The Cross: Jewelry or Stumbling Block? (part 3) - [1 Corinthians 1:18-25]

I think we're entering a crucial junction here at Bethlehem Bible Church, a critical junction.

We've experienced lots of growth, not just numbers of course, but maturation -wise, discipleship, evangelistic opportunities, saints being more like Christ.

And then, I'm wondering, we've got two different kinds of folks here at the church.

One, sold out, abandoned, follow Christ, going one -way

Christians, Tozer would call them. People who have recognized the folly of following self and the wonder and glory of following Christ Jesus.

It's kind of one group. Then we have another group at the church, sadly, and I would consider them

Sunday -only Christians. I think we have more sold -out followers than we have Sunday -only

Christians, but we do have some who consider Christianity kind of a game. You do just enough on a

Sunday morning to make your conscience feel good throughout the week. And 1

Corinthians is going to do something to both different groups. For those that are sold out, this book will encourage you.

It will motivate you. It will give you excitement. You'll realize the majesty of the King and the privilege it is to follow

Him. But for the Sunday -only kind, it's going to drive you either to the kind of biblical commitment that Christ calls for, or it will drive you away from that, and maybe even away from this church.

I hope it drives you to a greater commitment. That's what we all want. Lord, we don't follow you like we should increase our following.

Isn't the Lord Jesus worth your whole life? Isn't free grace and salvation worthy of your life's service?

Isn't life short enough and eternity long enough that today you should say, Lord, please forgive my passiveness when it comes to spiritual things.

Please restore me and give me a burning heart for you and your glory. Isn't today the day we should say to ourselves as a mature

Christian or as a Sunday -only Christian, Lord, we want to follow you by your Spirit's power.

Equip us through your Word to live for your King. Let's turn our Bibles to 1 Corinthians 1 and have the

Word of God do that exact thing. This book, this text, this passage will either accelerate your growth, as the

Spirit of God applies these texts and these thoughts to your mind, or it will make you want to run and go to another church where maybe a

Sunday -only Christianity will make you in the upper echelon of leadership. This text talks about the abandoned life for Christ Jesus, the kind of Christian that has seen

Christ's life, His death, that Christian has seen their own sin and what they deserve, hell eternal, and they realize that they have forgiveness, that they have mercy, that they have grace, and they'll say, at any cost,

I'll follow you. Sadly, too many people, when the pressure gets hot, they don't want to follow

Christ. Paul comes to the church of Corinth, he stays there for 18 months, and he pours out his life and his heart and he opens up the

Scriptures and teaches the people at Corinth the truths of God about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Chapter 1, verse 2, Lord Jesus. Chapter 3, Lord Jesus. Not chapter 2, but verse 3,

Lord Jesus. Verse 7, Lord Jesus. Verse 8, Lord Jesus.

Verse 9, Lord Jesus. Verse 10, Lord Jesus. And he tells them, I've taught you about the

Lord, now live in light of your King. Here's who you are in Christ.

Paul would say to the church at Ephesus, now live out who you are. Here at Corinth, though, he says, I've taught you about the

Lord, you say you follow Him, prove it. There's all kinds of problems and issues going on in the church, whether it's people suing one another, factiousness, and Paul wants to try to set their mind right.

He wants to kind of realign their mind. I don't know if you go to a chiropractor or not, but it took me a long time to go.

I thought they were probably going to do some kind of voodoo to me or something and kind of crack my neck and insert

Hinduism into my brain at the same time. I didn't know what they were going to do. So you kind of get your back is not quite right, and you feel like you're kind of walking not quite right, and you just need to be readjusted.

And all of a sudden, you lay there, and the chiropractor takes your head and just says, well, you know, how's everything going at work?

To try to detract your mind away from what's going to happen. And you go, oh, it's doing fine. I think that was worth the copay.

But you feel realigned, feel good. Now, people talk about realignment in Scripture, but it's really the word repentance.

We're thinking one way, but it's not God's way. And so the Word of God gives us this adjustment so we begin to think the way

God wants us to think. Paul is dealing in chapter 1 of 1

Corinthians, chapter 2 of 1 Corinthians, chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians, chapter 4 of 1 Corinthians, to make sure that we think rightly about the body and how it should be united and not divided, how factiousness is so bad.

We've been looking at chapter 1, verse 18 and following, and here's basically the general setting, and then we'll get into the specifics.

The general setting is this. If you think men and women come up with wisdom, and then you follow that wisdom, there's lots of men and women who purport this wisdom, and you're going to split up.

If you believe the apostles, on the other hand, have received the wisdom from God, there's only one kind of wisdom from God, and everybody will follow that one wisdom, even though it might come from different apostles.

