The 3 Crosses

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I want you to take your Bibles this morning to Luke 23.

Do me a favor if you would.

If you've got a seat near you that's empty, raise your hand.

Okay, of course, the front row.

I don't know if ushers, if there's anybody in the back that needs a seat, but there are some middle and a little up front.

Church, this is exciting, a good problem.

We had to go to the shed and fish out a hundred of our old chairs.

Amen.

I'm so glad that you chose to be with us this resurrection Sunday.

And this weekend has been phenomenal for us as a church.

There was over 1,500 people in attendance at our extravaganza yesterday.

Amen.

And uh we just want an opportunity to connect with the community.

We want to connect with you.

If this is your very first time at this church, we want to know you.

We want to make you a part of the CCW family.

And uh, we want to just say, uh, please come back, check us out.

And if you have any needs, don't leave here today.

Uh as pastors, we want to meet you.

We want to be able to pray with you, and uh we want it to be more than just today.

So we would love to get to know you more.

But turn your Bibles to Luke chapter 23.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

Luke 23, and I've been asking the Lord to show me uh for a few months what he would have me to speak this morning, Easter Sunday morning, and uh he took me to the three crosses.

So the message this morning is entitled The Three Crosses.

The number three is used in the Bible 467 times.

The number three is an important descriptor in the Bible.

When they speak of God, he is spoken of in this word, in this phrasing, holy, holy, holy.

Three times that's mentioned.

Jesus told Peter three times, if you love me, feed my sheep.

If you love me, feed my sheep.

If you love me, feed my sheep.

The Magi that came to see the birth of Jesus Christ, they brought three gifts to Jesus.

The identity of who our God is, who this person of God is found in three persons, in triunity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And of course, today we come together to celebrate that after three days, Jesus rose up out of that grave.

I don't mean to brag, but in 1999, I was the DVAC.

That's Delaware Valley Athletic Christian School Association.

I added some letters there.

But it was called DVAC.

Three-point champion.

Nothing.

I got nothing, Pastor.

Three-point champion.

Not the two-point champion, easy.

Three.

Okay?

And it was in the third round that I won that championship.

We were tied after two rounds.

And uh I got a medal for it and everything.

It's quite small.

But it's still my championship.

This morning, this may seem a little strange to some, but that's okay.

As I was preparing and coming in, I went by the Dollar General and there on the ground, laid out by my car, three pennies lined up.

I thought, okay, Lord, we're gonna talk about this three.

For most us, remember that on Good Friday there was a cross.

And we sing about the old rugged cross, and there's many songs about the cross, but I want to tell you and submit to you this morning there were three crosses at Golgotha on that Friday, and those three crosses each have something to teach us.

Every human being is faced with a choice at the cross.

I want you to pray with me.

Father, we love you.

We thank you for the opportunity that we have this morning to come together.

Lord, over the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I pray this morning that you would be lifted up, that you would draw each person to yourself, and that at the foot of these crosses, Lord, there would be a lesson to be learned.

Lord, teach us, get us out of the way for a few minutes.

The things we brought in, the things that came from this week, this month, I pray for just the next few minutes, our minds would be clear and full of what you have to say to us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

In Luke chapter 23, if you would look there, we're gonna read verses 32 through 39.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

Point number one this morning is this a reviling at the cross.

Luke 23.

Look at what it says, a reviling at the cross.

We've got a few verses to go through here.

There was also two other criminals led with him to be put to death.

And when they had come to the place, Calvary, there they crucified him.

And the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left.

Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.

And they divided his garments and cast lots, and the people stood looking on.

But even the rulers with them sneered, saying, He saved others.

Let him save himself if he is Christ, the chosen of God.

The soldiers also mocked him, coming and offering him sour wine, and saying, If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

And an inscription also was written over him in the letters of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

This is the king of the Jews.

Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed him, saying, If you are the Christ, save yourself and us.

Letter A is this hard-hearted and hanging.

That was this thief next to Jesus, hard-hearted and hanging.

He is a criminal.

He's been caught, he's been convicted and condemned for his crime.

The true character of the human heart, I want you to know this morning, is revealed by the actions of lost people at Calvary.

Their actions remind us that this man is hopeless apart from God's intervention.

Your reaction to the cross reveals where your heart is, the condition of your heart.

A reviler is someone who takes their anger and uses words to degrade.

Anybody know a reviler?

You don't have to point.

Matthew 15 says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

In Mark 3, Jesus, as he was going through with the disciples, highlights his opposition.

