Crossing Between Two Thrones

By: Dr. Robert Petterson

Apr 05, 2009

The cross is both the glory and shame of Christianity. In our age of soda fizz theology, Dr. Phil sermons, and praise songs that by-in-large ignore the centrality of a crucified life, the cross has been reduced to mute ornaments in church buildings and costume jewelry to be worn by people who would never carry a real one. But the cross cannot be ignored. AW Tozer wrote, “In every Christian’s heart there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne (wearing his tinsel crown) until he puts himself on the cross.” In Luke 9:23-27 Jesus tells us that, until we get off our thrones, and pick up our crosses, we will never receive the only throne that really matters.

Sermon Text:

[Text: Luke 9:23-27]

Crucifixion was first invented as an instrument of torture in ancient Iraq. But the Romans perfected it as a diabolical art form. Our word excruciating comes from the Latin crucifixio. A Roman proverb said that crucifixion was a thousand deaths in one.

Our Lord's crucifixion began earlier that day when legionnaires whipped him until his back was flayed into a bloody pulp. Exhausted and weak from loss of body fluids, he carries a 125-pound crossbeam to a pile of rock and rubble in a garbage heap outside Jerusalem. That rock formation looks ominously like a human skull, adding to the ghoulishness of his execution.

The executioners strip Jesus stark naked before gawking eyes, forcing him to endure what to a Jew is the ultimate degradation. Later his naked body will be blistered by sun and covered with flies, adding to his torture.

Rough hands shove him to the ground and knees pin his arms to the crossbeam. With professional efficiency, the executioner probes his wrist to find the hollow spot and then drives a six-inch spike through quivering flesh. The searing pain is almost unbearable. The executioner jumps across the body to the other wrist. With Jesus now securely pinioned to the crossbeam, soldiers lift it up the side of a perpendicular shaft of wood. For an excruciating moment, his full weight hangs suspended from his nailed wrists. He almost passes out from the rush of nausea.

Our Savior's knees are buckled, one foot is placed over another, and a single square-cut spike is driven through both ankles. His arms are now in a V position. The pain in his wrists is beyond bearing, and muscle cramps are knotting his forearms, upper arms and shoulder pads. The pectoral muscles of his chest are paralyzed. He panics, unable to exhale the air in his lungs.

He raises himself on wounded feet as high as he can. Finally he gets his breath out. But then his legs and thighs begin to cramp, and the pain in his ankles is shattering. He slumps again, hanging by his wrists. Spasms of pain again shoot through his arms. His internal organs begin to collapse in on each other, slowly asphyxiating him. He rises again to catch his breath. All afternoon he will rhythmically rise and fall, trying to find relief from the alternating pain. Now the muscles in his lower back begin to spasm in unspeakable agony.

A speedy tetanus sets in. Convulsions rack his body. Blood, supercharged with sugar, is pounding in his head, producing a throbbing migraine headache. Though agony intensifies by the second, death will take hours. The nerves of his limbs and torso are screwed tighter and tighter, like strings across the bridge of a violin. He is burning with fever and delirious with thirst. Because his swollen tongue has doubled in size, he can barely swallow. He feels like two hands are squeezing his throat.

His terror mounts as the overwhelming flood of our sins wash over him, crushing him with their enormity. He feels utterly dirty and ashamed as his soul freefalls into hell, sucked into a black hole of utter despair and aloneness. He cries out in Aramaic, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sbachtahan?"—"My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Finally, having paid the full penalty for our sins, he rises like a twisted scarecrow and cries out, "It is finished!" He slumps forward with a raspy whisper, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." The organs of his constricted torso collapse, slowly but inexorably crushing his heart.

This crucifixion is unspeakably grotesque. His disciples couldn't bear to follow him to this place of horror called Golgotha. Isaiah 53:3 says that those who witnessed it were so traumatized that they hid their faces. Yet we dare peek at the mangled mess nailed to that cross; for it was out of love for us that he endured this crucifixion. We are so relieved that it was Jesus, and not us, nailed to that cross. But then we read his shocking words in Luke 9:23:

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

None of us wants this Cross, but it is at the heart of Christianity. On Palm Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem to die on a cross. On Thursday night he begged his Father to let him off the hook. But he denied himself and prayed, "Your will be done, not mine!" On Friday he took up his cross and followed his Father's will all the way to Golgotha. He died on that cross, paying the penalty for our sins and opening the doorway of heaven to us.

