The Wonder of Calvary — William MacDonald

Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Father, we just look to you in the sacred name of the Lord Jesus. We pray that we might hear your voice as we look into your word today, and we pray that we might go back another way.

Lord, that the revolutionary truths of your word might transform our lives so that we can never be the same again. We ask it in the Savior's name, and for his sake, amen. Would you turn in your Bibles, please, just for a single verse to Acts chapter 20, and it's verse 28, and at first you will see no connection between the verse and what I'm going to say, which is not at all unusual for preachers.

Acts 20, verse 28, Paul speaking to the elders of Ephesus at Miletum. There he says, Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood.

And I'm thinking especially this morning of the last part of the verse, the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. Now, that's rather unusual, isn't it? It's rather shocking, as a matter of fact, because the antecedent of he is God.

And the verse says that he purchased the church with his own blood. We'll talk about that later. You know, the implications of the Christian faith are awesome. When you think of Calvary, the love of Calvary, there's a certain logic connected with it as well.

And we can say this expression, Christ died for the ungodly. And you know, the truth of that is so tremendous that it's enough to rock the universe. Christ died for the ungodly. And in the shadow of Calvary, there's no room for a comfortable mediocrity.

When you think of what happened at the cross, it really has to be everything or nothing. I say there's no room for an average Christianity. It has to be everything or nothing. To be tepid about the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ is an insult to his majesty.

And it was for good reasons that he said to the church of Laodicea, because you're lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. Well, that's strong words. Those are strong words. But really, when you consider the immensity of Calvary and the issues involved, they're absolutely true.

Ho-hum Christianity is a contradiction of terms. I mean, those words don't fit together. They're what you might call an oxymoron, you know. An oxymoron, like he says he's going to Hawaii on business.

Well, that's an oxymoron, you know. And ho-hum Christianity is an oxymoron. Angels must marvel to see blood-bought people living for self and for pleasure, or to see Christians who show more enthusiasm for possessions than they do for the Lord Jesus Christ.

There's nothing that could be more incongruous than for people who've been died for to fail to acknowledge their Redeemer as Lord of all. Stop with me this afternoon just to think, what would happen if the church, if all believers, if ransomed saints, would enter into a deep appreciation of what happened at the cross of Calvary and the empty tombs.

Supposing their eyes were anointed with divine eyesalve so that they could see as never before what really happened there. They would be overwhelmed by the dimension of their salvation. I want to tell you, church buildings would be filled with people just involved in spontaneous worship.

And Christians throughout the world would be going gossiping the gospel, urging men and women to be reconciled to Christ. If we really entered into the meaning of Calvary, the world would be evangelized.

And an un-evangelized world today is a testimony to a lukewarm Christianity. It really is. Every once in a while, a gleam of light comes into a person's life. It's as if God draws back the curtain. And this man or this woman sees it all.

And sees what really happened there at the cross of Calvary. And that person can never be the same again. The compelling significance of the middle cross and of the one who hung there. That man says, in effect, I've seen the vision and for self I cannot live.

Life is worse than worthless unless all I give. That's the logic of Calvary. I have seen the vision and for self I cannot live. Life is worse than worthless unless all I give. And never again can that person be satisfied with a bland Christian life.

He hopes that he'll never again succumb to the chill of his environment, which is so easy to do. To succumb to the chill of his environment. A new drive takes over in his life. And it absolutely controls him.

And he has a mission now that absorbs his waking hours. What is it that has happened to him? Well, four great truths have burst in upon his soul. The first truth is a new appreciation of who the Lord Jesus really is.

The second is a consideration of what he did there on the cross of Calvary. A third is the people for whom he did it. And the fourth is the marvelous blessings that have flowed as a result of Calvary's work.

Consider him. Consider what he did. Consider us. And consider those favors that have flowed from his work. And we're going to consider those four things this morning. As we do so, let's just pray that the Lord will give us a deeper appreciation than we've ever had before.

