Staying Near the Cross

The message that's been coming, not only here in the body of Christ, but in the body of Christ really all over the place, especially in recent months, has been a call of the Spirit to repent of all compromise, to salute no man on the road, don't let that old prophet get you sidetracked and eat the bread of compromise at his house, because when you do, he'll turn right around and condemn you. To eliminate from our lives this lukewarm, half-baked faith that wants to serve God and mammon at the same time, and invariably goes right around and starts trying to pick the little speck out of everybody else's eye and never sees the log in its own. The Lord's been calling us, and others like us all over the place, to get back into the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. And then he says, if he describes in 5, 6, and 7 of Matthew the life he wants us to live, that's the life.

That's the life. Nothing less than that. Specifically, clean up your relationships, he says to us.

If you bring your gift to the altar and then there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift. Clean up your eye, your imagination.

Whoever looks at a woman in lust has committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye offends you, pull it out. If your right eye causes you to stumble, cut it off.

Clean up your speech, he says. Let it be yes, no. Anything more than this comes from the evil one.

Clean up your attitudes toward the people who are wronging you. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.

Clean up your walk with the Father. Let it be a walk before the eye of the Father and not before the eye of the public. Get your eye off the audience.

When you give alms, do it before the Father in secret. When you pray, go into your room and shut the door. When you fast, wash your face and comb your hair.

Don't make a production out of it. Clean up your faith. Don't be trying to serve God and mammon at the same time.

It can't be done. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and trust that the Father will provide mammon, money. Open up a channel for the mercy of God to flow out through your life by thinking, first of all, mercy thoughts.

Judge not, he says to us. We still don't hear it. Then he says, start doing mercy deeds.

Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, Hallelujah, shall enter the kingdom of God, but he who does the will of my Father which is in him. And we know as we read Matthew 5, 6, and 7 and soak it up and apply it to ourselves that this is the life that we've been called to and that anything less than this is an affront to the holiness of God and really is very unsatisfying for us to do. Anything less than this.

Boring. Would that we were either hot or cold. And yet, even though we know that this is also, we're scared.

You know, where do you get the stamina to live that kind of life? Many of us already feel overwhelmed. You know, we think we're burnt out already. You know, and any time somebody starts talking about putting our hands to the fire, who can live such a life? And yet, if such a life, the life described in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, isn't possible, then we're wasting our time by coming together here.

If such a life can't be lived by us now on this side of the grave, then this feast that we eat week after week becomes a sham. What we need to see clearly and act on today is that the life described by our Lord in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 absolutely is possible. Impossible, but possible.

That there are people who have lived that life and there are people who are living it now. I don't mean without flaw, but I mean their hearts are given to it and they're pleasing God. As far as He's concerned, they're doing it.

And so can we. We can live that life if we will do one thing. If we will make sure that we stay near the cross.

I'm saying that the life that we're called to in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 becomes real and possible if we stay near the cross. Keep our eyes on that cross, open our hearts to that cross, and draw our life from the cross of Jesus. Reading now from 1 Corinthians 1, verse 17.

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross be emptied. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of the Lord. When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

And I was with you in weakness, in much fear and trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. And Jesus Christ hanging on that cross, when the Spirit wipes away the centuries, that we find ourselves in front of that cross, and we see who this is who hangs there, and what's really happening, we change. From Acts chapter 8, verse 26.

But an angel of the Lord said to Philip, Rise and go toward the south, to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a desert road. And he rose and went.

And behold, an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a minister of Candacy, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to worship, and was returning. Seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And this is something this man took to travel to learn Hebrew, and to travel this tremendous distance from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to seek the face of God.

And the Spirit said to Philip, Go up and join this chariot. So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, Do you understand what you're reading? Do you know what you're looking at? And he said, How can I unless someone guides me? And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of Scripture he was reading was this, As a sheep led to the slaughter, or a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth.

In his humiliation, justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken from the earth, described by Isaiah centuries before it happens. And the eunuch said to Philip, About whom, pray, does this prophet say this? About himself, or about someone else? Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus.

And as they went along the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said, See, here is water. What is to prevent my being baptized? The Ethiopian man is looking at the crucifixion.

As he reads Isaiah 53, Philip says, Do you know what you're looking at? For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. But to those, to us, to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. And it is the power of God, not only at the beginning of our walk, but it is the power of God all the way through.

It is the source of our life. It's the thing that keeps us going every day of our walk with God on this earth. We get our bearings by looking to the cross.