When he cried out, "It is finished!" his work on the Cross was done. You would think that this would be the end of the Cross. But there is an endless forest of crosses, each with the name of a Christian etched on it. Among them is your cross and mine. Jesus says that we must each deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. Here's the cardinal principle of the Cross:

Without His Cross we have no salvation. Without our cross we have no sanctification.

We are justified before God because Jesus paid the entire payment for our sin by living a perfect life we couldn't live and dying a perfect death we couldn't die. In our Bibles he cries out, "It is finished!" But in the original language it is only one word: "Finished!" Literally it is "Tetelestai!"—an ancient Greek banking term which means, "Paid in full!" We do nothing to earn our salvation. God declares us righteous because Christ's righteousness has been transferred to our account. Our salvation requires His death alone.

But our sanctification demandsourdeath. Sanctification comes from the Latin word Sanctus which means to be holy. God calls us to be increasingly holy in our lives. If the life of Christ is the gold standard of holiness, sanctification means that we must be conformed more and more to Christ.

Look at the first phrase of Luke 9:23: "If anyone would come after me…" The original language is intensely passionate. It speaks of chasing after Jesus, reaching out to grab hold of him, and then holding on for dear life so that nothing can pry us loose. We want to look like him, talk like him, think like him, act like him, do what he does, and go where he goes. This passion is captured in the words of 1 John 3:2: "…what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him…"

It was in ancient Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians as a term of derision. Literally the phrase was "Christ-ians" or "little Christs." These followers of Jesus were the brunt of jokes because they were committed to imitating their Master, down to the smallest details.

When I was adopted at age twelve, I wanted to be just like my new dad, "Pete" Petterson. He was a legend among the fishing fleets of the Pacific Northwest, consistently battling the biggest storms to bring home the largest catches of salmon. I was proud to be his son. I shadowed him wherever he went, dressed exactly like him, and aped his every move. When we walked the docks, fisher-man would call out with good-natured humor, "Here comes Pete, followed by his son Re-Pete." Pete would wink at me, and I wanted to burst with pride. Forty-eight years later, I still want to be like Pete. But even more, I am more desperate than ever to be like Christ, while I still have some time left on this earth.

Pollster George Barna finds in his most recent surveys that there is one predominate reason that today's youth are turned off to Christianity: "They don't see in our lifestyles the reality of the Christ we speak about." What defines Christ's life on this earth more than anything else? It is the Cross. That's why Jesus says, "If any would come after me, he must…take up his cross daily…" When we refuse to take up the cross, we rip the very heart out of Christianity. Without the cross, Christians become powerless. Look at the words of AW Tozer in his book, The Root of the Righteous:

"In every Christian heart there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne till he puts himself on the cross; if he refuses the cross he remains on the throne. This is at the bottom of the worldliness among gospel believers. We want to be saved, but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying to self. We remain kings of our little kingdoms and wear our tinsel crowns with all the pride of a Caesar; but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility."

The Cross is not a symbol we stick on a church wall, but a reality we must pick up and carry seven days a week. It is not a miniature piece of jewelry we hang on a gold chain around our necks, but an instrument of death on which we must hang the whole weight of our lives. How do we take the Cross from religious symbol to righteous reality?

1. Commit to the Great Certainty: the way of Christ is the way of the Cross.

Look back in Luke 9 and see what proceeds Jesus' call to the cross. He and his disciples are going to Jerusalem for the last time. He asks his disciples in verse 20, "Who do you say I am?" Peter answers, "The Christ of God." The Greek word Christ means "The Anointed One." The Hebrew word is Messiah. The Jews in Peter's day were desperate for the Messiah prophesied by Isaiah some 700 years before. They believed that he would come as a Warrior King with supernatural power to destroy the enemies of Israel and set up a Jewish world kingdom. The disciples followed Jesus hoping he was the Christ, fantasizing about the power and prestige they would possess as chief lieutenants in his kingdom. When the crowds came out to cheer him on Palm Sunday, his disciples were giddy: the revolution was at hand! As late as Passover the evening before his crucifixion, they argued about who would be greatest in his Messianic Kingdom. Peter wants all this power and prestige when he says, "You are the Christ of God."

