God Crucified - Art Katz

See God Crucified!

See God nakedly hanging.

See this excruciating suffering and you’ll understand His horror of sin.

Has it been a horror for you so much so that you could never consider to crucify the Son of Glory afresh or trample upon His blood by singing choruses that celebrate something of which we have little actual knowledge and experience, and of which many of us are contradicting in actual practice or thought or imagination?

“He was wounded for our transgressions.”

Have you read Psalm 22 lately? What a picture of Crucifixion!

Maybe 1000 years in advance of the event.

“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd ; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou has brought me unto the dust of death…they pierced my hand and my feet. I may tell all my bones.:they look and stare upon me.” (Ps.22:14-17)

Do you know the wonderful hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”by Isaac Watts?

When have you surveyed it last?

Do you know what Charles Finney was writing which I read today? He said that he would not dream of traveling in ministry with a colleague who was not himself broken down before God at least once every 2 or 3 weeks.

This encouraged me to speak on the subject tonight, though I am sure you know it already. But I don’t think I would miss God to suggest that a frequent survey of the Cross is a good thing.

We need to see the Lord high and lifted up. “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.” (John 12: 32)

We need to remember what the heart of the faith is that staggers the minds of antichrists and unbelieving Jews!

God Crucified!

For our transgressions and our iniquities.

Isaac Watts was inspired by the Holy Ghost to compose this hymn.

“When I survey the wondrous Cross On which the Prince of Glory died, My richest gain I count but loss And pour contempt on all my pride.”

Only when you survey the wondrous Cross.

Anything else is play acting, a gamesmanship, a mere phraseology, a subscribing to correct doctrine, a plastic substitute.

We need to survey the wondrous Cross on which the Prince of Glory died.

Forbid it Lord that I should boast, except in the Cross of Christ my Lord.

Any of us boasting? If not in words, in countenance and appearance?

Do you know how Finney said that he knew conviction was coming into a people to whom he spoke, that God was breaking them down by His Spirit?

They couldn’t hold their heads up.

They couldn’t look at him.

They had to turn their faces away.

They looked down. They were bowed over.

He said so long as he saw an audience that still looked at him as the speaker, he knew that God had not yet done his work of convicting power.

Forbid it Lord that I should boast except in the Cross of Christ my God. All the vain things that charm me most I sacrifice to His blood. See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love mingled down…

If he was naked in his private parts and humiliated there to save us from humiliation, what shall we say of the significant wounds in the hand and head?

He was wounded in the hands for our practices, for which reason many of us cannot yet lay hands upon others and send them out with holy hands.

Wounded in the feet because we’ve have carried our bodies to places that ought not to have been.

Do you know about the Shroud of Turin, that famous linen thing that has been kept for centuries in which there is considerable evidence that it was actually the shroud that covered the body of Jesus?

Interesting that it should be coming out of hiding, now in our generation. It was recently examined by a panel of experts and anatomists who know the body and its structures. They counted over 200 lash marks on that body. You say, “How could they have that kind of evidence?”

It is because a strange thing happened in a certain explosive moment that took the coagulated blood that clung to this linen cloth and made of it a photographic negative in a blinding moment of light, so that every wound was registered on that sheet.

200 lash marks, profuse bleeding on the scalp from some kind of thing that was pressed on the skin and skull, and other ugly evidence of torture I can’t describe.

See from His head, His hand His feet sorrow and love come mingled down.

See it by the Spirit of God. See it!

I’m just being so much the fool tonight. I wouldn’t even call this a sermon or a message. I’m just simply trusting that somehow God wanted God Crucified preached. He wanted Himself raised upon the Cross before His people,

that we might see it….

really see it

really celebrate it

really acknowledge it.

For it alone can keep us. When we see the horror of what sin caused Him, we shall love righteous and hate iniquity and keep ourselves from crucifying the Son of God afresh.

Do you see it?

(the person translating is so overcome with emotion at this point she can hardly go on.)

It says in Isaiah 53: 8, He was cut off and out from the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was he stricken.

There’s something so surgical about that expression, something so total!

Talk about total God calling to total man, cut off and out from off and out of the land of the living!

I’ll tell you that is about more than the issue of sin.

It is a profound salvation for us if we have been joined with that one in that crucifixion…..to be cut off and out…

Such a radical separation from the world, the flesh and from the devil, from those who had had the same ax laid to their root.

In closing:

Do you remember the Eunuch that Phillip led to the Lord in Acts 8. God thought so much of that man that he took him from the field of successful ministry and joined him to one black man on his way to Ethiopia.

According to Christian legend, this one man brought Christianity to Africa, that Ethiopian Eunuch..a man who has had the ax laid to the root….as a man of great authority who had the charge of all the queen’s treasure. (Acts 8:27-40)

Jesus spoke at one time about the eunuchs. He said that some were born eunuchs, those who are biological freaks. They will never have the physical enablements that are the rights of all men.

Then there are some men that are made eunuchs by men. Talk about a horrible scene…the shrieks and cries as a man is pinned down by an army of men held him down as another man did the filthy thing!

But Jesus also said”there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” (Matt.19:12)

This Ethiopian Eunuch was a man of great authority and was in charge of all the Queen’s treasure. (Acts 8:27-40) Only a eunuch can be so implicitly trusted. He is not going to appropriate anything for himself over which he has been given charge(women).The ax has been laid. He’s been cut off and out. God offers us the same protection. The Cross of Christ Jesus laid to the root of life that you might be cut off and out of the land of the living.

I think, in my opinion, the only men who will be safe at the end of an age abounding with iniquity are believers to whom the ax has been laid!

Iniquity shall abound, full of filth and lust, seductions of such power that you will stagger; such subtlety, and such sensuality that its taking victims already among Christians.

Only a dead man can be safe, to whom the ax has been laid to the root of his life, who has been cut off and out of the land of the living, who recognizes the horrible propensity of his flesh. Self-conscious discipleship is not the answer. Saying, “I’ll never do it again,” is not the answer. Neither are whistling in the dark and singing choruses, the answer.

Only ONE answer.

It’s the Cross of Christ Jesus!

Not the plastic counterfeit but the BLOOD of the Cross, the place of suffering and shame, where God bids us come.

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up His Cross...(Luke 9:23)

When Christ bids a man come, He bids a man come and die.