The Woeful, Wonderful Cross

Well, this is the weekend that we celebrate our freedom as Americans and rightly so. We ought to thoroughly enjoy that and celebrate the freedom that we have in this country. But as believers in Jesus Christ, we come together every Sunday to celebrate another kind of freedom, a greater freedom, freedom from sin, freedom from the darkness of bondage to sin, freedom from the punishment of sin in hell. We come to celebrate freedom from all of that. And just as our liberties in this nation and our freedom as Americans has been bought and paid for for us through many of given their lives, beginning with the revolution in the 1770s. And right up till today, just as our freedom has been purchased for us and bought by their blood, our freedom as believers has been bought for us by the death of one who shed his blood for us on the cross. And so we celebrate freedom that begins at the cross. For some months now, we've been making our way through John's gospel and today we find ourselves at that point in John 19 where he describes that scene on the cross, the crucifixion of Christ. And when we think of the cross, we speak and we sing of the cross as that wonderful cross. And rightly so, I believe we sang that song last week here in this service, the wonderful cross. And it is wonderful. It is wonderful because of what the cross does for us. But we must never forget there is also a woeful side to the cross. The cross is not only full of wonder. It is full of woe. It is wonderful for us, but it was woeful for the Lord Jesus Christ. Woe meaning a place of sorrow, a place of suffering, a place of agony, a place of judgment, a place of separation from his father, Jesus experienced all of that woe on the cross. And in John's account of the crucifixion, he focuses on both the woe and the wonder of the cross. It is amazing how he does it. His section on the crucifixion is just about equally divided between those two infacies, the suffering, the woe, and also the wonder of the cross and what it provides for us, what it means for us. So this morning, I want us to begin by looking at the woe side of the cross, the agony of side of the cross. So we begin by looking at the suffering on the cross. In verses 16 through 24 of John chapter 19, you find the description of the woeful suffering on the cross. Now before we get to John's description of that, I want to back away for just a moment and refocus our attention on what Jesus suffered for us on the cross. We see so much blood and gore in our culture today. On the news, in the entertainment industry, we see so much that I think sometimes we become desensitized to the cross and to what happened there. And we just kind of walk by it and don't understand what Jesus went through for us. His suffering was very real. And while I do not want to get caught up in a morbid preoccupation with the gore of the cross, we have to understand that the real physical suffering of the cross is the window through which we view the greater agony of the cross. And that is Jesus' death for our sins, the spiritual agony that he suffered there. We have to understand what Jesus was doing there and why he was there, what it was like for him to be there. You see, there is a great difference in modern methods of capital punishment and the Roman method of execution in crucifixion. Today in modern methods of capital punishment, they are typically private with maybe a small gallery of observers. But in Jesus' day, I have to understand that crucifixion was purposely a public spectacle. There was almost a carnival like atmosphere that surrounded crucifixions. And it was purposely designed to flex the Roman muscle of power and authority and to serve as a very public deterrent to crime. So it was very different from what we think of as execution today. The second difference is that today, capital punishment or executions are typically done in ways that bring death swiftly and as painlessly as possible. In fact, one of the greatest objections to capital punishment is the sometimes mistakes that are made and the pain that comes along with it. So the goal is as quickly and as painlessly as possible, that was not true at all of the crucifixion. Crucifixions were painstakingly crafted to extend the process of dying as long as possible and to create as much agony to maximize the suffering of the one on the cross. And so it was a cruel, agonizing, torturous, humiliating kind of death that was all done to our Lord and Savior. Let's look at what John describes about the suffering on the cross first, his cross. In verses 16 through 18, John just simply describes his cross. Verse 16, finally, Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. And that follows, of course, right on the heels of the trial before Pilate, which we looked at the last time we were in John's gospel. The trial before Pilate was an agonizing time of being shuttle back and forth between Pilate and Herod. And it was actually a time when Pilate himself was on trial and Christ was composed and calm, even in the midst of great suffering. But Pilate, although he tried to convince the Jews to let Jesus go, he found no fault in him, no crime worthy of death. Finally was kind of pushed into the corner and forced to give the execution sentence. At this point, he finally hands him over to them to be crucified. Verse 16 says, so the soldiers took charge of Jesus carrying his own cross. He went out to the place of the skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgatha. There they crucified him and with him two others, one on each side and Jesus in the middle. Little