the letter to the Colossians. And I'm going to read the whole paragraph again from verse 11 down through verse 15, but this morning we'll be thinking particularly about the end of 13 and then 14 and 15. This passage is so rich. I'm remembered of when you're making a beautiful sauce, you know, you put all of the ingredients into a pot and maybe you've got this much stuff. And then you simmer it slowly and you stir it and you simmer it until you get this thick syrup that's the distillation. You guys are all hungry, right? This sauce isn't a breakfast sauce. It's not even a brunch sauce. This is a dinner sauce, so knock it off. But then you get so all those flavors, but with such concentration. And here you really have everything that Paul says about everything simmered and stirred and distilled down to one little paragraph. And if we ate it, we'd choke. It's so rich. So we got a diluted a little bit. So that's why I'm now second message, but we're going to have one more because we've got to loop back and connect circumcision with baptism. But this morning we're thinking particularly about the victory of the cross of Christ. So let me read from verse 11 to verse 15. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses so now this is where our text begins that having forgiven us all our trespasses By canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he, God, set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him or in it. We'll get to that little distinction in a moment. Let's pray. Lord, how can a man, a weak and sinful man, preach any part of your glorious and holy word, but especially to open up for your people the height and the depth and the breadth of your love for rebel sinners that is represented by the death of our Lord Jesus on the cross? Lord, as we enter into this holy place, for those of us who are Christians and maybe seasoned Christians, long exposed to the reading and the preaching of your word, we have to confess that it's very easy for the forgiveness of our sins to become a commonplace. Even so much that we may not routinely ask for the forgiveness of our sins. unless we do something really over the top, or we wound or hurt somebody demonstrably, or our conscience especially strikes us. But too easy is it for us, O Lord, to make the blood of Jesus a common thing by presuming upon your forgiveness. rather than truly trusting in it. And so I pray for myself, and I pray for my brothers and sisters here, and for those who may be present who are yet strangers to this grace, that you would so overpower us with the wonder and the grace of this message, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, that our hearts would be filled with a deep deep gratitude, that you would banish the last vestiges of rebellion and disobedience from our hearts, that we would love you more than we love ourselves and our stuff and our families and our peaceful and secure lives and our money and our ease and comfort, that we would love you through Jesus Christ with all our with all our soul, with all our strength, with all our mind, and Lord, we know we will never love you like we should unless we appreciate what you have done for us in sending your son to make atonement for our sins. So help us, we pray, for we are weak, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. At the end of last week's message, I mentioned that as we read the Bible, we discover that as sinners, we have a two-fold problem. Actually, we got a very complicated problem, but the heart of it is that we stand before God as guilty sinners in need of pardon, and we are people who now, since Adam and Eve, have a corrupt, a bent nature. We are twisted. We can't walk straight. We don't see things clearly. In the Old Testament, oftentimes the Lord uses the image of a plumb line. You know what a plumb line is. It works with gravity. So you hold it, and the line, because of gravitational pull, is straight vertical. And so you can put it up against something and measure whether it's vertical. Try it in your house sometime. You'll find out how good the builders were. Put it in the door jamb and see, oh, that's why that door goes that way. Earthquakes help with that a little bit, too. So, plumb line, straight up and down. Well, we can't judge up and down anymore because we are bent, but everybody else around us is bent, and so we can say, hi, how are you over there? We're all doing pretty good here, right? So, guilty conscience. and a corrupted nature. And God addresses both of those dimensions of our sin problem and indeed solves those problems by providing His Son, Jesus, to be our King and Redeemer. So last time then, in talking about the circumcision of Christ, we saw how in coming to faith in Christ, we and we, along with our Colossian brothers and sisters, have received the true inward circumcision. God has changed us inwardly. He's dealt with the corrupted, bent, twisted nature by taking out our heart of stone, giving us a heart of flesh, by putting His own Spirit within us, so that now the presence of the Spirit within the life of a Christian is a constantly, dynamically transforming force. So that more and more, day by day, we are conformed. Here's the potter with the clay, shaping us into the likeness of Jesus. Think back, for some of you, it may be a long, long time to when you first became a Christian, and you began to see that wonderful transformation. You would read