Power Of The Cross | Jason Martin

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We hope this message will light up your day.

So today it's Good Friday and Good Friday again. If

you're in the x clang group, right, I shared a

comic strip. What's so good about Good Friday?

What?

Yes, Jesus died on the Cross. That's what we all

know and we celebrate. But more importantly is that he

rolls again on Easter Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, and because of

that we are restored to God and we have a

we are able to have eternal life again. Okay, but

good Friday. The symbol of Good Friday is usually the

the cross. The symbol of Good Friday is usually the cross.

How many of your Bibles have a cross in front

of it? Mind doesn't have a but some Bibles have

a cross in front of it. How many of y'all

are wearing chains with a cross around it? Some of

y'all are wearing it. Some of y'all have T shirts

with the cross. You got stickers with a cross, and

sometimes it becomes a fashion statement as well. The cross.

It has become popular because there is the red Cross,

you know, all around the world where eight is being

provided by the Red Cross Society. And apart from that,

some people like what I mentioned, they use it as

a fashion statement. But today I wanted to just bring

us back. It's bring us back to really understand what

the Cross is. And again this was my journey again

with every sermon that I preach. It's a journey that

I take to re examine whatever I believed in and

to really understand it. So my goal is that even

the kids will be able to understand it. So the

best way to know if you understand something is that

if you can explain it to a kid and they understand,

you know. So that is my goal today to explain.

Let me get my slide up. So the title of

today's sermon is the Power of the Cross, The Power

of the Cross. If you've been in church long enough,

you have probably sung the song the Power of the Cross.

You know, if just by looking at that right, you

can already rehearse the words of the song in your mind,

because we have sung it so often time and time again,

and but there is so much power in it. You know.

We look at the cross as something so polished, it's

like a fashion statement. We use it to declare that

I'm a Christian, but do you know the actual cross

was a rugged cross. It was a rugged cross. It

was a rough piece of wood, It was not polished,

It had a lot of splinters, and it was used

for the worst of criminals. The cross was used for

the worst of criminals. And not only that. Because it

was used for the worst of criminals, it was also

the worst form of punishment. It was the most painful

way to die. You you know that some people they

hung on the cross for days. Can you imagine they

hung on the cross for days. They died slowly in agony,

suffocating on their own blood. And that is the cross

that we are talking about. That is the cross that

Jesus died on. So this evening right that what does

this cross represent to us? When we look at the cross,

what do we remember? Do we just think that, hey, yeah,

you remember of God's goodness that Jesus was willing to

go to the cross to die for our sin. But

today I want to just summarize it into three points.

It's in three c's and then we will take it

from there. Okay, So the first point, the power of

the cross confronts So when you look at the cross,

it is supposed to confront us. What do I mean

by confront When you look at the cross, it is

like what I mentioned, right, It is reserved for the

worst of criminals. It is reserved for the worst of criminals,

meaning that people have committed the worst kind of crimes.

But Jesus went to the cross for us, and why

why is that soul? So let me bring us through

a few versus. Okay, first one romance tree. For everyone

has sinned. We all fall shot of God's glorious standard.

So this is something that across when we look at

a cross, it should confront us. He says that he

actually I'm not such a bad person. I'm okay, you know,

I'm good. If you compare me to somebody else, I'm

actually okay one. You know, if you compare me on

a scale of one to ten as a sinner, probably

I'm a one or two compared to somebody my neighbor,

who is eight or nine, you know. And that's how

we evaluate ourselves. We think that a in comparison to

somebody else, actually I'm not so bad. But the Bible

says that all of us has sinned. Whether you are

a one or a ten on a scale to us

of a sinner, you are still a sinner. There is

no scale of one to ten. There is zero or one.

You are either a sinner or you're not. You have

either sinned or you have not. How many of us

here can boldly pull up your hands and say, I

have never seen before? Okay, because it is quite impossible.

It is. We are born with sin nature. If you

have babies, right, one of the first things you have

to do, right is teach them how to share. Right,

You have to teach us share. You have to Yeah,

got to feed up. But later, because of sin nature,

sharing does not come naturally. Everything is about self selfishness. Right,

and because of that, all of us have sinned, and

all of us have fallen shot of glorious God's glorious standard.

Then you say that how can when did the start?

I mean if if I, for example, if I was

born and I never sinned at all, would I qualify

to be sinless. Let me take us to the next

verse next Romans five. When Adam sin sin entered the world.

So all of us are from the descendant of Adam.

So it means that all of us have that sin

nature in us. We cannot escape So when we look

at the cross, the cross is there because we have sinned,

because Adam has sinned, and sin nature is in us.

