Coram Deo

This is the best sermon I have heard on the cross and I have written my notes for you to read. It’s incredibly powerful and please listen to it. Why are there four gospel accounts of the crucifixion with four different focuses? What would we be missing if Mark wasn’t in the Bible? So many preachers talk about the physical aspects of the crucifixion. It is painful but nothing as excruciating as the separation from God on the cross. There is a shock value of violence but here Mark is restrained from talking about violence. As awful as the physical suffering of Jesus was, it was the least of Jesus’ pain. The other ways that Jesus suffered were described in much more detail, thus making it much more severe. He suffers at the hands of his friends, his enemies, his God, and our hands.

The deepest level of his suffering was at the hands of His God. He could have broken the ropes that bound him at any time. He could have brought down fire from the sky or demanded that God would rescue Him and send angels down.

The darkness that descends is the judgment of God (ex. plague of darkness in Egypt). There is also the cry “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Of all the things that Jesus was experiencing, that Jesus was enduring, which was the worst? The one that made him finally cry out in agony? Not the betrayal, the abandonment, the insults, the injustice, the physical pain. It was being forsaken by God. As terrible as the other things were, they pale into insignificance.

If a classmate came up and said to me, I never want to see you again or talk to you again, it would bother me. But if my parents said that, I would be devastated. I’ve known my parents for 20 years. Some of you reading this are around the same age bracket. This is a mere couple decades compared to an eternity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have loved each other from eternity. Imagine your parents turning their face away and saying I don’t know you. The longer the love is the deeper the love, the greater the pain is at its love. Jesus and the father have loved each other from eternity, infinitely long.  Jesus and the father have loved each other from eternity, infinitely long.  They made the world together. Jesus lost an absolutely perfect love. His highest prayer for his disciples was that they might be one as He and the father are one. That oneness was gone when God turned his face away. This is the worst possible experience a human being can have. Jesus was willing to be separated from the love that He has known for us…so that we will never be separated from the love of God.

Jesus endured all of this for us. He was cursed by God to free us from the curse of God. He entered into the darkness so we would never have to know hell from the inside. He was forsaken by God so that God will never forsake us. He was despised, humiliated, beaten. He endured all the dimensions of hell on that cross. Everything he endured in Mark 14-15 is what we deserve for our rebellion. Jesus endured it so that we would never have to. The cross teaches us that we are so sinful, lost, broken, disobedient, and evil that Jesus had to endure this for us. It was our sin that held him there. It is only when you understand the magnitude of Jesus’ suffering, when you understand the magnitude of your sin. Even more, the cross teaches us that we are so loved and cherished by God that Jesus willingly died for you. Even more than our sin, it was the love of Jesus that held him to the cross. The love that has now come into our live, fills us, and consumes us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord- Romans 8:39

Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. Nothing- no person, no object, no thing can ever separate us from God’s love. Your bad days, sick days, hard days. Your feelings and thoughts may tell you otherwise. But that’s not true. God still loves you when you’re at your lowest, when you’re utterly broken, when you’re wandering. When your body is weak and frail.Your heart aches. When your soul is downcast. Even when your feeble mind is burdened with fear and uncertainty. 

As humans, these things can separate us from loving people. Humans can stop loving one another when someone moves away, when someone sins against you, or when the circumstances are too difficult. 

Even when you don’t feel it, God’s love is still there. Even in death, God still loves you. The God of this universe loves you with a hesed love.He loves you with this faithful, relentless, unfailing, never ending love, steadfast, devoted from the very “beginning” to the “end” of time itself.

You are loved and pursued by the God of this universe. Nothing can separate us from the loving kindness of the Creator. This should move us to worship our Father and live all of life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, and to the glory of God alone.