Sunday Messages

As we begin this message let’s look at some of the last words Jesus ever uttered on earth from the cross before he died. These are the final words that Jesus Christ spoke while hanging on the old rugged cross. On that cross we see our Lord’s greatest work, and on that cross we hear our Lord’s greatest words. Some words live on!

I read about a lady who died in Kansas and on her tombstone were these words: "I told you I was sick." Some words live on! 

I read about a man who owned a restaurant for years, and he was about to die. He had always been known for being stingy! As he lay on his bed, he began mumbling something. So the family leaned in to hear his final words. Very faintly he said, "Slice the ham thin," and then he died. Some words live on!

I read about a wealthy man who died and the family gathered together to hear the reading of his last will and testament. The family all sat in a circle trying to look sad as the attorney read the will. They were all anxious to learn what their portion of the inheritance would be. The attorney began reading, "I, Sam Jones, having made a large fortune, being of a sound mind and proper judgment, want to reveal to my family that I spent it all." Some words live on!

However, if there were ever words that lived on, it would have to be some final words of Jesus Christ as recorded in Luke 23:34…

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

The cross of Jesus must be either the darkest spot of all in the mystery of existence or a searchlight by the aid of a forgiving God of which we as sinners may penetrate the surrounding gloom and doom of our day. Jesus died on the cross as atonement for our sins and extended to us forgiveness as sinners.  Sam Jones spent it all, but Jesus paid it all! Yes, some words live on!

If we look inside any church, we are likely to find a Christian Cross. Typically it is made of stone, stained glass, polished hardwood, some type of polymer or metal, and occasionally covered with gold leaf. Very rarely is it a cross of roughly hewn timbers, which is odd because Jesus was not crucified on a cross of polished hardwood, polymer or metal, and certainly not a cross covered or painted with gold leaf.  But the cross in his mind was no gilded icon; it was coarse, cruel, blood-stained structure. Thus the title: The Old Rugged Cross.

Around a hundred years ago, an American called George Bennard (no, not George Bernard Shaw) spent quite a while contemplating this variance, and came up with a new hymn: The Old Rugged Cross. Hymn writing was one of his passions—he wrote over 300—and The Old Rugged Cross became one of the 20th century's most popular songs, with over 20 million copies sold in the first 30 years. He was born to a coal miner in Youngstown, Ohio, on February 4, 1873.  After finding his faith through a revival meeting, George became a full-time minister as a Salvation Army officer. Later, he became a Methodist evangelist and was ordained by the Methodist Episcopal Church. He preached all over Canada and the North America, in particular Michigan and New York. After a campaign in New York, George penned the words and music to The Old Rugged Cross. The reason for this spectacular success is probably because of its catchy tune and words that are easy to learn. The music fits the lyrics so well because Bennard wrote the words and music together.  The first verse and refrain have been put to memory by many Jesus-followers today:

Bennard had been preaching around a passage in the Bible from Galatians 6:14…

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

What did this mean to George? The words were written by Apostle Paul, who did not expect glory from power, fame or riches. For him true glory could only come from the atoning sacrifice of Christ's crucifixion.  Paul’s ground for boasting is not in the flesh of humanity, but in the cross of Jesus Christ.  On that cross the world died to Paul and Paul died to the world. 

When we are saved, the world says goodbye to us and we say goodbye to the world.  We are spoiled as far as the world is concerned because we are no longer interested in its fleeting pleasures, power and possessions; the world has lost the attraction for us, because we have found One who completely satisfies.  The cross is a great dividing line between the world and the child of God.

When I made the commitment of engagement to my wife Sue for marriage, it became a dividing line between loyalty to my single lifestyle of choosing my own time and relationships, and total allegiance to Sue.  I can’t imagine Sue welcoming my previous selfish pursuits and girlfriends.  I said goodbye to the things that were mostly important only to me, and I certainly said goodbye to all my previous girlfriends!

So by extension, this implies that if we as Jesus-followers expect glory from material things of power, fame and riches then that is discrediting, or even repudiating, the crucifixion. And those who take on the world’s philosophy of power, fame, and riches, differ from Paul's beliefs. Therefore, Paul uses the phrase "the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world".  We can only find glory through God's grace—opening our hearts to God. George could see that the message from the cross was central to the whole Christian faith, and was moved to write the hymn.

