GETHSEMANE CHURCH OF GOD IN CHRIST, INC

THE CROSS

When you look at the cross, what do you see?  For some it is a necklace to be worn around the neck.  For others it is a tattoo on some part of the body.  Some look at it as a wooden stake with a cross beam that was used for punishment.  When I see the cross, I see the love of Jesus. I see that he was willing to bleed, suffer and die for me.  He was willing to become a curse that I might be free.  I think many times we forget the great price that was paid for our salvation.  For the next few minutes, I want you to take a journey back in time with me as we see Jesus hanging on the cross.  Crucifixion was a common form of execution at that time.  It was invented by the Persians but refined by the Romans.  It was a hideously cruel method of capital punishment that delayed death while exacting the fullest possible measure of pain and suffering.  This is how one writer described the crucifixion of Jesus.

• His beard was plucked out.

• His back has been beaten with a whip composed of a leather strap with iron balls and bits of bone tied to each end.  His back looks like a plowed field.

• His face looks like a road map from the buffeting that he took from the Roman soldiers.

• Thorns as sharp as hypodermic needles are pressed down into His brow.

• He has rubbery mucus hanging from His face and lips where women and children spit upon Him on His way to the cross.

• He was stretched out like a canvas on a frame.

• He is nailed through His hands.  Then His feet are nailed down flush in a vertical position.  Then His knees were pulled up so that His calves instantly began to knot and the thighs instantly began to cramp.

• By placing one foot over the other, this created an “S” twist in His spine.  Every scientist of crucifixion says that within 2 hours every cartilage between the spinal column pops and then the nerves begin to sing and scream like someone dragging their nails across a black board.

• He is hung in this flex position.  Up for a while and then down.  Up and down.

• He is hanging on His biceps pulling apart the pectoral muscles.

• As He hung there trying to suck air into His lungs, His lungs begin to fill with fluid.

• His veins begin to twist into pieces so that the sacs under His arms turned black with internal bleeding.

• He is up again to take the weight off His arms and lungs.  His buttocks are pulled.  His pelvis is ripping, and He is bleeding from every orifice of His body, His eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and rectum.

• His tongue is black like liver between His teeth and He can’t shut His mouth.

• As He heaved up and down on the rugged cross, pieces of flesh were caught on the cross.

• As Isaiah states, He is marred more than any other man.  There is no beauty that we would desire Him.

I think you will agree that this is not a pretty picture.  It is something we try to put out of our minds.  We must never forget the suffering of the cross and what was accomplished for all mankind.  For God so loved the world that He gave His son.  His Son loved us so much that He gave His life.  THANK GOD FOR THE CROSS.

May God Richly Bless You

Pastor Raymond F. Berry