The Power of the Cross - (Part 1) — Erlo Stegen

On this day where we think of your dying for us on the cross, we thank you, Lord, for what thou hast done. And as we have sung that there is salvation at the cross in your blood, there should not be one of us here in the meeting who does not experience complete forgiveness and complete healing from any enslavement to the devil by your work which we commemorate today.

After going through all what you went through, Lord Jesus, what a shame if we who call us by your name are still enslaved by sin and by things of this world. So take this service and may it be in your hands and may you work as thou wilt, as thou hast thought of this hour.

May that come true in each and every one of our lives. Bless us and save us from an eternal damnation. That your will be done in our lives. Amen. Amen.

The Message of the Cross as God's Power

Let's read our text from 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 12. Sorry, verse 18. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

Let us pray. We invite you, Lord Jesus, to be in our midst. Through your word and your Holy Spirit, we pray that you would speak to us and touch our hearts. The word of God says that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.

But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Today, it is Good Friday. For what reason? Today, across the world, people are reminded of the cross. And that's why we even have a symbol erected here.

There, we see that there is a crown of thorns with a wreath with it. When Jesus was crucified and they placed the crown of thorns on his brow, there were no flowers. It was only thorns. But today, they've put red flowers there to symbolize the love of God, which he demonstrated to us on the cross.

And that those thorns, to us, are so precious. And we have here Jesus' love as a result of the crown of thorns that he put on his head.

But when he was crucified, there were no flowers. And that's why we have here Jesus' love as a result of the crown of thorns that he put on his head. Today, across the world, people are reminded of the message of the cross.

But to us, it is the power of God, God's power, which is above every other power. There are big machines in this world, earth-moving machines, tractors and bulldozers.

With a lot of power.

There is great power displayed in nature through thunder and lightning. Now, I don't know how true it is, but I heard that the Germans before the Second World War had a project where they built tremendously big batteries.

I don't know how many hectares they covered. And their intention was to store the energy from lightning. And when lightning struck, it destroyed all those batteries. They exploded because of the amount of energy that is in one lightning.

The energy in one lightning bolt. So there is great power displayed in nature and in natural phenomena, but God's power is much, much greater than that. There is a lot of power in fire, raging fire and in floods, raging torrents of water, but there is no power that can be likened to God's power.

Now, the message of the cross is the power of God to those who believe. I don't know whether you have met up with that power already.

I don't know whether you have met up with that power already. I don't know whether you have met up with that power already.

Transformation Through the Power of Christ

So we who are saved, are saved through that power of the cross. Now some will say, well we are from the Joneses, or we are from the Smith family, and our family is known for the fact that we've got a hot temper, we quickly get angry, or we are like this, and people excuse themselves in that way.

But no matter what family you are from, even if you're a prostitute, or a drunkard,.

An alcoholic, or you're a thief, but if you meet up with this power of Christ, you will be changed completely. You will not be able to carry on as you used to live before. If you do, that's just a fairy tale that you've met up with this.

Power. You say, well I'm addicted to nicotine, I'm a smoker, or you're a drug.

Addict, and you say, well it's impossible for me to kick that habit and to get rid of it from that addiction. Why is it impossible for you? Because you haven't.

Met up with this power of Christ. And even if you would call yourself a.

Believer, and a Christian, you should know that you are outside. It's a lie that you're a Christian. It's a lie that you are a Christian. It's a lie that you're a Christian. It's a lie.

And so there's no power that we can compare to the power of the gospel and.

The power of the message of the cross. And even though you see young people taken up by the world, swept along by the pleasure of the world, but to the one who has experienced this power, all of that means nothing.

And even though you worship the ancestral spirits and you are really very serious about that, and you're hardened in that, but the day that you meet up with the message of the cross, all of that will be swept away.

And for the whites, you can say satanism or spiritism.

If you've been in the occult and you're a hardened satan worshiper involved in the occult, all of that will be swept away the day you meet up with the message of the cross. These days, if the Lord spares us, I'd like to speak about the message of the cross.

Today and tomorrow. And then on Sunday, we'll speak about the resurrection of our Lord. What does the cross mean? What does it say?

What does it symbolize? No, no, no.

We said that some today use the cross as a decoration or as an ornament or as jewelry, which they hang on their ears or other parts of the body, or they make a black cross on the door of their house.

Sitting in Google. But what is the crux of the matter?

Christ Died for Sin

What is the core of the message of the cross? Oh, suck. That Jesus died on the cross is for one reason only. And that is that he died for your sin.

If you do not condemn them, they are nothing, they are nothing, they are dead.

The meaning and the message of the cross has to do directly and solely with your sins. And if it does not have any meaning or value, then it is meaningless.

The death of Christ and his cross and the message of the cross has to do with your sins.

The cross has to do and speaks about the crucifixion of our Lord for your sins. We can speak about the ruggedness of the cross, we can speak about the crown of thorns, we can speak about the sharpness and the hardness of those nails.

