Tony Evans - Victory Because of the Cross
You are the pastor of your family, and if you're not shepherding your family, then you're not being the man of God that God has called you to be.
How is God using you today as a man, as a David, in this generation? Until you have purposed to find your purpose in God, you will never have a heart for God.
To put it another way, men, you must take God off of the loop of your life and let him come downtown.
Gentlemen, it's time to come home. It's time to come home to Jesus Christ. Come on home to a Savior who loves ya. Come on home to a Savior who died for you.
So if you want a better world, composed of better countries, made up a better states, then happy about better counties composed of better cities, made up of better neighborhoods, illumined by better churches, made up of better families, it starts with you becoming better men. It starts with us! It starts with us!
Throughout the Scripture, God would commemorate special times for special celebration in recognition of his intervention in history to deliver people. There is no greater intervention into history to deliver people than the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Resurrection is God's receipt that the death of Christ was accepted by him as full payment for the sins of mankind. So if there's any commemoration worth recognizing, celebrating, and shouting about, it is to have time set aside for a focus on our salvation accomplished by the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, Resurrection Sunday should be a big deal. It should be a big deal all the time, but like those special celebrations throughout the Bible, this is undistracted focus on a single event, the greatest event in history, the Resurrection of the Son of God.
One of the greatest verses related to the cross and related to its provisions for you and me is found in Romans chapter 8, verse 32: "He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him over for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things"? So now you see the story in the verse. "He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him over for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things"? He goes on to say in verse 37, "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us". "He did not spare him. He gave him over," a reference to the cross.
Why should this reference to the cross excite you? Because it comes with so much more. "Will he not with him," because you embrace the Son, "freely give you all things"? What does that mean? All things God has deemed by his grace that should come your way come for free. Now, how many folk like free stuff? Let me ask a question: How many of you like free stuff for everything? Guess what he says? "All things for free". All the God has bequeathed to you as a believer is yours at no cost. It does not have to be earned. It does not have to be bought. It does not have to be cajoled. It doesn't have to be forced. It's free.
Now, that's hard to grasp. That's hard to grasp in a world where you have to earn everything, that God's doing this for free. It goes against our nature. It goes against our understanding, and yet, he says if you embrace the Son, God bequeathed to you all things, and it's all things that have been bequeathed to you which is gon' vary from person to person. Some things are general to all of us as believers. Other things are specific to us, but he says it's free. Now, there's a free word in the Bible that's a word used throughout the New Testament, and it's the word "grace". "Grace" is simply all that God is free to do for you because of what Christ has done. Grace is what God does without any help from you. Grace is simply all that God is free to do for you because of what Christ has done. Grace is what God does without any help from you.
Now, this ought to shift a little bit your understanding of your salvation and how it plays into the work that you do. Ephesians 2:8 and 9 says, "By grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not according to works, so that no man should boast". Free. Then he comes to verse 10, and he says, "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he has created beforehand that we should walk in them". So he's got "works" in verse 10. But the work in verse 10, is a response to the grace in verse 8 and 9. In other words, you're not working to get grace. You're working because you have grace. In other words, grace is my appreciation for a free gift. Grace doesn't earn it. It's just my gratitude for it. That's where a lot of teaching and preaching goes left. We try to get people to earn what Jesus wants to give.
You cannot earn grace. "Grace" and "earning" are contradictory terms. The cross of Christ is so pregnant, so rich, so full, it not only involves your salvation in terms of forgiveness of sin, it involves your provision, all that God is free to do for you. You ought to be able to go, "Phew, you mean to tell me he's bequeathed that"? That's why there's so much in the New Testament about going back to the law, this thing of earning favor by rule-keeping, not because there aren't rules. It's just that the rules are kept because the relationship is strong.
It reminds me of the story of the woman who was married to a very miserable husband. The husband had all these rules, 25 of them, to be exact, and he expected her to keep all 25, and they would've laid out when she was to get up, what she was to cook, what day she was to clean, all of the rules that would satisfy him as a husband. She hated the rules and hated him because she was under this weight of legalism, of rule-keeping, and it was a miserable existence. For an extended period of time, many years, she lived under this. It came about the husband died. She was freed from him. While on a trip to Europe, she ran into another gentleman, and this gentleman began to show her attention, and after a while, they fell in love, and then they got married.
