THE COST OF FREEDOM

On May 24, 1861, Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth took troops into Alexandra, Virginia.  He saw a Confederate flag flying above the thee story Marshal House.  Ellsworth, with an aide, climbed to the roof where Ellsworth hauled down the flag.  As he was descending, a man on the second floor gave him a blast from a shot gun at close range, killing him.  Abraham Lincoln could not restrain his tears when he heard the news of Ellsworth’s death.  He exclaimed, “My boy, my boy, was it necessary this sacrifice should be made?”
The cost of war in human life is a terrible price to pay for freedom.  Why are we so willing to fight and if need be to die?  WE FIGHT BECAUSE WE BELIEVE.
War is not good but sometimes necessary.  Our soldiers fight and die NOT for the glory of war, but for the prize of freedom.

The words of the philosopher John Stuart Mills says it best: “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.  The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight; nothing he cares more about than his own personal safety; is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free.”

Our country was founded by people who crossed the ocean, not seeking soil for their plows, but liberty  for their souls.  A people seeking God to worship Him according to the dictates of their hearts.
Ronald Reagan said, “If we ever forget that we’re a nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

If we are truly concerned about America then live a life in harmony with the will of God as recorded in the Word of God, the Bible.  Only then, does one have the right to sing:  “GOD BLESS AMERICA, LAND THAT WE LOVE.  STAND BESIDE HER AND GUIDE HER THROUGH THE NIGHT WITH THE LIGHT FROM ABOVE. FROM THE MOUNTAINS, TO THE PRAIRIES, TO THE OCEAN, WHITE WITH FOAM.  GOD, BLESS AMERICA, OUR HOME SWEET HOME.”

We desperately need the blessings of God.  The Psalmist wrote in the 33 Psalm verse 12:  “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

CRY OF TRUST

Come to the Cross.  It is central to everything. Jesus lived His life in the shadow of the cross. He was eager to go to the cross because God’s mission of salvation could not be carried out without His sacrifice on Calvary.  He who knew no sin became sin for us.  John the baptizer told his followers, “Look the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  John 1:29  His death was not just the death of anyone.  It was none other than the Son of God who died.  Jesus voluntarily breathed His last. He gave up His spirit.  He willed it and accomplished God’s will in doing it.  No man ever lived or died like Jesus.

We turn to listen to Jesus last statement from the cross which is the CRY OF TRUST.
Jesus first cry from the cross started with “Father” and now His last cry begins with “Father.”  It is only fitting that Jesus who would not use the word “Mother” speaking to Mary from the cross, now uses the word “Father” in this final cry.  Jesus knew whose He was, He was the Son of God.  Even when He was twelve years old, He said, “I must be about My Father’s business.”  God, the Father had said of Jesus, “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him.”  Matthew 17:5   Jesus had felt this Father-Son relationship slip away as on the cross He bore the sin of humanity.  The separation of Jesus from God had drained Him.  But, now what He came to do was done, finished.  The darkness is gone.  The fellowship is restored, never more to be broken.

With great confidence, Jesus said, “Father into your hands I commit My spirit.”  Luke 23:46
Jesus knew what it was to be in the hands of men.  He spoke of this on several occasions.  To the twelve after His transfiguration, He warned them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill Him.”  Matthew 17:22-23    At the Last Supper, Jesus said, “But the hand of him who is going to betray Me is with mine on the table.”  Luke 22:21   In Gethsemane Jesus said, “Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is  betrayed into the hands of sinners.”  Matthew 26:45
Men’s hands had done their worse.  But, never again will Jesus be in the hands of men.  So He places Himself into the safe, sure hands of God.

Now Jesus knows that the worse is behind Him.  The best is yet to come.  He is going home to be with the Father. Jesus prayer was answered, “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”  John 17:5   The writer of Hebrews said, “After He had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”  Hebrews 1:3    Jesus is at the right hand of God in heaven.  Jesus had lived by faith and He died in faith.  His life was fully committed to God.

Dwight L Moody saw boys jumping from a porch into the arms of a man.  They were having such fun.  One boy stood off at the side, just watching. Mr. Moody asked him why he did not join the others and jump into the man’s arms.  The boy replied, “that man is not my father.”
We have committed our lives to the heavenly Father.  Trust Him fully.
Remember, life is on down the road and, for the Christian, the best is yet to come.

 

“IT IS FINISHED”

I am so thankful that Jesus did not cry from the cross, “I Am Finished” but rather “IT IS FINISHED.”  He might have been saying, ‘I am done, I have gone my limit having attained nothing but shame, defeat and death.’  This could have been the saddest words of man ever spoken.  Jesus might have been putting a blood period to the end of His physical life.  But, thanks be to God, we know that this is not a cry of defeat but of victory.  Man and devil had done their worse against Christ.  The awful storm of God’s wrath against sin had been poured out on Jesus. The price for the redemption for mankind had been paid.  Jesus had accomplished His mission to “seek and to save the lost.”

This was the grand purpose of God now fulfilled in Jesus.  But, the issue still confronts each one of us as to what do we see in the cross?  What does the death of Jesus mean to us?  Why did He die?
Come to the cross and see the finished work of Christ.

Look at the cross and see the REVELATION OF GOD.
That which happened on Calvary expresses to the world most dramatically and conclusively the nature of God.
Through out the ages it has been the eternal quest of man to know God.  All of creation speaks of God. But, finally in God’s own good time, He sent His Son, Jesus, to express His full nature.  Only Jesus could say, “When you have seen Me you have seen the Father” for the Father and I are one.  In word and deed, God became visible to us.  Yet, it was on the cross that God fully revealed Himself.  Jesus showed the world what God was like, a God of love and mercy.

