THE CROSS, THE NEW FORM OF WORSHIP
By: Frank Tunstall, D. Min.
Gethsemane: the name means “olive press.” When a press squeezes olives, it yields valuable oil but crushes the fruit in the process. Like an olive in the jaws of a press, Jesus was in Jerusalem, a few hours away from being crushed for the sins of all humanity. The sacrifice would be made about nine o’clock after morning dawned.
Isaiah had prophesied this very squeezing. “The Lord was pleased to crush [Messiah], putting Him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10). Jesus’ death would yield a much more valuable kind of oil: fresh anointing oil of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to anyone who thirsts (1 Samuel 16:13; John 14:16-17; Acts 2).
A millennium earlier King David’s son Absalom plotted to murder his father and take his throne. David’s path of escape took him up the same “Mount of Olives, weeping as he went.” It was a sad, sad scene – the great king’s head was covered and he was barefoot (2 Samuel 15:30).
King David fled successfully from his son, but David’s greater Son found no place to run and hide. It was there in Gethsemane that Jesus knelt and offered this prayer, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet, not my will, but yours be done.” The Lord was in such anguish “His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:42-44). The cup Jesus was about to drink was the bitter curse of the sins of the entire world, and it led to His sacrifice and unimaginable suffering (Matthew 20:22).
When Jesus had approached Jerusalem in his triumphal entry, He paused to look at the beloved city and began to weep (Luke 19:41; John 11:35). The word Luke used communicates actual sobbing and wailing.
Can you, dear reader, identify with Jesus’ pain when, with tear filled eyes, He sobbed and moaned over Jerusalem as He prophesied its destruction? Caiaphas offered a sacrificial lamb that morning, but the Lamb he needed was hanging to His cross. The new form of worship came at a great price, requiring Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The era of offering animal sacrifices had come to an end but Caiaphas didn’t know it. Henceforward, Jesus Christ was the Lamb of God who was to be worshiped. Jesus offered His own blood that redeems all mankind around the world who repent of their sins with Godly sorrow.
Our Lord is very patient. Israel’s leaders had forty years before Rome’s invasion to turn around their people and their worship, and welcome Jesus as their Messiah, but they did not do it. That forty years did, however, give the Apostles time to lay the foundation of the Lord’s Church, with Jesus as its center of worship.
Yes, devastation for the City of David was only forty years away. It could have been prevented, but it was not to be. The Caesar’s legions destroyed the city and killed people by the tens of thousands. Many Jews prayed for their messiah to come and save them but they had rejected their true Messiah and continued to look for Him everywhere except at the foot of His Cross.
I must needs go home by the way of the Cross.
There is no other way but this.
I shall ne’er get sight of the Gates of Light,
If the way of the Cross I miss.
The way of the Cross leads home.
The way of the Cross leads home.
It is sweet to know as I onward go,
The way of the Cross leads home.
It is especially important in our generation for pastors, evangelists, and teachers to speak of the wrath of God and
the judgment to come. But we must do it following the Lord’s example, with a broken heart and misty eyes.
And, in every worship service, your writer believes there should also be a place to pray for America that is moving rapidly away from God.
During the visit of some Greeks who wanted to see Jesus, the Lord made this gut-wrenching statement: “Now is my heart troubled and what shall I say. Father, save me from this hour? No. It was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name” (John12:27).
Our Lord, however, answered His own question with a resounding, “No!
With His death and resurrection, Jesus was leaving behind sacrificing lambs, the old form of worship. In its place He was building a new form of worship – salvation by grace through faith for anyone who sincerely accepts Jesus as the Son of God and repents with Godly sorrow. The Greeks standing in front of Jesus illustrated the new beginning; the Cross of Jesus would reap a great harvest.
Since that important day when Jesus gave His life by crucifixion, His resurrection has opened the gates of heaven to millions around the world to worship Jesus Christ and Him alone, in Spirit and in truth (John 4:23-42).
