Yuba-Sutter Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Rick
Warda. We currently meet at the Yuba
County Library, located at 303 2nd Street in downtown Marysville,
California, on the corner of 2nd and C Street. Weekly services
are held on Sunday at 11 a.m. at the library. For more information,
visit our website at ysgracechurch.com. Now here's our pastor, Rick Warda. I've entitled this message, What
the Cross Teaches Us. In our sermon today, I want to
try to distill what God teaches sinners by the death of his only
begotten son on the cross. Without a doubt, the sufferings
of Christ leading up to the cross and his death on the cross is
the central theme of all of scripture. Scripture is the revelation of
the offering up of the Lamb of God. When Adam sinned in the
garden, God clothed him and Eve with coats of skin. And Abel
offered to God a lamb for his sin. Noah offered to the Lord
a sacrifice of every clean animal. God provided Abraham a ram to
offer in the place of his son Isaac. And in the law God gave
to Moses, he required animal sacrifices be offered for sins
during the entire period of time before the crucifixion of Christ. Scripture is very clear on this
point. The Lamb of God is the subject
of Scripture. Christ crucified is the message
God commanded His servants to preach throughout this world.
By His death on the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ put away all
of the sins of all of His people. Hebrews 1. He overcame the death
we deserve. He destroyed the works of the
devil. He bound the devil and now delivers his people from
the kingdom of darkness. Most importantly, by his obedience
in his suffering and death on the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ
made full satisfaction to God's justice in fulfillment of God's
holy law. Christ honored God's law that
His people broke. By His obedience, He made them
righteous before God. Therefore, in heaven, Jesus Christ,
the Lamb of God, now rules as absolute sovereign over all things
in heaven and earth to the glory of God. The Lamb of God, the
Lord Jesus Christ, reigns on the throne of His Father. In
all of this we see clearly that the cross of Jesus Christ is
the revelation of the eternal will of God. The cross of Christ
is the center stake in the tent of God's eternal purpose and
work throughout all of human history. What we believe of Christ
and His glorious achievements on the cross reveals whether
God has saved us in His sovereign mercy, because saving faith is
the gift of God's sovereign grace. God himself has commissioned
his servants to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified throughout
the world until the end of time. The cross of Christ is the one
subject of most importance to men because Christ and Him crucified
is of utmost importance to God. Now, before I begin to distill
what God teaches us in the cross, let me first underscore this. I know that I am nothing but
an unworthy, sinful man. In myself, I am the most unworthy,
and feel myself the least capable to speak on this greatest of
all subjects, because I am a great sinner. I must take my place
with the worst of men. I know that in me, that is in
my flesh, there is no good thing. When we learn the lesson of the
cross, this is what we will know about ourselves. And I want to
drive this point home at the outset to remove any barriers
that might arise in your mind because you are able to perceive
self-righteousness and sin in me. I am ashamed to admit it,
but I am all that and more. I have no reason in myself to
think that God would favor me. I only deserve his wrath. As
a sinner, I have only one cause for hope. I have what you have,
the word of God. When we hear the message of the
cross from scripture, remember this. God determined this. God said this. God did this. And God now tells sinners like
me and you of His wonderful grace in Christ and Him crucified,
that we might honor Him for His goodness and rejoice in His salvation. Let's begin, then, by reading
a portion of scripture from Matthew 27. Though we will only read
a small portion at this time, I will mention many things from
the Gospel accounts of Jesus' death, things which you have
no doubt heard, and which you will soon remember as soon as
I make mention of them. But for time's sake, I must leave
you to read the account of Christ's sufferings and death for yourself. But we will pick up the account
after Judas betrayed Jesus to the Jews. The Jews arrested Christ
under the cover of night. They took him first to Annas,
the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest. Then they led
him to Caiaphas, who was the high priest that year. Caiaphas
and the entire Jewish council examined Jesus. Without any evidence,
they concluded he was guilty and worthy to die. But the only
witness against him was his own testimony that he was the Son
of God, the Christ of God. Caiaphas and the Jews, before
any trial, determined to kill Jesus. Therefore, his death was
a murder committed by the Jewish authorities, acting in treachery,
but acting according to the exact predetermined counsel of God. Beginning from this introduction,
therefore, let's read Matthew chapter 27. In verse 27 it says,
Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall,
and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. And they stripped
him, and put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had plaited
a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head. and a reed in
his right hand, and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked
him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spit upon him,
and took the reed, and smote him on the head, and after that
they had mocked him, they took the robe from off him, and put
his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him. The subject of the cross is very
