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1. The Crossroads of History
These two pieces of wood stand at the very crossroads of history. They are history’s watershed, its spiritual continental divide. All of history revolves around these two wooden wedges implanted on a hillside just outside the city walls of Jerusalem. Those perpendicular planks have forced all people of all time to choose sides. There is no middle ground, neutral territory, or No Man’s Land regarding those two storied pieces of wood. All people must either embrace the cross by faith or reject the cross and what happened there in unbelief. Sadly, many folks do reject the cross – if not with their lips, then with their lives. Paul writes: “Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction…their mind is on earthly things.” Paul also shows the life-and-death consequences at the crossroads of the cross: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Paul made no bones about which side of the cross he stood on: “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
2. The Crossroads of His-Story
Those two pieces of wood form the focal point of His-Story, the greatest Book ever written – the Bible. God’s vast eternal plan centers around those two cursed beams. Ironically, they were the culmination of the hopes of centuries of Old Testament believers. They were the fulfillment of God’s promises to those ancient saints. Already in the Garden of Eden, a showdown was promised, which would accomplish man’s salvation. Speaking to the serpent, God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” In Psalm 22, the cross was specifically pointed to as the battleground for this showdown, “A band of evil men has encircled me; they have pierced my hands and my feet…they divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.” Even as Old Testament believers looked forward to those two timbers, we New Testament believers look backward to them as our reason for existence and our sure hope for an eternal existence in heaven. They form a divine guarantee that all the rest of God’s promises will be fulfilled in time and into eternity. Yes, those two terrible timbers form the crossroads of His-Story.
3. The Crossroads of His Personal Story
Think of what happened at that confluence of the cross: The Almighty God in heaven voluntarily left His happy home on high to take up residence for a time in this vale of tears on this rotting planet. He voluntarily set aside His divine attributes and humbly took on a human body. Paul wrote to the Philippians: “(Jesus Christ) being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross.”
When Jesus came to this world, He came as the humble Babe of Bethlehem with a cattle’s feeding trough, a manger, as His cradle. Already on that first Christmas, the shadow of the cross fell ominously across that cradle. During His entire life, Jesus was a Man on a Mission. The cross was always looming large on the horizon before Him. He fixed His eyes on the cross and never let them waiver or wander until His Mission was accomplished.
What happened on those two rough-hewn beams on that fateful Friday actually immortalized them. There, on those beams, a most amazing thing happened. The mighty God of heaven and earth was stretched out and hung out there to die. It was there on a lonely hill on those frightful planks that Jesus accomplished mankind’s salvation by dying as our Substitute.
Those two timbers formed the crossroads for Jesus because behind that cross was His crown. After His mission was accomplished, He once again returned to the crown and the glory that He had left behind when He first came on His mission of mercy. Paul writes concerning that coronation: “God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Truly, the cross stands at the crossroads of His personal story.
4. The Crossroads of Our Story
Those two pieces of wood have become the symbol of the essence of God and how He deals with His people. On the one hand, that instrument of execution produces terror in the hearts of unbelievers and nominal Christians because it is a constant reminder of the severity of God’s justice. It is a constant reminder that the terminal case of sin with which we are afflicted at conception will ultimately lead to death as cold and cruel as the death that Jesus suffered. It also reminds us just how much God hates sin – so much that He was willing to execute His own Son to punish the sin He was carrying – our sin.
On the other hand, Saints, the cross has lost its terror and horror for us believers and has become a symbol of God’s amazing love and mercy. We see it as the only crossroad that bridges the gaping chasm between God and man caused by sin. Those same two ugly, rough-hewn pieces of wood have been sanded, stained, and shellacked by Jesus’ blood and have become very beautiful to our eyes of faith. So beautiful, in fact, that we wear replicas of it around our necks and hang it on our walls. It serves the Christian as a ready reminder that our Lord loves us with a love that just won’t quit – till we are safe at our Savior’s side in our eternal home in heaven.
Just think of the parade of people who have made a vain grab at fleeting fame only to have history bury them along with their memory in its dust as time rolls relentlessly on. And then think about those two pieces of wood. They will live on in infamy until the final curtain comes down on the last scene of this life. When that happens, in faith, we will cross over the cross to our new forever home in heaven at our Savior’s side. Saints, let’s thank the Lord for those two blessed pieces of wood! Amen.
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