Adam's sin brought death, so death spread to everyone for

everyone has sinned. So when we look at the cross,

the cross is supposed the confronted and say that, hey,

I had Jesus had to come down to die for us.

Because I have sinned, I have fallen shot of God's glory.

No matter how good I live my life, I am

still The wages of sin is death, which is the

next verse next for the wages of sin is death,

but the free gift of God is eternal life, true

Christ Jesus alone. So when we look at a cross,

it confronts us. We are sin We are sinners. Again,

there is no small sin. Big sin is zero or one.

You have either sinned or you are sinless. And we

know that only Jesus was sinless. Okay, And because we

have sinned, we know that sin entered through the time

of Adam. And because of that, all of us are

born with us sin nature. And because we are born

with a sin nature, the wages of sin is death,

the dead end if we don't change our sin nature.

We will be headed towards death, eternal death. Okay, So

next I want to ask you all a question. Next,

why didn't God just erase our sins? Why did Jesus

have to die on the cross? But why didn't God

just erase our sins? Yeah, all of us have sinned.

But again, God, if he wanted to, he can erase,

you know. And this is a question which is saying that, hey, God, actually,

if you wanted to, you can erase. You can erase,

you can start from scratch, right, you can erase all

the sin. Because can you imagine, just because adam ate

that apple, then oops, everyone's wages of sin is death.

So why why didn't God just erase our sins? Why

did Jesus have to die on the cross. So I

will give you an example. Imagine you are driving on

the road. Right, you are driving, and suddenly you get

hit by a drunk driver. You know, the guy was

swerving all over the place, he was driving dangerously, and

he hit your car. Your car flung into the ditch.

Your kids are in your car. Everyone is screaming, and

then suddenly there's silence. When you open your eyes. Everyone

is injured, and then the ambulance, come you rush to

the hospital and stuff like that. And they caught the

guy who was drunk. They caught the drunk driver. When

they caught the drum driver, they brought him before the

judge and said. The judge said, you are guilty, found

guilty of drunk driving, and you have caused an accident

and caused harm to these people. Okay. And then suddenly

the judge says, oh, because you are my friend, I

forgive you. I forget everything you did, and I erase

everything you have done. That's the right expression that you

would get. Imagine you were a person that was hit

by that drunk driver. How would you respond? What would

you think of that judge? What would you think of

that judge? You would think that that judge was corrupt,

You would think that judge was injust You would think

that judge was biased. And none of the words that

come out here mouth will say that that judge was good.

Because the father the drunk driver committed a crime and

then just because the judge knew him, he let him go.

But God is a good God and he is a

just God. Because he is a just God, there must

be justice. And for every crime you need to do

the time. And you know that crime for the wages

of sin is death. And all of us are like

that drum driver, because like what I mentioned, there is

no big sin or small sin. All of us have

sinned and somebody has to pay the price for that sin.

And the only one that can pay the price for

that sin is somebody who has never sinned before. So

who has never sinned before Jesus. And that is why

Jesus had to die on the cross. He had to

die like the worst criminal to show that he will

pay the price for all our crime, our sins, and

by doing that then we are released for the justice

of the wages of sin. So that is why Jesus

had to die on the cross. So when we look

at the cross, the cross should confront us and say that, hey,

I have sinned, but Jesus died on the cross. And

because he has died on the cross and prayed for

my sins, justice is done and I am free from

the punishment of sin and death. And that is what

we must when we look at a cross, we should

always remember that it should confront us. Okay, So that's

the first see second, see the power of the cross. Conquers.

So what is it conquer? The power of the cross

conquers sin. It conquers sin because the wages of sin

was death, and the devil uses the law to laud

it over us. You know that the devil uses the law.

So the devil uses the law in this way. Hey,

the law says that if you're sin, you must be

put to death. That is the law. And most of us,

we most of us say that we want to live

by the law. Are you sure you want to live

by rules? But God conquered whatever the devil had in store.

So that's why the devil was so adamant to put

Jesus to death, because he thought by putting Jesus to death,

then then everyone would still be under the law and

everyone will still have to die for their sins and

join him in eternal health. So by dying on the

cross and more importantly raising today life again, Jesus not

conquered the power of sin and death. He has overcome

the grave. You know, the song right that could not

hold him, the veil toor before him. He silenced the

ghost of sin and shame. The heavens are roaring, and

because of that he has conquered God. Jesus has conquered death.

