Title: The Cross that Prayed to the Father
“Then Jesus said to them, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34a).
1. Introduction: People who have experienced the cross
- Many people today believe that they are serving God by living a life of faith that is right in their own eyes. Are the people who have been living in faith for twenty or thirty years and yet do not seriously think about what it means to be saved, who really have a longing for God? However, there were not many people in this world, but there were people who lived only for God, lived a life like a flame, and served the Lord. They lived in this world with mature piety and tested fortitude. And what makes such a life possible is that they are people who have experienced the cross. They were people who had the present experience of how to walk with Him, die with Him, and rise again.
2. Body
1) What we need today, faith in suffering
- There were few times in this world that a man who wanted to live a godly life was welcomed. In the world, there are always many people who do not know God, and there are only a few people who strive to be true believers and carry the cross of Christ. But the world was changed by those few.
- The ancestors of faith in this land were able to keep their faith despite hardships for the following three reasons. First, because only the Bible is the Word of God, we must believe and live according to the Word of the Bible. The second was the firm belief in the afterlife that the suffering we are experiencing now will pass for a while and that there is a future life where we will live with our Lord forever. The third was the suffering faith that Jesus Christ suffered for me, so I too deserve to suffer for Jesus as the Lord's child. Because Jesus suffered for me, when I had to suffer in order to serve the Lord, rather than taking the easy way, I suffered for Jesus, and because Jesus died for me, I would die for Jesus if necessary. In that spirit they lived in this world. This life is what we need today.
2) The cross where the Father prayed: Jesus spoke seven words on the cross, and the text is the first of those words.
① When you prayed
- “Then” This refers to “about that time,” that is, when many of the people Jesus healed and fed are no longer seen, and even the disciples betrayed Him and left. The cross is “staurov”, which means just a stick. The pain of the cross was a burning thirst and a pain that made you feel like your head would explode. And that pain continued right up to the moment you died. started with a prayer to God.
- The content of the prayer was to ask for forgiveness for our sins. However, before we look at the contents of prayer, we see the figure of Jesus praying before God even in the moment of terrible suffering. Even in that time of suffering, Jesus prayed, and that prayer came not by chance or because it was a special time of crucifixion, but because his entire life was a life of praying and running.
- Think about how fragile our lives are and how easily we back down. But the truth is, the difficult situation we are facing does not prevent us from praying, but rather the life of oblivion that does not know the true love and grace of Christ who saved us. We must realize this and deeply repent. We must become people who deeply repent and pray about who I am and how the Lord saved me, taking me as a child, and leading me to live today.
② Beginning of prayer, “Father”
- Jesus' prayer began by calling on God the Father. Jesus was crucified because God allowed it. But even though we were abandoned by God and crucified because of our sins, Jesus called the Father with intimacy and affection. Jesus' earthly life was a life lived in close communion with the Father, so no circumstance or hardship could break this trust in the Father.
- The greatest happiness of God's children is that God becomes their father. So, he lives in close acquaintance with his father. But foolish people give up their intimacy with God too easily in the face of the easy life of the world. Isn't loving the whole world more than loving your father's house, and your excessive lust for material things and attachment to the world are making you lose your intimacy with the once living God? We are people who should not live like that, because we were bought with the blood that Christ shed on the cross. Therefore, while thinking about what Jesus accomplished on the cross, we should consider that our true worth is to please God, and we should become those who are loved by God even if we sacrifice everything we have.
- Whenever it is difficult and painful, we should live in that spirit, remembering that Jesus was nailed to the cross and called on the Father's name. You must be close to your father, consider it a privilege, and cherish the intimacy you have with God more than anything else in the world.
May we become saints who live in intimacy with God every day...
2004-02-29