Calvary's School

There is a school for ministry and service to God Almighty, and it is not an institution like seminary where one learns about theology, church history, or Hebrew and Greek, but rather it is a school of learning that few wish to enter because of the enormous cost involved. But for those graduates who endure the curriculum and instruction, the benefits gained far outweigh the sacrifices made. In fact, the very first graduate of this school is its primary instructor.

The curriculum which he took can be found in Isaiah chapter 53. It is Calvary School, and the master teacher is none other than Jesus Christ. Students enrolled in this school are placed through a course of study quite unique to their own person and called a ministry.

Some of the graduates of this school are names which most would not be quite familiar with. They were missionaries stationed in destitute outposts of heaven. They served their God without man's recognition bestowed upon them.

Some were bedridden invalids whose ministry was a hidden life of prayer, and their bedroom of suffering became a throne room of glory as revival was sent forth as a result of their lives of sacrificial prayer. Some of the graduates labored faithfully in country pastorates like a shepherd over a flock of sheep, both shepherd and sheep, unknown to history but not unknown to the one who will judge the world in righteousness at a future day. Some of the graduates of Calvary School are names more well known and familiar, such as the Apostle Paul, Luther, Knox, Whitfield and Wesley, Moody and Spurgeon.

My message today, friends, is entitled Calvary School, and we will be examining several aspects of this illustrious school whose students gain knowledge and experience quite unlike any other school in the world. I will list several vital aspects to this school of learning and then elaborate upon them as we proceed. Allow me to list them for us now.

Number one, the way of the cross to Calvary in surrender and self-emptying. Number two, the Gethsemane cup of faith and obedience. Number three, the shame of the cross in humiliation and death to reputation.

Number four, the pain of the cross in the crucified life and the fellowship of his suffering. Number five, the glory of the resurrection in the transformed life for God's glory. Let us now take a look at Calvary School and see the requirements and curriculum in this unique school of learning of things of eternal worth.

I want us to see this first aspect, friends, of the way of the cross to Calvary in suffering and self-emptying. In Isaiah 53, verse 3, we read, he is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed him not.

The way of the cross is one of surrender and self-emptying, and all who wish to follow in the Savior's footsteps will tread the same pathway in the footsteps of the master. In Matthew's gospel, we read of the Lord's surrender to the cross, and they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away. How that speaks of his holy surrender to that cruel cross.

Do you not think, friends, that Christ could have called down ten legions of angels to deliver him? He that stilled the stormy sea, healed the sick, and raised the dead had power over all creation. He could have resisted the way of the cross, but he chose not to. Rather, he surrendered completely to it, and I'm glad he did.

Where would I be if my Christ had not gone to that bloody cross on my behalf? And as well as surrender, there was a self-emptying aspect as well. I like what J. Sidlow Baxter used to say, and I can hear his lovely voice now in my mind as I relate this to you, friends. Sidlow Baxter said, how can a man full of himself preach to Christ who emptied himself? And I also like what F. J. Hegel had to say on this important subject as well about self-emptying in regard to the life of Moses.

Hegel related, for forty years on the lonely slopes of Midian, the fiery Moses is schooled. There were graves, if I may so speak, scattered all over the mountainside, where hope after hope was buried until at last self went down in utter annihilation. Now let's look at this second aspect of Calvary school, friends, and that is the Gethsemane cup of faith and obedience.

In Luke's gospel, we see Jesus seated at the table with his disciples at what has been called the Last Supper, and the text reads, and he took the cup and gave thanks. But there was another cup awaiting our master, and it was in Gethsemane. Gethsemane is where he faced it.

There too he had to take that cup in obedience to the Father's will, drink it down to the dregs. I'll never forget a story I heard Leonard Ravenhill relate. He said he was a pastor in England, and he often passed by a poor woman's house on the way to his church.

One day she invited him in for a cup of tea. As he entered the shabby dwelling, he had to step over boxes of junk and piles of newspapers stacked high about him. He made his way to her small kitchen area, and he noticed a pile of filthy plates stacked in the dirty sink.

She told him to sit at the table while she made him a cup of tea. He said she reached into the sink and pulled out a dirty cup that was unwashed, and then poured a black glue-like substance into it from a filthy pot from the stove. She handed it to him to see if he would drink it.

Ravenhill said, as I stared into that filthy cup, I felt her eyes upon me to see if I would drink it. Then my thoughts ran back 2,000 years to another man in a garden who had a cup handed to him. He stared into it and saw all the filthy, filthy rottenness of my wretched sins, and he chose to drink that cup for me.

Listen, friends, there will be times in the school of Calvary that your afflictions will be your teachers, your adversities will be your subjects of study, your loneliness and grief will be your only classmates. As the storm clouds break forth upon your head in the midst of your deepest trial, your faith will be exercised as your understanding of God is deepened and your obedience to him is strengthened through your suffering. In Hebrews we read, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and he was heard in that he feared, though he was a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered, and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.

Did you hear those last three key words, friends, that obey him? Now let's look at this third aspect of Calvary school, and that is the shame of the cross and humiliation and death to reputation. The way the cross had humiliation all over it, in Mark's gospel we read, and they clothed him with purple and plaited a crown of thorns and put it about his head and began to salute him, hail, king of the Jews, and they smote him on the head with a reed and did spit upon him, and bowing their knees, worshipped him. I remember when I was a boy, I got into a fight with another boy in my neighborhood, and he spit in my face.