Of the drama of our redemption and of the marvelous dimensions, immeasurable dimensions of it all. Consider him. Who he is. You know, leave out the Lord Jesus and life has no meaning. Has absolutely no meaning.

To me, the book of Ecclesiastes is a marvelous book, you know. Solomon searched under the sun for the meaning of life and he came up empty. He said, life has no meaning. And he was right, too, under the sun.

Twenty-nine times in that book, the expression, under the sun, is found. Dear friends, you have to get above the sun to find meaning in life. It's found in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus is the hub of history.

He's the center of eternity. The fountain of satisfaction and the embodiment of reality. You really never find reality until you find the Savior. Who is he? Well, we could begin by saying he's the babe of Bethlehem.

Of course, he is then. The babe of Bethlehem. The virgin-born son of Mary. That perfect child she's holding in her arms. In many ways, a normal child and yet a different child. Angels announce his arrival.

And right away, there's a conflict of emotions about him. A king and the people of Jerusalem are troubled. And yet Gentile wise men travel great distances to come and worship him. There never was a child like that before, was there?

And eventually, an edict goes out to exterminate all the children of his approximate age. An effort to eliminate this harmless baby. No child ever aroused such a conflict of emotions as Jesus did. Yes, he was the babe of Bethlehem, but he was a lot more than that.

He was a lot more than that. He's a man. The fact that he's human is seen in the fact that he hungered. He thirsted. He grew weary. In fact, he was so human in a way that the people rubbed shoulders with him.

They never thought he was any different from themselves. He had so marvelously veiled his deity in a body of flesh. Beside, he threw his most divine array and veiled his Godhead in a garb of clay. And in that garb, this wondrous love display, restoring what he never took away.

Wonderful, wonderful Jesus. To his contemporaries, he seemed quite normal. In his twenties, he was a carpenter in Nazareth. I've often thought that that sanctified the occupation of carpenter down through the centuries.

At 30, he embarked in a public ministry of preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons, doing good wherever he went, raising the dead. In a life without parallel, he lived for others. In fact, when you read about him in Philippians chapter 2, that's about the key word of the chapter, and it's others.

He lived for others. He inherited all the qualities of our humanity except one. He was sinless. That's marvelous to me to think that once a man walked the dusty lanes of this earth, a man whose life was stainless, absolutely pure.

He knew no sin. He did no sin. Never an evil thought. Never a regret for having done something. Or a regret for not having done something that he should have done. Never came to the end of a day unfulfilled.

Did only those things that pleased. His father tempted from without. He was never tempted from within. Yes, he was tempted from without there in the wilderness, wasn't he? Never from within. Yes, our Lord is truly human, and he's sinlessly human, but that's not all.

I don't think you can ever comprehend a fraction of the meaning of our redemption until you remember he's God incarnate in a body of flesh. We want to think about that today. In that babe in Bethlehem, this is marvelous to me.

Every time I see a baby, I think of it. In that babe in Bethlehem dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Isn't that wonderful? God contracted to a span, John Wesley said. God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man.

And another writer, William Billings, said, come see your God extended on the straw. I tell you, that's enough to boggle the mind, isn't it? Come see your God extended on the straw. Low within a manger lies he who built the starry skies.

And the poet said, cold on the cradle, the dew drops are falling. Low lies his head with the beast of the stall. Angels adore him in slumber reclining, maker and monarch and ruler of all. He's God. And I like the way Booth Cliburn in his hymn said, down from the glory, ever living story, my God and Savior came.

And Jesus is his name. Born in a manger to his own estranger, a man of sorrows, tears and agony. Dear friends, the young Jew of Palestine was the ancient of days. And that one who wore that carpenter's apron amid all the sawdust of the shop in Nazareth was the architect of the universe, wasn't he?

The architect of the universe. And that one who girded himself with the slave towel, the apron of a slave that day, and got down and washed his disciples' feet, who was he? He was the one that was giving them their breath at that very moment.

