, he continually does this. He didn't just do this in the past, but he's continually showing us something. The idea here is he lines us up on one side of the dance hall, and continuously points to someone else on the other side of the dance floor. And that person, as we'll see, is Christ.

We're on one side, Christ is on the other, and he's continuously pointing us to this person on the other side of the dance floor, so to speak. human romantic love tends to cool off after time, and the things that we did early in our dating relationships or early in our marriage tend to diminish. Hopefully they get renewed throughout our marriage, but God continually shows off his love in Christ. There's never any diminishment.

He's just continually showing us his love and his love is a person. And notice in the text that it says he demonstrates his own love for us. His own love, his love is Christ's love. There's a unity between his love and and Christ's love.

his own love, that is his, is the love that is peculiar to himself. This is an odd thing to think about, to be expressing your love through somebody else. It'd be hard for me as a human being to show my love through my son Sam. But the Father and the Son are so intricately tied together as part of the Trinity that the Father can show his love through his Son because they're in harmony in their love for us, the children.

And so God continuously demonstrates his love towards us. Paul includes himself in the us, in that, he says, look here, Christ. Christ, that is the anointed one, the Messiah, the one whose Holy Spirit filled and sent by the Father. So think of it like this.

God the Father is the matchmaker, so to speak. If you were Jewish, you would go to a a a Shadkin, a Shadkin to match you up with someone else. In this text, we can think of the father as the matchmaker. You're at the other side of the dance floor against the wall.

Christ, the quarterback of the football team is on the other side, and the father is commending his son to you. That's an odd image. We're on one side and the Father's coming to us and say, hey, look at him over there. Check out the quarterback of the football team.

That's Christ. He's commending Christ to us, which part of what this does is it also implies the deity of Christ that if the Father demonstrates his love towards us and that Christ died, that implies that Christ is part of the Godhead. And so we have this interesting image. God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

Jesus in the book of John said he that sees me as seeing the Father, the Holy Spirit, also in our context is pouring the love of God into our hearts. And so one of the ways that God shows off his love to you, and to me, and to Paul, is in a person. Jesus Christ. But another way that God continually shows off his love to us is through a performance or what Christ did an act.

And that's where you guys can fill in. God shows off his love to us through Christ. who has died. Christ has died.

Now, in the reading I did this week to see how people show someone that they love them, I didn't read anywhere, anybody say that I show my beloved how I love them by sending my son to die. I didn't see anybody say that, but the father sends his son. To die for us, to show off his love. Notice the text again, but God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Let's put our emphasis here on the died, died for us. Death is horrible. A lot of times when we, when we've been in church for a long time, and we hear these words since we were little, Christ died for us, we forget that death is a horrible thing. I don't know how many of you have seen death.

We have some medical personnel here, we have police and firemen who have seen death up close and personal. I have been, I've walked into the room after people have passed away and have been there when the ambulance shows up and wraps up a loved one in the body bag and brings them into the ambulance and takes them away to the funeral home and you hear the moans and even the shrieks of family members. I remember lying beside my grandmother when she was convalescing after her death, and just, just looking at her that she is dead, she is gone.

Death is a horrible thing.

But Christ. Died on a cross. How did God show His love for us? Did he show his love for us merely in creating us?

Was it merely by providing our food every day, By giving us food in seasons? God shows his love through something called death. And that should strike us, that should shake us. That God is actually showing us something.

In fact, his greatest show of love is through death. And it's the death of his son. One commentator says this, so there stands the cross. The revelation to us, not only of a brother's sacrifice, but of a father's love.

And that because Jesus Christ is the revelation of God as being the irritation of his glory and the express image of his person. Friends, light does pour out from the cross, whatever view men may take of it. Think about it. Christ's death is the greatest show on earth, according to the Bible.

It is the greatest demonstration of the Father's love. God is the greatest showman. How can the death of the son demonstrate the father's own love? All analogies really break down for us at this point.

There's no analogies that really do justice to the love that's being shown to us through the Trinity, because the Father sends the Son and thus shows his love. The Son lays down his life and shows his love, and the Spirit pours the love of God into our hearts. It's just like John says in 1 John 4, love consists in this. You wanna find out how does love consist?

Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. You guys know the verse, Children, you can say it for God, so what? Love the world that He gave His only begotten Son. That whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus says greater love has no man than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. And yet Jesus didn't just lay down his life for friends, as we're gonna see in our final point, he laid down his life for sinners. So God shows off his love to us through a person that's Christ. God shows off his love to us through an action that's Christ having died.

But lastly, God shows off his love to us through Christ who has died for righteous people. For good people. For godly people, for friends. For sinners, God continuously shows off his own love through Christ who has died for sinners.

Notice what the text says while we were yet. Sinners What's interesting is most of the English translations put a word in there, but this is actually a present tense, what we call participle. It's as if God's in eternity past looking forward at our sins in the present tense in the in his own mind. He doesn't look from eternity past and look and see us as saints.

Before we were born, God looked out and saw us in our sin. He didn't look ahead to our good works, but looked forward to our sin. Christ died for us as sinners. And when you put the whole context together, verse 6, we were weak and helpless, ungodly, sinners.

Verse 10, enemies. It says, it's like the hymn says, guilty, vile, helpless, we, spotless Lamb of God, was he full atonement? Can it be? Hallelujah!

What a savior. John MacArthur has this to say. When we were powerless to escape from our sin. Powerless to escape death, powerless to resist Satan, and powerless to please him in any way, God amazingly sent his son to die on our behalf.

Even when I openly hated God. And did not have the least desire to give up my sin. I was still the object of God's redeeming love. Let's stand and be befuddled by that for a moment.

That we present tense in our ongoing sin, God looks out from eternity past and says, I'm gonna demonstrate my love for them in sending my son to die. Charles Hodge has this to say. This is part of what this should well cause to well up in our hearts. He says this, if God loved us because we loved him.

He would love us only so long as we loved him, and on that condition. And then our salvation would depend upon the constancy of our own treacherous hearts. But as God loved us as sinners, as Christ died for us as ungodly, our salvation depends, as the apostle argues, not on our loveliness, but on the constancy of the love of God. Do you see how amazing this is that the love of God is dependent not upon our love, but he looks out and sees us as sinners, and on that basis, shows his love towards us in Christ.

Then it depends on his constancy, not on ours. Consider this illustration. Imagine a very attractive Christ on one side of the dance floor, like Joseph, he's handsome in form and appearance. He's the beloved of the Father, good, kind, wise.

On the other side stands us, dressed in filthy rags. Ruined by the fall. Our mouth is an open tomb, poisonous vipers are under our tongue. We are leprous in our sin.

Our wickedness is great in the earth and every intent of our hearts is only evil continually. Our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Yet we somehow think we are rich and good looking. But we can't see that our riches are actually corrupted and our garments are moth eaten, and we are blind.

Consider the contrast on each side of the dance floor, and yet the Father comes alongside to our side of the dance floor and is trying to entreat us to consider Christ as a partner. Brothers and sisters, that's befuddling, that God demonstrates he commends his love in Christ towards us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This is a mercy date, if I've ever heard of one. It's a mercy date.

God comes to us, the matchmaker. We are the mercy date. Christ has it all. We have nothing to offer but our helplessness, ungodliness, sin and enmity.

Christ is the captain of the football team. We are the dropout junkie that people are afraid to let their children be around. And yet Paul in our text shows God alluring us. He is wooing us.

Romans 5:8 and its context is the New Testament equivalent of Hosea 2:14 and following. Listen to Hosea. You guys know the theme of Hosea, right? Gomer is a prostitute.

Hosea is a prophet who is married to this prostitute, and it puts on this display of, of God's love for us. Listen to what it says in 2:14. And this is right after some pretty crazy rough passages about what God is gonna do to punish, and yet he's gonna pull his bride and his remnant out of the ashes. And in verse 214, he says, therefore behold, I will allure her.

The idea is I will woo her. Will bring her into the wilderness and speak comfort to her. I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness.

Whose righteousness? Not theirs. In justice, who's justice? Not theirs.

In loving kindness. This is covenant mercy. Is it their loving kindness? No way.

In mercy. Not their mercy. I will betrothed you to me in faithfulness. Whose faithfulness?

And you shall know the Lord. Verse 23, and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy. And then I will say to those who were not my people, you are my people, and they shall say, you are my God. This is the Old Testament equivalent of Romans 5:8, that God comes along and allures this bride who's a prostitute and basically says, I am going to betroth you to me.