So if you believe in godly wisdom revealed from God, by God, through the apostles, you'll all be in line.

If you believe everybody's kind of got their own truth, then you might line up under the wrong people. And so Paul is going to say, let's line up under the wisdom of God and from God, because wisdom from man is always tainted and fallen.

And so in chapter 1, verse 18 through 25, this morning, let me give you several motivations for you to preach the cross of Christ Jesus, so that worldly wisdom just dissipates.

Let me give you several motivations if you're taking notes this morning, several motivations so that you will preach the cross, avoid worldly wisdom, and as you preach the cross, you'll make the idea of worldly wisdom disappear.

Motivation number one. If you don't have your Bibles, by the way, you'll need your Bible, or you're going to be not seeing for yourselves this text.

I guess I could say it now before I get into motivation number one. We don't need

PowerPoint. We don't need big computer screens. We don't need to show you the

Bible verses up here. There's a reason why I have you bring your own Bibles, because I want you to see in your own

Bible. Look at the text. Look at the context. Look what comes before. Look what comes after.

I don't just say, well, let me pick the kind of nice, fuzziest verse I can in verse 18 and put it up here in kind of the message version or the new, whatever kind of latest money -making gimmick version is up here, so you kind of feel good about it.

This is going to be kind of hard to give you one of those good -feeling sermons today. Why? Because I'm going to reflect what the text says, and the text is saying, for the sake of the

Lord Jesus Christ, think biblically, get your mind adjusted biblically, and make sure that the cross is front and center in your life and evangelism and everything else.

Motivation number one. Preach the cross because it powerfully saves. Don't get caught up in all this kind of wisdom of the world.

Preach the cross because it is what powerfully saves. In review, take a look at verse 18.

For the word of the cross, this simple proclamation about the doctrine of the cross, this doesn't mean one single word, cross.

This means the word of the cross, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the doctrine of sacrificial lamb

Christ dying in the stead of sinners that He is slain on our behalf.

This is the doctrine of the cross. This is the word of the cross. This word of the cross is to those who are perishing, worthy of a standing ovation.

To the perishing, it's foolishness. This whole idea about Jesus dying for someone else, the

Father judging the Son, it's foolishness. But to us who are being saved, it is what?

It's worthy of a standing ovation. It is the power of God. Remember, think like the

Bible people did back in those days. The Greeks and the Roman culture, those at Corinth would say, we don't care what you say, we want you to say it well.

So say it well and we don't care what you say. It's kind of the art of speaking.

And Paul says, forget how you say it. It's the substance. It's the doctrine. This is the doctrine that has saved you.

Remember Corinth? How do you explain the church of Corinth? Smooth speaking? Wonderful kind of oratory?

How do you take these sinful people that used to go down to the temple and engage in sexual intercourse with people for worship, and now they're here worshiping the triune

God. How do you explain that? Smooth words? The word of the cross.

Not some kind of rolling, beautiful language. It's the word of the cross, but he says, do you see it?

The word of the cross to the foolish, to the perishing, it's foolishness. It's moronic.

It's stupid. It's nonsense. Here's God's wisdom hanging on a tree. That's sure unpleasant at best.

Stupid at worst. How can I be saved, the world says, by the work of another?

Shouldn't I have to save myself? Don't I have to do something myself that someone else would die in my place?

I contribute nothing? I want to do something. I want to contribute. I want to participate. Human wisdom wants to help.

And human wisdom says that cross that is barbaric, that cross that is shameful, that's not part of salvation, but it changes lives.

Motivation number two, you should preach the cross because man's concoctions of salvation are never right.

You should preach the cross, number two, because man's concoctions of salvation are never right.

You can ask people today, by the way, well, how do you get to heaven? And they have some kind of little concoction. And they put a little water here, and they add a little soda water here, and they put some sugar in and some sweetener and some food coloring.

They have their own little spiritual concoction. This is how I get to heaven. I had my concoction growing up. Didn't you have yours?

For me it was, yeah, I say I believe in Jesus, but I kind of live whatever way I want.

My concoction is this. I take Jesus as my Savior, but I won't have

Him as my Lord. Oh, I got baptized as an infant. I've got my original sin taken away.

I have communion. I have the sacraments. I'm better than other people. But it goes way back, all the way back to the

Old Testament, that the way man does things, it just gets in the way because by nature man is sinful, so he thinks sinful thoughts.

Take a look at chapter 1, verse 19. For it is written, Paul just like Jesus says, it is written, and he's going to talk about how human wisdom is bound to fail when it comes to saving yourself.

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.

Right from Isaiah chapter 29, verse 14. Just like in those days,

Hezekiah's advisor said if you want to be saved temporally, have an alliance with Egypt.