Yes, we can speak about all of that, but the crux of the matter goes deeper than that. It is no small thing that the Son of God, God himself, suffered for our sin, but the crux of the matter goes even further than that.

The Seriousness and Evil of Sin

The message of the cross speaks about the seriousness of sin and the evil of sin and the greatness of your sin. Do not take that matter lightly. The message of the cross speaks about the seriousness of your sin.

Do not take that matter lightly. The message of the cross speaks about the seriousness of your sin.

Maybe you love your sin and you will even steal away, you will go out, no matter whether people try to stop you, you will find a gap somewhere to go and commit your sin. But realize this, that the day that you meet up with the message of the cross, you will realize the seriousness and the evil of your sin.

We have people that come from overseas, from Germany, from the countries there in Europe, Germany and the other countries. They travel a long distance, 10 ,000 kilometers, coming here to Kwasi Zabantu.

They don't know any Zulu, they don't know the blacks, but it won't take long and you'll see some of those very people using drugs here at the mission.

We once went to the other side of Ngutu, we were invited and really asked and pleaded with by the Church of England to go and hold services there. And we took a German girl along, a visitor, I don't know whether she was 16 or 18 years old, and we arrived there, we got out of our vehicle, we went into the church.

She had a drug addiction problem, and I thought I'll take her under my wing and I asked her, would you like to go along with us over there, we're going to have a service. And she said yes, I'd love to.

So we went into the service, I preached, the choir sang, we went out, got into our vehicle and left for home.

And on our way home, we discovered that she had marijuana, dacha, with her. Now, somehow, I don't understand and I don't know how, but when we got there, she got hold of somebody who had dacha, she didn't know any Zulu, she had a packet of dacha with her, I didn't see anybody using dacha, but somehow she got hold of that person.

How do you explain that? A person who was born and bred in Germany, comes to South Africa, doesn't know a word of Zulu, can't communicate with blacks. In a few seconds, she got dacha from someone there.

How is such a thing possible? Well, it's inexplicable. But there is a saying in English that says, birds of a feather flock together.

Sin's Attraction and the Stench of Corruption

One person who was a homosexual. And then she said, when we were together with some visitors at my home, and then she said, Uncle Elo, do you see that person? She's a lesbian. And there's another one.

And there's a gay person, a gay man. And I said, now, how do you see, how do you recognize that? How do you notice that? She said, but don't you see it? It's obvious by the way that they are walking and the way that they are acting.

And I said, well, thank you for teaching me, I didn't know. I'm a child, I'm an infant when it comes to such things.

I was a lesbian. I know the language and the behavior of such a person. And so, even if you would be a thousand people, you wouldn't be able to recognize that person.

And so, even if you would be a thousand people here, but if you're a cripple, and I say that a cripple because of your sin, then you'll very soon find somebody else who's in the same boat as you are in, who's also like that, because there must be some odor that that person has, and that's how you find each other.

And some odor that I haven't yet discovered with my nose. Because flies, they've got a way of detecting the smell of that which is rotten, rotten meat, or even of dung. I once told the story about a girl that came down from the Transkei on her way to Johannesburg.

She had a child on her back, a baby. And she had tied the child with a blanket onto her back, as is the custom down there. Now, this was a magistrate or a judge that told me this story. A prosecutor, sorry.

She traveled up by bus up to Durban, and there she changed the bus and got onto another one. In Johannesburg, she got off the bus. And the people around her noticed that many green flies followed after her.

A swarm of these green flies following behind her, behind her back. And then the police stopped her. They became suspicious because of those flies. And they said, what's there on your back? And she said, no, it's the corpse of my dead baby.

And she wept tears and she said, my little baby died. She said, I'm on my way there to Johannesburg, which they call Gauteng today, to go and bury it. And they said to her, take off the blanket. And she said, no, I can't.

I've got the corpse of my baby. They said, take it off.

They took off the blanket. And indeed, here was the little baby that she had on her back.

And as they took off the body of this dead baby, they noticed that it had been cut. And they noticed that it had been slaughtered, that it had been cut right from the top to the bottom of its stomach.

All the intestines had been removed. And it was filled with dacha, which she took there to go and sell for tens of thousands of Rand. Is there something like that possible? Does it exist? It's almost as if it's a story, a fairy tale.

But there is, because of sin. Here you're pinky for the devil, and I saw your yellow hand fat. The cross has to do directly with your sin, with sin. One young white lady who came here, she said, I don't have the problem of men.

I'm not troubled by alcohol.

But my problem is,.

My problem is, I love motor cars. These big, smart, expensive motor cars. And she said, not like your Mercedes, no, that's chicken feed. I'm not interested in that type of car, but these big, smart, expensive BMWs, those very expensive motor cars.

She said, if I see a car like that passing by, my eyes can't leave it. And we and our gang, we won't rest until at least one day we've got hold of one of those cars. We'll kill the driver or the owner, and go and throw that person somewhere where we get rid of the body, and steal the car in that way.