Their breath at that very moment. And make no mistake about it, dear friends, that the one who gave sight to that blind man in John chapter 9 was the Creator. I tell you, when you're born blind, you need new optic nerves.

And only a work of creation can ever do that. I'm going to tell you, John 9, you miss the chapter if you don't realize the Creator was present there, creating new optic nerves. And who but God could rise in that boat and raise his hand and still the tremendous waves there in the Sea of Galilee with a word.

God manifested in the flesh. I want to tell you, words are beggarly things. When we try to describe the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the mysterious union of God and man in one person, it's something that the human mind will never be able to understand.

But you know, there's another wonder too that boggles the mind. Consider him, consider what he did. And I want to tell you, when I read my Bible, when I read the Gospel, I know that no man, no man ever wrote this book.

No man would have ever had God coming down to this earth, taking upon himself human flesh and dying on a cross of wood. If the person of the Lord Jesus Christ is enough to cause us to be just absolutely boggled, I tell you, his death on the cross as a substitute for sinners just staggers the imagination.

Face the fact head on today, we've been died for. The one who died for us was not just a mere man. The one who hurled the farthest galaxies into space. I tell you, it's sobering, isn't it? It's the one we're dependent upon right now.

I just take a breath. He's the one who gives me, he's the upholder of all things by the word of his power. This is what's so shocking. The one who died for me on Calvary's cross is my creator. Can I ever be the same if I really appreciate that, if I really take that in?

The marvel that the dying Lamb of God there on the cross of Calvary is the eternal God in a body of flesh. He's the Alpha and the Omega. He's the brightness of God's glory, the express image of his person.

He upholds all things by the word of his power. He's the King of kings. He's the Lord of lords. He's the one who inhabits eternity. He's Emmanuel, God with us. There may be other religions where the creature dies for his creator.

I've never heard of any religion where the creator dies for his creatures. Have you? Only the gospel. Only the gospel. Where God in a body of flesh dies for humanity. It's absolutely amazing. And I tell you, you and I never come to grips with Calvary until we stand there before the cross and say, I did all that to him.

He did all that for me. And when we do that, the truth starts to filter into our mind. That's why I read that verse at the beginning. I really think that verse is put there for its shock value. Shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood.

You say, well, it's a bad translation. Well, it's in the King James Version that way. It's in the New King James Version that way. It's in the New American Standard Bible that way. It's the New International Version that way.

It's in the Revised Standard Version that way. But it raises problems. It does raise problems. First of all, God is immortal. Immortal means he's not subject to death. How can God die? Of course, God can't die.

He's immortal. And yet it says, the church of God which he shed with his own blood. The answer, of course, is found in the incarnation. God came and he became man so that as man he could die for man. I like the way Charles Wesley handles it in a hymn that I know we all love.

Tis mystery all, the immortal dies. That's good, isn't it? I wish I had written that. Tis mystery all, the immortal dies. Who can explore his strange design? In vain the firstborn seraph tries to sound the depth of love divine.

What does that mean? It means the firstborn seraph would be the seraph having the highest place, the highest honor in heaven. And here's the highest seraph, the highest seraph in heaven trying to figure it out.

Trying to sound the depth of love divine. Then Charles Wesley says amazing love. How can it be that thou might die for me? It's amazing that you and I, especially me, that I can sing that without gasping or without tears.

Amazing love. How can it be that thou, my God, should die for me? Another question would be, of course, if God died, and we know that God can't die. If God died, who would run the universe while he was dead?

Actually, there's no problem at all because it's solved by the incarnation again. The Lord Jesus here on earth dies there on the cross. It's just a transfer of position. One second he's here on earth running the universe.

The next second he's in heaven running the universe. It's not that for three days and three nights he was just unconscious in a tomb. That's not the thought at all. There was no interval at all when he was not in complete control.