That's what we'll do. We won't cry out to the Lord. Oh God, help us. We trust in you and your covenant promises.

We can't do that, so we'll have a political alliance. The same thing holds true today. This is a biblical principle.

As people don't want to trust fully in the Lord for temporal things in the Old Testament, neither today do they want to trust fully in the

Lord for spiritual salvation. Thinking that doesn't come from God is going to fall short in the

Old Testament, in the New, at Corinth, and here today. Because wisdom has to come from God.

Because it has to be external. Because anything that we come up with is tainted by the fall. But sadly, men have always thought their way is the right way.

Pretty much nothing new under the sun is what Paul is saying here in verse 19. How can men concoct something to say let's deliver us from God's wrath and deliver us unto

God's good pleasure? Motivation number three.

You should preach the cross because professionals can't help you and they can't even help themselves.

You should preach the cross because professionals can't help you or anyone else, including themselves. When it comes to sin, sanctification, salvation, the professionals can't even help you.

I mean, if I need help, I want to go to the pros. I want to go to the professionals. I want to go to those who can help me. Oh, you've got some plumbing problem.

Then go to the pro. I've got some computer problem. Then go to the pro. Let's go to the pros to try to figure out how we can save ourselves.

Let's look at secular. Let's look at sacred. Let's look at the scientists. What can they do? You've got to have it from God.

Take a look at the verse. This is kind of staccato. One breath, he says, all four of these questions.

And it's kind of like come one, come all. I dare you. My father used to take me to the Golden Gloves boxing match.

And kids don't know about boxing today because it's mixed martial arts and everything else. He used to take me to these

Golden Glove boxing matches. And it was basically, if a guy won at 7 o 'clock, he would fight again at 9 o 'clock.

And it's kind of like, I'll just challenge anybody. Like Mike Tyson back in the 80s. You just think, who's the next fool to fight this guy because this guy's going to go down.

And this kind of language has this victorious ring to it. Machine gun kind of rhetorical questions.

Look at verse 20. Where's the wise man? Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not

God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Does human wisdom even last?

This is kind of machine gun. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Kind of sarcastic,

I think, of Paul. And look what he says, number one.

Question number one to the first professional. Where is the wise? I grew up playing the trumpet, but I don't play like Brian Casey.

But if I could play that trumpet right now and I wanted to put my mouth on his mouthpiece, I would have this little trumpet, this kind of victorious trumpet blast.

Where's the wise? The answer is they're not to be found. Where's the wise man?

The person who says, let me try to figure out through my own wisdom how to save myself and have the cross of Christ Jesus put over here, kind of way over here.

We don't want to have it involved because we can't think about the cross. So forget Jesus, forget the cross, forget

God. Let's have our own kind of concoction. And here, Paul says, where's the wise?

They're nowhere to be found. They're nowhere to be found. These lovers of wisdom, phila, love, sophistry, lovers of wisdom, they can't come up with it.

You go back to the wise men of the day, philosophers of the day, they can't come up with, these

Greek philosophers can't say, how do I get my sins forgiven? How can I be right with God? How can

I worship the God of the universe? And how can I know that I can get to heaven when I die? What do they do? They don't do anything because they can't figure those things out.

These are the same Gentile philosophers that sneer when Paul says in Acts 17, the resurrection of Christ Jesus.

D .A. Carson said, what place does the cross have in communism?

What place does the cross have in capitalism? Does systematic hedonism lead anyone to the cross?

How about dogmatic pluralism? Will secular humanism lead anyone to the most astonishing act of self -disclosure that has ever occurred, the cross of Christ?

Does the elevation of virtues of democracy lead men and women to Christ? Does democracy itself lead anyone to the cross?

Back in those days, what about the Stoics? Could they come up with things? The Epicureans, could they come up with things?

Those that followed Plato, could they come up with salvation? What about today, you say, who would be some of these people?

Well, what about the secular professionals at Harvard? Yale. There are certainly some

Christians at these institutions. But this is the kind of wisdom that Paul says, they don't want to talk about the cross.

They don't want to talk about Christianity. They don't want to talk about substitutionary atonement, literal resurrection, the word of God. You put it over there and then somehow pretend you're wise.

And Paul says, where are they? All the Stoics, the Epicureans, everybody else, where are they?

They're dead and gone. And the same thing with philosophy today. You say, well,

I don't go to those kind of people. I go to sacred religious professionals.

Oh, I have a question for them from Paul. Number two, do you see that in the same verse?

Second kind of machine gun question, where is the scribe? Now, if you're thinking, that's just somebody who writes a lot, he scribes, escribe.

A scribe was an expert in the law, the law of God, the

Old Testament. Where is the religious Old Testament Jew who writes down things, who then became like a lawyer for the

Old Testament, who then became this law expert. Where is the Jewish expert in the

Old Testament law that says, I can't believe in Jesus. Jesus can't be part of the equation.