the Bible, you'd hear it preached, you'd talk with other Christians, and you found your thoughts were being changed in really profound ways. Your desires were being affected, drawn away from certain things, and being directed towards something else. And you might have thought, well, that's interesting. And maybe you just attributed it to the influence of the church. Well, certainly the church and the preaching of the word are influential, but it's that spirit working in us to take away that corruption and to replace it with holiness, with Christ-glorifying ideas and actions. And so we talked about the way then in which, in this paragraph, Paul, and he subsumes that all under the idea of the circumcision of Christ, which is the circumcision of the heart, the change in the inner person. God makes us, if you will, a new creation in Christ. Paul writes to the Corinthians, if anyone is in Christ, by faith, new creation. The old has passed away, the new has come. Now I emphasize that because in our day-by-day experience, man, being holy is a battle. And oftentimes it feels like one step forward, two steps back, or maybe just three steps back. I'm not going to fall off the platform here. And we can lose sight of the fact that because it works out in terms of struggle and conflict, yet in principle, a change has already taken place. We are not who we were, and we'll talk about that next time, God willing. We are no longer identified in the old way, but now we are in Christ. That's our identity, and that's our calling. Well, today we want to talk about the other side of our sin problem, namely the fact that we are guilty, condemned, and that God, through the cross of Christ, has made provision for the forgiveness of our sins. Now, in order to get at that in this text, I don't want to take anything for granted. So let's just back up a couple of steps, just like we did last week, and put some biblical context to this whole matter of guilt and forgiveness. What is sin? Well, our catechism gives us a good answer, right? Any want, lack of conformity unto, or transmission of, our kids when they were young, transmission, no, no, transgression of, transgression of the law of God. Now that answer focuses our attention upon breaking God's rules. And certainly we broke God's rules, but we need to put that in the context of Adam and Eve. God created Adam and Eve as unique creatures for a relationship. And he entered into that relationship freely and graciously. We call it covenant. I will be your God. You will be my people. And in sin, Adam and Eve said, we don't want you to be our God. We don't want to be your people, your children. We can get along quite nicely by ourselves. Thank you very much. Well, actually, no thank you very much. They were ungrateful. You see, the heart of sin is not the breaking of rules. It's the repudiation of a lover, of a husband. It's the forsaking of our God. And if all we do is think about sin as breaking rules, we'll never get it. Sin is against God, as David said many years later, against you. You only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. So when you think sin, don't think, first of all, rules. Think about a person, the person of God, your Creator. A God that you had no claim upon. He's the Creator. You're the creature. A God who lavishes all of the blessings of this life upon, and then gives you Himself. Again, think of a marriage, and a pledge, and then the forsaking, the repudiating of that pledge. Adam and Eve, if you will, divorced God. And God had done nothing wrong. And so sin doesn't terminate on rules. It terminates upon God Himself. See, I think that's why a lot of non-believers, they don't get this whole sin thing. Because, you know, what's a rule here or there? I mean, in the modern age, we don't really even believe in rules. So why does anybody get so bent out of shape when you break a rule or two? You break them, I break them, we all break them. But sin is an offense against God. It's a rejection of God. So that's the first thing that we need to understand if we're going to understand our situation properly. We are alienated and estranged from God because we said, get out of my life! Don't come back. And all of us have sinned. And isn't that interesting how Paul puts it? Many of us know this verse. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Well, the glory of God was that creational setup, that covenant with its promise and its hope of eternal and glorious life. We don't want it. We've sinned and fallen short. So if that's sin, then what is guilt? Now here again, we have to think clearly because our modern age says guilt is a feeling. And if you follow Freud and other psychologists, it's actually a neurosis. It's a mental illness. And we do therapy or give pills to get rid of the guilt feelings. But guilt really is a liability to punishment. Think about a condemned criminal. He's tried, the case is made, the jury finds him guilty, and the judge pronounces sentence. Now, some criminals feel really, really bad about that. And some sit there stone-faced, hard-hearted, defiant. They don't have any feelings about it. Neither the remorse nor the hardness of heart affects the guilty judgment. They're going to jail. In some cases, they will be executed. And that's what guilt is, liability to punishment. It means to be condemned. Now, it may give rise to guilt feelings, but again, human beings sometimes can