detail is given about the actual process of crucifixion because everyone in Jewish society would be well familiar with it. This was a very, as I said, public spectacle. And so Jews, most adult Jews at least had seen people crucified. They knew what was involved. For us, it's just so far into us and so far removed from us. We don't really understand what our Savior went through. At the point that he would be turned over to the soldiers, it would be in the courtyard of Pilate's Roman governors, palace. And so it was in a courtyard where he was turned over to the soldiers. Jesus would be immediately surrounded by four soldiers, one on each corner serving as a barrier. They were called the Quaternion. And they were kind of a barrier between the crowd and Jesus as they made their way to the place of crucifixion. Then the cross beam would be placed on Jesus' shoulders, much like you might carry an ore on your shoulders and wrap your arms over top of it. The person being crucified would carry their own cross beam, the one beam that their hands would be strapped to. That would often weigh over a hundred pounds. So Jesus is forced to carry that cross or at least begin carrying the cross in front of this group as they would make their way through the streets of Jerusalem. There would be an official that would hold a placard up on a stick. That placard was the writing of the crime that the person was guilty of. And as they wound their way through the streets, usually taking the longest route possible for the maximum effect on the observers. As they wound their way through the streets of Jerusalem, this placard would announce to everyone the crime of the individual being taken to execution will see what was on that placard in just a few moments. When they get to Galgotha, Jesus has been carrying his own cross, but obviously a hundred pound beam of wood after all that he has been through, the scourging after which many men would go into shock or would even die. Jesus is weak and he stumbles and loop tells us in his gospel that a man who is watching this procession is called into service by the Roman soldiers and calls to carry that beam to the place of crucifixion. When they get there, Jesus is stretched back on that beam as it's put on the ground. His arms are stretched out. Typically, they would wrap them with bands of rope around the cross, but if they were seeking to hasten the execution which they were on this day because of the Jewish Sabbath coming soon. They would nail those hands to that wooden beam through the wrist and that's what they did to Jesus we know from the gospel accounts. Then they would hoist that beam up to be affixed to a beam that was already standing and had been placed in the ground. Jesus feet dangling until that beam was affixed to the standing beam and then his feet would be nailed to the cross, giving enough flex in the knees for that horrible up and down movement of every sufferer on a cross trying to gasp for breath. Most people who died on the cross died of asphyxiation. They were stretched out so far and the agony and the suffering physically of the cross began to take its toll on their lungs and they could not breathe deeply enough to get adequate breath and typically their lungs would fill with fluid and they would die that way. And so to prolong death the feet would be nailed where the knees would be bent a little bit so that the sufferer could actually lift himself up and down on the cross to gasp for breath. It was a cruel, torturous way to die. But the text tells us in verse 18 that he was crucified between two others. The other gospels tell us they were two thieves, evidently not just common petty thieves. You didn't get crucified for that. They evidently were involved in some kind of insurrection against the Romans or maybe it's stolen armaments or something from Roman soldiers but they would be crucified for something very serious and that was intended to be the final disgrace for Jesus. The Romans and the Jews put him in between two thieves, two insurrectionists to be the greatest terrible disgrace of all, basically saying publicly you are the worst of the three. But actually it becomes for us a beautiful picture of salvation because on those three crosses there are three different things happening that day. The one in the middle cross Jesus who is the focal point in God's mind, in God's eyes, the focal point of what's happening there on that day is dying for sin. He is dying as a substitute for our sin. The Bible makes that clear. During those hours on the cross one of those thieves on one side of him will recognize because of what's being said about him by those on the ground and the words he himself is uttering from the cross. Jesus himself is. One of those thieves will recognize that he is the Messiah, he is the King of the Jews, he is the one that he should place his faith in and he turns to him and says, Lord, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom and with that act of faith Jesus says, today you will be with me in paradise. In both of us die, we will be in the presence of the Father. That man died to sin. Like all of us who have trusted Jesus as our Savior, we have done what the Bible calls dying to sin. In other words, that old life is gone and we have walked away from that and we are now a new creature in Christ, a new creation, a new person. We have died to sin. That is behind us. But although we still struggle with it, it no longer has the mastery over us that it once did if we exercised that position in Christ of being dead with him. That man died to sin but there was another