And so here's our religious experience and here's religious forgiveness based on everything except Jesus.

Where are those people today? That's what Paul says. Where are these experts in the

Old Testament who have no view of the cross? I can't remember the exact time, but I do think back to it when

I was first given binoculars. And I put binoculars up to my eyes and everybody's saying, oh,

Mike, look at that over there. I don't know where we were on the river. Look at that duck, look at that orca. I don't know what we were looking at.

It just seems all fuzzy to me. And then strangely, you take the little lens there, this little round thing, and you do what?

You turn it or you push the button and you go, wow, everything's in focus. And these religious professionals today,

I don't care where they're from, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, any other seminary friend, right down the street at other churches, it doesn't really matter where, if they have the cross put to the side, everything will be blurry forever.

Where is the religious professional, Paul says? Religious professionals can't be bothered with kind of the yucky cross, the blood of Christ.

What will wash us? The blood of Jesus. You say, well, you know what?

I'm a scientist. After all, I'm a student at WPI and I'm into biomedical stuff, so it's the scientist.

Oh, I have a question for you. Look at the next question. Where's the debater or disputer or the investigator of this world?

Where's the Greek academician who looks around and says, you know what, let's try to concoct by empirical formulas.

I'm kind of an empiricist and I have to go by fact and by scientists. If you think that way and you're a

Christian and you say, there is the Lordship of Christ throughout science.

Well, this verse isn't talking to you. But if you say, there's my faith, here's science, and if science trumps my faith, then

I'll push faith to the side, or more specifically, forget any of this faith stuff. Jesus, the dead

Jesus, the one crucified on a cross, naked. I don't want that, so let's try to figure out how to live life just through empirical formulas.

Where are those people? I'll tell you where they are. They're dead and they're going to die if they are alive now.

They cannot come up with a way that man could be saved from his sin.

One man says, Paul fillets them with these questions. I have my own spiritual word for it.

Paul shish kebabs them. It's like this long, poked kind of shish kebab here, and you go, where is the secular pro?

Where is the sacred professional? Where is the one who says,

I'm into empiricism? And he skewers every one of them. It's not that people are too smart for their own good.

They're too sinfully smart for their own good. The next time someone says to you,

I'm a facts guy, and I like to talk about facts and empiricism, and I need the facts.

And here's what you tell them. I have one thing for you, and it's called the bloody death of Christ Jesus, your only hope for salvation.

Yeah, but you don't understand Pi and significant figures and all these other things that they do.

You can tell I'm not that very scientific. I'm trying to think of something scientific. Pi. What I have for you is the cross.

You know that cross where the Persians said that criminal was so grotesque?

We don't want the criminal to touch the earth and somehow defame the earth because the earth is a mother goddess.

So we can't kill that criminal and let him touch the earth. We better raise his feet up off the ground so that when he dies, he doesn't pollute the earth.

Let me read you these verses from Jesus and tell me if you see a parallel. I praise

You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

Yes, Father, for this was well -pleasing in Your sight. The wise tend to trust in their wisdom.

The rich tend to trust in their riches. The scientists tend to trust in their analysis.

But children have nothing to bring to the table. What do they contribute to the family? They contribute nothing.

They are needy. They are dependent. They have to trust their father and mother for everything.

Show me a smart person and I'll show you someone liable to self -deception. You ever met somebody who's super smart and you go, their

IQ is like 250 and then they make stupid decisions because they know how to rationalize their bad decisions.

The smartest people make the stupidest decisions and some people are laughing. I guess they may think they're smart.

Maybe now they're prideful and dumb at the same time. It's this rationalization so you become so smart you go, yes, but I can rationalize it.

I'll repent when I finally get older and my kids are into it or when the elevator is going down the shaft.

I'll repent at the last minute and I'll do this and I'll do that or I'll do something else instead and I'll be good and I'll do good deeds and I'll be a good deed -doer.

There are no resources for anyone when it comes to salvation or sanctification outside of the cross.

Look at kind of the summary question. Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

The world thinks the cross is so stupid and God makes the wisdom of the wisest stupid, foolish.

It's not even that it appears dumb. It is. One man said,

God has made foolish the wisdom of the world. He has reduced the vaunted wisdom of the world to folly.

And this question anticipates a positive response. Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

Yes, He has. Yes, He has. Has not God made Janus and Jamboree the wise men who were trying to contradict

Moses? Hasn't He made them look foolish? The answer is yes. Hasn't He made

Plato look foolish? And do you see how this verse gives us some insight?

Don't pass it up. Verse 20. Where is the debater? Do you see right in the middle? Of this age.