wide and deep, and I do not pretend to understand every lesson God
teaches sinners in the death of Christ. Nor do I have time
to cover every lesson that I see in it. But let me list 11 things
we learn from the cross. First, we learn that the cross
was the will of God. All that happened was done precisely
according to God's predetermined purpose. Scripture says to those
who crucified Christ, Him being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken and by wicked
hands have crucified and slain. Acts 2 verse 23. Remember what
Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane before Judas betrayed
him and before the Jews arrested him? He prayed to his Father,
Not my will, but thine, be done. If you and I could see into the
heart of Christ, we would find the one reason for all that he
did was to do the will of God. No matter what it cost him, the
Lord Jesus set himself to do the will of his Father. What
was the will that his father gave him to do? It was this,
to save his people from their sins, to defeat every enemy,
and to do all to the glory of God alone. How did the Lord Jesus
Christ accomplish this salvation? What did God require his son
to do to fulfill his will? He required him to make atonement
for the sins of his people by offering himself as a sin offering,
bearing both the guilt and the punishment for the sins of his
people, answering God's justice, fulfilling his law, accomplishing
all of this by his own suffering and death in their place. Christ
did the will of God. And that will was to redeem God's
elect from sin and death and from the devil. On the cross,
Jesus Christ overcame every enemy of his people in glorious triumph. The second lesson of the cross
is this. The Lord Jesus gave himself willingly
to shame and suffering and death. He was not a victim. He was not
helpless. He gave himself to do the will
of God. He gave himself to shame and
suffering and death. His death was obedience to God. It was voluntary. Men may choose
to die, but only Christ had power to give his life. No man could
take it from him. He laid it down, and he took
it up again." John 10, verse 18. This was his father's commandment,
to lay down his life for his people, his sheep. Christ is
the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd gave his life
for his sheep according to the will of God. Christ gave himself
to shame and death willingly. And the third thing we learn
from the cross is that Christ suffered as the substitute for
his people. The terrible things that happened
to him were not for crimes that he did. It was not for sins that
he committed. Nor did he suffer and die for
the sins of every person in the entire world throughout history.
He died for the sins of his people. God laid their sins on him. He substituted himself to take
their sins and the punishment they deserved. Isaiah 53 says,
All we like sheep have gone astray. The Lord hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all. And the us all, whose iniquities
were laid on Christ, is given two verses later in Isaiah 53,
where God said, For the transgression of my people was he stricken. Jesus suffered shame and pain
and died, not for himself, but as a substitute for his people.
As the Old Testament high priest confessed the sins of Israel
over the head of the goat on the Day of Atonement, symbolically
transferring those sins to the goat, Jesus himself actually
owned the specific sins of a particular people, and they are called God's
elect, his sheep, his brethren, the church, his children, the
spiritual seed of Abraham. He suffered for them in exact
proportion to what God's strict justice demanded for their sins,
no more and no less. Christ died as a substitute for
the sins of His people. When He died, by His one offering,
He delivered them from their sins. He purged their sins from
them. Hebrews 1.3. He cleansed them,
washing them from their sins. John 13 verse 10 and Revelation
1.5. He made them holy. Hebrews 10
verse 10. He perfected them forever. Hebrews
10 verse 14. Thus, when the soldiers stripped
him, when they put a scarlet robe upon him, when they braided
a crown of thorns and pressed it into his head, when they took
a reed and put it in his hand as a scepter to mock him, as
if he was a weak, pretend king, not holding the scepter of righteousness
and not ruling in absolute sovereignty. And when they spit in his face,
when they took the reed of that mock scepter from his hand and
hit him on the head with it, driving the thorny crown of cursing
more deeply into him, they did all these things to him as our
substitute. He must suffer all that His people
deserved to suffer. He was stripped before men, because
before God He was laid bare with the sins of His people. Adam,
by sinning, made himself and his children naked in their sin
before God. But Christ, by owning and confessing
our sins as His, by bearing the shame and suffering and death
our sins deserved, clothed the nakedness of our guilt and shame
and condemnation before God with the robe of his spotless righteousness. And the soldiers put a scarlet
robe on him. Scripture says our sins are as
scarlet, Isaiah 1, verse 18. They are blood red as crimson. We are scarlet and crimson in
our sins because we are guilty and worthy to die. But Christ
was robed in scarlet, the color of our sins. He poured out His
blood, the color of the punishment we deserved, that we might be
robed in the clean white linen of His righteousness. Revelation
19 verse 8. And he was crowned with thorns
because the curse of God's law that was put upon us was put
upon him. In obedience to his father, Christ
willingly bore the crown of shame and cursing from God as substitute
for his people for their salvation. The crown of cursing was put
on him that the crown of righteousness and eternal life might be put
