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Part of the gospel, the story of the gospel, and hearing the good news of Jesus is learning that we see God and we come into right relationship with God after doing it wrong. Doing God wrong. This is a critical aspect of the good news, Christ crucified. What we see in our readings today and what we recollect and remember on Good Friday with the crucifixion, what we see is the power of God over sin. That God is able to take what we intend for evil and bring good. This is a terrible fiasco that's unfolding, and all of humanity has a hand in it. And yet, this fiasco is our salvation. What we see, what the cross is, in other words, this is humanity looking at God and saying, go away. I don't want anything to do with you. Get out of here. Let's be rid of God. We look God in the face and said, Let's get rid. Let's get rid of this one. The cross is humanity's rejection of God, resistance of God, resistance of the lordship of Christ. It is this resistance and resentment that is targeted upon Jesus, you see in Scripture, right? Away with him, away with him. And we end up disposing of God in Christ in a manner in which we wouldn't treat our own garbage. Yet what's so incredible about the story of Christ crucified in the gospel is that all of this resistance and resentment and anger and hostility and our ambitious desires, it gets projected onto God in Christ. God uses that very hostility and that very sin as the mechanism of our redemption. Is this not wild? I mean, we say all the time, Christ died for our sins. And yet what we see unfolding in the scripture is that we're the ones, right, ushering Christ to the cross. We need to be rid of Him. In other words, our sin, through the mystery and the wisdom of God on the cross, our sin becomes the fuel in the engine of God's redemption. Your sin has been mysteriously caught up by this Christ, the only one able and capable to deal with sin. Your sin is caught up as fuel in the engine of redemption, forgiveness. This is why we can't out sin the cross of Christ. Because whatever sins we lay up on the cross, apparently this is just gasoline on the fire of God's love. In the same way that Christ teaches, right, we're all supposed to excel in love. Right? That's what we're called to. Love fulfills the law. Christ gave us a commandment yesterday, a new commandment I give you, that you love each other the way I have loved you. To excel in love. Love never ends. And yet Christ teaches us, we see this in the Gospels, that those who love much have been forgiven much. That your sin is directly proportional to the magnificence of your love. So think like, and we're called to excel in love. So the people in the vanguard, the front of the line, this shouting parade, who are leading, waving the banner of cruciform Christ-like love, it's those who have been forgiven much. Sin transformed like gas on the fire of God's love. The cross, in the cross, we see God's power over sin. God's power over shame, guilt, wounds. He bears our iniquities, but he bears our grief and our wounds. That all this is transformed by this Christ, the crucified Christ. The cross shows the power of God over sin, and the cross also shows our unsurpassable worth before God. Now, the gospel, we hear this, I know, especially those who grew up in the church. You know, you hear, yeah, God, God loves you, or God loves humanity. But when we talk about the gospel, we're not claiming that God loves humanity in general, like in an abstract sense. God loves humanity. But the claim of the gospel is that God loves you. This is a personal God. We see from the very beginning, which means if you're going to hear the good news, what this means is that the Lord has good news for you. A particular word spoken by the Spirit to you. This is how the gospel works. It's not just a generic message, it's deeply personal. And what we see with the cross is that you in the eyes of God have unsurpassable worth. And how can we say this? Use an example from uh theologian uh Greg Boyd. That we know how much something costs by how much we're willing to pay for it, right? If I had a car that was a total beater and I told you it's worth, you know,$40,000, I will go to the grave never selling that car. Why? Because it's not worth$40,000. Well, what if I told you though? Let me sweeten the dill. What if I told you actually the engine does not work and the wheels fall off? Friends, while you were enemies of God, while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Christ died precisely when we weren't functioning. We were a car that didn't run. Christ died for us while we were while we were hostile, enemies, dead. This is when Christ died. Well, what does this mean? That our worth before God has nothing to do with what we've done or what we haven't done. The best thing we've done and the worst thing we've done. Our unsurpassable worth has nothing to do with our functionality. It is simply given precisely because God delights in you as his creation. It comes built in already by virtue of being a human being created in the image of God. And so we see in the cross of Christ, you, we have unsurpassable worth. That God, what is what is humanity? What are you to God? Apparently, you're worth everything. You're worth God on the cross in the grave. That's unsurpassable worth. You know how much something's worth by what somebody is willing to pay for it. And Christ, God in Christ, looked upon humanity. Like the cross is simply God's way of saying, look, anything, anything, anything to make human. God so, so loved the world that he gave his son. What we see on the cross is a God who doesn't give a rip about dragging his name through the mud to be with you. Doesn't give a rip to take on shame and degradation. The worst. What was the most shameful and degradating thing the human imagining human imagination came up with in first century Palestine? It's crucifixion. Christ sees this before him and says He does. He looks back at the cross and he says, Okay. I believe it was C. S. Lewis, I may be wrong about that, who said that God speaks loudest in suffering. That the cross, what the cross is, is a megaphone, God's megaphone of love for us. And in the great mystery, God has taken the very problem, sin, our resistance, our wanting to have nothing to do with God, get rid of God, throw him away. God has taken all that, the problem, and is somehow poured into the engine and the economy of his grace and wisdom and redemption and has saved us. Wow. Wow. My prayer for us as we continue to journey with Christ with his cross and ultimately into the grave and out of the grave. That we see and hear the megaphone of the love of God speaking to us. That we hear the good news, personal good news spoken by the living spirit, who is constantly laboring over us. God is constantly wooing you, God is constantly inviting you, God is constantly laboring over you to give you a particular personal word. And it is this Christ, the Christ that we behold on the cross. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

unknown 13:47

Amen.