The New Cross vs. The Old Rugged Cross

Many of today’s Jesus-followers want a new cross, not the old rugged cross of the Bible.   They want a faith that makes no demands, creates no conflict and which raises no controversy.  As well, many of today’s Jesus-followers want a Christianity that does not ask them to make sacrifices or do things that will make them feel uncomfortable. That type of Christianity is not Biblical Christianity.  It is called self-absorption.

This Christianity adopts a new cross as its symbol. The new cross is slick and polished like the new Christianity that gives birth to it. Its likeness to the old rugged cross of the Bible is superficial. Its differences are fundamental. Those differences have been devastating to the cause of Christ and the missional outreach of local churches.

A.W. Tozer writes…If I see aright, the cross of popular evangelicalism is not the cross of the New Testament.  It is, rather, a new bright ornament upon the bosom of a self-assured and carnal Christianity.  The old cross slew men, the new cross entertains them.  The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses.  The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it.

Jesus spoke clearly regarding the sacrifice of the old rugged cross in Luke 9:23…

Then he [Jesus] said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

To take up the cross means a willingness to make any sacrifice, suffer any pain, to do whatever may be required to maintain identity with Jesus Christ.  To be a disciple of Christ means the willingness to constantly live under the shadow of the old rugged cross.  Being a Jesus-follower means the willingness to die for the cause of Christ, but the great difficulty is to live for him.

It is the old rugged cross we are called to "take up" and follow Christ. It speaks of the condemnation of sin and the wrath of God on the unrepentant. It proclaims God’s pending judgment on this world, on lost sinners and on Satan and his demons. It speaks of the moment in history when the love of God met the wrath of God and paid the wages of sin for the whole world in the Body of Jesus Christ. It is totally opposed to the philosophy of this world. The new cross wants to be this world’s friend. The old rugged cross demands a life of denial, self sacrifice and obedience to Christ.

So what are the fundamental differences in the preaching of the old rugged cross?

1.  It asks for repentance, not toleration.

2.  It makes demands, not requests.

3.  It teaches separation, not access.

4.  It promotes Biblical evangelism, not political activism.

5.  It condemns the sinner; it doesn’t redirect the sinner.

6.  It is in the regeneration business, not in the remodeling business.

7.  It is a symbol of guilt and shame, not innocence and fame.

The old rugged cross demands extreme sacrifices and makes absolute, unbending demands. The old rugged cross slams the door in the face of compromise. But most of all, the old rugged cross gets in our face with truth, pulls no punches and boldly proclaims the sacrificial atonement of Jesus Christ.

George MacLeod writes concerning returning the cross to Calvary’s hill…

“I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the center of the marketplace, as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a high cross between two thieves: on the town garbage heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew, in Latin and in Greek…. At the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse and soldiers gamble. Because that’s where He died. And that is what He died about. And that is where churchmen ought to be and what churchmen should be about.”

Therefore, before we observe the Lord’s Supper, we must affirm the reality of The Old Rugged Cross.  It is a cross-style of life to which Jesus-followers are called.  The God who so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son for it expects the church likewise to be in the world, but not of the world.  The words of the Lord’s Supper commission us: my body, my blood.  The Spirit of Christ is given to us to enable us to love with his love, to die in his death, to give our body and blood for others.  The great expression of the Spirit each day is to get the cross out of the church and into the world; to have the power and presence to say not only in liturgy but in life, “This is my body, this is my blood.”

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, till my trophies at last I lay down.  I will cling to the old rugged cross, and exchange it someday for a crown.  Amen!

Shift: Jesus-followers must make room for expanded hearts to be more like Jesus and embody a genuine love for those who are far from God.

The little things do matter…

Shifts not only have a big impact in the crust of the earth, but also in every area of our lives.By making these small adjustments in the right places, we can set off a chain reaction – much like the earth’s seismic forces that result in an earthquake – but in this case small changes can make a BIG difference in the most important areas of our lives. 16:Shifts can take place almost anywhere: in the workplace, the school, the family, the church, the community, and in our spiritual and personal lives. In our last message, God disclosed to us the importance of Shift #13: The Shift from Flattery to Truth-Telling.

SHIFT #14: From Us to Them

We celebrate today Mother’s Day. As we think about the shift from Us to Them, Mother’s are the embodiment of “Them.” Mothers most often think of others, not themselves.

