The Cross

At my church, we recently finished a great sermon series called “In My Place: Why The Death of Jesus Matters.” Our pastoral team, headed by our senior pastor, Jared Mellinger, wanted to lead us through a timely sermon series zeroing in on the death of Jesus Christ, drawing from seven key texts through Scripture giving us different angles on that single glorious event. The seven sermons were:

1. Death – 1 Corinthians 15:1-5. Here Jared’s main point was there is nothing more urgent and important for believer and unbeliever than understanding and embracing the penal substitution of Jesus Christ. He introduces the series and makes it crystal clear why Jesus was our substitute before God for the wrath of God that we justly deserved.
2. Judgment - Exodus 12:1-28. This text teaches us that the God we need to be saved from is the God who saves us. Jared did a great job of connecting the judgment that the Egyptians deserved was equally what Israel and us deserve. I think he did the best job I’ve heard of connecting that sobering text in Exodus with our present condition today.
3. Unclean - Leviticus 16:1-34. Here Jared spoke very clearly on how sinful people deal with a holy God is the fundamental question of human life. Jared took one of the foundational texts of the Old Testament and brought it to us with such clarity in its focus on the death and atoning work of Jesus Christ.
4. See and Be Satisfied - Isaiah 53:10-12. Jesus Christ knew what he was aiming at when he went tot he cross. It was not a random event, nor an unexpected one, but one he intended for a particular purpose. Jesus purchased our reward in his death and resurrection.
5. Forsaken - Mark 15:21-39. One of our other pastors, Jim Donohue preached an incredible message on how when the Son was forsaken by the Father we were redeemed. I told Jim after this message that I completely forgot that it was him preaching and was rather just gazing at the horror and beauty of the cross. This is not only the best sermon I’ve heard from Jim, but it is also the best sermon I’ve heard in recent memory on the cross event of Jesus Christ. I highly recommend this message.
6. Wrath - Romans 3:21-26. With what Luther calls the most important passage in the Bible, Jared shows us how the Cross resolves the dilemma of God and the dilemma of man.
7. Cursed - Galatians 3:10-14. Here Jared closes the series looking at how the blessing of the Father to us comes through the Son becoming a curse for us. This was a triumphant closing to such a glorious series, showing how the full blessings of God come to us through the Son, the eternal beloved of the Father, becoming our curse hung up on a tree.

This series was, in my estimation, phenomenal. Here at the church we ate it up. In particular, many people I talked to said that the preaching from the OT texts finally “made those parts not so intimidating.” It’s true, for many Christians understanding the OT is like trying to understand the ins-and-outs of English grammar, but the fact that our pastors preached messages that took hard passages and made them not only understandable, but important to people in how they understand and live their lives, well, that’s just good preach’n!

For me, the last three messages were the most affecting to my own soul. I left the whole series with my soul filled, but the last three in particular met me. Jim’s message, Forsaken, was just such a feast for my soul to look and dwell on. I didn’t take many notes through it, I just sat under the preaching of the Word, received, and viewed the cross of my Lord. Jared’s last message also affected me deeply. He began Cursed by talking about the current landscape of professing Christians in their views of what Jesus was doing on the cross. What was sobering and saddening to me was in his descriptions of how people call the penal substitution of Jesus on the cross “divine child abuse” and like phrases is the perspective many of the people I know from my past would take. Many of my friends would not hold a clear view of the cross, and would deride the view of it as penal substitution. The clear call is that such views that deny penal substitution are not Christian views, and undermine the claim of “Christian” by those pushing such views. What mercy of God that I, one of those who mocked his glory in the cross! Jared points out that the series isn’t a response to those people, but it would be naive to suppose that the series wasn’t to help us avoid such error.

I highly recommend listening to these, as you have the chance, in your devotional times. It’s not best to listen to sermon’s at times when you can simply turn them off – I’d note Tony Reinke’s thoughts here. The sermons and their personal application material can be downloaded here.