At the Cross is the Love of God

That was the conduct of divine creature number two. Everything that happened to Him was from the hand of God. And everything that happened to Him was an expression of love. Alright, I’d like you to see the Lord. What is His attitude and response? There is this: He was obedient. He was obedient. He responded with an expression of abandonment to what the Lord was doing. He responded with love.

I told you that the Lord Jesus was under dual love a moment ago. He was being loved by the Father, and He loved the church. When He came to the time, not of the cross, but of the crucifixion, He obeyed the Father in love and at the same moment out of a deed in utter love for His wife, for His bride…He suffered for her. He loved her and gave Himself for her. If you could have been inside of Jesus Christ that day, you could have felt Him. He was accepting it as fast as it was being given to Him. He was abandoning Himself to it, and that was the conduct of the Groom toward the girl He loved, and toward the Father…toward the Father who what? Who meted it out to Him.

Sister, you need a new God. As far as that goes, the whole Christian family needs a new God. The Lord forgive me…I hope my words aren’t cruel. Our present God needs to be dumped. His name isn’t God; His name is Santa Claus. We sing a song, and I love it. We got a great big wonderful God. But I like the song that says, “God is a good God.” You know that song? Never heard that song. It’s sung on the radio quite frequently by one of the evangelist’s programs. Does anybody know it? I got a wonderful God. I’ve got a God full of wonder. I also have a good God, but not like that guy means it. That guy means he’s a god who will prosper you. Is your god a god who will lead you to a whipping post?

Well, I know that God is…but is your God? Well, I will even say some people have a God, and they very well would believe that He would let Him be led to a whipping post. It’s a terrible God. But have you got a God, who, out of a passionate love for you, will decree such suffering in your life? You know that is the easiest God in the universe to misplace. Do you understand what I mean? When He comes as such a God, you never recognize it as the Lord. Circumstances and suffering. And not only must we recognize it as the Lord’s hand, not only that, but we must see it as an act of passionate love. But that’s not all, either.

Well, that’s the way the Lord. I don’t have to tell you that you don’t like to suffer. Do I? Do I have to tell you that John? Do I have to tell you that? God wants to just be God. And really, He’s very, very stubborn about the whole thing. Well, do you suffer? I hope you do. I hope you still suffer, because if you don’t, the forward move of God in your life isn’t there. I have had to learn a lot of lessons just by standing there and watching them. You know this; here’s a brother who starts out with the Lord. Boy, that is the fieriest, most enthusiastic…he’s got a deeper insight, he’s the one who gets up with the neatest testimony. Everybody is saying, “Wow, boy, that’s going to be a brother and a half…or a sister.” Then he takes blow number one and blow number two. One day, he reaches his maximum cross, and he does not see the Lord’s hand; he only sees the circumstance. And what he actually says is, I am suffering greatly for the Lord, and this is unfair, and you’re a bunch of dirty unmentionables, and I’m going to have nothing to do with you…or my boss is a dirty unmentionable…or my wife…or something.

And now he becomes a miserable creature. But I want you to know that that is suffering…and that is misery. And there’s a world of difference. The forward move of God in His life has ended. I want you to know that pretty soon the misery will pass, and the joy will be gone too. But the Lord will not bother him anymore. He’ll just kind of settle down with a good God, and after a while, there’ll be the color TV set and the big automobile, and he’ll camp right there, and that’s where it’s going to be. There’ll be times when the Lord will spur him and revive him a little, and every time it will be simply to put him right back there…and he’s not going anywhere. And sister, you’re not going anywhere…and brother, you’re not going anywhere till you get right back to that same cross. And what you once refused, you bloody go through it.

There’s only one way you can escape the cross. I wonder if anybody in this room can remember what I said. What? There is only one way you can escape the cross. Only one way – by opening your mouth. How do you escape the cross? Open your mouth. You immediately escape. Had the Lord opened His mouth at the trial, He would have escaped it. But I don’t want to get off on that. Are you still under the heat of God? Is the furnace still blazing? Boy, it better be for those whom He loves.

Be careful. I hope you don’t ever graduate from the love of God. The Lord Jesus Christ did not graduate from the Lord’s love. That is a great big picture of suffering. Sometimes I have to see a great big picture in order to handle a little bit of reality. Do you understand me? Sometimes I have to see the Lord suffering to get through one lousy roommate. I want you to know something. You have to get to a lousy roommate before the Lord will ever get you this. If the Lord never gives you this, it means you never got past your lousy roommate. You never learned to keep your mouth closed.

I’ll come back to this one day. I want you to know something – you win the right to be crucified. You win it. If you please, you earn it. How? Right, Michael, by bearing the cross, and the day you lay the cross down, you’re out of the race. You’ll never win the opportunity to be crucified. You know what’s on the other side of every cross? A bigger cross. And you know what’s on the other side of the biggest cross? Our crucifixion. You know what’s on the other side of the crucifixion? The resurrection. THE resurrection. Not a resurrection; THE Resurrection.

Simon Peter got tied to a whipping post. Isn’t that exciting? You think me mad…but isn’t that exciting? Simon…the coward. Simon the quicksilver…hot one day, cold next. Brave as thunder one day, as cowardly as a mouse the next. Simon Peter got tied to a whipping post…probably not too far away from the place where his Lord was tied to a whipping post. Okay. Who’s next? Paul of Tarsus. Maybe Patty can help me. Patty…it’s four strips of leather. Two made out of donkey-hide and two made out of cowhide. 4 * 195? 780 lashes across the back. What did he say about it? “I count it all as nothing for the surpassing knowledge, the surpassing excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.”

Paul of Tarsus had a back that looked like corrugated cardboard because of the brutal beatings he had gotten in his lifetime. I have told you before; I tell you again, brothers and sisters: he never once let it get inside him. But now I ask you why. As an act of love from the hand of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I want to ask you, was the Lord Jesus beautiful? Was He beautiful in being whipped? Was He? He was beautiful. Simon Peter, when it came to being whipped, was He beautiful? He was beautiful. Paul of Tarsus, when it came to the whipping post, was he beautiful? He was beautiful. Who is Simon Peter? Who is Paul of Tarsus?

I want you to know she had a passion for her Lord. I repeat it. She had a passion for her Lord. She loved Him. On the day that Stephen died, Paul of Tarsus, Saul then, the unbeliever, instigated this thing of whipping Christians. That’s when it began. John and Peter had known it previously and rejoiced that they had suffered for the name’s sake of their Lord. Wow…the privilege…of being loved. The first 13 stripes are applied to the chest. The next 13 are applied to this side. And the last 13 are applied to this side. Many people who received the 39 stripes died. Many were whipped unconscious. It wasn’t easy forgetting…