I'm gonna do it all, and I'm even gonna cause you to say, you are my God. When have you ever heard a story about a good looking star quarterback of a football team being willing to be set up with the junkie dropout who's been in and out of juvie? When have you ever heard that story? As the great theologian Andy Mino says, when have you heard a story about a hero dying for a villain?

But that's the story of the gospel. Spurgeon in his message, loves commendation when he preaches on this very passage. He helps us further see this disproportionate gap on the dance floor. Consider these aspects of the fact that we are, when the Bible says we are continuously sinners.

We are continual sinners. We, we haven't just sinned once. We've sinned continually, time and time again. And we've sinned in an aggravated sense.

Most of us who are here, we've had many privileges. Many of us have heard sermons since we were little. We've had parents that have trained us up. We've been in a, we've heard preaching, we've heard gospel centered preaching.

Some of us have been to seminary. And yet we've sinned and despised our God. And yet God says, don't despair. Yes, you've continually sinned, you've sinned in an aggravated sense.

And consider the fact that we've, we haven't just sinned against each other. We've sinned against Christ, the very one who died for us. He died for us, and yet like the soldier who pierced his side, we've pierced him with our continual aggravated sins. And we've even despised Christ in our past, and we're described as enemies.

If we really understand what Paul is saying here in this text, love died for hatred. And this love that was given to us by God was completely unasked for. We never could have asked, even if we had the wherewithal to ask for redemption. We were blind in our sin.

We loved our sin, completely unasked for, God came to us and entreated us to come to him. And God didn't consider our merit. He didn't look out and say Christ died for saints. He considered our sin.

And, and think about the fact that God received nothing in return for what he did. There's nothing really that we offer him that he didn't already have. We're gonna bring him singing today. Guess what?

He had thousands of angels singing to him. We wanna bring him good works. Guess what? Jesus Christ has already blown the curve.

We wanna bring him glory. He had all the glory he needed in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There was really nothing that God gets out of this deal. He comes and demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were still sinners, this was a mercy date.

About this. That we There are probably at least children or maybe some adults here today that. You question whether you really need this mercy. Or you don't really feel in your heart a need for Christ.

But just consider for a moment that knowing that the Bible is true and what Paul is arguing is true. You have leprosy in your heart. You're not rich, the way you think you are. You're poor.

And outside of Christ, the wrath of God abides on us. There's a day coming when every one of us will feel our need of Christ very keenly, when you rest your head on your death pillow, and when you're taking your last breaths and waiting for the body bag, and the hearse, and the coffin, and the cold grave. Christ is the only bridge that can take you over these troubled waters. Can you face death?

What will you do when you cross that river, children? If it's if it's a terrible thing to speak of death and hell, then how much more terrible is it to actually experience hell? We need to be careful that we do not so dull our minds with entertainment and laughing and everything else when our time draws near, and here God is trying to woo us to himself. The Bible says he that believes in the Lord Jesus Christ is baptized shall be saved.

He that believes not shall be damned. But what does it mean to believe? If it's so important for us to believe, what does it really mean to believe? I, I talk to people all the time when I witness that say they believe in Christ, but upon further discussion, what they mean by belief is something short of biblical belief.

I wanna talk for a moment about what do we mean by belief. Spurgeon says, give up trusting in yourself and trust in Christ. Stop trusting in yourself and trust wholly in Christ. Jonathan Edwards in a beautiful sermon that he delivered to the Mohawk Indians in 1751, has an amazing explanation of what it means to believe and trust in Christ.

He says this, what is meant by believing in Christ? For a man to believe in Christ is to come to him with all the heart. To take him for his savior, and to give himself to him to be one of his people, and to have all his dependence on Christ to make him happy. And then Edwards goes on to distinguish true belief from false belief, because many of these Mohawk Indians had seen many Christians come in and rob them of their lands and make false covenants.

And so Edwards goes on to say, there are many who are called Christians who are baptized, who attend church, who don't truly believe in Christ. And so how do if you really believe in Christ? Well, he says, those who truly believe in Christ, know Christ. That seems simple enough.

They know Christ. God opens up their eyes to where they know him by experience, they taste of him. And then when they read of him in the word of God, they find the excellencies of Christ welling up in their hearts. And they find in their own hearts, when they look to Christ, they feel their need of Christ.