I should mention too that Darby in his translation says, and of course he's right too, he says, which he purchased with the blood of his own, meaning his own son. That God purchased the church with the blood of his own son.

Of course, that's true. It's true. I still like the translations we have today that make my mind reel off into space to remember who it was who died for me on the cross at Calvary, that it was the supreme being who gave himself as a substitute for me.

I want to tell you, my most ardent efforts to describe it to you today are little more than a stutter. Little more than a stutter. It just strains the brain to take in what happened at Calvary. It wasn't simple homicide.

Homicide is where one man kills another one. One human kills another human. It wasn't genocide where an effort is made to exterminate an ethnic population. It wasn't that. It was deicide. The murder, and it was, was the murder of God incarnate, what took place on the cross of Calvary.

I'm afraid that we develop such a deadly familiarity with the words of Scripture that their impact is lost upon us. Like we reel off words like, The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me. It is all truth.

It's all truth. But you know, how can we say it without prostrating ourselves before him in worship, love, and adoration? I think some of these verses, they lose their impact on us, and we can say them without emotion.

It really seems sinful to handle the truth so lightly, doesn't it? And it seems sinful to me to preach it so blandly and matter-of-factly that it doesn't bring us to our knees. It's that grace that should, really.

I think we're guilty of what someone has called a dry-eyed Christianity. A dry-eyed Christianity. And continually we have to bring ourselves back to the amazing facts of what happened there 2 ,000 years ago.

The nature of the universe as man for man was made a curse. The claims of law that he had made unto the uttermost he paid. His holy fingers made the bow which grew the thorns that crowned his brow. How do you like that?

His holy fingers made the bow that grew the thorns that crowned his brow. The nails that pierced his hands were mined in secret places he designed. He made the forest whence there sprung the tree on which his body hung, and he knew it all from eternity.

He died upon a cross of wood, yet made the hill on which it stood. The sky that darkened o 'er his head by him above the earth was spread. The sun that hit from him his face by his decree was poised in space.

The spear that drew his precious blood was tempered in the fires of God. The grave in which his form was laid was hewn in rock his hands had made. The throne on which he now appears was his from everlasting years, and a new glory crowns his brow, and every knee to him shall bow.

The hymns of that poem really brings before us the wonderful truth that the maker of the universe as man for man was made a curse. Consider him. Consider what he did. Consider us, the people for whom he did it.

The whole program of God's redemption becomes even more amazing, even more straining to our brains when we think of the people for whom he did it. The whole human race. I think I'm fortunate to live in the age of the Hubble telescope, where man has peered out into the universe further than he's ever peered before.

He still hasn't reached the edge, you know. The more he looks out into space, the more minuscule our planet becomes. The universe is of such marvelous and great proportions that planet Earth, well, it's a speck of cosmic dust.

A pretty small speck at that. A speck of cosmic dust. But dear friends, if planet Earth is a speck of cosmic dust, what am I? I'm not even a speck. You know, sometimes we think, well, quite the thing, you know.

Human beings discovering wonderful things that have to happen. But if you look at us through a microscope, we're really not very much, are we? When God looks down upon us, there's a marvel that he loves us.

We're really nothing. We're less than zero in the universe, and he loves us. No wonder it brought from the psalmist that marvelous question, the breathless question, what is man that thou art mindful of him?

Well, not only are we minuscule, but we're really frail mortals. We're really made of nothing more substantial than dust and water. I'm getting smaller all the time. One day I'm in full athletic strength, and the next day a non-filterable virus enters into my body, and I'm as weak as water.

One day I'm emotionally strong, and I feel I can just cope with any situation, any trial, any difficulty that comes along. Forget it. The next moment some crisis develops in my life, and I go to pieces emotionally.

And not very much. He died for me. He died for me. He loved me enough to do that. And then there's our transiency. Not only are we minuscule, not are we frail, we're transient. And it's wonderful to go through the Bible and see what inspired poets have likened our life to be.

