The Most Important Battle

What was the most important battle in history?  The Battle of Stalingrad in WW2? Operation Overlord in Normandy, France in WW2? The Battle of Yorktown in the American Revolution?  Waterloo? Thermopylae?

There are many battles that historians have argued to be the most important battle.  But the greatest battle is often ignored in these debates.  At first glance, it doesn’t even appear to be a battle.  Some guy was crucified along with 2 thieves.  Big deal, right?  The Romans crucified a lot of people.  But, THE most important battle was fought at the Cross.  God died to redeem fallen man and to conquer evil.

How do we know this was the most important battle?  Jesus referred to His coming death and resurrection many times.  The first recorded words of Jesus (not necessarily His first words ever spoken) are to His earthly parents after they left Him in Jerusalem by mistake and found Him speaking with the teachers in the Temple.  He reminded them of His one reason for coming to earth: “I must be about my Father’s [work]” (Luke 2:49).  His whole life He was primarily focused on one thing: His death.  Jesus told His disciples many times that he was going to be killed and rise again after 3 days (cf. Mark 8:31-32, 9:30-32; Matt 17:22-23; Luke 24:25-27, 44-47; etc.).  Even the night before His death, when he instituted the sacrament of communion, Jesus’ actions declared the importance of the cross. 

He took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and told the apostles that it symbolized His body given for them, then finished by saying “do this in remembrance of Me.”  Then, He took the cup, gave thanks for it and said “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” (I Cor. 11:23-25; Matt 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:17-19.)

His memorial service was not to be a one-time event, like ours, but rather a regularly occurring event.  We are to remember that the bread symbolizes His body given for us.  The cup symbolizes His blood shed for us.  His death speaks from both elements.  The Lord’s Supper, the only sacrament instituted by the Jesus Himself, doesn’t highlight His birth, nor His life, nor His words, nor His works.  Instead it highlights His death.   It was by His death that He wanted to be remembered.  Could anything more plainly illustrate the importance of the cross to Jesus? 

The apostles in their letters echoed the same sentiment.  Paul starts I Corinthians 15 by saying:

Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. –I Corinthians 15:1-4

In chapter 2 of I Corinthians, Paul wrote:

For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. –I Corinthians 2:2

Paul plainly stated that the cross was the most important thing he taught when he had been with the believers in Corinth.  There was nothing more important to him than the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.  For sake of time, I won’t go into the other apostles, but I think it is safe to say that without the Cross, there is no Christianity. 

If the Cross isn’t central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus. 

So, let’s pray, then we’ll look at the importance of the cross.

Why is the cross so important?  We first need to look at something about the nature of mankind.  Then we’ll look at a couple of characteristics of God that most people don’t put together.  But together, they play a crucial role in the cross.  Then we’ll be able to better understand the necessity of the cross.

Hurricanes and earthquakes strike, and man rallies to help his fellow man.  He donates money, food, and his time to help.  So, man is basically good, right?  Listen to this:

“Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He's dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free rein to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.”

Sound like the beginning of an article in a Christian magazine?  It isn’t.  It’s from a crime report written by the Minnesota Crime Commission in 1926.   Man is born sinful.  And each of us makes a decision to rebel against God.  We reject our position of a created, dependent being and proclaimed ourselves to be independent of God and His moral law.  Mark 7:21-23:

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man. –Mark 7:21-23

Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us that the “heart is … desperately wicked.”  Our attempts at being good are nothing more that repulsive, oily rags.  (Isaiah 64:6).   The English word “sin” comes from 5 different Greek works. They range from words meaning “to miss the target” (hamartia – the most common), “unrighteousness, iniquity” (adika), “evil of a vicious or degenerate kind” (ponēria), “trespass or transgression” (parabasis), and “lawlessness” (anomia).  We are a lawless, trespassing, unrighteous bunch.  We can’t do anything good apart from God (Romans 3:10).

 For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God –Romans 3:23

As a result of our sin and rebellion, we have earned death.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. –Romans 6:23

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned –Romans 5:12

Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. –James 1:15

Sin brings one thing: death, both physical and spiritual.  In our natural, unrepentant state we are separated from God.  We are dead spiritually. What semblance of good that man has within him comes from having been created in the image of God.  But we chose to rebel and “miss the mark.”  The only thing we deserve is eternal separation from God. 

Why must we be separated from God?  What is it about Him that makes sin so bad?  If we are made in His image, why doesn’t he just forgive us and move on?

In Isaiah 6, Isaiah had a vision of heaven.  He noted that there were angels whose sole purpose it was to cry “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts!” (v. 3). What is holiness? Holiness is the inability to tolerate sin.  He, because of His holy nature, is unable to coexist with sin.  God is so pure and righteous, this His very nature will not allow sin to anywhere near him.  God is completely unable to allow sin to exist.  Sin cannot approach God. 

This, unfortunately, is often over looked, or left out.  But it answers the age old question of “How could a loving God send someone to hell?”  