The people that were opposing his teachings and the miracles, and they were commenting about this.

The hardness of their heart does not allow them to believe.

At the cross, soldiers mocked Jesus.

At the cross, a thief mocks Jesus.

And at the cross, the crowd mocks Jesus.

1 Peter 2 23 says, When Jesus was reviled, he did not revile in return.

Jesus had authority in the way that he spoke.

He had shown all these miraculous shines and wonders.

But yet at the cross, when people were railing at him, Jesus held his peace.

Hebrews 12.2 says that he despised this.

He was despised and endured the shame.

Don't miss this part.

Jesus was being mocked.

He was being railed at.

See, Jesus forfeited the perfection of eternity, forfeited his union with the Father.

And on the cross, the God man cried out to his father, Why hast thou forsaken me?

In effect, God rejected God at the cross.

Many men throughout human history have rejected the cross.

And Jesus came willingly, gave up all, and here it is, for the chance that you and I would choose to accept him.

He endured all of that shame, all the suffering for a chance that someone, that us, that we would receive him.

And Judas and the thief and others would receive him.

He came and died, that everyone who railed on him would receive him.

What a heartbreaking moment.

Before his death, there was one more rejection that he had to taste.

And it was a thief right next to him.

Jesus came to touch that man, his life and his sin.

And he had to taste once again reviling and rejection.

Letter B, well, what happens to the thief?

He died in denial.

Look at there at Luke chapter 23.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

Letter B is he died in denial.

In verse 44, it says, Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.

This darkness came over the earth, and we see the power of God over the elements.

Interesting, after that last insult, I point out this darkness.

The last insult from this mocker, this thief, this reviler, he hurls him.

If you are the Christ, why don't you come down and save us too?

And just a few verses later, I believe God the Father shows his disproof when he turned out the lights.

You're mocking, the crowd's mocking, everybody's mocking my son who's dying for all sins, and who is in control of the weather, church.

God turned out the lights.

What happened when the land went dark?

This thief, I want you to hear this, never saw the beauty of light again.

A person who rebels against God's call, a person who reviles against God's sacrifice of his son will one day die in darkness.

He'll die in disbelief.

They'll die in denial.

It's interesting, the very first sin that was introduced in the Garden of Eden was a sin of unbelief.

The serpent came to Adam and Eve and said, Did God really say that?

He introduces unbelief, and there's this man next to Jesus and says, If you really are Jesus, this doubt, this denial, you see, he didn't believe in John 14, 6, which says, Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.

No man comes to the Father except by me.

It comes down to this, church.

At the cross, this man was saying no.

What do you say at the cross?

You see, history proves Jesus was a man, and accounts even outside of the Bible align with the veracity of biblical claims.

There's a Roman historian named Tacitus, Josephus, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and a host of others.

And history proves the acceptance that Jesus was a man.

History proves there was a real crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

And here is what we have to face ourselves with.

Is Jesus Christ Lord?

The Bible in Revelation says this.

This reviler rejected the salvation that was right next to him.

The great white throne judgment, Revelation 20, 11 through 15, says, Then I saw a great white throne, and him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them.

And I saw the dead small and great standing before the book, and the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life.

And the judge the dead were judged according to their works by the things which were written in the books.

The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them.

And they were judged, each one according to his works.

Then death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire.

This is the second death.

And anyone not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

So we see the fate of denial.

But I want to take you secondly to the remembered cross, remembered at the cross.

Look at Luke 23, verse 40 through 42.

Luke 23:40–42

You see, there were three people on those crosses, and there was another man, there was a thief.

Verse 40 through 42 says, But the other answering rebuked him, saying, This is him speaking to the other thief, Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation?

And we indeed justly for we receive the due reward of our deeds.

But this man has done nothing wrong.

Then he said to Jesus, highlight this, mark it, underline it, start.

He said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Letter A is this a recognition and remorse.

Recognition and remorse.

Both Matthew and Mark recognize that not one, but both of the criminals, okay, Luke's account didn't share this, but both of the criminals at the onset of crucifixion reviled Jesus.

Both of them.

But in Luke's account, we see something different.

A change happens.

There's a change in the heart of this one thief.

Understand that crucifixion was meant to be drawn out and torturous.

Mark 15, 25, Jesus was crucified in the third hour, it says.

And in Matthew 27, the sky went black in the sixth hour.

And in the ninth hour, we see the death of Jesus Christ.

So that's approximately six hours of crucifixion.