So the verse Isaiah fifty four, verse seventeen. That's why

I quoted this during prayer time. No weapon formed against

you shall prosper. Every tongue which rises against you in

judgment you shall condemn. So the devil he will still

try and come and condemn you us. Hey, you're not

good enough. You're a sinner. You know, God won't love

you if anybody knows what kind of sin you have done,

or what kind of person you are, what you have

done before, what you've done in hiding. That is the

devil trying to condemn us, trying to make us carry

our sin, which has been paid for by Jesus. We

don't have to carry it anymore. We don't have to

carry it anymore, as long as Jesus lives within us

and we accept what He has done for us on

the cross. So he says here, this is the heritage

of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is

from me with Jesus blood, we are made righteous. Made

righteous means what we are made right with God. Next

verse Romans aid, who dares accuse us whom God has

chosen for his own, no one, for God himself has

given us right standing with him. Who then will condemn

us no one? For Christ. Jesus died for us and

was raised to life for us, for sitting in the

place of honor at God's right hand, pleading for us. So,

this afternoon or this evening, if you are sitting here

and you are struggling with guilt, you are struggling with condemnation.

You know, sometimes the most difficult person to forgive is yourself.

Know that this is not from God. This is the

devil trying to hurl condemnation. But Jesus, through the cross,

has conquered that. So let's not live under condemnation. Let's

not live under condemnation because we are a new creation

in God. Let's hide behind the cross. So no weapon

that the enemy has thrown at us. World prosper next verse.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us

from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,

neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow.

Not even the powers of hell can separate us from

God's love. No power in the sky above or in

the earth below. Indeed, nothing in all creation will be

able to separate us from the love of God that

is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. This is a

very powerful promise, and the sad thing is we do

not claim it because we worry about tomorrow, because we

give into our fears instead of hiding under God's love.

So it says that nothing can separate us from God's love.

So I just wanted to share something that happened today.

All right, So remember last week I was sharing my testimony.

Right for those of y'all who were here not here,

I'll give you a short recap. So my testimony is

last week I was driving and then suddenly I had

a flat tire, had a pull to the side, changed

the tire. When I put the tire down, suddenly my

fuel line, the car fuel line started leaking. So my

jack hit the fuel line. Okay, so it's leaking, patrol

leaking patrol. I couldn't find the part. Long story shot.

After a week, I found a part on Shoppy at

thirty percent of the price which was quoted to me

at the workshop. I changed my tie and after that

I got into a bike accident. Bicycle accident last week,

fell face first going forty kilometers an hour. But praise God,

I fell on the grass instead of row, so I

got scars on my feet and all this. But I'm

I lived to share my testimony last week and I'm

here today, so all right. So I was like, yes,

no weapon formed against me will prosper. Then today before

coming here, at five o'clock, right, I was coming going

home to get ready to come this, I had the inkling, right,

check your tires. It's like, what cannot be right? So

I looked at my tired. There's one nail looking at me.

I was like, oh my, what you know. I have

never had a flight flat tire for I don't how

many years, ten years, fifteen years. I've never had a

flat tire. No, we did two weeks and I just

changed for new tires. Okay, this was this was at

five pm today. Okay, I had to preach today, I

had to come here anything, So I said, okay, it's okay,

drive to the shop. Drive the shop. I thought, I'll

get it fixed very fast. It looked at it, say, sir,

the tire went into your side wall side. All means

you have to throw it, the whole tire and buy

a new one. You cannot fix it with a five

ring git th I was like, Okay, let's get it done.

Let's get it done. And I got it done and

I'm here. I'm here because it does not mean that

we will not face battles, but I will not be conquered.

I will not allow anything to separate me from the

love of God. Does this mean that God loves me less, No,

it does not. It just means that the devil wants

to mess with me because he knows God is doing something.

And so that's why, whenever we go through challenges, always

look at God's reflect back on God's love. Things could

have gone so badly. If I did not look at

that nail and suddenly that tire blue when I was

coming here, things could have gone much worse. But I know,

but I know that nothing will separate me from God's love.

Does it mean that I will not have hardships? No,

but I will overcome it through God. I will overcome

it because He has come it all. Just as the

way that Job, God still loved Job no matter what happened,

and God preserved Job, and Job was faithful. Just the

way that Joseph was preserved by God. God was faithful,

so nothing can stop us from God's love. The devil

will try and hurl everything to make us turn our

eyes to our situation and blame God because he knows

if you do that, if he manages to do that,

he wins. But Jesus has conquered it all. So don't God,

don't get distracted. Don't get distracted. If the enemy is

coming your way, know that it's because you are doing damage.

God is in our myths, and God is using us

for his glory. Next verse collosions too. You were dead

because of your sins, and because of your sinful nature

was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive

with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled

the record of the charges against us, and he took

it away by nailing it to the cross. In this

way he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed

them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.

So he canceled every record. We are free in Christ.

We are free. We are free from sin and death,

and we should live that way. There's the cross that's

looking on the cross. Cause us to live that way?