thief on a cross who evidently never turned to Christ in faith. He that day died in sin with his own sin still on him, not paid for by the one dying beside him because he's not accepted it for his own salvation. So we have a beautiful microcosm of the whole plan of salvation in those three crosses. The focal point, the one who died for sin, one who died to sin and one who died in sin. That is the gospel. Jesus died for us so that we might live in him and not die in our sin. So those three crosses portray the gospel story. That is Jesus' cross of suffering. But John goes on then to describe another element of his suffering on the cross and that is his crime. His crime. Remember that placard I told you about that would be carried in front of the person to be executed on the way out to the cross? This is what happened to it once they got to the place of crucifixion. It would be nailed to the upright beam across the person's head who was on the cross. Verse 19. Pilot had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to pilot. They did not write the king of the Jews, but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews. Pilot answered, what I have written, I have written. John focuses upon this placard that announces to everyone the crime that Jesus is being crucified for. What is it? His only crime. Pilot, remember, had found no fault in him, no crime worthy of death. And so he announces to the world that Jesus only crime is that he is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. That is his crime. I wonder if Pilot himself is admitting his own feelings, his own conviction that there was nothing in this man that should be criminally prosecuted. He should not be on this cross, and so I will proclaim that through this placard. It was written in three languages, the Bible tells us. Aramaic is the local language. Latin is the legal language. Greek is the commercial language that everyone in the Roman Empire would speak for purposes of commerce. What the point here is that it was written in all three languages used in the Roman Empire that in that day. Languages that everybody would know indicating that Jesus is dying for everybody, for the world. Hebrews, Romans, Greeks, everyone is included so that everyone can hear the message that Jesus is the king. The religious leaders don't like that message. They protest that message. They appeal to Pilot in the tense of the verb in the original language that this is written in. The Greek word is a present tense, which means they continually over the six hours Jesus is on the cross are appealing. Somebody is going back to Pilot saying, change this, change this. Don't say he was the king of the Jews. Put on there, he claimed to be the king of the Jews. Just imagine them standing at the foot of the cross, gloating over the crucifixion of Christ with his very claims, staring them in the face. They can't handle that. They appeal for it to be changed, but Pilot who hates the Jews, who has had enough of them, who has already sacrificed justice in order to give them what they wanted to crucify him, will bend no further. I can just hear the sarcasm and bitter anger in his voice as he says, what I have written, I have written. That's it. I'm not changing it. He is the king of the Jews. And although Pilot may not have recognized the full meaning of what he was saying with that inscription, it was the truth. That was Jesus only crime. And it was the truth about who he is. He is the king of the Jews and not only of the Jews, but he is the king. He is the Lord of the universe. He is the king of the universe. And he is our king. He is our Lord. It is proclaimed from the cross that if you know him as Savior, he comes not only as an escape plan from hell, not only is he your Savior from sin, he is also your Lord. And from the moment you get saved, his demands on you are that you submit to his authority, that you yield to his Lordship. It is a gracious Lordship that provides for you fullness of life and fullness of blessing as you walk with him, but it is a Lordship that tells you to take up your cross and follow him, to lay down your own plans, your own life, your own will, and accept his which is much better for you. That kind of surrender to him as Lord is what he calls for and even calls for from the cross. He is our king. He is our Lord. The question for you and me is this. If you have trusted him as your Savior, are you yielding to his Lordship? It is not a matter of accepting him a second time as your Lord. He is your Lord. That is who he is. The question is whether or not you have understood his demands on your life and whether or not you have yielded everything to him and said, I will take up my cross. I will put to death my own plans and my own way of living life. I will yield myself completely to the Lordship of Jesus. He will be the one that tells me how to live. He will be the one that guides and orders my life and I will joyfully obey him. That is the path of peace and joy in life and that is what Jesus calls us to. That is his crime. That is what is put on the prosecution placard on the cross that he is our king. But then John focuses on a third element of Jesus suffering, unusual that he would even mention this. Surprising. Maybe it might be in our minds uncalled for, but he focuses thirdly upon his clothes. I think the reason for this is to cause us to understand the utter humiliation of the cross, the abject horrifying humiliation of the cross and what Jesus did there for us versus 23 and 24. When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them and the undergarment