And if you go back and look at documents about crucifixion, sometimes they said it could take days.

Okay?

This form of torture was going on approximately six hours.

Something changed in that time on the cross for one of the thieves.

Again, Matthew, Mark both state that there were two thieves who reviled Jesus.

And all of a sudden, here in Luke, there's an account brought out.

One of them has a change of heart.

This man recognized Jesus.

Look at what he says.

A couple of things.

Verse 40 says, Do you not even fear God?

So he has a perspective of who God was.

And then he says, further, Jesus has done no wrong.

And it may seem subtle as you read this text, but the biggest shift in this man's life, this thief who was about to die, happened in verse 42.

He turned and he called Jesus as Lord.

That's capital L Lord in my Bible, not a lowercase Lord.

He called on Jesus as Lord.

And interestingly, because anything we know about the crucifixion, it is very difficult to talk on a cross hanging.

So every time there's a phrase that's given, there's a struggle in a phrase.

When they have to pull themselves up, catch a breath, there's a lot of pain going on to speak.

Jesus didn't preach a sermon from the cross.

Jesus did not mention his kingdom from the cross.

Jesus did not ask anything of the thieves at the cross.

But in that six hours, a major change happened in a man's life.

By association, he was with Jesus for six hours.

I've been with my wife for 20 years.

And I hate to admit this, but I now eat avocados.

I told myself I would never eat an avocado.

In my mind as a young person, look, I'm gonna admit this.

I'm steps away from guacamole, folks.

It's the ugliest food I've ever seen in my life, and as a kid, I thought, what on God's earth are people doing to themselves?

Why would they face themselves near this snot salad and put it in their mouth?

And I'm this close.

Some of y'all spoke out, it's good.

Now I got the people preaching back, amen.

You talk about Jesus, but it's good.

I'm that close.

I swore in my mind I'd never be there.

20 years of influence.

Can you imagine six hours?

If I said to some people here today, if you had six hours and the real Jesus came in the flesh and was near you, do you think you could leave from that circumstance not changed?

All of the people, think about the disciple, all the people that walked the earth in Jesus' three years of ministry.

Imagine the children that came and sat on him and shared that they'd been blessed by Jesus.

This thief sat there and just the presence of Jesus Christ on the cross and his heart had been changed.

He went from reviling and witnessing the nature of Jesus Christ.

And I need you to know this was this was a difficult thing in that day.

Jesus was a polarizing figure to many because they wanted a Messiah, and he was not what Israel had come to expect.

His miracles made his claims have some veracity, some strength behind them.

And I thought maybe the thieves, maybe they had been to a church service.

They'd been to a place or around where Jesus might have spoken.

Maybe they have seen or heard or been near a healing.

But what we know for certain is there was an instant, and this thief's heart went from reviling to, this is Lord.

This is Lord.

And that's important, church.

And I want to narrow that down because we live in the Bible Belt.

It is important what we call as Lord.

When I say we live in the Bible belt here, lots of people their whole life have heard here of Jesus.

It's not like that every place.

Okay, we're lucky in a real sense.

Most of you, your whole life since you were a child, there are probably people in this room that that's not the case.

But my whole life I've heard of the gospel.

And we're here in the Bible, and you've heard of Jesus as Lord.

And for most people, if I said, do you agree that Jesus is Lord?

Most people in most places in Chelsea, Alabama, the majority would raise up their hands.

That intellectually we agree that Jesus is Lord.

But I want to tell you something that's a little scary.

Religious awareness in society does not make Jesus your Lord.

It doesn't make him your Lord.

Have you called on him as Lord?

Is Jesus Christ Lord of your life?

The Greek word for Lord is Adonai, which means master and supreme authority.

Is Jesus that in your life?

When you look at your decisions, when you look at your schedule, is Jesus Lord?

Is he supreme master?

Look at what A.W.

Tozer said.

People who have Jesus Christ as Lord have three distinct marks about them.

This is how we know that a person really and truly is a Christian.

They are facing only one direction.

Man, when Jesus got my heart, I went like this.

They're facing only one direction.

The second thing he says, they no longer have plans of their own.

And they are in a direction they can never turn back.

That was the third thing.

They're facing one direction.

Their plans are not their own, and they can never turn back.

It's not that they even want to.

I cannot.

My life is this direction.

It's not going back.

There's not, I may mess up, fail, fell, but I'm getting back, and I'm going that way.

People that call Jesus as Lord see it in that manner.