feel guilty when there's no guilt. And oftentimes, they don't feel guilty when there's a great deal of true moral guilt. That's the phrase that Schaeffer used. And you know, I love the way Schaeffer encapsulates ideas, like true truth. Well, because everybody talks about truth, but we're talking about true truth. Well, everybody talks about guilt, but they mean guilt feelings. And so he said, no, we're talking about true moral guilt, liability to punishment. We stand condemned. Paul again writes in Romans 6, 23, for the wages of sin is death. And Jesus made it very, very clear. Whoever believes in the Son is not condemned, but whoever does not believe in the Son is condemned already. We're on death row, if you will, facing not a physical death only, but an eternal punishment. We call it hell. We're condemned already because we have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. Or again, later in the same chapter, John 3, verse 36, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains, rests upon him. That's the bad news. That we stand condemned. And so what's our great need? What does the condemned prisoner need? He needs a pardon. He needs to be forgiven. And what is forgiveness? It's not just a phrase that we say to make each other feel better when we're suffering from guilt feelings. Again, that's what we do. Oh, please forgive me. I'm feeling so guilty. And so we say, I forgive you. No big deal. And that's supposed to make us feel better. But you see, the problem is that sentence of death, of condemnation, that wrath that rests upon us has to be removed. And so Luther's big question, how can a condemned sinner get out from underneath that sentence? In Psalm 32, we read, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven. Now listen to the rest of the verse. Whose sin is covered. It's, in effect, hidden from the sight of the judge. Now, this isn't a subterfuge, but something has to cover that sin. Something has to take it out of the judge's sight. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. So it's God not holding our sins against us. Again, judicial language. This is not psychology, this is law. And it's a law that condemns. So how can a sinner be right with God? How can we receive pardon and forgiveness? And because we know that this judge, unlike human judges, is perfect in justice, absolutely holy, we know that he can't simply overlook sin. But to condemn the innocent, is a twisting of justice, but to vindicate or to pardon the guilty, that's also unjust. It's kind of like when you lose $20, now it's a problem. If somebody else loses $20, that's not a problem because I picked it up. I got it. For the judge to pardon the guilty would be unjust. And so the Bible says we need a just basis for the pardon of people who are guilty. And the answer is found, and again, those of you who know the Bible, you understand that this is the Old Testament pattern. There must be an act of representative substitution. Something that stands as the representative of the sinner in the place of and experiences the death that is deserved. And so all of those animals that were sacrificed and their blood shed in the Old Testament, the animal stood in as the representative of the sinner. The hands were placed in some instances upon the sacrifice, and the sins were confessed, they were transferred, they were imputed to the sacrifice, and then the sacrifice was led off to the punishment of death, and the sinner was declared pardoned. See, that's what we need. We need somebody to represent us. who will stand in our place and bear the penalty, the real wrath, the real judgment that stands against us as sinners. And where is such a one to be found? Animals really won't do it. They're just animals. And the good news is that God so loved the world that He sent His own Son. in the flesh, in our human nature, to be our representative and then to stand in our place and experience the judgment that we deserve. He is called Messiah, the King, the Shepherd, the representative of his people. He's called the servant of the Lord. Often at communion, we read from Isaiah 53, so much so that some of you probably have it vaguely memorized. But let me read these wonderful words again. Surely He, the Messiah, the servant of the Lord, surely He has borne our griefs, carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquity. The chastisement, the punishment that brought us peace was laid upon Him. And with His wounds, we are healed. See, that's the language of this transfer. It's our guilt. our deserved punishment, the chastisement that ought to fall upon us, but it's all been transferred by the judge to the spotless Lamb of God. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way. And yet the Lord, again, the Lord, has laid upon Him a servant. the iniquity of us all. We ought to sit here and weep a while over that amazing transfer. What we deserve. And again, those words can roll off our lips, can't they? Jesus died for my sins on the cross. Let's move on. No, let's not ever move on. That's what we need. That's the only just basis for divine forgiveness. And that has been given, says the whole Bible, for us. Paul writes to the Romans, God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Now, I've taken some time with that because we use terms, even terms that we think we understand, sin, guilt, forgiveness, but we really have to let them register. They've got to get into our heads. Now, with that background now, let's read what Paul says here again, and how it is that he explains the death of Jesus to the Colossians, who hadn't been reading the Bible nearly as long as you guys, who hadn't been going to Sunday school, who hadn't been able to say, you know, this is the 5,300th sermon I've heard in my lifetime. This was all brand new to them. They're hearing for the first time what God did for them in the death of His Son on the cross. So Paul says, God has forgiven us all our trespasses. That's the end of verse 13. By canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Now, let me just read that for you. That was the ESV. Let me read verse 14 again in a little bit more literal, wooden translation, because I think it might help us. having blotted out the against us handwriting with its regulations, which was against us. So notice it's against us and it's against us. It's opposed to us and it's against us. We'll come back to that in a moment. All right, quickly, what do we want to notice about what Paul says here? First of all, it is God who forgave, God who made alive by acting in the death of his son on the cross. It's the offended party. It's the holy judge himself that initiates and executes this wonderful act of substitution, transfer, and blessing. You know, when we're offended, You know, oftentimes we say, well, let them come and make it right with me. It's their offense. But here the judge doesn't say, let Adam fix it. It was his problem. Let the human race deal with their sin. And when they get themselves straight, then they can come to me. It was God, who alone could do anything about our guilt, who initiated the plan of redemption. When that condemned criminal stands in the court, And he thinks about the penalty that he's going to have to pay. And he thinks, I need help. Can his lawyer help him? Maybe. Could the witnesses help him? Could maybe the prosecuting attorney be convinced to come at this in a different way? But the last person he looks at is the judge. We're told, look at the judge. Because the judge is the Redeemer. The judge is the Savior. It is God who acted. He's the one who has forgiven our sins by providing this just basis for the forgiveness of our sins. Paul says there's a record of debt that stands against us. It's in the book. It's been recorded. The offense is there. The verdict is there. The sentence is there. Now, Paul uses an interesting phrase. It's brought out in that more literal translation. It's a handwriting. It's an unusual word in Greek, and it's only used once here in the New Testament, and it makes you kind of think, why handwriting? But it's a handwriting, a record of debt. And some scholars suggest, well, maybe it's kind of using the imagery of an IOU. You know, you owe somebody something, you write out an IOU, and you give it to them as a certification of the debt. That doesn't really seem to be what Paul is getting at, but it is kind of an interesting use. Most likely, he's referring to the Mosaic law in particular. In the parallel in Ephesians 2.15, he talks about the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, and it stands against all human beings, not just Gentiles, but Paul says against Jews as well. And of course, it separates Jews from Gentiles, which is the point that he makes in Galatians and Ephesians, though that's not the center of his concern here. Here again, we face the reality of our true moral guilt. There's a record. We have a record. And it stands against us. Not only does it stand against us, opposed to us with a kind of a hostility, but it represents a barrier between ourselves and God. You know, we talk about building a wall on the border. And even if you build this wall, is it going to keep anybody out, really? Well, our offenses build a wall between ourselves and God, and we can't penetrate that wall. We can't get over it, under it, or around it. He's the one that must take down that barrier, and that He has done through the cross of Christ. The legal demand of justice violated has to be satisfied. The penalty must be paid. And the good news, as Paul expresses it here, is that's exactly what has been done by God's provision of His Son, Jesus. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. Think again of the firmness, and this might be why Paul chooses this word handwriting. Now again, don't Well, you don't have to quote me on it. It's on audio for the world to hear if they want to. But maybe this is what the handwriting. In the ancient world, they wrote on papyri. It was kind of an ancient form of paper. And they would write with ink. And at least if you did it soon, while the ink wasn't firmly set, you could actually wash the ink off of a papyrus and then maybe use it again. So, Paul, in a sense, is saying, this verdict that stands against you unchangeable, and it is impossible for you to change that verdict, God, by nailing it to the cross, has, in effect, washed it off the paper. What is impossible for man is easy for God. It's been wiped away. I don't know if that's what Paul has in mind when he thinks about this idea. Another resonance for those of us who know the Bible is that title that Pilate had nailed to the cross above the head of Jesus that announced publicly his specific crime. Remember what it said? Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews, in Aramaic, so the Jews could read it, in Greek, so the Greek speakers could read it, and in Latin, just to make it official. Pilate nailed that to the cross. Well, Paul, maybe echoing that imagery, is talking about our offenses, the verdict, the record against us being nailed to the cross. And again, think of the irony of this. The mockery. Pilate says, King of the Jews. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. But we who have come to know this Jesus, we say, there's the King paying the penalty for the rebel offender. We're the insurrectionists. We're the one that threw off his authority. I mean, can you imagine any American president conservative, liberal, Republican, or Democrat, leaving the White House to go down to Gitmo and endure whatever they're doing to the prisoners there. This king hanging on the cross is there because we rebels should be there. Where do we get this stuff? Who could imagine, who could dream this amazing good news? And so the pardon, the forgiveness that can be granted comes through the blood. of Jesus in Romans 3 Paul says we are justified by his grace in chapter 5 he says we are justified by his Jesus blood as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus there had to be the satisfaction of justice by a representative substitute and that's what we have in Jesus Christ and because the penalty has been paid the righteous judge can say, I set aside that verdict. There's actually an action in law, it's called a motion to set aside judgment. It's not very often granted unless there's very strong grounds. But the idea is to get the judge, after he has pronounced the sentence, to vacate that sentence. Well, that's what God has done for us on the basis of the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross. He has vacated our condemnation and we are declared not guilty, set free, released. What an amazing, amazing grace this is. Now again, you see how easy it is for us because we talk about sin, we talk about forgiveness, we talk about Jesus dying on the cross. for it to be trivialized by its very commonness. We don't slow up long enough very often. Now, if you blow it really bad, and you've done something you never imagined you could ever do, and now your parents know about it, or your friends know about it, or your boss has discovered it, then you might be shattered with a sense of guilt and condemnation. But we ought to feel that way all the time. and then feel that sweet release of God saying, I'm not guilty. That's forgiveness. And of course it affects our feelings, but it's because in the law court of God's justice, it is so. Now there's more here, but just before I go on quickly to a little bit more, let me remind you that in the context here, This is another part of Paul's argument to the Colossians against looking to Judaism and to its Torah, its law, as a means by which they, who are Gentiles, might enter into a right relationship, enter into a covenant relationship with the one true God. Neither circumcision, which we talked about last week, nor the Torah, the law, can bring the Colossians to God. And that law can't bring us to God either. But Jesus, the Messiah, in whom the Colossians have already put their trust, they have received him, can and does bring them into that right relationship. Indeed, Paul would argue elsewhere that the Jews themselves, just like him, Saul of Tarsus, the Jew, need to come to Jesus, the Messiah, in order to escape the curse of their own law against their sin. So that's Paul's deeper point to the Colossians. Don't go to Judaism. Stay where you are with Christ. But what is this more? It has to do with the dark powers that have enslaved us and Paul argues that they have been defeated in the same cross of Christ. Now, this is important because within Protestantism, and particularly in our Reformed faith, we so emphasize what I've just spent the last half hour emphasizing, the judicial significance of the cross, that we sometimes forget that there's anything else going on in the cross. Paul doesn't forget it, and he has a very, very important additional point to make here. And it actually connects way, way back to the very first promise of a savior in Genesis chapter three. You remember that verse, Genesis 3.15, God is speaking to the serpent. who has just seduced Adam and Eve into sin and rebellion and started this whole terrible story. And God says, I will put enmity, hostility, between you, the serpent, and the woman, Eve, and between your seed, your offspring, and hers. And then this, he shall bruise your heel. He, the descendant of the woman, shall bruise the head I said a heel. The head of the serpent and the serpent shall bruise his heel. Paul here says he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him or in it. Paul's referred already in verses 9 in verse 8 and 9, to the elemental spirits of the world and to all rule and authority. And without going back over that again, I think here he has in mind the fallen angelic spirits, the demons, if you will, Satan and his hosts that stand behind all false worship among human beings, all idolatries. Remember, Paul says when we worship an idol, we're really worshiping a demon in the form of a false god. And these powers have held the human race in bondage ever since Genesis 3, since the fall. These, Paul says, these powers have now been decisively defeated and disarmed by Jesus through the cross. Now again, the phrase in him or could be translated either