We find new vision, get new power, you know, refresh energy by looking at that cross. And if we take the trouble to fix our hearts and minds on Jesus, hanging on that cross, and listen to what the Spirit is telling us as we watch, there is absolutely no way we'll ever burn out. We'll go from strength to strength.

We'll mount up on wings like eagles. We'll run and not be weary. We'll walk and never faint.

When we want to experience forgiveness, when we want to receive healing of that inmost sickness in our hearts, we go to the cross. And when we want unity again, or maybe for the first time with God and with each other, we go to the cross. Watching Jesus hang on that cross and die.

We are seeing and experiencing, reading from Isaiah 53, beginning at verse 4, Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. To understand that forgiveness is not something that God gives us lightly. It's not like he just kind of blinks his eyes and says, Oh, that's okay, you're forgiven.

But forgiveness is something which is costly beyond our... Who is this hanging on this cross? With the blood running down from the crown of thorns, bruises on his face so bad that you can't even recognize who it is. And don't forget, it's not as if Jesus hangs there as the only or one of the few who ever gets crucified. He was one among thousands.

Crucifixion was very common. It was a disgrace. But it was happening all over the place.

When the Roman government found somebody they wanted to teach a lesson to and everybody through that... And you walk along almost any Roman road and see these guys hanging there. So it was no great, dramatic new thing. It was something that was very, very common.

But this one, this one, and by his death, innocent death, he's draining our guilt into himself. Every wrong thought that's ever gone through our heads, every harsh word we've ever spoken, every act of indifference, every mean and ugly thing we've done, every sin against the holiness of God is sucked in, drained into this dying body and taken down into the grave. And where's the father while all this is going on? Is he up in heaven having a cup of tea? The father, while the son dies, is dying a thousand deaths, suffering beyond our comprehension, dying with his son.

As his son hangs there, forsaken by God and man, this sin and honor he's staining us might be drained off. It was not easy It never is easy. Watching Jesus hang on that cross and die, we are seeing and experiencing the healing of our own inmost sins.

Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. See, we're not only wrong in here with our arrogance and our pride and our criticism and our self-righteousness, we're sick. Sick in the sense that we can't change.

We just keep going on and on and on like this. But, when we see him hang there and die, this twisted spirit, this sin-sick soul within us dies with him to make room for new life from God. Watching Jesus hang there and die, we are seeing God restoring us to unity with himself and with each other.

All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. We have turned everyone to his own way.

Doesn't that describe us? I'm not going to walk with you, man. I'm going my way. And if our paths coincide for a brief moment, that's okay.

But I'm not going to commit myself. I'm going my way. And that's how we all are, and we have such a hard time living the unity of the body, receiving and living the unity God already gave us.

But when we come and see our iniquity put on him and our self-righteousness and our arrogance, it's like the arrogance within us is punctured like a balloon, and we repent. And as we repent, the veil hanging between us and God is torn away, and the walls that separate us from each other crumble down, and we begin to experience. This meal we eat week after week is the meal of unity.

It brings us together. We're eating of one loaf, which is his body, drinking of one cup, which is his blood, and every time we eat this meal, we're looking at Calvary. For as often as you eat this bread and drink of this cup, you show forth his death.

Calvary. For those who have eyes to see, and you have to have eyes to see, I suppose, but for those who have eyes to see, there is revival going on here and in many places. Now, I know that there are those who say, Where is it? I don't see it.

But there is. Things are happening, awesome things. Lives are changing, even in this past week.

Changes in lives that are absolutely flabbergasting. And it's not only happening here, it's happening all over the place. But in every place where revival is going on, so is an attack taking place.

The enemy is trying in those places to split us off from the source of our life, and this explains, really explains, and the paranoia and the suspicion and the childishness, awful childishness, that would try to undermine every good thing God is doing in our lives. The attack of the enemy will be rendered absolutely ineffective, and all the fatigue that so many of us seem to feel will roll away, and we will be fresh and strong and new and one if we will come and stay before that cross, open our eyes to it, open our hearts to it, and surrender ourselves to it. For the word of the cross is foolishness for those who are perishing, but for those who are being saved.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our inequities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him.

Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him.

There is our forgiveness. There is our healing. And there is our unity.

Now if we want that forgiveness, and if we desire that healing of that inmost sickness, and if we truly desire that unity with him and with each other, the one thing we need to do today is repent of the things that we have allowed to come between us and that cross.