Ladies, I got a question for you.

How many of you would be okay if your man was 90% faithful in the marriage?

Zero percent! Am I right?

That's an A in high school, 90%.

He's doing pretty good, right?

90%.

No, there is no such thing as 90% loyalty.

Loyalty is 100%.

If he's 90% Faithful, you are not his lady.

Are you hearing me?

If he is 90% there, there is no marriage.

I have yet to meet a guy who's ever said, you know, Pastor, my wife's loyal to me most of the time, and that's pretty good.

No, it's not.

It's not good at all.

It's not fine.

Augustine said, Jesus is not valued at all.

Don't miss this.

Until he is valued above all.

This man acknowledged his guilt before God, this thief on the cross.

He said, We indeed have been judged justly.

He has remorse about his sin.

And then he acknowledged Jesus as Adonai.

Now I know the moment was brief, but he looked at him and he said, Adonai, Master, Lord.

He said, Please remember me.

If you have not recognized Jesus as Christ as Lord today, there's going to be an invitation.

And if he's Lord, I want to tell you, it's a hundred percent.

Your schedule looks different.

Your life looks different.

Your goals are one way and they don't ever go back.

If Jesus is Lord.

Now we may agree in the Bible Belt of Alabama, yes, sir, Jesus is Lord.

But what does your life say about that statement?

Is that accurate by the steps that your feet are taking?

Is he Adani?

Well, let's look at letter B.

What happened with this second thief?

Verse 43 of Luke 23.

It says, And Jesus said to him, Assuredly, I say to you, today, you will be with me in paradise.

You see, the first thief, he died in denial.

But the second thief who acknowledged Jesus as Lord, it says he would be with him in paradise.

That word is paradosis.

It's a Persian word meaning garden park.

Originally it was used for the Garden of Eden in the Old Testament, and it became a type of future bliss for God's people in this present passage.

It represents Jesus' promise to the thief of what would happen after death.

And I need, folks, listen, I need you to face yourself with this question.

What happens with my life post this life?

What happens after death?

Something happens.

Some people believe it's just nothing.

You go into the grave.

But I want to submit to you, I believe that something happens.

And I wanted to share with you this morning a video.

Alistair Begg offers this explanation much better than I could share.

So I wanted you to hear from Aleister Begg about what happened with that man that day.

If you watch his video.

I can't wait to find that fellow one day to ask him.

How did that take out for you?

You've never been in a Bible study, you never got baptized, you never you didn't know a thing about church membership.

And and yet, and yet, you made it! How did you make it?

That's what Angel must have said.

You know, like what are you doing here?

Well, I don't know.

What do you mean you don't know?

Well, I because I don't know.

Excuse me, let me get my supervisor supervisor in.

So with just a few questions for you.

First of all, are you are you are you clear on the doctrine of justification by faith?

Guys that I've never heard of it in my life.

I thought, let's just go to the doctrine of scripture.

And eventually in frustrating says, on what basis are you here?

And he said, The man on the middle cross said, I can come.

The man on the middle cross looked at the thief that day and he said, You will be with me in paradise.

You see, Jesus came for that thief that day.

He came to seek and to save that which was lost.

Church, folks, today Jesus came for you.

The man in the middle said, I can come.

And it's up to him.

It's based on what he's done and what he said.

Let me tell you what he said you can do.

In Romans 10, 9 and 10, this is what we're told.

The Bible says, confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, and you will be saved.

That man on that cross that day confessed.

He said, Jesus, he said, Lord.

Verse 13 of Romans 10 says, Whoever, that's anybody, that's any side, that's anything.

Bible says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall, it doesn't say might be saved, can be saved.

It's a question, maybe it says, Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Now, have you called on him as capital L Lord?

Wording is important.

Yes, I agree.

In the Bible Belt of the South, in football, in Jesus, in Friday night lights.

Has my heart turned to say, Jesus is my Lord?

If my path hasn't changed, my words can say a lot, but have my actions followed.

And here is the promise that the thief that day who perished to paradise would come to understand.

John 14, 1 through 4 says, This church, one day, those who are remembered by Jesus Christ, those have repented, who have had remorse, it says, Let not your heart be troubled.

In my father's house, there are many mansions, and if it were not so, I would not have told you.

And I go to prepare a place for you.

And I will go, and I will come again to receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.

He says, one day, there's this great, big, beautiful place, this heaven for those who have called on him as Lord.

Well, let's finish up with the Redeeming Cross.