Jesus responds to Peter's confession by shattering his dreams in verse 22. He says that he must go to Jerusalem, not to sit on a throne, but to hang on a cross. But Matthew's gospel records something that Luke leaves out. Peter jumps in front of his Master to stop him in Matthew 16:22: "Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you." In short, Peter is trying to restrain Jesus from taking up his cross. Jesus responds with a stinging rebuke: "Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men!" Peter wants the prestige of a Messianic kingdom, not the death of a suffering servant; a throne without a cross; and a crown of gold rather than a crown of thorns. But Jesus says, "If anyone would come after me…" It is not our place to stand in front of Jesus and tell him where we want to go. Rather, we are to follow him to where he wants us to go. And he wants to take us to the Cross. What does it involve? Luke 9:23 says we must do what Jesus did with his cross.

1) There is an ultimate condition: "If anyone would come after me…" This is a conditional clause in the original Greek sentence: the inescapable if. You cannot come after him unless you do what he did. You cannot have the life of Christ without living the life of Christ.

2) There is an initial submission: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself…" Most gospel presentations today are designed to make Christianity attractive to seekers. A gospel for a self-absorbed culture is all about what Jesus can do for you. It produces preachers who are more like Dr. Phil, sermons that are self-help talks, and services that look more like an episode of the Oprah show. But Jesus presents a radically-different gospel that demands of every would-be follower, "…he must first deny himself..." The key is that word self. We don't always have to say "no" to self. But we do have to deny all desires that stand in the way of God's will. Jesus had to say "no" to self in the Garden of Gethsemane and pray, "Not my will, but yours be done." Peter had to say no to his dreams for power and prestige because they stood between Jesus and the Cross. And so must all of us.

3) There is a great decision: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross…" When a condemned man picked up his cross he was going to his place of execution. He was never coming home again. He was saying goodbye to everything in this world. When he picked up his cross he was already a dead man. It was a terrifying thing for Jesus to pick up his cross. He would endure shame and pain. But after hanging on a cross, he would sit on a throne. We cannot follow Christ unless we die to everything in this world. We have to die to doing things our way, our prejudices, our materialistic cravings, our addictions, our self-centeredness, and every attitude or action that runs counter to the will of God. We have to say goodbye to the world as we knew it. We have to get down off our thrones, take off our tinsel crowns, and pick up our cross. The throne is for later, after our resurrection.

4) There is a daily continuation: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Taking up your cross is not a one-time deal. In the Dufar region of Sudan, a million Christians have been martyred by Islamic terrorists. By order of the Sudanese government, 88 Christians were nailed to crosses in 2004. One of those who escaped, and is languishing in a refugee camp, told a reporter, "It would be easier to die for Christ, than to live for him. You die once and then it's over." But carrying the cross daily for years wears you out." Jesus knows how quickly we want to throw down our cross. Maybe you are tired of denying yourself in some area of life. For just once you would like to win an argument, or get a break, or find some happiness, or enjoy some relief from the pressures of life. When I feel that way, I remember the words of Hebrews 12:2: "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

5) There is a great expectation: "…when he comes in glory…" Jesus is coming again. Verse 26 says that he will go through horrific humiliation during his trial and crucifixion. His disciples will be tempted to be ashamed of him. But after his humiliation, there will be exaltation. He will rise from the dead, ascend to heaven, and he will come "…in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." And so it is with us. If we will give up the temporary thrones of this earth, and take up our cross today, there will be an eternal throne of glory that will far exceed our temporary troubles.