Mother, on a winter's day, milked the cows and fed them hay, hitched the mule, drove kids to school...did a washing, mopped the floors, washed the windows and did some chores...Cooked a dish of home-dried fruit, pressed her husband's Sunday suit...swept the parlor, made the bed, baked a dozen loaves of bread...split some firewood and lugged it in, enough to fill the kitchen bin...Cleaned the lamps and put in oil, stewed some apples before they spoiled...churned the butter, baked a cake, then exclaimed, "For goodness sake!" when the calves ran from the pen, and chased them all back in again...Gathered eggs and locked the stable, back to the house and set the table...cooked a supper that was delicious, then washed and dried all dirty dishes...fed the cat and sprinkled clothes, mended a basketful of hose...then opened the organ and began to play: "When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day.”

A teacher asked a boy this question: "Suppose your mother baked a pie and there were seven of you--your parents and five children. What part of the pie would you get?" "A sixth," replied the boy. "I'm afraid you don't know your fractions," said the teacher. "Remember, there are seven of you." "Yes, teacher," said the boy, "but you don't know my mother. Mother would say she didn't want any pie."

Motherhood and compassion are intertwined. In the Hebrew language of the Old Testament the word for “compassion” comes from the root word, “womb.”The picture is of a birthing. Something new is being born. If we apply this in a human experience, it means that our compassionate acts always give the other person another chance. We offer a fresh start. Such compassion will dramatically change the way we relate to each other.

This shift from Us to Them must not only take place in the family, but also in the church community. Often a community of Jesus-followers assumes that making serious efforts to reach out to those who have not yet come to know the love of Jesus suppose their own church community will be forgotten and their needs won’t be met. This imagining reveals fundamental misunderstandings about God, the church, and the call to share God’s love with the world.

There are those in the church today that have legitimate concerns regarding the meeting of their needs in the local body of believers. However, when believers who are already receiving quality worship, study, fellowship, and service opportunities in the church say, “What about us? In your reaching out to new people please don’t forget us!” We must ask in return, “What do you need that you don’t already have?” We are not talking about physical needs like clothes, a car, or a place to live. We are talking about the spiritual blessings and eternal inheritance we have in Jesus.

The apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 1:3…

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

God has been so good to us when we remember the marvelous grace God has lavished on us and the sacrifice he made to show us his love. Once we have reflected on all we have as God’s children, we can look at one another as Jesus-followers and ask ourselves, “What do we need that we don’t already have in Christ?” The answer must be, “Nothing!”

In Jesus’ day, there were many cultural barriers between various groups of people. Jews had no dealings with the Gentiles. Most men would not speak with women in public. No one wanted to be seen with the tax collectors. No one in their right mind would dare touch a person with leprosy. So we might say that there was a huge “us versus them” mentality.

Since Jesus was an aspiring Jewish rabbi, most people knew that for him, some people were off limits if he wanted to maintain a good reputation in the religious community. But in full view of the public, Jesus systematically knocked down the cultural barriers. He questioned the norms and customs of the day.

Love That Risks

Jesus took a huge risk when he had a theological conversation with a Samaritan woman who had a questionable moral history. However, we don’t want to focus upon the encounter with this woman as much as we need to center upon Jesus’ discussion with his disciples after they rejoin him from buying food in town. This dialogue with the disciples helps us as Jesus-followers understand the “us versus them” way of thinking. It helps us to have expanded hearts for lost people. It enables us to take an honest look at how we function and discover if there are patterns that are counterproductive to reaching out to those who are not yet part of God’s family.

Let’s pick up the narrative with Jesus and his disciples in John 4:31-38…

When the disciples are concerned with their own physical needs, Jesus confronts them with the shift from Us to Them in two compelling and challenging ways:

1. Satisfying needs by doing the will of God

³¹ Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." ³² But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." ³³ Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" ³⁴ "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

Jesus’ ultimate source of nourishment is that divine, eternal relationship he shares with his Father who has sent him. It is in obeying God and doing his will that he finds fulfillment, his most satisfying food. And Jesus will see that work through to the end. It is Jesus’ great desire that we should be as he was: to do the will of God is the only way to peace; to do the will of God is the only way to fulfillment; and to do the will of God is the only way to power.

Thus, to have ministered to this Samaritan woman’s need was as food to his soul; it was doing God’s will and accomplishing his work. For most of us our hunger for two or three nourishing meals a day takes precedence over everything else. Jesus spoke of satisfying another hunger: ministering to God’s needy and lost people. To Jesus it was exciting and immediate. It is also true that any one of Jesus-followers who have been caught up in God’s mighty work, however small it may have seemed, discovers food in an entirely different dimension than any physical lunch.