on every believing sinner. He was crowned with a curse that
we might be crowned with glory, with righteousness, and eternal
life. 1 Peter 5.4 says, When the chief
shepherd shall appear, we shall receive a crown of glory that
fadeth not away. And 2 Timothy 4.8, the Apostle
Paul said, There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness,
which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that
day, and not to me only, but unto all them also that love
his appearing. He was crowned with the curse,
that we might be crowned with glory, righteousness, and eternal
life. And Christ willingly took hold
of the reed of weakness and shame, that he might glorify his Father,
defeat our enemies, and take the scepter of God's righteous
rule to save his people from sin and death. Hebrews 1.8 says,
Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is
the scepter of thy kingdom. And he willingly submitted to
the beatings of that mock scepter on his head, the whip on his
back, and the fists and slaps in his face, because God's law
demanded that I be beaten for my sins. And as my substitute,
he was chastised with the beatings that my sins deserved. Isaiah
53 verse 5 and they spit in his face. Isaiah prophesied of Christ. He said, The Lord hath opened
mine ear. I was not rebellious, neither
turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters,
and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face
from shame and spitting. Isaiah 50 verse 5 and 6. They
spit in His face to shame Him, but that was by the will of God,
that God might receive His redeemed without shame, in the full favor
of His grace, because of Christ's righteousness made theirs. He
did not hide His face from shame and spitting, that we might see
the glory of God in His face. Now the fourth thing we see in
the cross is the horrible wickedness that is in the heart of man.
In the account of the cross, men premeditatively purposed
and plotted the murder of the Son of God. They killed the Prince
of Life. They crucified the Lord and King
of Glory. They murdered the Just One. Man's
crime in the cross was of indescribable proportion because of the sinlessness
and the dignity of Christ whom they crucified. It was a crime
of envy and hate. It was deliberate. It was unprovoked. Their crime was all the greater
because they were driven to murder Christ not for His sin, but for
His goodness. The goodness and kindness and
truth of the Lord Jesus Christ came into contact with their
sinful hearts, and for all the good that Jesus said and did,
they envied and hated and murdered Him in shameful, painful death. This is what men do when they
are left by God to their own will. Therefore, the cross shows
us the exceeding great wickedness of our own hearts, because this
is what we would do if God were to turn us over to our will. And the fifth lesson we learn
from the cross is the terrifying consequences that our sins bring
upon us unless Christ bears our sins. The unbelieving religious
Jewish leaders and the Jewish people brought upon themselves
the guilt of the blood of the Son of God. That is unspeakably
terrifying, but Jesus said that because Judas did what he did,
it would have been good for him if he had never been born. The
Jewish leaders and the people demanded Pilate crucify Jesus. They were like the demon-possessed
swine who rushed to the cliffs of eternal doom by calling for
Jesus' blood to be charged to them and to their children. Judas
was so tormented by his own conscience that he loved death more than
life. But his death could not extinguish
the pain in his conscience, because in hell their worm dieth not,
and the fire is not quenched. Mark 9. The sixth lesson we learn from
the cross is that when God has given man up to do all the evil
that is in his heart, nothing can stop the violence of his
torrential will. Pilate could not turn the opinion
of the Jewish crowd. He offered to release Jesus and
keep Barabbas, a notable prisoner, who was a thief and committed
murder. But the people demanded in unison, crucify, crucify him! Luke 23 verse 21 Oh, how you
and I need to be delivered from the evil that is within us in
our very nature. No wonder Jesus taught his disciples
to pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Matthew
6, verse 13. The seventh lesson we learn from
the cross is the utter spiritual weakness of Christ's most favored
disciples. Peter denied Jesus three times
within a few hours after insisting he would not do so. Though Jesus
told Peter he would most surely deny him that very night, Peter
argued against Jesus. In his self-conceit, he claimed
that though his fellow disciples might, he would never deny Christ. But Peter was not the only one
who failed. All of the disciples forsook
Jesus and fled in fear. Therefore, we see the utter lack
of spiritual strength in the best of men. The cross teaches
us our horrid sinfulness and spiritual weakness. And it teaches
us that Christ is the only one who did not fail. He is the only
one able to do the will of God, able to save to the uttermost
all who come to God by Him alone. The eighth lesson we learn from
the cross is that God alone makes the difference between those
who believe and are saved and those who receive the due rewards
of their sins and unbelief. The only difference between those
in heaven and those in hell is the difference that God makes
by His sovereign grace. 1 Corinthians 4 verse 7 We see
this truth prominently in Judas. Though Jesus chose 12 disciples,
he said he did not choose Judas to salvation. John 13, verse
18. He did not shed his blood for
Judas. He told his disciples they were all washed from their
sins. He said, you are clean, but not
all. John 13, 10. Jesus did not choose
Judas to eternal life, nor did he wash Judas from his sins.
