Cries from the Cross

Can you hear the cries?   Have you really listened to them?  There are seven of them.  Seven cries and each holds a special meaning, a prophetic message.

After listening to a wonderful sermon by Pastor Damon Thompson, I could not stop thinking about the seven cries.   His message was powerful and I just had to share my thoughts on this one.  Thank you Jesus for how you speak through your anointed ones!

Christ's first cry from the cross was "Father, forgive them" in Luke 23:36.   Jesus was teaching the importance of forgiveness.  Forgiveness frees us.  It is probably the most important deliverance a person can have on their life.  I personally imagine that Christ's glory brightened up even a little bit more, if that is even possible,  as He uttered this cry.  Up on a cross, suffering along with the two beside Him, yet He is thinking of others, and focused on making sure His heart harbors no darkness, oh don't you just love that heart?

A second cry.   Turning to the sinner next to Him, who saw His goodness, He cries out "Today you will be with Me in Paradise" in Luke 23:43.   Christ was teaching us that we have the ability to turn to Him, even when all hope seems gone. Christ demonstrated that even through His own pain and suffering on our behalf, that the invitation was still there.  We can turn to Him, always at any time.

"Here is your mother" Jesus cries out to the beloved disciple in John 19:26-27.   When we have the cross in common, we establish new family members.   Christ was showing that we all belong to each other when we enter into His kingdom.   I rejoice to have new family members with me and thank Him for such beautiful family!

Having been adopted as a one-year old child, experiencing the loss of many loved ones who died before I turned the age of 10, I had developed a sense of abandonment.  One of the things that came out of a prayer session I had with some dear prayer warriors and sisters in Christ that pray with me, is that I may have  been bound to this sense of abandonment.   What a joy it was to be delivered from any residual effects that abandonment may have had on my life.  However, this experience gave me a whole new understanding of how Christ felt when he cried out "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" which means "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" found in Matthew 27:46.   The Father turned his back on Christ in those final moments, for Christ was loaded down with the burden of all of my sins and all of the sins of the world.  During those few moments, He was soiled with our sin and therefore had to be forsaken.   He experienced being forsaken so that we would never have to experience it again.  He has promised and his promises are true, that He will never forsake us.   For those who have been abandoned in life, this has to be a huge comfort.  You have someone to turn to and depend on no matter what.  He is always there for you.  Praise Him that He had victory and was able to be restored to the Father.

John 19:23 gives us Christ's fifth cry from the Cross.   "I am thirsty".   My eyes were opened from the sermon.  I realized that this thirst was what we typically presume.   We think of it as a physical thirst, with His body exposed to the full sun beating down on Him; His sweat and blood being poured out in the heat of the day.  However, after examining the passage more thoroughly, it says right before that cry "knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled,  Jesus said, "I am thirsty".   Jesus was talking of a spiritual thirst.   He was thirsty to have the work finished.  Carrying the burden of the sin of mankind on Him, He was thirsty to be close again to His father, just as He was carrying our own thirst for the Father.    He wanted to be back in that kind of communion with His Father, just as we desire that same communion.  Jesus wanted the fulfillment of Scripture to be complete, full and final.  He was the fulfillment of all Scripture written.   ALL Scripture is about Jesus and His fulfillment of the eternal plan laid out before us through His work on the Cross. 

His sixth cry was "IT IS FINISHED"!   Finished indeed!   Damon said something that brought a smile to my face was worthy of further consideration.  When Christ cried out "It is finished", he suggested that there was likely great partying going on in the underworld.   Satan probably thought Jesus was giving up and not realizing the full extent of what Jesus was proclaiming.   However, Christ ends up with the last party.  Here was perfection being betrayed by the same people that He created.   Here was the price paid, complete atonement.   Here was the manifestation of all Scripture being fulfilled.   Here was the man who "fought off every one of hell's hounds so that we could be with Him in Heaven" (Damon Thompson).  

The true happy dancing occurred on that early Sunday morning as Jesus claimed victory now the tables were turned.  The underworld no longer were rejoicing and partying.   All of its inhabitants were now trembling.   Hallelujah that it is finished!   All death is defeated - it is finished!   Cancer is defeated - it is finished!   Addictions are no longer - it is finished!   Reconciliation is complete through Christ.   The Kingdom of Heaven is brought to earth through Christ and His beloved Bride.   It is finished!   Light has defeated darkness, purity has defeated perversion, truth has defeated lies and deceptions...it is finished!

The final cry came in Luke 23:26 where Christ drops his head and claims "into Your hands I commit My Spirit", returning the treasure of who He is into the only hands worth trusting, His Father's.   He gave and surrendered all to the Father, in his birth, life on earth, crucifixion, and continues to surrender to His Father next to whom He now sits.  He has been rewarded as King of Kings and Lord of Lords over all things, as a result.   Hallelujah!   "Jesus was born to die where all other men were born to live" - Damon Thompson.   

Christ cried out seven times so that we would never have to cry any more.   Hallelujah, Praise Him!