What do you mean of this age? This fleeting, vain, passing, temporal age.

When you have the eternal wisdom of God. Jesus Christ was slain before the foundation of the world.

It wasn't plan B. It was part of the plan of God that we'll see in just a minute. But what about the wisdom of the world and their own concoctions of self -salvation?

Where are they? They're gone. Last age. The age before. The age before of this age. Look at the temporal, ephemeral quality of human wisdom.

It's passing. I like to call it the spiritual leaning tower of Pisa. Think about fireworks.

You're a kid and you go see fireworks. You go down the street to the Clinton High School and you watch fireworks.

It's just all this show for about what? Ten minutes, depending on what the budget is for Clinton that year.

And then it's what? It's over. It's passing. It's fleeting.

Steve Cooley and I did a radio show the other day and we taped it. I said something to this effect.

Welcome Pastor Steve, etc., etc. Let's talk about the Savior today. Senator Scott Brown.

Now you may or may not like it that Scott Brown is

Senator. But all these talking heads, all these people,

I hope they don't inform your worldview and your spiritual view of sin, salvation, and sanctification.

Because if they do, you're going to be just like Hezekiah who says, I'm going to trust in the Egyptian alliance.

And you're going to come out looking pretty dumb saying, Well, I trust in Bill O 'Reilly.

I trust in Jay Severin. I trust in Dr. Laura. I trust in Scott Brown. I trust in Fox News.

Void of the cross at the center. It's like the grief counselor who shows up at a school shooting.

Basically, they show up naked because they have nothing to offer the people. But everything in me wants to defend

God. When I have to look at these verses and say, God is never on trial.

When you evangelize and you preach, do you know God is never on trial? Who's the one asking these questions?

God is saying, show me the mountains of philosophy and I'll show you something that doesn't last.

So don't ever get backed up into a corner. I don't want to say you have to always be aggressive and offensive and rude.

But when people start putting God on trial, is the time you need to start talking to them about the Creator and their life and death and forgiveness.

God isn't on trial. And instead of saying, let me tell you about carbon dating.

Let me tell you about prophecy. Let me tell you about Old Testament manuscripts. Let me tell you about the worldview.

Let me tell you about my transformed life. No, here's what you tell them. I have something to talk to you about today that will tell you about yourself and about forgiveness.

And it's called the cross. And if they don't want to talk about it, you might try again from a different angle.

And then it is pearls before swine. I will never sit there when people put

God on trial and just feed the fuel and try to somehow speak for God. God, the lion of the tribe of Judah, needs no defense.

He is pleased to use Christians who tell people about the cross.

For those of you who weren't here last week or the week before, Paul's focus is the cross.

Do we believe in the resurrection? Yes. But the focus is the cross. God the Father punishing our sins on Jesus even though He didn't sin.

God the Father reckoning to our account, crediting to our spiritual bank account, Christ's life even though we did sin and never lived

His life. Forget rationalization. Forget proving things. You meet somebody from Harvard, you want to sit down with Alan Dershowitz and talk about the

Bible? Then don't get put back on your heels. You say to him, do you want to talk about forgiveness and guilt and heaven and hell and atonement and being right with God?

Then I have a message for you. If not, how are the patriots doing? By the way, this is why we don't accommodate the culture.

This is why we don't contextualize. How do you contextualize the cross? God isn't on trial for treason.

Sinners are. And even in a courtroom, the prosecuting attorney can't go to someone who is just observing in the back row of the court as a court reporter and say, you murdered the person.

Why? Because this person is not on trial. God is never on trial either.

Take a look at verse 21. For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know

God. That's how God designed it. Search for eons. You'll never come up with salvation.

God has to tell you, reveal to you from the outside. God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

Here's God's wisdom. The cross. Here's the world's wisdom.

It passes. Which one is more powerful? Which one is more efficacious? Which one does your friend need?

Who's not born again? I have to ask the question.

If it was about how we talked and not what we talked about it, just how articulate and smooth could you be when you would talk about an execution of the

God man? Just how smoothly could you talk about Jesus's death?

Well, you can't. Push Jesus and the cross out and it would be easier for evolution to be true than for you to get to heaven.

Motivation number four. Motivation number four. You should preach the cross because it's part of God's eternal plan.

It's part of God's eternal plan. Someone says, here you go in that whole sovereignty deal again.

You're always preaching the sovereignty of God. I say amen to that. R .C.

Sproul said, God has a favorite doctrine and it's his sovereignty. And if you were God, it'd be your favorite doctrine too, he says.

I don't know how you can not look at the Bible and go, there's sovereignty all over. You might say, well,

I'm going to preach the cross. But you know what? God's original plan before the fall. He had kind of another deal.