There are five metaphors the Bible uses to help illustrate the complete irreconcilability of divine holiness and sin: God’s height above and distance from sinful man (Job 22:12), God as light and fire blinding and consuming (Isaiah, Moses, Jesus transfiguration), and His reaction of vomiting out sinful men.  He cannot be in the presence of sin.  Habakkuk explains His holiness by saying:

Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and you cannot look on wickedness with favor. –Habakkuk 1:13a

Isaiah 59 talks about how our sin has made a separation between us and God.  Our sins have hidden his face from us so that He doesn’t hear us.  Later in the chapter, Isaiah says that God will repay us according to our deeds. 

His wrath is poured forth as his holy reaction to sin (Ezekiel 7:7-8; Lamentations 4:11).  He must judge sin.  To not do so, is to violate His character.  Why does the God of the Old Testament seem to be a God of wrath, while the God of the New Testament seems to be a God of love?  He wanted to show us his intolerance of sin so that we would see our need of a Savior.

His holiness is again seen in the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  In John 11:33, Jesus is “deeply moved” when He sees Mary’s sorrow for her brother.  The verb translated “moved” comes from a word that means “to snort with anger,” or “to have indignation on, to blame, to sigh with chagrin.”  His actual reaction to her sorrow was to snort in anger.  Jesus’ was angered that sin had ruined His creation and brought death.  This time it affected Him by taking one of His close friends, and it angered Him to see the life He had created destroyed.  I don’t think He wept tears of human sorrow for the loss of a friend, but tears at the corruption sin had brought into His creation.

Contrast His holy inability to tolerate evil with His love.  I don’t need to spend a lot of time explaining His love, as it has become a major point in Christian teaching of late. In Hosea 11, God describes treating Israel like a child.  He taught him to walk, took him in His arms, and bent down to feed him. Yet Israel was determined to go his own way and rebelled.  As a Father, God should punish Israel, yes?  But in verses 8-9, God says His “heart is turned over within” Himself.  He says He will “not execute [His] fierce anger” and that He “will not destroy Ephraim again. For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”  God chose to withhold punishment out of love.  He goes on to describe how Israel “will walk after the Lord” and “roar like a lion.”

His love is taught over and over again throughout the New Testament, but we can’t separate His love from His holiness.  We cannot change the dualism of God’s holiness and love - wrath and mercy - into one characteristic without destroying the seriousness of the Biblical knowledge of God.  The cross is the only place where we see uncompromising righteousness put together against unrivaled love.  “Without a holy God, there would be no problem of atonement.  It is the holiness of God’s love that necessitates the atoning cross….” (P.T. Forsyth, Work of Christ, p.80)

Because of our sin, we deserve death.  The Creator’s holy wrath has been kindled against the created because we rebelled against him.  We had no way of redeeming ourselves.  Even our best attempt at righteousness is offensive to God.  At some point, Evil was going to clash with Good.  When it did, it would be a battle for the ages.  The most important battle.  The climax of all of history.  That battle happened at the cross.  “In Christian theology of history, the death of Christ is the central point of history; here all the roads of the past converge; hence all the roads of the future diverge.” (Stephen Neil as quoted by John Stott, The Cross of Christ)

Satan knew that Jesus had come to earth to defeat him.  Thinking that since he had power over the earth (as the “Prince of the power of the air Ephesians 2:2), and Jesus had taken human form and was in Satan’s territory, Satan tried to derail Jesus’ plan.  Satan had tried to defeat Jesus throughout Jesus entire earthly life.  Herod had tried to kill Him by murdering all the male children under 2 years of age; Satan himself had tempted Him on numerous occasions; the Jewish leaders tried to kill him several times; and the people misunderstood Him and wanted to make Him an earthly king and overthrow Rome.  Satan had ignited the anger of the Jewish rulers against Jesus.  He was perceived as a “threatening rival who disturbed their peace and upset the status quo.”  They wanted Him gone.  But, God used their sin to further accomplish His purpose.  From His birth, Jesus had one thing on His mind: The Cross – redeem His fallen creation, and take back what is rightfully His.

The Cross was merely a bruise to Christ’s heel (Genesis 3).  “What looks like … the defeat of goodness by evil is also, and more certainly, the defeat of evil by goodness. Overcome there, He was Himself overcoming.  Crushed by the ruthless power of Rome, He was Himself crushing the serpent’s head.  The victim was the victor, and the cross is still the throne from which He rules the world.” (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p.228).

Jesus died for several reasons.

1) For us, the sheep (John 10:11; Luke 22:19; Romans 5:8; Ephesians 5:2; I Thessalonians 5:10; Titus 2:14

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. (Romans 5:8-9)

2) So that He might bring us to God

For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit…—I Peter 3:18

3) For our sins (I Corinthians 15:3; I Peter 3:18; Hebrews 9:26, 10:12; I John 1:7; Revelation 1:5-6)

4) He died our death when He died for our sins. (Romans 6:23; Hebrews 2:15).  Death isn’t natural; it’s penal (punishment). Remember Jesus response to Lazarus’ death?