in him or in it, and scholars are divided in which they think is best. In a sense, it doesn't matter because it's Christ But I do think in the context, it's specifically in the cross of Christ that these powers have been defeated. And I hope that'll come clear in a moment. Now, this idea of disarming defeated enemies and putting them to open shame, that conjures up in Paul's world a particular picture. of a triumphant imperial general returning to Rome after a successful military campaign, and now he's going to get the praise that he is due by parading his subjected enemies in front of him. So in comes the parade into Rome, and here's the prisoners, beaten, bloodied, limping, to show how they've been completely overpowered. at the end of the day they'll be executed publicly just to make a final end to them and then all the spoils of war carried along and finally in the end comes the Roman general to the praise of the Empire for his great great victory and that's the picture Paul has of Christ and his cross a great big victory The cross as a great triumph over God's enemies? Divine, I mean, demonic and human? How does that work? If you want a more up-to-date, although we don't do this too much anymore, think of a ticker tape parade. Most of you have seen pictures at the end of World War II when Eisenhower and some of the other leading generals were, they went down Wall Street and all of the, confetti and the ticker tapes are flying out the window, you know, and everybody's cheering because they won the war. Well, the Roman celebrations were more grisly, but equally celebratory. This is a public display of triumph. And here, Paul explains how it is that Jesus, as the Messiah, has become the head of every rule and authority. And here the echoes are of Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, where God lifts up his king, the Messiah, and gives him victory over all of his enemies. We'll talk about that a little bit more in Sunday school. So these hidden, and sometimes not so hidden, enemies have been stripped. At the end of a battle, when the enemy finally gives up, they surrender, and the first thing they do is take away their weapons. and all of the other things that might allow them to return. So that's the stripping away. They've been, as the ESV says, disarmed of what limited power they have been permitted by God in this interim period. And this is because they have been decisively defeated by Jesus' death on the cross. John Stott, the English theologian, wrote a magnificent book, and I asked Sandra to put it out on the rack, give you another chance to check it out and read it. It's called The Cross of Christ, a true classic exposition of all of the multidimensional significance of Jesus' death on the cross. But he points out that typically we think of the resurrection as the victory of Christ over his enemies. But he argues, no, it's in the death itself. When Satan took his best shot and used his last weapon, death itself, against the Messiah, and he had nothing more. And in the death of Christ, the victory was obtained. And here Paul is thinking along the same lines that Jesus Himself had in mind. Remember in John 12 when He said, My soul is so troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify Your name. And then a voice came from heaven. I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. And the crowd, of course, they wonder, Where's this voice coming from? And then Jesus says, now is the judgment of this world. Now will the ruler of this world and all his hosts be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. And then John adds the comments. He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. and the lifting up of the Savior on the cross. The prince of this world and all of his hosts were defeated, disarmed, and now he makes an open display of their shame. Now again, that's not the way we think of the cross. And here again, the paradox of what's really going on in the cross. Again, just think of the way we look at the cross as a symbol of beauty and of glory. I've said before, you know, you wouldn't wear an electric chair around your neck as a piece of jewelry. A little syringe for a lethal injection. Oh, that makes nice earrings. Let's wear those. See, the cross was a symbol of shame in the Roman world. For us, it has become something completely different, because we've learned Paul's lesson. So if you'll indulge me, let's just contemplate for a moment the stunning irony of the cross and of its paradoxes. This is gonna be a little weird, but go ahead, if you're gonna indulge me a lot, just close your eyes for a second. When we close our eyes, we can concentrate our attention and it helps our little imagination a little bit. Let's just rethink some things. The powers of this present evil age, Satan himself, represented by Jewish officials and the Roman governor, conspired together against Jesus, who is the true Son of God. After all, he threatened their power. He might take away their place. They accused him falsely. and condemned him in their own courts to a horrible punishment. The punishment of crucifixion that was designed first to shame and humiliate someone and then to hurt them badly before they died. And they treated him shamefully. Think about those soldiers. They take off his robe, they put on a scarlet robe, they beat, a crown of thorns into his head. And what's the point? They're mocking his