Well, it's like a breath. It's like a wind. It's like a vapor. It's like a grass. It's like flour. It's a hand breath, you know. It's like the weaver's shuttle dashing back and forth. And Spurgeon reduced our biography to four words, sown, grown, blown, and gone.

And it tells the whole story. Sown, grown, blown, and gone. I want to tell you, in the light of eternity, our life drops to the zero point on the time scale. It really does. The difference, the worst is that we're not really very nice people either.

It's not just that we're transient. It's just not that we're frail. But we're really not very nice people. And this is probably the understatement of the century that I have made. We're all sinners, and sin has affected us through and through.

Paul brings this up so wonderfully in Romans 3, where sin has infected us all. Every part of our being is infected. We're all sinners. And we're all sinners to the core. While we may not have committed every sin in the book, we're capable of it.

In fact, that scares me sometimes. A lot of times it scares me to think of the capacity for sin in my life. The capacity for evil. No wonder you read in the book of Jeremiah, the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked.

Above all things. Desperately wicked. Above all things. I think some nations of the world look at Germany and at the Holocaust there, and they think, we could never do that in our country. Oh, no. Don't say that.

We're all made of the same material. We've all been affected by the fall. It could happen in the United States as well. I pray God it never will. We did not love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength as he told us to do.

We said we do not desire you nor a knowledge of your ways. That's the way it was. We don't want you, God. We don't want some cosmic deity to be running our lives for us. And we were ashamed of God. We were ashamed to talk about it.

We became uncomfortable when his name rose up in conversation. In the name of Jesus. It was a name that was banned in our hearts. And we could say, with Major Andre against a God who built the skies, I fought with hands uplifted.

I despised the mention of his grace. Too proud to seek a hiding place. To be blunt about it, we were at war with our God. And yet you never know the wickedness of the heart of man. So you stand before the cross of Calvary and see humanity murdering God incarnate.

That's the depth of sin in the heart of man. Even the thought is just overwhelming. It's breathtaking. It's unimaginable. God comes down to earth in the person of the Lord Jesus to rescue his people. To save them from hell.

And they nail them to a cross. Dear friend, time hasn't changed. If he came again today, man in his unregenerate condition would do exactly the same to him. They would turn on him like savage beasts and kill him.

Of course that wasn't the end. He rose from the grave. Wonderful, wonderful Savior. He rose from the grave. Spent time here on earth and then ascended back into heaven. Prince and a Savior. And then he turns around and offers eternal life to all of those who will trust him as Savior.

You tell me that isn't wonderful. You tell me that isn't great. Treat it like that. And then he sends the Holy Spirit, as it were, without spreadsheets, inviting people to be reconciled to God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

I tell you, it's wonderful, wonderful grace. God could have turned his back on the human race and no one could have accused him of injustice. He could have just dissolved the human race in a nuclear blast.

And he would have been perfect, true God, had he done so. Imagine man sitting in the face of the Lord Jesus, covering his face with shame and with pity. And yet, he wants to save us. He loves us. I tell you, if we really took it in that the Christ of Calvary, the God of eternity, we would be lost in wonder, love, and praise.

We would prostrate ourselves before him in adoration and use the words of that hymn which I love, dissolve our hearts in thankfulness and melt our eyes in tears. Aren't those beautiful words? Dissolve our hearts in thankfulness and melt our eyes in tears.

That's the proper response. But then the hymn goes on to say, But drops of grief will ne 'er repay the debt of love I owe. Dear Lord, I give myself away to all that I can do. That's the logic of Calvary.

We've talked about the love of Calvary. The logic of Calvary is, Dear Lord, I give myself away to all that I can do. At the breaking of bread we come and we hear the Lord Jesus saying, This is my body, given for you.