2. Don't be Ashamed of the Cross

Jesus goes on and gives three reactions that will hinder us from taking up our cross. He knows why Peter is fighting against him going the way of the cross. It defies all human logic. St. Paul later wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:18, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing." Do you realize that Christianity is the only religion in this world where its Lord died a criminal's death? Under Roman law only slaves, rebels, or the most despicable criminals were crucified. It was the most disgraceful and shameful way to die. The Roman philosopher Seneca called crucifixion the supplicium servile or "the abasement of slaves." Cicero called the crucified the humilitates or "the lowest of the lowest." To the Romans power was everything. They could never worship a king who died like a slave. To the Greeks wisdom was everything. They would never worship someone who turned logic on its head by saying that you live by dying, possess the world by giving it up, find glory through shame, show strength in weakness, or trump wisdom through foolishness. The Jews had a saying about crucifixion: "Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree." (Deut. 21:23) How could they worship a crucified savior? Why is the cross so offensive?

1) It calls us to die to ourselves and this world. In verse 24 Jesus says, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it." We cling tenaciously to life till our last breath. People will sell out their country, compromise their principles, and give away entire fortunes to live a little longer. Jesus said it: we will lose everything, even life, to hold on to life. In verse 25 Jesus adds, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?" People love this world and all of its stuff. Perhaps it is because our human bodies are made up of the dust (or stuff) of this earth that we are driven to gather all the stuff of this world that we can. We even sacrifice eternity in order to hold on to life and stuff. Like our first parents, we would rather have the forbidden fruit than eternal life. The cross calls us to do the very thing we abhor most: to die to life and this world. Peter just can't bear the thought of losing his kingdom and all the stuff that would come with it. Neither can the church today. We have become so worldly, so rich in material things, and so prone to tell people that if they follow Jesus they can even get more of the good things of this life and earth.

2) It calls us to shame in the eyes of this world.Jesus goes on to say to Peter and all of us disciples in verse 26, "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in glory…" Peter is proud of Jesus when the miracles are flowing, and demons are being cast out, and the crowds are huge. He is giddy with excitement when they enter the city to a tumultuous welcome of "Hosanna to God in the highest" as the multitudes come out to welcome their Messiah. He exults in triumph when Jesus drives the money-changers out of the Temple later that week. Everything is falling into place for an earthly kingdom of power. He and the other disciples are already dreaming of the prestige they will enjoy. This is the kind of church we want today: mega churches with impressive numbers, first class praise bands and attractive preachers, gorgeous building, lots of programs that meet our needs, and ministries that make us all happy. We want Jesus to give us the riches of this world along with good favor in the eyes of others. We want what Peter wanted.

But when he insisted on the way of suffering and death, of washing feet and carrying crosses, they became ashamed of Jesus. Judas was so disillusioned that he sold him for 30 pieces of silver. How many of us will sell out Jesus for material gain? Peter was so ashamed that three times he denied he belonged to an enterprise that the world scorned. How many of us are embarrassed to identify with Christ when we are with people who scorn our Faith and its Lord? Like Peter we keep silent, lest we offend others and put ourselves in a precarious position. We might even curse a little just to prove we aren't one of those fundamentalist Christians. The rest of the disciples turned tail and ran when things didn't turn out the way they wanted. How many of us run from Jesus when the cross gets in the way of our dreams of thrones and crowns?

3) It calls us to postpone glory until after the shame. Look again at the words of verse 26. There is a time for shame, and there is a time for glory. Now is the time of the cross. It calls us to deny ourselves, die to this world, and live out a gospel that is absurd to the world. There will be seasons of shame. Some of us may even die on a real cross for our faith. Eighty-eight Christians died on crosses in Sudan in 2004. We don't know what the future holds for us as the world marches inexorably toward Armageddon. For some of you, the cross means you will have to postpone your happiness and stay in a barren marriage. Others of you will be called to persevere in financial situations, or bad health, or lose favor with friends because you will not compromise your biblical values. Still others of us will be called to give away houses and money from our savings, and even financial security, to meet the needs of others and advance the kingdom. And a few of us will lose our careers and even relationships we count dear. Jesus teaches us that there is a divine sequence: He left his throne in glory. He walked the way of the cross on this earth. After he rose from the dead, he ascended to heaven and sat down on a throne. And so we walk today between two thrones: the throne we give up on this earth, in order to walk with a cross, so that we might ascend to an eternal throne in heaven. Our glory is yet to come.

Copyright 2008-2012, All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced without permission from Dr. Robert Petterson, Pastor Trent Casto or Covenant Presbyterian Church of Naples.