Look at the cross and see your REDEMPTION.
Man reaches up to God and God reaches down to man but it took the sacrificial death of Jesus to unite the two.
Calvary is the supreme demonstration of forgiveness.  God cannot excuse sin.  So, He made provision to forgive sin by the way of the cross.   There is no other way for entrance into eternal life with God except by the way of the cross of Jesus.  In this death of Jesus on the cross, Jesus perfect sacrifice, finalized for all times God’s payment for sin.    A Christian can mark across his or her life, sin paid in full.

Look at the cross and see your RECONCILIATION.
Sin separates us from God.  God created man for fellowship with Himself.  He cries out to man, “O be you reconciled.”  Jesus death on the cross makes possible for mankind to be united with God. The atonement, Christ’s death, makes real the at-one-ment we can have with God.  Though man may never stop being a sinner in the flesh, still through forgiveness purchased by Jesus’s death, we can have fellowship with God.  I love these verses in the first chapter of John, versus 12 and 13:  “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God–children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”   

“It is finished”
The sculptor laid his tools aside; Unfinished though he was, he died.
The artist, with his work undone laid down his brush at set of sun.
The writer with his tale half told, no longer to his life could hold.
The farmer put away his plough, sod still unturned, he’s resting now.
God’s Son alone, triumphant died.  For “It is finished” Jesus cried.
The price is paid, the battle won, the work of great salvation done.
Because He finished all for me, complete in Him I know I’ll be.”

“CRY OF NEED”

The shortest of all the sayings of Jesus from the cross is “I THIRST.” John 19:28-29       It is one word in the Greek.  It is a cry of need.  Understandably, Jesus had been on the cross for six agonizing hours.  His lost of blood, was exhausted, exposed to the weather, all created a raging thirst.  Early in the crucifixion Jesus was offered a drink of wine mixed with gall. It was an anesthetic to diminish the sense of suffering.  Jesus refused this sedative. He refused to let anything dull His awareness to the sacrifice as He tasted death for every human being.

Jesus is now offered another drink in response to His cry of need.  Possibly, an unknown soldier hears and responds by soaking a sponge in sour wine and fixed it to the end of a long, stiff reed of a hyssop plant and pressed it against the lips of Jesus.  This bystander may have been a pagan, but he stands out in the carnival of hate at the cross as one who showed mercy.

What a word this is.  The Lord of glory in need of a drink.  The Maker of Heaven and Earth with parched lips. This is the only cry that speaks of personal suffering.  It tells us of His humanity.  This Creator of all is in need of a drink of water.  He is dependent upon others to supply His need. There is no question about His deity.  He proved it over and over again through His authoritative teaching, His miracles, His sinless life.  He was God in flesh.  He said, “When you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.”   But, here on the cross, we see Jesus in all His humanity as He cries, “I Thirst.”  As a man, He suffered so severely.

There is something more meaningful in this cry of Jesus, “I Thirst”, then just water to quench the body’s need. Jesus yearns for restored fellowship with His Heavenly Father. Jesus had just suffered the total wrath of God against sin which is God’s separation from sin.  God cannot tolerate sin.  God had laid on Jesus the awful weight of the sin of humanity.  Jesus had just been though Hell for us; forsaken, abandoned, deserted by God.  Jesus had known the intimate joy of full fellowship with the Father and now He wants it back.  He was thirsting for the Father.

The cry, “I Thirst” is our cry too.  Thirst is dissatisfaction, the craving of the mind for something which it has not, but for which it desires.   Our Lord said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”  John 7:37    Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks water I give will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  John 4:13-14

At camp, we sang this chorus:  “Jesus gave her water that was not from the well.  She went away singing and came back bringing others to the water that was not from the well.”
Thirst for the water that offers eternal life with God.

“CRY OF LONELINESS”

 

The most gut wrenching cry of loneliness in history came not from a widow or an orphan or a prisoner.  It came from a hill, from a cross, from the Messiah.  Jesus cried out with a loud voice , “MY GOD, MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU ABANDONED ME?”   Mark 15: 33-34

Never have words carried so much hurt.  Never has one been so lonely. It is more than Jesus can take.  He withstood the beatings and remained strong at the trials. He watched in silence as those He loved deserted Him.  He did not retaliate when the insults were hurled at Him.  Nor did He scream out when the nails pierced His wrists.  But when God turned His head away from Him, that was more than Jesus could handle.

Martin Luther studied these words for days going without food or sleep.  Finally, Martin Luther exclaimed, “God forsaken of God, who can understand that?”     Difficult to understand, but we must try.  This fourth cry staggers and startles us.

First of all, by this cry, we can realize the awfulness of sin and its terrible consequences.
The Apostle Paul, divinely inspired, wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:21  “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”   At that very moment of crucifixion, Jesus is bearing the full weight of he world’s sins upon Him.   Isaiah said it hundred of years before the coming of Jesus, “and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  53:6

Now, if Jesus is to bear our sins then He must also bear the consequences for sin.
The Bible declares, that the wages of sin is death.  Now, that death is not just physical but spiritual.  As  physical death is separation of soul from the physical body so spiritual death is the separation of soul from God.  The penalty which Jesus bore for us on Calvary was the inevitable separation from God which sin brings.
No matter how we describe Hell, it is that place where God is absent.  The final and eternal price for unforgiven sin, not trusting in Jesus, is separation from the presence of God.

Jesus takes this cry for us.
May we understand that if we be in Christ, loving Him and obeying Him, we will never have to give such a cry of loneliness.  Jesus made it forever unnecessary for us to experience fully this fourth cry from the cross.
Here we understand the basis for our salvation.  God desired that none be separated from Him so He sent His Son to save us.

“Not the nails but His wondrous love for me, kept my Lord on the cross of Calvary.
Oh, what power could hold Him there?  All my sin and shame to bear.
Not the nails, but His wondrous love for me.”