This second husband was not like the first one. He cherished her, valued her, complimented her, encouraged her, motivated her, just showered her with value. One day, while the woman was cleaning out one of the drawers in the home, she ran across the old lists from the first husband, and when she ran across the old lists from the first husband, she began to giggle, and the reason she giggled was, she was doing all 25 things that the first husband demanded for the second husband who didn't demand it and was loving it. It wasn't the list that changed. It was the relationship that changed because she was in love. She was now motivated to do.
Religion forces you to do whether you're in love or not, and that creates a burden. Jesus says that, "My laws are not burdensome. You're supposed to enjoy it". But that's assuming that the love relationship is intact. God wants to dispense to you. You know, I got somethin' in the mail the other day, and I've gotten it a number of times. Many of you have gotten it too. It was from a credit card company, and they told me I had been prequalified to be able to use this credit card for another five or ten thousand dollars. They were givin' me stuff I didn't even ask for. They prequalified me. You know, that's what grace does. It prequalifies you, but the prequalification came because you have now been credited with the righteousness of Christ.
Maybe we ought to review that because I think it's easy for 2 Corinthians 5:21 to get lost, because 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "He who knew no sin was made sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him". "He knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him". That's a credit score. On the cross, God credited all of our sin onto Christ. When you come to Christ for salvation, God does a reverse credit. He takes all the righteousness of Christ, which was perfect righteousness, and he credits it back to you. He credits our sin to Christ. You accept Christ. He credits Christ's righteousness back to you, so you look to God like his Son because you have been imputed, or credited with a perfect credit score which frees God up to relate to you as though you are his Son. You are his child but to be his little Jesus in relationship to the Father.
So this cross, yes, it gets us to heaven, but it allows God to dispense to you in history. It's not only for the sweet by and by. It's also good for the nasty here and now. Yes, there are problems, there are troubles, there are struggles in this world. There are things that we have to overcome. That's why he says we're overwhelmingly conquerors 'cause there are things that you have to overcome. But whatever he has decreed for you, you don't have to earn it. He wants to give it away. In fact, if you tried to earn it, you're insulting him because you're saying he's not sufficient.
That's why I love a statement about the cross in Romans chapter 5. It's often read over very quickly, and if you read over it too quickly, you will miss it. The well-known verse, verse 8, "But God demonstrated his own love toward us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us". Now, we know that. We were sinners. We were unbelievers. Christ died, the cross. "Much more than", well, let me hear you say, "Much more than". Say it a little louder, "Much more than". That means, "on top of all that". Okay, wait a minute. We just found out, "He died for me". That's the cross. But now he says, "on top of all of that". There's a whole lot more. "Having now been justified by his blood," saved, "we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him".
What do you mean, Paul? Verse 10, "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son," the cross, "much more," on top of all that, "having been reconciled," now already saved, "we shall be saved by his life". So he talks about another kind of salvation, a salvation by his life. He says, "As a salvation by his death," when he paid the price for our sins, the cross, then he says, "On top of that, much more, there is a salvation by his life". And what is that salvation from? He says that salvation is, "from the wrath of God".
Well, wait a minute. I thought, if I was saved, I wasn't goin' to hell. Well, absolutely the case. The Bible promises that. Then how is he much more saving me from his wrath if I don't have to deal with his wrath to begin with? Well, he's not talkin' about hell. In Romans chapter 1, beginning with verse 18, he describes the wrath of God as the consequences for evil in the world. God gave them over to this, gave them over to that, and he describes that as the wrath of God, for the wrath of God has been revealed against all unrighteousness.
So, it is God's reaction to evil. He says that, because of the death of Jesus Christ that saved you, coupled with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is not only deliverance in eternity, there's deliverance in history from the consequences of evil that surround us. The only way you don't get what's freely been dispensed to you is you disconnect from Christ. That's why Romans 10:9 and 10, since we're in Romans, is such an important verse, often another one misunderstood. He says in Romans chapter 10, verse 9, "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with a heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, but with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation".
According to those two verses, you gotta do two things to be saved: Confess with your mouth and believe in your heart. But the Bible tells us you have to do one thing to be saved: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved". Romans adds this other word, "Confess with your mouth". So does that mean, if I believe, I'm not saved until I say something with my lips? Or is he talking about something else? I'd like to suggest he talking about the same use of the word "saved," in chapter 10, that he was using in chapter 5, which wasn't salvation for an eternity. It was salvation in history. It was God's deliverance.