Just as God made the difference between Israel and the Egyptians,
and God made the difference between Israel and the Canaanites, God
always makes the difference between His people and the world. The
lesson of sovereign grace is strongly taught in the cross.
Christ made the difference between Peter and Judas, between the
eleven and that one betrayer. He made the difference between
the believing thief and the unbelieving thief. He made the difference
between the centurion who, on hearing Jesus cry with a loud
voice, it is finished, said, truly, this was the Son of God. And God made the difference after
the resurrection of Christ. He called some to life and faith
and left others in their willful unbelief. Acts 2 verse 39 and
verse 47. Salvation is God making the difference
by His grace. Election is by sovereign grace. Romans 11.5 says, At this present
time also there is a remnant according to the election of
grace. Justification is by sovereign
grace. Romans 3.24 says, Being justified
freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus. Regeneration is by sovereign
grace. Ephesians 2 verse 4 and 5 says,
But God, who is rich in mercy for His great love wherewith
He loved us even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened
us together with Him. By grace you are saved. God makes
the difference by His electing grace, by His redeeming grace,
and by His life-giving, regenerating grace. He said in Romans 9.15,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. The cross teaches
us that out of this world of wicked and spiritually impotent
men, God alone makes the difference to salvation by choosing some,
by redeeming them by Christ's blood, and by raising them to
life. and he leaves others in the madness
of their unbelief. Given the universal wickedness
and failure of all men, the ninth lesson from the cross is very
plain. Only Jesus Christ did the will
of God. Judas betrayed Him. Peter denied
Him. The disciples all forsook Him
and fled. The Jewish leaders and the Jewish
people demanded He be crucified, and the Romans crucified Him.
When all men failed, Christ alone obeyed. Though He is Lord of
all, He was obedient as a servant. The all-important lesson we learn
from this is that salvation is by the work of Christ alone. Salvation is entirely apart from
anything from man. The only contribution of man
in the cross is man's sin and man's wickedness. Christ did
all by himself to save his people from their sins. He did not even
have the comfort of his friends and family. Therefore, he alone
gets all the glory. The tenth lesson we must learn
from the cross is this, the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for
his people. Everything that caused him shame
and everything that caused him pain, and especially when he
bowed his head and died, were all the tokens of his love for
his own. when they mocked and reviled
him, and he did not answer back, when he gave his back to the
smiters, when he did not hide his face from shame and spitting,
when he took the reed and held it in his hand, when he submissively
bore the crown of thorns, when He stretched out His hands and
feet for them to drive the nail through into the cursed cross,
and when they taunted Him to prove He was the Son of God by
saving Himself from the cross, and when they said His God and
Father would not have Him and that He trusted God in vain.
All these things in particular, and all of them together, show
us His great love for His people and for His Father. everything
the Lord Jesus did, He did out of love for His Father and for
His sinful people. Finally, from all of this, the
cross teaches us that the only hope any sinner has is found
in the one we hated, the one whose murder men plotted and
carried out on the cross. The cross cries out to sinners,
why will you die? Turn from your indifference.
Abandon your self-righteousness. Put down your arms of rebellion. Look upon Christ crucified. Find
Him to be your only hope and all the glory of God. Come as
a sinner to Christ. He alone fulfilled the will of
God. He alone saved His people from
their sins and from every enemy. See the love of Christ that passes
knowledge in His cross. Will we harden our hearts against
God's Word, or will we honor God by coming as sinners and
looking to Christ as all of our righteousness? The Gospel demands
from us the obedience of faith in Christ. But God must give
this to us also. Faith is not a work. It is the
God-given persuasion that Christ is my all. Faith sees that He
is my sin offering. He is my answer to God in judgment. He is my obedience. He is all
my confidence. He is all my hope. God's gift
of faith enables me to come to Christ, to rejoice in Him in
glad submission, because on the cross He saved me by Himself
from all my sins. Isaiah said that to those God
gives saving faith, they would say of Christ and Him crucified,
Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him, and He will save
us. This is the Lord. We have waited
for Him. We will be glad and rejoice in
His salvation. I have told you what Jesus did,
what He did all by Himself to the glory of God. May God now
give you this precious faith to look to Christ alone and be
saved. You have just heard a sermon
by our pastor, Rick Warda. You may contact us by email or
by phone, or download a copy of this sermon by visiting our
website at ysgracechurch.com.