Luke 23, verse 44 and 45.

Luke 23:44

There's a third cross, the cross in the middle.

It says, Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.

Then the sun was darkened.

This is important, I'd highlight this, and the veil of the temple was torn into.

And when Jesus is cried out with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

Having said this, he breathed his last.

Letter A is this sinless and substitutionary.

I want you to see something that if you were just reading by, it comes as background noise, you may miss it.

It says, The veil of the temple was torn.

Why is that important?

Well, once a year in the Old Testament, the high priest could come into the temple.

And inside the inner courts of the temple, there was a place called the Holy of Holies.

And inside the Holy of Holies, just outside of it, there was a veil, a covering that nobody was able to get into but this high priest.

And once a year, the high priest could come and bring a sacrifice into the very Holy of Holies.

And the high priest, before he did that, let me tell you some things he had to do to get into the Holy of Holies.

He had to bathe, he had to put on special garments, and if the priest did not follow particular Levitical protocol, the penalty for him was death.

Okay?

The high priest was the only one that could touch the veil and enter into the Holy of Holies to bring a sacrifice for everyone who sinned.

He had to come in and bring a blood sacrifice into that Holy of Holies.

Well, it signified something very important the moment that that veil was torn from top to bottom, from the heavens to earth.

A major truth happened.

And here are some verses in Luke.

You can look with me quickly, verse 14, 22, and 41.

I want you to see it.

Says this.

He was sinless.

This is important.

In Galatians 4, 4 and 5, it says, When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman under law, to redeem those who were under law.

We are under the law.

Romans 8 says, the demand of that law, I'm getting somewhere, requires a man under the law for redemption.

Okay?

There's just one problem.

The demands of the law for flesh are impossible.

The demands under the law are this sinlessness.

You can't not sin.

Just try.

How many of you never lie?

A bunch of you just sinned.

Right there.

Romans 5 12 says, by one man sin entered into the world, and to all man, death by sin.

No matter how good we try, we can't erase sin because it's in us.

It's in our flesh.

And we need a flesh substitute.

This man was sinless.

All of these people that brought him before them in trial, they said, This man has no fault found in him.

He's sinless, he's sinless.

And so we need this substitute because we are not sinless.

In 11th grade, they gave us a substitute Spanish teacher.

And in 11th grade, halfway through the year, and I'm going to tell you, I'm not proud of this, but we ran off a teacher.

We were so bad at class that we ran off a teacher.

I watched it.

Mr.

Garb said, I'm out of here.

I mean, walked out middle class, and we're like, what have we done?

So for the rest of that year, my parents are paying$5,000 a year at this Christian school.

That was a lot of money back then.

And you know, they employed after that, after we ran off Mr.

Garber, they employed an$8 VHS tape to teach us the rest of the year.

No questions.

I couldn't ask the VHS tape what that meant.

There was no conversations with that tape.

Here's your VHS, kids.

Good luck.

I got an A that year in Spanish.

But I want to tell you today, me no comprehende.

Y'all with me?

I needed someone in the flesh.

Someone that was a representative of teaching.

Well, man is stuck.

Man is sinful.

And because flesh has to be authority, we're in this plight.

But God before time, John 1.1 and John 1.14, married this thing.

See, John 1.1 says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Jesus and God existed together in this union.

But John 1.14 it says, and then Jesus, God was made flesh, came and dwelt among us.

And so we were sent.

Jesus, who has authority and the right to authority, because this flesh lived in a sin-riddled world and had no sin.

2 Corinthians 5.21 says, He who knew no sin became sin that I might know God.

Hebrews said he was tempted in all points, yet without sin.

They stood there looking for an accusation, couldn't find any.

And then the earth shook and the veil tore from top to bottom.

And what it signified was our propitiation was the perfect substitute.

Our substitute had come, and it what it had torn was the thing that guarded us from getting to the presence of God the Father.

Our substitute.

Well, letter B is this.

Jesus died and resurrected from the dead.

Look at verse 46.

And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

Having said this, he breathed his last.

Jesus died.

He breathed his last.

Luke's version of this feels a little anticlimactic.

Let me fill in some blanks about what happened.

You see, Pilate, the last one that said Jesus was without sin, washed his hands.

Yet he said, I will chastise him.

And that word for chastise means scourged.

So Jesus was scourged.

Stay with me, church.

Jesus died that day, and we could say that flippantly, he died and he rose again.