with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless woven in one piece from top to bottom. Let's not tear it. They said to one another, let's decide by lot who will get it. This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled, which said, they divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment. So this is what the soldiers did. The Jewish male would have five pieces of clothing that they would typically wear in the first century sandals, a turban for the head, an inner cloak, which was an undergarment that was almost as long as the outer cloak went almost to the knees and then the outer cloak would be worn over that and then fifthly a belt which would be tied around the waist. That was typical clothing for that day and that part of the world. A person who was put on the cross was stripped naked and the clothes were then parceled out among the soldiers. There are five pieces of clothing. Each soldier got one piece. That's what the text tells us. They divided it into four and each one got one of the pieces and that leaves the undergarment which is seamless. It's woven from one piece. The text tells us and they didn't want to tear that because if they'd torn that it would have rendered the garment worthless. So they're going to gamble. They're going to cast lots for who gets that one. Just imagine if you will the horror of this scene, the humiliation of Jesus on the cross as he is agonizingly dying, cold-blooded soldiers are dividing up his clothing while his mother watches her son die and is not even given the courtesy of receiving his clothing. And then they gamble loud casting of lots. Whose numbers it going to be? Amato Lucky one day at the foot of one who's dying and agonizing death. Oh, the cold heartedness of the scene and yet it simply reminds me of the world's disregard for the death of Christ. How is it that we can look on the cross and the one who is crucified there and not be horrified by it, not be touched by it, not be moved by it when we understand that is the God of the universe, the Lord Christ dying there. How is it that we can look at the cross and just walk on by and live our own lives, turn our back with disregard on what Jesus did for us there? My friend the cross and all of its agony and all of his suffering and all that he went through there ought to stir within us a humble adoration of our Savior. It ought to move us to love him more. How can we dare look at the cross and walk away without bowing ourselves before him as our Lord and Savior? And my friend if you're here today and you've never seen Jesus in that light, you've never understood that he went through all of this for you. He never sinned himself. He was God come down to earth to become a man so that he might give his life as a sacrifice for us. So he wasn't dying for himself. He was doing all this for you and for me. If you've never seen Jesus in that light, how is it that you can see Christ suffering on the cross for you and think there's anything you could do to work your way into God's good graces and inter-heaven? After what Jesus has done for you, the cross should bring us to our knees to recognize him as our Savior but also to yield to his Lordship, the one who would do all of this for me, who deserves everything I have and everything I am. I dare not treat the cross with disregard. I dare not come to the cross without it moving my heart to a greater degree of yieldedness and commitment to Christ. I dare not despise and disregard the cross of our Savior, the suffering of Jesus on the cross. All in fulfillment of prophecy of Scripture. That's the woe of the cross, the utter agony and humiliation and suffering of the cross. But there is more here this day. Not only does Jesus suffer on the cross, Jesus also is heard to be speaking from the cross. And John focuses on that in the rest of this passage in verses 25 to 30. When he tells us three of the things Jesus said from the cross, the Scriptures, if you put all the gospels together, indicate that Jesus spoke seven times from the cross. John records three of them and this is the wonder of the cross. Yes, what Jesus experienced was the suffering, but what he says is for us and that expresses and puts on full display the wonder of the cross because what he speaks first are words of love. Look at them if you will, tender words of love, verse 25. Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clovis and Mary Magdalene, four women who were all well known to Jesus and would not let him die alone are standing there at the foot of the cross. Verse 26, when Jesus saw his mother there and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, woman, here is your son and to the disciple, here is your mother from that time on this disciple took her into his home. Oh, the love you see in this scene, the tender love, first of all of the mother to be there, she will not let her son die alone. This one who has done nothing but bring her joy, but this one who also, because of who he was and because of her place in his life has also brought suffering into her heart and sorrow into her life, I mean people didn't even understand her pregnancy, certainly did not believe the story that she told of an angel appearing and it being a virgin birth, I'm sure that most people in Nazareth maybe even her own family laughed at her about that and so from the very beginning there was sorrow in her heart and then not long after he's born, herred the king wants to kill him and they have to flee to Egypt and then later in his ministry she sees him scoffed and scorned and rejected and now here at the cross this humiliating, agonizing