Edward uses the analogy of a sick man, a person who doesn't know they're sick, won't go to the doctor. But when we look at Christ and we read of him in the word, we begin to see that we're sick, and then we want the savior. That's part of what it means to believe in Christ. And they realize that they can't help themselves.

Like there's a growing realization as they believe in Christ that I have no ability to help myself. I'm helpless. And then when they begin to look at that person across the dance floor, they realize he is able, he is able to answer for my sins. And then they begin to feel his love and mercy and his pity.

For me, such a, a poor sinner, and the loveliness of Christ begins to grow in their heart as their belief expands. And then they want to be joined to his people because those that truly believe aren't believed as individuals, but they get joined into a body. And then when someone comes along and wants them to forsake Christ, how can I possibly forsake the one who has loved me so dearly, just like we heard about. I am I forgetting the early church father's name from last week, starts with a P.

Polycarp, there we go. And so that's what it means to believe in Christ. It's to take him for your savior and give yourself to him as one of his people and depend upon him to make you happy. What do we mean by Sinner again.

Spurgeon says, how can I believe that Christ died for me? Spurgeon says, can you say that you are a sinner? Children, can you say I'm a sinner? Spurgeon says, I don't mean that with a fine complimentary phrase, which many of you use it when you say, yes, I am a sinner.

And if I sit down to ask you, did you break that commandment? Oh no, you will say, did you commit that offense? Oh no. You never did commit any wrong and yet you are sinners.

Now that is not the sinners I am preaching to, Spurgeon says. The sinners I called repentance are those whom Christ invited, those who mean what they say when they confess that they are sinners, those who know that they have been guilty, vile, and lost. If your sinnership, so truly Christ has died for you. That's a great statement.

If your sinnership in that way, then Christ has died for you. Have you truly believed in Christ today? Listen to the full argument from Romans 5 as summarized by John MacArthur in his commentary. He says this, how can a Christian.

Whose past and future salvation are secured by God, be insecure during the time between. If sin was no barrier to the beginning of our redemption, how can it become a barrier to its completion? If sin in the greatest degree could not prevent our becoming reconciled, how can sin in a lesser degree prevent our staying reconciled? If God's grace covers the sins even of his enemies, how much more does it cover the sins of his children?

If the blood of Christ covered your sins when you were an enemy, will his life cover your sins when you're his friend? I think so. See, it's Spurgeon further says about Martin Luther, he says this, remember that striking saying of Martin Luther. Luther says Satan once came to him and said, Martin, you are lost, for you are a sinner.

So Martin said to him, Satan, I thank you for saying I am a sinner, for in as much as you say I'm a sinner, I answer you thus, Christ died for sinners, and if Martin is a sinner, Christ died for him. If you can say this morning that you are a sinner, not just with lips, but know in your heart that you are a sinner, you can say Christ died for you if you simply believe. Back to Alistair Begg, we started with this pastor earlier. From Ohio, he says this, the Bible.

is ultimately. The ultimate design of the Bible is to introduce us to Jesus. To introduce us to Jesus as the one who has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. Both in living the life that God intends, and in dying the death in the place.

Of sinners That's why we need to focus on the cross. Is, is we're at this dance sometimes, I don't know about you, but I've, there's been times in my life where just scales have been over my eyes, and I think I'm on the side of the dance floor and that, yeah, I'm. Christ should love me. I'm, I'm all that.

But in reality, we're not all that. And yet God in His love comes over and it treats us and allures us to the quarterback on the other side and says look to Christ. I sent him to die for you, not as a saint, but as a sinner. And if you'll simply believe, I give you all of his righteousness and goodness and kindness.

This is the amazingness of the gospel, and we need to make sure that we keep it central, lest it become peripheral. If we put peripheral items central, then the cross will become peripheral. Let's go ahead and pray in the well of a few. Few announcements.

Lord, we thank you so much for this wonderful passage, and we ask God that your spirit would do what only your spirit can do. Those of us that know Christ, we have the Spirit in us, and part of his job is to pour the love of God into our hearts and to continuously remind us of what has already been accomplished. Christ died for us. We thank you Father that you are always pointing us to Christ.

We thank you Jesus, that your death has satisfied justice, and that at the right hand of the Father that you intercede for us, may we constantly be amazed. It's so easy for our love to diminish for one another, and it's easy for our love to diminish for you. But we thank you that the constancy of our salvation does not depend upon the constancy of our own love, but the constancy of yours. And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.