Communion Message
(The center of history)
July 27, 2003
Pastor Donald Sheley

For I have received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me." In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes. Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

Paul writes: At that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.

I was fascinated by some writing as I studied this week by a man who contemplated the man who nailed Jesus to the cross. This is what he says: History is nailed together; literally it is. The story of man from its beginning to the present is so varied and disconnected it had to be nailed together to give it continuity. Since the nail was driven, human history reads more smoothly. Since that time, there is a vital interrelatedness between its widely separated parts.

Now we do not know the name of the man who used the hammer, but about the nail we are more sure. A state employee, ignorant of his own vital role in history, drove the nail through the hand of a man and into a cross behind it. He was so completely lost in his bloody business that he took no time to scratch his name on the wood, so we do not know him. We can neither congratulate him for the meaning he gave to history, nor condemn him for the crucifixion of an innocent man. Still we must not be too hard on this nameless executioner. Could he really be expected to understand the significance of the nails? After all, he had spiked six hands to crosses that dismal morning in spring, and four of those hands belonged to criminals suffering from their sin and their conviction.

In innocence this man drove the nail of history. For you see a mallet man only drives the nails where the state says to drive them, and the hands of a robber and a carpenter all look alike. The nail was driven and forgotten. The sporadic grasp of history reached its zenith in the year 027, that is the year of the cross. This was the year that our nameless benefactor took his hammer and fastened together man's meaningless disconnected story.

Now perhaps you do not see the cross as the center of history. Other pieces of human event may seem to you to have deeper meaning for man's existence. You might name the Code of Hammurabi or the Decalogue or the Magna Carta as of equal importance, so the year 27 might not be as significant to you as 44 BC or the year 1066 or 1945. Yet none of these events have been so fundamental to answering the human need as that of the cross. Men from the stone ax to the astronauts have been vexed in lonely moments by a few questions that only one historical event has made the attempt to answer. These are the questions that hound humanity. Where have I come from? Where am I going? And what's the use of my being here?

The cross has answered those questions. Human genius from Salomon to Socrates did not have the answer. None of the tyrants from Hannibal to Hitler had them. But between Nebuchadnezzar and Napoleon there was a Nazarene who had these much sought-after answers. These answers could not be spoken they had to be suffered. The answers were all exposed on the cross. They were developed in three days of darkness while man argued with themselves as to what this sacrifice had meant. Then with the emergence of that first Easter, man's deepest longings have been fulfilled. The fundamental issues all had been answered.

For 200 decades now men have crawled out of every little corner of time to throw rocks at the cross. The philosophers have pelted it with laughter, asking its purpose. But the cross has answered them in the words of one if its greatest defenders. The preaching of the cross is to them that parish, foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. The legations have cried that its too unbelievable to the educated or to the wise, and yet the cross has its answers. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

Has the cross successfully answered its critics? Well, they are mostly all gone now, and it remains. It has outlived all its assailants to bring to you new meaning and to set your feet upon a pathway that leads somewhere. It would like to do this for the whole world at once, but that's not the way of the cross. It builds its belief in one heart at a time. The cross is there to remind you that you came from God. It was He who created you in His image. You have come from God and you're made like Him intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And God is that great power that made you with the right to choose and hope you would use the power to choose the right.

But the cross too came from God. It has come because men who were created good have gone bad. Given the power to choose between sin and righteousness, we chose sin. The cross has become the symbol of His righteousness. It was because He clung so tightly to His righteousness that He even faced the cross. For Christ could've avoided His death by surrendering His sinlessness. At Calvary truth died holding out its bloody hands to falsehood. So have come a chain of man 2000 years long asking Him to take the fullness of righteousness which was His and place it in the center of their lives. The promise is extended to you.

Though you have tried to live without sin and have failed, there is yet a measure of some happiness, and although you cannot depend upon your own righteousness to save you, His righteousness is dependable. Is it not time to raise the cross in the middle of your life? You must salute it moment by moment and serve it hour by hour. It's the supreme example of righteousness and can never belonged to a man who will not show it his supreme respect. Just as history's hour is the hour of Calvary, so your greatest moment will be that small quantum of time when you say, I am crucify Christ nevertheless I live.

So our writer suggests are some things of history we will never know; the man's name who used the mallet; What was his address? What size family did he have? We'll never know, but there are some things about the cross we can know. It was there the price was paid for our redemption. It was there at the cross Jesus took your sin and my sin and became the substitute, the sacrifice, and because He died we can live. We know that. That's why we honor the cross, and that's why we worship Christ. That's why we love Him. Let's bow in His presence, shall we?

It's true, Lord Jesus, there are a lot of things we'll never know. But that's all right. What we do know is vitally and eternally important and that is that on that cross 2000 years ago You took my sin and the sin of all the world and You took the penalty of that sin, which was death, and with Your life You paid that penalty in death so I could live forever with You. That is absolutely amazing. Wonder of wonders that You Lord Jesus would love us so much that You would come to this world to die for us. We bow in reverence and in worship, Lord Jesus.

Now we're here today and there's not a one of us that would even suggest to the slightest any degree of perfection. We are sinners. Yes, saved by Your grace, but yet in our weakness and our frailty and in our humanness we fail You so often and we sin. And in this moment we ask Your forgiveness, Your cleansing and Your pardon . And the beautiful thing about this prayer is that we hold in our hands its answer, because the emblems tell us that in Your body, which is represented by the bread, You were our substitute. You died in our stead. And this cup bespeaks of Your precious blood that cleanses from all sin. So You gave us these reminders, simple yet profoundly wonderful, to tell us that You do forgive us and that You do love us; and for that we are eternally thankful. So we take these emblems today with great joy and with the knowledge of Your love and with the promise of forgiveness. Let's take the bread together, and then the cup. Wonderful Jesus, blessed Redeemer, almighty God, our King, our Lord, our Savior. Amen. Let's stand and greet one another, shall we?