claim to be king of the Jews. And here in my imagination, I hear bearing shame and scoffing rude in my place. In my place, condemned, he stood. They stripped him. This is the embarrassing part. naked or near naked and then they hung him up in front of everyone on a cross. So the crowd could join in. And they mocked his powerlessness. If you're the Son of God, come down. But of course he didn't come down, they thought, because he couldn't. Well maybe if you call for legions of angels to help you then, but no, nothing happened. And so they draw their conclusion, he saved others. Himself, he cannot save. Another song, ashamed I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. But, you got that picture in your mind, what's going on? Paul says here that in taking such complete advantage of his apparent power over Jesus, Satan overstepped himself and sealed his doom. Okay, you can open your eyes now. It's hard to imagine just when Satan had his oh no moment. But it wasn't the resurrection. I think it was that phrase, it is finished. We've already said that's a declaration of judicial satisfaction. But when Satan hears it is finished, it's you are finished. Your power has been spent. You are now the weak one. in the face of my power and my glory in the midst of the darkness of the cross. Again, another song, finished the victory cry. Finished the victory cry. This is the power of the cross. Paul says, in the cross, Jesus disarmed. He defeated and stripped of their weapons, of their power, of their authority. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame. They are now naked, helpless, and ultimately hopeless, triumphing over them. What a work of redemption. we have in the cross of Christ. Yes, dealing with our shame, our guilt, and our liability to punishment. There is free forgiveness for all those who believe in Christ. But also saying that enemy that's been calling the tune in your life, your whole life long, through addictions, through evil affections, through peer group pressure, however he gets to you and pulls you by that ring in your nose and says, come on, follow me, his power is broken. Sin no longer has dominion over you. Friends, we live all the time making excuses for the dominion of sin in our lives because we don't believe this. And so we look somewhere else for some other solution to the bondages in which we continue to live. If we understood what Paul was saying here and truly embraced it by faith, then we'd begin to partake not just of survival, but of victory. More than conquerors through Him who loved us. Now we're going to come back next week, God willing, to this change, again, that takes place in our moral and ethical life. We are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, and that's symbolized in our baptism. So we're gonna come back up and connect circumcision with baptism. But we partake of this victory through faith in Christ. It's sad that the sign of the cross, particularly in Western culture, is associated with the cross on the armor of the knights who went out to slaughter Muslims, thinking that was going to advance the kingdom of God. You see, the sign of the cross is the message of the cross. It's to keep on preaching and keep on believing what Paul said he would only preach, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And yes, we have to talk about lots of different things in our Christian life, but it has to come back to this. Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth and deliverance from the bondage of sin through the death and indeed the resurrection. of our Lord Jesus Christ. Stott said the cross was the victory won, and the resurrection was the victory endorsed, proclaimed, and demonstrated. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we can't put ourselves in your head What gave you the courage to stand before your accusers and not defend yourself when they paid people to lie about you? Because you knew that the accusations against us, your people, were all true. And you were hearing the accusations that we deserve. The sentence that was wrongly passed on you by the Sanhedrin and then by the governor pilot himself. Was in the end the sentence. Of your father passed against our sons. In your flesh. And so when you hung on that cross, it was our cross. And we were in that crowd. Not understanding. And so mocking the things that were most true about you, of course you couldn't come down from the cross. Not because you lacked the power, but because it was in that death that you were going to break the power of sin in our life and take away the condemnation that we justly deserve. So Lord, please, Holy Spirit, please bear these things in upon our minds and upon our hearts. Lord, we know how quick we can forget. One cup of coffee and a couple of words at the tables will erase this unless you plant it deeply in our minds and in our hearts. And we pray, oh Lord, that you would forgive us for all of our excuse making. as if there were no power in the cross, as if there were no transformation in the spirit. But help us by faith and in reliance upon your grace to begin more and more to experience the victory that is ours in Christ, even as we rejoice in the pardon and the peace that comes as a result of your grace and your forgiveness. We ask these things so that Christ will continue to be glorified in the lives of your people for whom he died. Amen. Hark the voice of love and