death, what it must have done to her heart to watch her son die like this, but she's there, her mother's love cannot walk away and he reciprocates that love, I cannot begin to explain to you how incredible these words are, when I think of the agony of his suffering, when I think of tendons being stretched until they're about to pop, when I think of the muscle cramps and the agonizing of the beatings that he's already received and the bleeding and the asphyxiation that he's beginning to feel and the pushing up for breath rubbing his raw back against the cruel splinters of that wooden cross, when I think of all of the agony he's going through and even his heart now beginning, the paracardi in beginning to become difficult for the heart to beat and full of fluid because of the separation of the serum and the platelets, and all that's happening physically in him, he is lingering on death's doorstep and yet with all of that agony he will fulfill his caring and loving responsibility to honor his mother. And so he looks down upon this scene of her agonizing as she looks at him and he fulfills with honor his responsibility to care for her, he is the oldest of the family, evidently Joseph has already dead, Jesus has long been referred to now as the carpenter of Nazareth, his stepfather is dead, he's the oldest in the family, his brothers have not yet come to faith and so he sees John the disciple that he loves there and he commits the care of his mother to his beloved disciple and in these dying moments he will honor with love his mother. Yes, he calls her woman rather than mother, that was not a term of disrespect in that day, but I think even his referring to her as woman may have been a gracious and kind act of love, was it because he did not want her publicly recognized as his mother with Roman soldiers standing nearby in order to protect her that he refrained from using that word? Was it because he did not want to give her the further agony of hearing the word mother from his lips? Was it because, and maybe this is the real reason, was it because in these moments he is less her son and more her savior as he dies for her also on the cross? It is his mother but he is committing her care to another words of love flowing from his agonizing pain racked body, but then there are words of suffering as well, verse 28, later knowing that everything had now been finished and so that scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, I am thirsty, a jar of wine vinegar was there so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the his up plant and lifted it to Jesus lips. These words indicate real human suffering. Jesus is thirsty on the cross, his lips, his tongue, his mouth, his parched, his throat, his dry, with all of the agony that he has gone through for hours, even before he got to the cross, the loss of blood, the perspiration, he is agonizingly thirsty. This is real human suffering. God does not thirst, angels don't thirst, saints in heaven don't thirst, but Jesus as a man giving his body on the cross suffers in thirsts, but it's also indication of a willing suffering. Jesus is not some delusional sufferer at the hands of men here. He is still fully in control of his mental faculties and so he scans the scope of the Old Testament prophetic scriptures and he recognizes there is yet one scripture that has not been fulfilled. It is Psalm 69 and verse 21. He who knows the scriptures better than any is thinking through all of those scriptures and recognizes this one has not been fulfilled. They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst in that Psalm which portrayed the suffering of the Messiah. He knows that must be fulfilled and so with full mental capacity recognizing he must fulfill this scripture, indicating that his life is not being taken from him as much as it is being offered willingly. He cries so that scripture would be fulfilled. Verse 28 tells us he cries, I am thirsty, but it is also a purposeful word of suffering. There's a reason why he would cry this, not just to fulfill prophecy, but also to give him the force physically to say what he's going to say next. Again his throat, mouth, tongue, lips are parched. He's probably scarcely able to utter anything more than a whisper, but the next words he will say from the cross, he wants to say with forcefulness, he wants to say with authority, he wants to say so that the people will be shaken with their power. Matthew and Mark both tell us this last saying on the cross was done with a loud shout. Jesus, verse 30, when he had received the drink, Jesus said, it is finished with that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Those are words of victory. And he wants to be able to proclaim the victory loudly. We have three words in our English translation, the original language, what Jesus spoke from the cross was one word, at least the word John uses to describe it, one word, it was the most brief of all of the seven sayings on the cross, but it is the most powerful. It is finished. It is completed. What is completed? All of prophecy is completed for one thing. Knowing that everything had been done, back in verse 28, everything had now been finished so that scripture would be fulfilled. He cries, I'm thirsty. He knows that all of scripture has been completed. All of the prophecies about him have been finished. And so he cries, to tell us, die. It is finished. It is completed. It's done. All of scripture has been fulfilled, but there's also a complete end to his suffering. It is finished in that regard, all of his physical suffering, and yet all of his spiritual