Before the fall, before the cross, before anything else in eternity past, God said, this is my plan.

I have the end ordained who goes to heaven. I have the means ordained, the preaching of the cross.

And I have the very beginning ordained because I'm now ordaining it with the members of the triune God. Titus chapter 1.

Father, Son, and the Spirit. This great triune promise. Redeem men through the cross.

And take a look at the verse and you'll see this part of God's plan. See if you can see it in here. You might miss it. Verse 21.

For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God. God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

Well pleased. It is a biblical phrase, figure of speech, an idiom that means this.

It is God's sovereign decree to do something. It is God's sovereign decree to do something.

Free choice of God to do this. Sovereign choice of God to do this. Not plan

B. Not plan C. Not saying, you know what, I think I'm going to have my plan of Jesus bearing sins on the cross.

Affected by Finney and by Pelagius and by a host of other people who are heretical.

No, God says this is the cross. And by God's own free will. God's sovereign will.

God pleased. Well, there goes my notes and it goes under the pulpit. So that's why you better know your material. There goes the notes.

By God's free and sovereign grace, God chooses the way of salvation.

God chooses the way of salvation. I'm going to grab my notes anyway. I might be dumb, but I'm not stupid.

Listen to this similar language. Don't turn there. Colossians 1. For it was a father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him.

It was the sovereign decree of God. It was his good pleasure. It wasn't that just God says, I'm pleased.

The language of Scripture, when you see well pleased, it's often, this is my determined, sovereign, free will choice.

Galatians 1. But when God who had set me apart, Paul said, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his

Son in me. The sovereign grace determined when that I was going to have my eyes opened. That's why

I'm not going to get caught up into spin, and selling, and advertisement, and Madison Avenue.

If God has sovereignly decreed, you give them the cross, the preaching of the cross.

Why would I now say, but God, you don't really understand our culture. It's Gen X, it's Gen Y, post -moderns, and we have to accommodate, we've got to contextualize.

How do you accommodate and contextualize executions? We have one message.

The lovely died for the unlovely. The just for the unjust. People are like, well, you know, it hurts my self -esteem.

I want your self -esteem to be hurt. Because until you realize that you are a sinner, defiled, rotten, and wretched.

But something more important than that, there is this God who loves sinners.

Can you believe that? You'll say, well, I've never experienced love in my life. Christians have.

The God of the universe has loved me in spite of who I am. Eternally, He has decreed this love and set this love on me because of Christ.

God loves me. Not because of who I am, but because of who

He is. We give the cross to people.

It's our only message. And they come to know God by that. Motivation number five.

Motivation number five. You should preach the cross because God determines the message and methods, not the culture.

These are all kind of related concepts, but they will help drive the point.

Motivation number five. You should preach the cross because God determines your methods and message, not the culture.

When I grew up in the 70s, my mom listened to people on the radio. And I remember three people that she listened to on Christian radio before she was even saved, before I was saved.

She listened to Chuck Swindoll. That would have been a good choice to listen to. She listened to Jimmy Swigert.

That would have been a bad choice to listen to. And she listened to a reverend. He's not a reverend, so I won't call him that.

Some Schombach. Who knows Schombach? Bruce Binney has to know. You probably got his autograph or something.

Saved by grace, right, Bruce? I have no idea where that comes from.

And in those days, Campus Crusade for Christ had a little thing that you'd put on your bumper sticker with three words to kind of entice some evangelism.

Three simple words. I found it. I found it.

And when you saw that on the bumper sticker of someone's car, you're supposed to pull them over at a red light. This is before carjacking and say, what'd you find?

Oh, I found Jesus. And then off you go. While I love the motivation for evangelism, and in one sense, people that do it wrongly but do it have more commendation for some of us, or me, who know the right thing to do and don't do it.

But we've got to have the message and the methods. I found what? I was found by Him, maybe.

You know, the culture, they're inquisitive. We want to appeal to their minds. The culture likes transformation stories.

Get up and tell your testimony. What do we tell Jews and Gentiles? Well, look at verse 22.

For indeed, Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom. So you know what? We accommodate the culture.

So we preach signs to the Jews. We give wisdom to the Greeks. Isn't that what we should do?

Friendship evangelism. We've got to get them to like us first. But we preach, mark this,

Christ crucified. Not resurrected. We know that's true. But Christ crucified.

To Jews, applause? No. Stumbling block. And to Gentiles, foolishness.

Go get them. Be warm. Be filled. Everyone you know falls into one of the two categories.

Religious Jews, religious people, people that know the Bible. And Greeks, people who don't care about the

Bible. They're scientific. Everyone you know falls into one of those two categories. And you have one message to give them.

What's that? How many people can, you know, dinosaurs really could be in the ark?

