Dave spoke tonight from 1 Cor 2:1-5, reminding us of the centrality of the cross. He looked at 3 scenes from the last 24 hours of Jesus’s life:
1. The Last Supper, when Jesus ate with His disciples and instituted the sacrament of Holy Communion in remembrance of Him and with a definite emphasis on His forthcoming death. There, He stressed the centrality of His death, the purpose of His death (to establish a new covenant with God, that prophesied by Jeremiah in Jer 31:31) and the need to appropriate His death personally. We must believe in the efficacy of His death to receive the salvation He purchased for us, just as the Israelites had to apply the lamb’s blood to the door posts in order to be saved from the plague of the firstborn.
2. The Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death and prayed three time for the cup of God’s wrath to be removed from Him if possible. He emerged from this time of testing resolutely determined to do God’s will. This scene shows us the humanity of Jesus and how to succeed spiritually by submitting to the Father’s will.
3. On the cross we see the emphasis not on the physical horrors of crucifixion, but the response of Jesus as He died – forgiving another sinner, caring for His mother, the sense of anguish and forsakenness as He bore the sins of the world, the sense of victory as He realised His work was finished.
These scenes remind us of the seriousness of sin (which applies to us personally), the magnificence of God’s love and the fact that though salvation cost Christ everything, it is free to us. The cross is a stumbling-block to many even now, but it shows us the power of God and is the only way to be saved.