suffering, the cup of God's wrath has been drained dry. All of God's wrath has been satisfied about our sin. The darkness has now ended as the Father had turned his face away from his beloved son. That's ended. All of God's judgment has been accomplished. It has finished. It is done. It is completed. The work that Jesus has done on the cross, but there's something else here. And that is this was completed. The payment for our sin was completed. And that really is at the essence of what Jesus said. That one word that is used to describe his saying, to tell us, die was the Greek word for paid in full. It was an accounting term. That's what would be stamped on the receipt if you pay to bill. Just like when you go to the sanitary board or to another place of business and you pay a bill, they may take a stamp and stamp paid in full or paid on your receipt. Well, what would be stamped on a receipt in the first century was to tell us, die paid in full. The complete payment has been made. Jesus was uttering from the cross. All that was necessary to pay for your sin in mind was paid on the cross. All of our sin is paid for. All of our guilt. All of our condemnation. All of our punishment for our sin and eternity worth of punishment in hell is paid for. It's all finished. It's done. It's paid for at the cross. All of our sin is placed on him as the prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 53 and verse 6. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way and the Lord laid on him, the iniquity of us all, God placed on him our sin and he paid it in full. But my friend, you have to receive that payment or the dead is still on you. If you owe a debt, let's say you have a loan at the bank and they're going to foreclose and you're in trouble. It's too much for you to pay. There's no way you can pay it and a dear friend of yours finds out. The friend who has ample means to take care of that and they go with you to the bank. They come on, let's go and they go with you to the bank and they say, listen, I love you and I don't want to see this happen to you. I know the hardship you've been through. I have ample means to make provision for this and I'm going to write a check and pay off your debt. Now you still have to receive that. You still have to give them the okay to do that. For whatever reason you could reject it, you'd be crazy to reject it. But maybe you're too proud. And so you say, no, no, no, no, I'll take care of it somehow and you reject it. If you reject it, the debt is still on you. It is still your responsibility to pay. If you accept that payment that is being offered to you, then your debt will be wiped clean and your record will be cleared. There will be no debt that you owe. That's what Jesus is saying. I have ample means. I am making ample provision. Jesus died an infinite death. Only God could do that. And so he died an infinite death making ample provision for all sinners, for anyone to be saved. The provision is sufficient for anyone, everyone. But you still have to receive it. You still have to say, Lord, I know I can't pay this debt off myself. And you lay down your pride. And you say, I receive what Jesus did for me, the payment he made for me on the cross, as my payment for my sin. You've got to receive that payment, my friend. Have you ever done that? Or have you thought, you know, that's not really necessary. I'm a good person. I'm an upstanding citizen of my community. I treat my family well. I fulfill my obligations. I'm a good person. And I think that's what God wants. And certainly God will smile on me. And I'll be in His good grace as I'll get to heaven. You've forgotten one thing. The Bible says, if you ever sin one time in your life, it's like you've committed everything. It's like you've offended God in every way because one sin offends His holiness so much that you can't get into heaven. I don't care how much good you've done. It's not a matter, my friend, of trying to weigh out the scales. Here's the reason Jesus has already made all the payment you need for your salvation. And there's nothing else you can add to that. It's been paid in full. If you're in that bank and your friend writes the check for the full amount and you go up to the bank vice president and you say to him, or to her, could I add $10 to that? Of course not. This guy's offered to pay the whole thing. You don't need to pay anything. Jesus paid it in full. That's why he died. That's the reason for the suffering on the cross. It was for you. It was for me. The question this morning is, have you accepted that payment for your salvation? Or are you rejecting it at your own eternal peril? Only you can answer that question for your own heart. Let's pray together. Father, we come to the cross. We see as best we can, the agony, the suffering that Jesus did there for us. But we know the reason for it was to completely pay for our sin. Thank you for your love in sending him. Thank you, Jesus, for your love in dying for us. And thank you that you've made it clear in your word. That's the only way we can spend eternity with you because the debt has been paid in full. Help us not to offend you, God, by offering you something else when you've already paid the debt in full. And I pray, Lord, if there's anyone here this morning in this audience that has never accepted that payment for their sin and trusted Jesus as their Savior, not religion, not church, not good life, but trusted Jesus and his death for their salvation. I pray, Lord, that they would recognize their need today and come to Christ. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.