2. Securing the harvest by developing the kingdom of God

³⁵ Don't you have a saying, 'It's still four months until harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Even now those who reap draw their wages, even now they harvest the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷ Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."

It is Jesus’ unrestricted obedience to his Father’s will which has brought Jesus to a great harvest. The response of this one Samaritan woman which has made her an uninhibited witness among her own people, despised and rejected as they are, now brings them running to hear and believe.

In God’s period of grace, which Jesus is ushering in, all the neat calculations about harvesting four months after sowing, as the ancient proverb put it, are upset and transcended. We are now dealing with God’s timetable. This is the Greek word kairos for “the proper time”—that the time of great opportunity is at hand; it is ripe for the harvesting. In this time, no one can carefully project who will receive the greatest wages, sower or reaper. Their work is intertwined, interdependent, and the wages are the same for both, the joy of eternal life. This is the time of grace.

We often want to wait in our churches—“four month until harvest”—when God says—“open your eyes and look at the fields”—the harvest is ripe now! We can only reap a harvest now because others have faithfully sown the seed of God’s Word. Is not the costly ministry of those who have ministered before us a part of this? So like the disciples, we are entering today into the faithful labors of others. Only then can sowing take place. But we must not wait; the harvest is ready right now, for “the proper time.”

In these verses, Jesus is challenging us in the church as Jesus-followers to shift from Us to Them by reminding us of an occupation—to do the work of the Father, and reminding us of an opportunity—to reap a harvest for God. These are the times in history when people are strangely sensitive to God. What a tragedy it is if Christ’s church as such a time fails to reap Christ’s harvest!

It would have been safest for Jesus to minister only to those who were on the cultural and spiritual inside track. In the same way, it is easier and safer for us to extend our love and compassion to those who are already part of God’s family. We can lock the doors of our churches, and forget the broken world Jesus died to save. But where is the excitement in that mindset? Where is the adventure? How does this put us in a place where we have to cry out for the wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit? Jesus took huge risks when he moved his attention from the “us” of his day to “them.” He also calls each of his followers to enter into this same risky journey!

Moving from Us to Them is one of the great disciplines that allow God to speak to our heart through his Word. Our series on 16:Shifts highlights the verse from John 3:16…

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

…God loves…God gave…We believe…We live.

Prayer: Father, I believe you love this world. You gave your one and only Son so I can live forever with you. Apart from you, I die. With you, I live. I choose life. I admit I need a Savior. I believe Jesus is my Savior. I choose to walk with Jesus and become a worldchanger.

From Clean to Messy.Since this is Mother’s Day, let’s return to honoring our ladies. Mothers learn to live with a balance of order and chaos in their lives. They move from clean to messy in so many ways. What mothers do in this life puts them in the tension between chaos and order, between clean and messy. This same tension exists in the church when we desire to make the shift from Us to Them.

So let’s encourage our ladies with God’s Word and an affirming word:

In the words of the King Lemuel in Proverbs 31:30…

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;

but a woman who reveres the LORD is to be praised.

In the words of Nehemiah 8:10…

…the joy of the Lord is your strength.

An affirming word (bookmark)…

A mother strengthens us with her prayers,

Encourages us with her hope,

And blesses us with her unending love.

• Prayers

Lorne Sanny of The Navigators once wrote of his mother: "My mother gave birth to me in a frontier house on a Midwestern prairie. On the kitchen counter she placed a list of the ingredients necessary for my formula. At the top of the list was 'prayer,' and that remained at the top of her list for me throughout her life...I have her to thank for firmly establishing my spiritual roots."

A mother strengthens us with her prayers.

§ Hope

Ann Lamott is a mother who wears everything on her sleeve, including her toils with young children, her poor motherhood skills, and her struggles with faith and her church. She writes, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”

A mother encourages us with her hope.

§ Love

Washington Irving writes, “The love of a mother is never exhausted. It never changes--it never tires--it endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother's love still lives on.”

A mother blesses us with her unending love.

May we end this message as we began. Mothers most often think of others, not themselves. There is no more influential or powerful role on earth than a mother’s. Stay at it, dear ladies. Never doubt the value of the shift from “us to them.” Without your prayers, hope, and love, the family and church simply could not survive! Amen.