The Cross–Good Friday Thoughts

I am currently at my desk working on my Good Friday sermon. I am once again amazed at the depth of the cross. It seems so simple to say that Jesus died for my sins, and yet that statement goes so deep. I think about what a helpless state that I am in.

A good non-Christian friend once said to me “all religions are people climbing up different sides of the same mountain. They all end up in the same place.” This statement reminded me of the people of Israel in the dessert. At one point God was going to meet with Moses on a mountain. God told them “Don’t let them come near the mountain or they will die.” (paraphrase). That is how helpless we are. In our feeble attempt to create religions, so that we can climb a mountain and see God, we are not even able to come near the mountain!

Today I admit my helplessness. I fall at the cross as one, who in myself, has fallen dramatically short of what God wants, and expects of me. At this place I also receive incredible forgiveness, grace, and strength. This place is the great equalizer of all humanity. The CEO on wall street, the factory worker, African, European, Asian, and American, men and women; all need to fall and admit their helpless need for God’s grace; here at the cross. I have not lived one day when I have impressed God with my goodness, but I feel His love and grace everyday. All because of the price my redeemer paid for me. So today I pray again the prayer I prayed so many years ago:

Lord I am a sinner

Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins

I confess you as my Lord and Savior

Thank you for forgiving me

Amen

For God So Used a Stick of Wood.

Francis Schaeffer in his book "No Little People" uses the illustration of the rod of Moses.

Moses was a shepherd for forty years. Every day he went to work and used his shepherd's rod to do his shepherd's stuff. This piece of wood was a stick form a tree and had been dead for at least forty years. When Moses met God at the burning bush; Moses objected to God's call by saying "How will they know you have sent me?". God answered with a very interesting question, a question I believe He asks us all. That question was this "What is in your hand?". All Moses had to offer God was a shepherds rod - a dead stick of wood. Throughout the ministry of Moses God used that dead stick of wood to defeat demonic powered magicians, bring the plagues on Egypt, cross the Red Sea, defeat the greatest army in the world, bring water from rock and much more. Almost everything God asked Moses to do was done through the dead stick of wood that was in his hand.

I love the thought that God only expects from me what I have to give. It reminds me of the boy with the loves and the fishes. Jesus used his little lunch to feed over 5000 people. God took a dead stick of wood consecrated to Him and did great and mighty things with it. What can He do with a person who is completely consecrated to Him? He doesn't ask us to climb a mountain, be better, or be something other than what we are. He never ask for what we do not have to give. He challenges us to live for Him and do His work. When we say "how?" , He asks us the same question He asked Moses: "What is in your hand?".