Well, dinosaurs really could be in the ark. But that's not what you need to do. You can believe in dinosaurs. You can believe in intelligent design and still perish.

But you must believe in the cross. We have one message, the cross. And, by the way, most people aren't going to like it.

But God tells us what to do. We don't give the culture what they want. You don't give your friends what they want.

You give them what God tells you they need. So what are the

Jews? Let's look at the Jews first. This is fascinating. The Jews require a sign. We want water out of the rock.

We want some manna from heaven. We want maybe some super smart person that can speak 25 languages.

And that was the culture of the day. In 45 A .D., there was a man named Thutis. And he persuaded thousands of people to leave their homes, follow him out to the

Jordan, promising that at his command, Jordan would divide, and they would walk across on dry land.

Do you think the Greeks followed? Do you think the Jews followed? The Jews said, that's what we want to do, the signs. Let's follow that.

In 54 A .D., a man from Egypt arrived in Jerusalem. And he said he was the prophet.

30 ,000 people followed him to the Mount of Olives. And he promised that at his word, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down.

The Jews didn't want a crucified Messiah. They wanted a political victor, didn't they?

Paul said, I've only got one thing for you. And I'm not going to impress you. I'm not going to prove something to you.

Here is the crucified Messiah, the only hope for salvation. You want some kind of compelling evidence, evidence that demands a verdict?

No. Faithful ministers, men and women, lay people, to say,

I have the cross. Some of the scribes and Pharisees answered Jesus, saying,

Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. Now, most of them would go, yeah, good. They want to see some faith.

They're kind of pre -Christians. Ever hear that language? We're ministering to pre -Christians?

We are? We want a sign from you.

But Jesus answered, I mean, how would you like this from Jesus? We'd like to see a sign. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of the prophet

Jonah. Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus, seeking a sign from heaven to test him.

Jesus sighed deeply in his spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.

They said, therefore, to him, What do you do for a sign that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?

He just fed 20 ,000 people. Jesus said,

Truly I say to you, It is not Moses who has given you this bread out of heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread of heaven.

You know sign seekers in your life? Give them the cross. But there are other people at the other end of the spectrum.

Take a look at the passage and greet. This isn't a nation. Whenever you're in Italy, you do something differently.

Now you're in Greece, you do this. No. This is not a nation.

This is a class of people who are influenced by 1st Alexander the Great's bringing in the language and all the culture, affected by the

Greek culture. What do you do to those kind of people who said, We have no Bible. We have no

Old Testament. What do you do to those people? Rationalize and talk and speculate.

By the way, if you tried to rationalize and talk to a Greek person about the cross, the first thing they would do is say,

Our number one attribute of God, the number one perfection we think of when we think of God is, that He is apathetic.

Path, emotions, put an A in front of it. No emotions. He has no emotions. You can't have emotions if you're a

God. Let alone, Jesus is a man. Greeks think,

Oh, God's a man. Jesus Christ is a man. You get thrown out for being demented.

If they could, they would throw a straitjacket on you. Jesus is

God and He sleeps. He sweats. He strains.

He gets tired. Sure. Celsus, who attacked

Christians, said this at the end of the 2nd century. God is good and beautiful and happy, and is that which is most beautiful and best.

If He descends to men, it involves change for Him, and change from good to bad, from beauty to ugly, from happiness to unhappiness, from what is best to what is worst.

Who could choose such a change? For morality, it is only nature to alter and be changed.

But for the immortal to abide in the same forever, God would never accept such change.

Stupid. Fifty different parties back in those days, all searching for the right answer.

So what do you do? Spin the gospel, mold it, make it malleable, contextualize it, seek real authenticity in community?

Oh, I know what we do. Let's meet in the middle. You want signs.

You want philosophy. I've got the gospel. Why don't we meet and we'll have some common ground.

You contribute a little bit. We'll contribute a little bit. I get a talk. Then you get a talk.

What would Paul think if we were going to contextualize the gospel, have common ground, come up with Manhattan Declarations and all these other

ECT things, and let's just kind of get together. Let's go with what we agree on and not separate by some of the distinctions.

What would Paul say? Paul would say, you need a wake -up call. You need some kind of spiritual 911.

We preach what? The cross. Yes, but you know what?

If you preach the cross, people are going to think you're a loon. They're going to think you're stupid. They're going to ostracize you.

You're not going to get a raise at work, and your neighbors are going to think you're crazy. Well, I'll just be like a

Secret Service Christian and kind of sneak in covertly. And Paul would say,

I've got a name for you. You're acting like a carnal Corinthian. It's tempting.

If I meet someone, I want to establish these kind of things because I know what's coming, and what's coming is this.

The crucified Messiah dying on a tree. Take a look at verse 23.