But the way that he died, he was scourged, he was stripped, he was tied to a post, and they took what was called a cat of nine tails and began to whip him.

They say, 40 lashes, save one, because a man could continue living in all of this torture with that many lashes.

So they ripped him to shreds.

He looked inhuman at the scourging, and then they would take a man, and the Romans perfected crucifixion.

The gospel writers didn't go into detail about crucifixion because they assumed everyone that would be reading this would understand how horrific and barbaric it was.

One man said crucifixion was to die a thousand deaths.

And so they would take his wrist and they would nail through his wrist, and they would take his feet and nail through his feet, and they would stand up the cross, and a man would begin suffocating to death.

And he would feel the icy chill of his joints and his bones and the pain coming over him, and he would breathe.

And every time that he spoke the seventh phrase on the cross, it was torture.

But I want to tell you all the things that were done to Jesus that day, not one person chose to crucify Jesus.

None of them chose to crucify Jesus.

Jesus chose to be crucified.

Jesus chose to be hung.

Jesus chose because Jesus in a second could have called a legion of angels down.

Jesus could have done anything that he wanted to do, but he chose quietly to take my cross.

For everything that was done on Good Friday, if it stayed that way, as Luke said, that Jesus had breathed his last, it would have been a historical story.

It would have been a sad story.

But if Jesus had just breathed his last, listen to me, if that's the way it ends, there's no reason for us to come to church.

If Jesus had just breathed his last, there's no reason for a choir and for everybody to be standing and worshiping.

If Jesus had just breathed his last, there's no reason to celebrate Easter and Resurrection Sunday.

But Mark 16 says something.

Mark 16, 2 and 6 says, very early in the morning, the first day of the week, they came to the tomb.

And when they got to the tomb, the stone had been rolled back.

And verse 6 of Mark 16 says, Do not be alarmed.

You seek Jesus of Nazareth, and he is not here.

But church, he is risen.

Amen.

He is risen, church.

You know, he died over 2,000 years ago, but nobody ever refers to him as the late Jesus.

When somebody dies today, they're the late Mr.

The Late Mrs.

Jesus is never referred to in the past tense.

The story of Jesus is tremendous because he did die.

Jesus did die and go into that tomb, but Jesus rose out of that grave.

He is the living Jesus.

He is not the late Jesus.

He's alive today.

And he went into a tomb tortured, crucified, and dead.

But on the third day, he walked out of that grave.

He's alive, Church.

Jesus is alive.

Well, I was thinking about this this week, that these crosses and what we have to do at the cross.

One man, a thief, reviled and he died in darkness.

A second man, when presented with the cross of Jesus Christ, had a life change.

He saw him as Lord.

When I was just a little boy, I went running into a mirror maze.

Some of y'all have been into those.

And at first it was really fun as I turned corners and saw, you know, the mirrors were all different shapes, and I laughed and I was having a good time and it was loud.

And suddenly I realized that I hadn't seen anybody in my family for a little while.

And then I became afraid and frantic.

And I began running, and every time I turned a corner, all I could see was my own face.

And I got more scared and more scared, and I kept turning and faster, my heart began to race, and it was just me.

I could hear people, but I got really scared sitting there.

I sat down and fight as I try, I began to cry.

I felt helpless and hopeless and scared.

And as I was sitting there, I slowed down my little eight-year-old mind.

I was stuck.

Finally, I yelled out, help.

Next thing I turned, and my dad came in, grabbed me by the hand, and I tried to keep my little tears, but my dad just grabbed me by the hand.

He knew what to do, and he walked me out and acted like nothing ever really happened.

I want you to see this image of the crossroads.

This picture.

Matthew 7, 13 and 14 says this there's two choices at the crosses.

Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction.

And there are many who go in by it because the narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life.

There are two roads.

You're on one of them.

The whole of the earth is on a road.

And as I thought about that, people are running at every turn.

And as they're turning each turn of life, they're coming face to face with themselves at another corner.

And as they keep going through the maze of life, I come face to face at another corner.

And many people today are suffocating because every turn they think they're going to find purpose and help and hope, and they're back at their own face.

And it's suffocating and it's hopeless and it's helpless and it's scary.

And I want to tell you the answer is at the middle cross.

If you will come to the end of yourself and you will cry out like I did as a child and say, Help, I promise you.

So that everyone could be relieved of this burden, of this weight, so that we could know Jesus as Savior and be released from this life of purposelessness, so that we could be given heaven one day to gain.

Would you bow your heads and close your eyes this morning?

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