5) To destroy the Devil’s work

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. –I John 3:8

Moved by His holy love, Jesus Christ offered Himself as the perfect substitute for sinners to satisfy God.  God, in Christ, bore our sin and died our death to set us free from sin and the ensuing punishment of death.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.  And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. –Colossians 2:13-15

I don’t want to be guilty of separating His death from His resurrection.  If the cross was the battle that won the War, the Resurrection was the bold headline to announce it in the papers 3 days later.  We cannot regard the cross as defeat and the resurrection as the victory.  Rather, the cross was the victory won, and the resurrection the victory endorsed, proclaimed, and demonstrated.  (Acts 2:24, Ephesians 1:20-23; and I Peter 3:22)

Mankind is willfully sinful.  God is holy and cannot tolerate sin.  Man has broken God’s law.  Man must be punished.  But, the same God, whose holy wrath would be poured out on us, has also made a way for us to come to Him.  In His holy love, He sent His only Son to die our death – for us, for our sins – so that we could be redeemed, justified, and reconciled to God.

What should our response be to the most important battle?  Just sit back and say, “That’s cool?  I like to feel loved.  It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.” NO!

For the unbeliever who has yet to accept God’s sacrifice for you own sin, I encourage you to change that today.  Accept Christ’s sacrifice for you. 

That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed." ... For "whoever will call on the Name of the Lord will be saved.” –Romans 10:9-11, 13

It’s that simple.  Believe that He died for you personally, and pray to Him expressing that.  If you don’t know how, or would like more information, please find someone here and get this taken care of today.  Don’t wait.  You may get hit by the proverbial “beer truck” pulling out of the church parking lot and not get another chance.  What happens if you die not believing that Jesus died for you?  You will have to pay for your sins for eternity.  The Bible says that unbelievers will be sent to the Lake of Fire where there is “weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth”; where “the worm never dies”; and thirst is never quenched.  A gift is only a gift if you accept it.  Please come see me or a pastor or the person who brought you to church today if you want help.  We want to help you understand this.  This is the most important decision that you will ever make.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. –John 3:16

Believers, when we die, we will get to enjoy Heaven with God, for He has made us righteous and holy.

For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. –Titus 3:3-7

Don’t forget where we came from.  Don’t have a holier-than-thou attitude.  We too were once rebellious sinners who despised God and were on our way to Hell also.  But!  To the praise of His glory, He loved us when we wanted nothing to do with Him.  He sought us out.  We did nothing, but believe. 

We have the joy of our salvation.  Nothing that we will go through in this life will ever compare to what Jesus endured on the cross.  He endured excruciating physical pain from a whip designed to expose and tear muscle.  He was then nailed to a cross while wearing a crown of very large thorns.  Being in the crucified position would have locked His lungs in the inhale position.  In order to exhale, He would have had to push and pull against the spikes, all the while rubbing his bloodied, bare back against a very rough, un-sanded piece of wood. Then, God placed the sins of the entire world on Him.  And now that He had become sin for us, God the Father had to turn His back on God the Son.  God could not look at His own son because of the sin he now bore.  For the only time in history, from before time began, through time, and all the way through eternity to come, God the Father had to turn His back on His own Son.

 But, those of us who believe cannot be separated from God.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing [even yourself; you’re a created thing], will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. –Romans 8:35, 37-39

We are no longer under condemnation.  We are redeemed.

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. –Romans 8:1

Saints, we are on the victory march.  The War is won.  We often feel as though our battles are the largest battles ever faced, or that we have to win the war single-handedly. Yes, there are small clean up battles to be fought; but Jesus Christ fought the battle.  And He won!  The war is won.  On the Cross, what was his sixth of seven statements?  “It – is – finished.”  In Greek, that phrase is one word.  It is in the perfect tense which means it has been, and will forever remain finished.  You can’t do any more than He has.  He finished it.  When God says it’s done, there is nothing else to be done.  The same power that then raised Him from the dead, is the same power that we have to live our daily lives and fight sin (Eph. 1:18-21).  Keep your head on a swivel, and finish strong.

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.  –Romans 16:20

Believers have an enormous responsibility as part of our freedom.

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.  "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." –Matthew 28:18-20

I want to leave you with a statement that my university president (Dr. Bob Jones III) drilled into us as students.  He has since graduated to the chancellor position, so I don’t know how much the current student body gets this, but at least once a month, if not once a week in chapel, he would say:

“The most sobering reality in the world today,”

Then as a student body, we responded with:

“…is that people are dying and going to hell today.”

This is the war.  To carry out the Great Commission.  Yes, we have to fight sin in our own lives, but, we should be actively sharing the Gospel with other around us.