We're almost done. But we preach Christ crucified. By the way, that word crucified is a perfect participle.

He is crucified in time, and he continues on now as crucified. You'll see the marks of his crucifixions if you're a

Christian in heaven. He's no political savior. To the Jews, what do they think when you preach this way?

They think it is a what? Stumbling block. It's a scandal. Jesus died on the cross.

Cross hangers in Deuteronomy 21 are cursed of God. You mean to tell me we're going to worship a cursed of God one?

That's like running really fast. Have you ever really run fast around the ocean, and there's a bunch of rocks, and you've stubbed your toe, and that big toe has just went whack.

Blood. That's the word scandal right here. One rabbi said,

Sir, these and such like passages of Scripture compel us to await one who is great and glorious, and take the everlasting kingdom from the ancient of days as Son of Man.

But this so -called Christ of yours is without honor, without glory, so that He has even fallen into the uttermost curse that is in the law of God, Deuteronomy 21, for He was crucified.

Sounds like hate speech to me, doesn't it to you? Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

And to the Jews? Stumbling block. To the Greeks? To the Gentiles? Foolishness.

Worshipping a crucified Savior. We want might. We want strong. I'll never forget the time when

I was in India, and I met this guy, and I said, Well, what's your religious background? And he told me, and I said,

Well, what kind of gods do you worship? What do you think a 22 -year -old man would worship for gods in Pune, India?

He said, I have two particular gods I worship, the God of strength and the God of virility.

How about the God of mental illness? That's what they think.

Folly. Hengel said, It does not denote either a purely intellectual defect nor lack of wisdom.

Something more is involved, closely akin to madness. It's like they said of Hosea.

The inspired man, Hosea 9, is demented. They said of Isaiah when he preached this message that he was preaching a message for babies.

And to whom would he interpret the message? Those just weaned from milk. Those just taken from the breast.

Isaiah 28, 9. Here's the message. It's for the little infant baby. Paul, all this learning has driven you mad.

Jesus, you have a demon and you're mad. But we, sadly me,

I want to be liked. I want to be thought of with reverence, with honor, with initials in front of my name.

I want to be thought of in the community like pastors used to be thought of in the community when there was a big deal going on.

Who are the people you respect in the community the most? Pastors and lawyers.

And now everything's switched wrong side up. Pastors are at the very bottom.

And you know what? I have nothing to offer.

I'm not smart. I'm not bright. I haven't been trained theologically. I haven't done anything in my life.

This is what a layman could say. But I do know that Jesus Christ was sent by the

Father and He loved me with an everlasting love. And He died for me and was raised from the dead.

And He offers forgiveness to all those who will look to the cross and believe. Isn't that reassuring to know?

You don't have to be... Should you study? Of course. But what has been rejected by men is choice and precious in the sight of God.

1 Peter 2. You meet someone who's religious or non -religious, you have the cross.

Say, yeah, but if I meet a Jewish person, I talk about other things. I don't talk about Jesus. When you meet a Jewish person, you go straight to Isaiah 53.

You meet a Gentile, you go straight to Isaiah 53. Because left to themselves, they won't believe you even if you were raised from the dead.

We'll talk about that next time. How could anybody believe with this message? And we're going to learn next week, but God.

When God is working, what was repulsive to you becomes beautiful. And the light goes on.

The sovereignty of God and salvation. We come to a junction in our church that this kind of message from 1

Corinthians, this kind of preaching, is going to do one of two things. It's going to make the mature say,

God, thank you for the message. Help me to be obedient to preach this message. Chop away those things in my life that make me like the world, make me like my old self, and I want to live to the glory of Christ.

I'm a one -way looking Christian, abandoned to God. It's going to take those other people who aren't thinking that way.

And one of two things will happen. You'll either say to yourself, God, forgive me. I can't do it on my own.

I'm weak, but would you give me the strength to be a follower of Christ Jesus and a Savior and Lord. Or you're going to say, who needs this?

I need to find some place where it's easier. And my only message for you is,

I have the cross to show you. The answer is in the cross. Let's pray. Father, what a great, great

God you are. Lord, just to be caught up in the Scriptures. I personally am not thinking about anything else except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

And certainly, Father, we recognize that He has been raised from the dead and He'll come again soon. We just want to be obedient and live in light of your promises by the

Spirit's strength. So would you help our dear congregation and would you help me that when we meet unbelieving friends, maybe we're married to one, maybe we have friends at work, would you give us the courage, would you give us the boldness, and would you give us the help so that we might be obedient to preach

Christ crucified. And Father, would you protect us from ever being ashamed for somehow backing down, somehow being weak and denying

You like Peter did. Lord, strengthen us for this hour. And Lord, we will trust in You for the outcome.