Guess what the good news of the cross is? That God not only can deliver you in eternity, he can set you free in time to overcome those things that look like they're overcoming you. That's one beauty of the cross that's often not talked about, not understood, but it is a provision of the cross, which means that evil and the devil don't have the final say about what happens to you. Circumstances do not have the final say in what happens to you. That's why the Bible says so much we're overcomers because they don't have the final say if you're attached to Christ. How are you attached to Christ, according to Romans 10:9 and 10? By confessing Jesus as Lord. Not just Savior. As Lord. In other words, I'm under his authority.
Now, we're gon' talk about that in our next lesson in a moment, but for right now, you are under his authority, and when you claim him as Lord, and "to confess" means "to publicly declare," in other words, this principle does not work if you're a secret agent Christian, spiritual CIA representative, or covert operative. Jesus said in Matthew 10, "If you confess me before men, I will confess you before my Father. If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my Father". It is your willingness to be associated with the Son, not just believing in God, but to publicly declare your allegiance to Jesus Christ that frees God's delivering forces at work in your life in history to save, which means to rescue or deliver, to do it in history.
That's what the confession does. Believing saves you for eternity. Confessing brings eternity into history so that you experience the rule of Christ and the provisions that Christ has made. All that God has bequeathed to you, all that God has determined for you is freely available to you. You don't have to earn it.
Now, sure, out of thanksgiving you should demonstrate your gratitude, so you work, not to get it, but to be thankful for it, but here's the key: The key is your willingness to be identified with the Son because the Father loves the Son, and he measures everything by his relationship. Like the planets are measured by their relationship to the S-U-N in our solar system, God measures all related to your life by the S-O-N, and you're rotating around it, rotating around him. He says, "If you confess me before men, I will acknowledge you before my Father". What does that mean? It means, when you call on the Father, the Son will endorse it, will say, "Daddy, you gotta do that for them 'cause they sure are not ashamed of me".
You know, in a political season, everybody talks about the candidates. They put placards in the yard, bumper stickers on the car. They talk about who they like and who they don't like. You know, they vote in private, but they talk in public about who they're for. We have people coming out for all manner of things, ungodly and unrighteous things in our society today. Well, if evil can go public, certainly righteousness can go public. And so, it is absolutely critical for you to experience all that God has for you because he has already predetermined your victory.
When my son was playing pro football, and I couldn't get to a couple of the games he was in, I would turn on NFL Network, which would do repeats of the game. It would do repeats of the game. So, I would sit down to watch the game that I missed on NFL Network after the fact. Now, when the replay started, NFL Network gave you the score, so you knew before you watched it, where it was gon' end. In other words, you know where it was gon' end before you ever watched it 'cause they put the score up 'cause the game has already been played. So, you know, I never got shook up by fumbles and interceptions and sacks. That never bothered me 'cause I knew where this was gon' wind up 'cause victory had already been declared.
In the process of working it out, there were gon' be problems, some failures, some setbacks, some challenges, but victory was already declared. I don't know how many of you like pro wrestlin', but I hate to break some bad news to you, but it has already been predetermined who's gon' win, okay? That's not a fight for victory. That's a fight from victory.
Now, while you're watchin' it, there are some bumps and bruises and folk throwing folk, folk throwin' folk out the ring. Have you ever wondered how somebody could be beaten to a pulp almost to the point of unconsciousness and, all of a sudden, come alive and overcome the opposition? That's 'cause it's been prescribed in advance. It's already been determined where the victory lies. All you're watching is the working out of that process. Guess what the cross does? It's predetermined your victory. In working it out, there are gon' be some bumps and bruises, but because you've seen the final score and you know where this is going, you can give thanks even in the midst, Paul says, of tribulation because you know where this thing is gon' wind up. And guess what? It's all because of the cross.
Good Friday was a bad day because that was the day that Jesus Christ was crucified. That was the day that he gave his life, but as bad as that day was for him, it was critical for us. On that day, sin was paid for. Satan was defeated. God's wrath was satisfied. Oh, a lot goes into that day, and one of the ongoing benefits of the death of Christ is the victory that has been transferred to all who had placed faith alone in Christ alone for the gift of eternal life and for his intervention in our day-to-day well-being on our way to eternity. So let's give him the praise due his name for the victory he accomplished for us that he validated for himself when he rose on Sunday morning.