Dear friend, the only possible response to that is, Lord Jesus, this is my body, given for you. Presenting our bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable service. I think if we really understood it, if we really took it in, we'd go out and grab people by the lapel and say, Man, why don't you trust the Lord Jesus?

He died for you on the cross. He loves you. He died for you on the cross. The problem is that we lose the titanic wonder of it all. We do. We lose the titanic wonder of it all. We've recited the scriptures so often and so mechanically that they become dull for us.

And we've lost our sense of wonder. And you know, the older we get, the easier it is to lose that sense of wonderment. And we have to stir up the spiritual fires continually. Too often we have to ask ourselves, Am I a stone and not a man that I can stand, O Lord, beneath thy cross and number drop by drop thy blood's slow loss and yet not weep?

Too often we have to say, O wonder to myself I am thou living, loving, dying Lamb that I can stand the mystery or not be moved to love thee more. It's really enough to take our breath away. We have to recapture the staggering immensity of Calvary.

That the suffering Savior there is the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Lord, the Lord of glory, God manifest in the flesh. And dear friends, once we do that, our life can never be the same again. We can never spend our lives again in trivial pursuits.

We can never do that. We can never be content to be minor officials in transient enterprises. From then on we would have to say with the Apostle Paul, The love of Christ constrains us. Or say with David Livingston, The love of Christ compels me.

Henceforth we have to say, Love so amazing, so divine, Shall have my heart, my soul, my life, my all. Dear friends, that's the logic of Calvary. How do we miss it? How do we miss it? I think C .T. Studds said it so beautifully in his biography, Words that changed the whole direction of my life.

He said, If Jesus Christ be God and die for me, Then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him. I read those words in a book in 1946. And I got down on my knees and I did what I had never done before in my life.

I turned my life over to the Lord for service. Eight years before that I had turned my life over to the Lord for salvation. But I still had Bill McDonald's plans, Bill McDonald's ambitions, Bill McDonald's desire to get on in the community.

But you know those words slew me. If Jesus Christ be God and die for me, Then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him. That's it. So we've considered him. We've considered what he did for us.

We've considered the people for whom he did it. Not a very pretty picture. And hopefully this afternoon we'll go on and consider some of the marvelous blessings that have flowed to us as a result of his work for us.

Shall we pray? Blessed Lord Jesus, what can we say when we've considered afresh who you are and what you did for us at Calvary. Our hearts are filled, our souls are thrilled to think you died for us. Not just in mere man, but the creator and upholder of all things, the sovereign of the universe, Emmanuel, God with us.

You died for us. Give us a fresh appreciation of it, Lord Jesus. Expand the capabilities of our mind and heart to take it in. And may we come to you this day if we've never done it before. Say, Lord Jesus, you have died for me.

Henceforth I will live for thee. O Christ, thy bleeding hands and feet, thy sacrifice for me. Each wound, each tear, demands my life, a sacrifice for thee. We ask it in your worthy name, for your sake.

Amen.

Let's sing number 148. Number 148. When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, and poor contempt on all my pride. Number 148. Again, look to the Lord in a word of prayer, and also thanks for the food.

Heavenly Father, we think of the immense person of yourself. We think of the billions and billions of stars that exist in the universe. And as it was said, we're just a cosmic dust. And yet you loved us.

Even though we were yet in our sins, Christ came, the man-God, and delivered us through the wonderful work that was transpired on Calvary. We give you thanks that all has been done to work out our salvation, and that there is, and can it be, that there is now no longer any condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

We give you thanks for the bright portion that is ours to live in the presence of our Lord Jesus and to do his bidding. We think of lunch that is served downstairs, and we thank you for the hands that have prepared it.

And we would pray that our fellowship may be sweet, that we may stimulate one another towards love and good deeds, even as we see the days of the Lord Jesus approaching. We give you thanks, and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen. We're going to head down just like we did for a coffee break, and that is to my right hand. There's a set of doors head on down there, and the lunch will be served in the gymnasium.