Does it remind us that Hey, it confronts our sin nature,

don't go back to it. It reminds us and says that, hey,

I have conquered sin and death. The devil has no

longer any hold over you. He will try and attack you,

but my love will surround you. And finally, the last point,

the power of the Cross is compassion. So we have

watched how many of y'all have watched the Passion of Christ,

how many of y'all watched it repeatedly. It's tough. Honestly,

it's tough. And they were saying, right, the Passion of Christ.

What happened in real life was probably more graphic than

what was showcased in the movies. Jesus is called the

passion of the Christ because Jesus was so passionate he came,

he gave it his all, He gave full passion, because

he was led by compassion for us. So the verse

here Romans fife. God showed his great love for us

by sending Christ to die for us while we were

still sinners. And since we have been made right in

God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly

save us from God's condemnation. So I want to do

again make it in such a way that hey, even

kids can understand, right, So so take it in this example, right,

you know that, let's I want to give this example

of this illustration. You know that there's some people who

have cancer in the blood. You know, they have like leukemia,

and leukemia is caused by because the bone marrow is

producing white blood cells that is attacking its own body, right,

and slowly the body is it's the white blood cells

are confused and they are attacking themselves instead of the

virus or the bacteria. Right. And what happens, right, that

is actually like sin sin nature. If we do not,

if we are not careful, sin nature is attacking us,

it will continuously bring us down. And what we need

is a bone marrow transplant. But all of us have

sin nature. We can't take a bone marrow from anybody

else because everybody else's bone marrow also has the same

cancerous cells. So who do we take it from? Only

Jesus has that bone marrow. That's why that produces the

blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. That's the power

of the blood of Jesus. When Jesus, when we have

that transfusion from Jesus, when we accept Jesus. That's why

you say you accept Jesus. Say Jesus, I need you.

I believe you have died for my sins, and I

accept your bone marrow. Accept you into my life. Be

part of my life. Once you accept that, Jesus's bone

marrow starts producing more and more new blood, and day

by day we become more and more like Jesus and

less and less of ourselves, less and less of our

sein nature. Well, what does the compassion is? The compassion

is Jesus was willing to come and say, hey, guys,

here I am use my bone marrow. It's free, you

don't have to pay anything. He is here, He came

down to earth. He is coming here. He is looking

for us. When most of the patients we see right

of friends or families, right when they need a bone

marrow transplant, they go looking say hey, guys, I'm begging.

Do you know anybody? Do you know anyone that can

help us? But Jesus is the complete opposite. He died

for our since he came down, He's like, guys, come on,

come on, there is the way to eternal life. I

can give you life. You do not have to suffer death.

You do not have to suffer the wages of sin.

All you have to do is to accept me. All

you have to do is to accept me. And once

you accept me and into your life, I will change

you from the inside. And that's the compassion of Jesus.

He has paid the price. He has come down. He

is looking for us. Next verse, if a man has

a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what

will he do? Won't he live the ninety nine others

in the wilderness and go to search for the one

that is lost until he finds it. That is Jesus.

He is here today looking for those of us who

have yet to receive the transplant, yet to receive the blood,

his blood that can cure the wages of sin, that

will give us eternal life. And when he has found it,

he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. When

he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying,

rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep.

Jesus is here looking for each and everyone. He wants

everyone to be saved. All we have to do is

to accept. It's a free gift, but it cost the

world it's a free gift, but it is so expensive.

The price that was paid was so expensive. Next verse,

even as it draw towards the end, Luke nineteen, for

the Son of Men came to seek and save those

who are lost. He came to seek and save. It's

not like us going and begging and looking. He has

the answer. He's coming and looking. Guys, I have the answer.

Take it. It's free. All you have to do is

to receive it. And the last verse, even as I

get the band up, for this is how God loved

the world that he gave his one and only son,

so that everyone who believes in him will not perish

but have eternal life. God sent his son into the

world not to judge the world, but to save the

world through him. So, Church, this evening, when you look

at the cross, what do you see? What do you see?

I hope, I hope it shows us the last light.

The power of the Cross should confront us daily and

say that, hey, I do not want to the same

way I lived. It should confront our sin nature. It

should remind us daily that hey, there is no more condemnation.

The devil has been conquered. The wages of sin has

been paid. The ransom has been paid the love of Jesus.

Nothing can separate us from the love of Jesus. And

the final one is compassion. Remember that Jesus is seeking

and looking for us daily. It is free. It is free.

All we have to do is to receive it. Receive

that transplant from him and you will get His blood

in you, changing as from the inside out daily. That's

why you need to be crucified to the cross daily.

Less of us, more of Him.

We hope you've been blessed by this message. For more

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this week is going to be a good week. I

hit for you. God bless