I remember the embarrassment of that incident still, the shock of it, the smell of it, the humiliation of it, but my master Jesus did not have just one man spit upon him, no, he had the filthy, wretched spit of many soldiers upon his blessed face. Then Jesus had a mock crown of thorns placed upon his head, a reed was placed in his hand as a mock scepter, and then the cruelty of the Roman soldiers deepened into blasphemy as they bowed and mocked the king of glory. Then Christ was led to that cruel cross, stripped of his clothes, he hung there naked on that bloody cross as a spectacle and as a scandal.

Calvary was a scandal to behold. Crucifixion was both humiliating and painful. He was numbered among thieves, so his earthly reputation was gone.

Listen to me, dear friends, if you tread the way of the master along the way of the cross, if you follow your crucified savior, you will enter into that shame of the cross in humiliation and death, death to your reputation, I can promise you that. There was a great shame in that cross, friends, and Calvary School is centered in the cross, for the school of Calvary is a study in suffering. If you are a preacher and your ambition is a desire to grow your reputation within your denomination, then you will have your reward from the praise of men.

But if you enroll into Calvary School, your reputation must be the first thing to go. It's those individuals who are willing to be a nobody that God can make into a somebody he can use. I like the story of D.O. Moody.

When he was a young man in Chicago and newly converted, his aim was to make Christ known among the poor children in the slum areas, so he rented a little hall and turned it into a Sunday school classroom for these vagabond children. One day, a minister entered the hall to find two solitary figures in the darkness. There in the corner was D.O. Moody sitting on a stool with a gas lamp in one hand and his Bible in the other, and on his knee was a little black boy in rags, and Moody was trying to read the boy a portion of the gospel.

But as he did, he mispronounced every single word just about, but Moody was willing to stay a nobody to make Christ known. It wasn't many years after this that Moody was shaking Great Britain with his powerful preaching to where he could hold the attention of 10,000 hearers for a month at a time in all the major cities like Edinburgh, Glasgow, and London. Yes, God has a school for those choice instruments who don't mind being a nobody so God can make them a somebody for his use.

Let us look now at the fourth aspect of Calvary School, friends, and that is the pain of the cross and the crucified life and the fellowship of his suffering. In Mark's gospel, it simply states with final authority, and it was the third hour and they crucified him. A crucifixion was the most painful of all executions and the most gruesome to behold.

Listen, friends, that cross on Calvary was full of blood and gore. That cross had Christ's blood all over it. It is Christ's blood that washes sins away.

When the Roman soldiers drove those nails into his quivering hands and feet, they fastened them there to that tree. The pain of Calvary was excruciating. There was no relief.

A crucified Savior must have crucified followers the way the cross is that of a crucified life. The Christian life is lived via the cross. There is the additional aspect of the fellowship of his sufferings.

Philippians 3.10 declares that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death. There is a story about the missionary Helen Rosevear which illustrates this aspect. She was one time a member of Graham Scroggins' church and one day she went forward and answered to her call to be a missionary.

Graham Scroggins greeted her at the front of the church and wrote Philippians 3.10 in the margin of her Bible and then softly said to her, you have come here. You know him. It is my hope that one day you will have the privilege to know the fellowship of his sufferings.

Years later, when she was a missionary to Africa in the 1960s during the Congo uprising, she was cruelly beaten and raped. Her pain was almost unbearable as her cruel attackers kicked her and beat her with a rubber hose. What got her through was her focus on the words of Graham Scroggins years earlier.

One day you will have the privilege to know the fellowship of his sufferings. That got Helen Rosevear through her terrible ordeal in Calvary School. There will be opportunities to exemplify the crucified life and to know the fellowship of his sufferings.

That is part and parcel of the curriculum. Now let us address this final aspect, friends, of the glory of the resurrection in the transformed life for God's glory. Philippians 3.10 also speaks of the power of his resurrection.

When one passes through Calvary School and learns the life of faith and obedience through the crucified life, then one may come to know the power of the resurrection upon their ministry. When they witness for Christ, there will be an attending power from on high upon them given light and life to the words of God. The anointed life is a crucified life, a life of consecration that God has power all over it.

I will never forget the story about my late homiletical mentor, Stephen Olford, a Dallas pastor who had asked Dr. Olford to come to his church to preach on a Sunday. A young seminary student was to pick up Stephen Olford at the airport and he asked the pastor if he had a photo of him so he would recognize him when he saw him. The pastor answered, no need for that.

Just go to the airport and wait for the passengers to disembark. Look for a man who has the power of God all over him and that will be Stephen Olford. Sure enough, the young man went to the airport and patiently waited.

And when he saw Dr. Olford emerge with his coat over his arm and briefcase in hand, he immediately recognized him as the man of God. Listen friends, the crucified life in the school of Calvary is the transformed life of power and anointing all for God's glory. Now allow me to close this message with the commencement address given to the graduates of Calvary School.

It's given by the apostle Paul, who was one of its first graduates. Here now is his commencement address to all students in this school. I am more in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths off.

Of the Jews, five times received I, forty stripes, save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep, in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils in the city, perils in the heathen, in perils among false brethren, in weariness, in painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness, besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. Yes, friends, Calvary School is a school of a strict curriculum, but the benefits gained far outweigh the cost and sacrifices made.