The Missing Links - R.C. Sproul

The last few weeks I have been busy and have not posted some of the notes from Together for the Gospel. Please do not think that this is because these messages were not as good as the others. In fact, the opposite is true. I enjoyed these so much that I wanted to take time in posting the notes and I just never got around to it. Anyway, some people may already have downloaded and listened to these, but the notes may serve as a reminder of the powerful messages from God's word.

Notes from the message by R.C. Sproul:

*There is no one image that can explain the cross. It is a multi-faceted event and a magnificent tapestry.

*There is an image that has receded almost into oblivion - the idea of a curse inflicted by God on His Son. Recall that when the New Testament speaks of atonement, it does so in terms of substitution, satisfaction of God's wrath, ransom, and victory over death. See also Isaiah 53 and ask yourself "how can the Father be pleased to bruise His Son?" It pleased Him because He accomplished His eternal purpose of restoring us.

*The idea of a curse today is associated with voodoo or superstition, but the biblical categories for curses are not superstitious. Remember the fall of man provoking a curse on the serpent, the earth, and women. The giving of the law attaches a curse to the covenant with its negative sanction in Deut. 28:15-19. Old Testament prophets pronounced curses in the name of the Lord. Isaiah calls a curse on himself in Isaiah 6 when he beholds the holiness of God. These statements are in the Bible, yet we often ignore them, preferring to the hear the blessings and not the curses in Scripture.

*So...what was it to Jesus to be cursed? Look to the benediction: "May the Lord bless you and keep you, etc. Consider that the antithesis of these elements were the curse for Christ. A vivid malediction emerges: "May the Lord curse you and abandon you. May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgement. May the Lord turn His back on you and remove His peace from you forever."

*We cannot image the weight of this curse. Yet, Jesus redeemed us from this same curse by becoming the curse for us. He did not simple take the curse of our sins, he became it. God is too holy to have looked upon Jesus, who became the primitive, obscene curse of sin. Jesus endured the malediction, when even the sun did not shine of calvary. Christ cried out on the cross. Was He in a quoting mood? No, this is not just a Psalm quote, not the cry of a disillusioned prophet, but a cry from the depths as He bore the curse of being utterly forsaken by the Father.

*There is little of this curse found in the pseudo-gospel of today. The Gospel is more than unconditional love which requires no need for repentance. God does love us, even in corruption, but we are still under the curse. We will either bear the curse, or flee to the One who bore it for us.