She's an attractive young girl, she's got an attractive appearance.

She said, if I see a car like that passing by, I won't rest until at least one day we've got hold of one of those cars.

Uncle Toby also knows about this, because we took her to Pretoria, because she had the desire to expose her crimes.

She said, if I see a car like that passing by, I won't rest until at least one day we've got hold of one of those cars. She said, if I see a car like that passing by, I won't rest until at least one day we've got hold of one of those cars.

She said, if I see a car like that passing by, I won't rest until at least one day we've got hold of one of those cars.

She herself drove that car across the border, across Byte Bridge, into Zimbabwe. And there at the bridge, it was terribly hot, and because of the heat, the stench of this blood came up into her nostrils.

So much so that she became nauseous, she wanted to vomit. And when she got there, a voice said to her, now you repent, go to Kwasi Zabantu, and get your life right with God. And so she did that, she came here, and came and she confessed her sin.

Well, in the olden days they used to steal horses, today they steal motorcars. She repented. Blood, human blood, made her nauseous. When Jesus was crucified on the cross, He was crucified for things such as these.

Jesus' Teaching on Murder and Adultery

And maybe you say, well, I'm not as bad as that. I haven't ever killed anybody, I'm not immoral, I'm not a drunkard, well, I'm not such a bad person after all.

But when God came to me, I said to him, I'm not as bad as that, I'm not as immoral as that. I'm not as bad as that, but I'm not as immoral as that.

And Jesus said to her, he said to her, you can't kill, because then you're a murderer. But I say to you, if you have said to your brother Raka, and you have become angry with him, then you are a murderer before God.

And he said of all that was said, that you should not commit adultery. But I tell you, if you have only looked at a woman, and you have lusted after her with your eyes, you are already an adulterer. And you say, well, I haven't divorced my wife, I'm still living with her, I've still got our marriage certificate.

But your eyes can follow other girls, and other women, and you look after them, and you desire in your heart, before God, you have already torn your marriage certificate to pieces.

And you say to your brother Raka, that you are an adulterer, and you are a murderer before God. But I tell you, if you have only looked at a woman, and you have lusted after her with your eyes, you are already an adulterer before God.

And you say, well, I haven't divorced my wife, I've still got our marriage certificate to pieces. But your eyes can follow other girls, and other women, and you desire in your heart, before God, you have already torn your marriage certificate to pieces.

And then at night, you go to your computer, and you disk your life away.

And then at night, when all the others are asleep, at eleven or twelve, around midnight. you go to your computer and you connect, you go online, you go onto the Internet and there you'll spend hours looking at all manner of filth straight from hell from the pit of hell and you'll spend hours looking at that, satisfying your lusts.

What are you before God if you're like that? You are nothing. You're married.

You've got a wife, she's yours, her body is your body, your body is her body and you still look pornographic things.

Before the Most Holy God, what are you? You say you no murderer, but before God you've murdered your wife and you've even buried her.

You say you no murderer, but before God you've murdered your wife and you've even.

Buried her. Here at Malmuth, there's a white man there, about two weeks ago, this man worked for ACAT, it's an organization that helps the blacks to train them how to do some farming and how to assist themselves to make a living, teaching them different skills and on his way home from church, some blacks asked for a lift.

He gave them a lift and right in front of his home, we don't know how it happened, there were some shots. They killed him, threw him out of the car and drove off with the car. They killed the very person that was helping their nation.

When Jesus died on the cross, it was for such kind of sins that he suffered and died. Do you see and realize the seriousness of sin? Now, I'm not just saying that because of a white man that was killed, but in this area, this Kranskop district area, a police officer told me that in one week, five people are killed.

Sexual Immorality and the Loss of God's Image

One girl who had a boyfriend, and I hope you listen carefully, you've got boyfriends and girlfriends before you get married. They're in the Kanda district. She got pregnant at home just like a cow would get pregnant because today, we've lost that morality.

We've lost that image of God that God has created us with to have and we've become like wild animals. And she brought a child into the world.

Now, you grannies, you support your grandchildren in that, or your children,.

Because they go, your daughters or granddaughters, they go and they have illegitimate children and they hatch them like eggs and they just bring them and they drop them off here in your home and then you look after them with your pension.

And then they go and they have the next one. And in that way, they are encouraged in that lifestyle. I don't know what you would say before God one day. And then you're so happy if they support you through groceries and other things that they get from their illegitimate relationships and their boyfriends.

And you enjoy that. Oh, you're only putting one stone upon another and hell is yours. It will be terrible. Hell is no game. Just put your finger into a flame of a candle and feel what it feels like. Imagine if your whole body experiences pain and anguish in the flames of hell.

Well, we'll hear one day from you when you cry out. So, this girl from Nkandla had an illegitimate child at home. And then she went to speak to her boyfriend. Now, we don't know what went on in their conversation with each other because the police officer said they still wanted to go to that young man to hear from him.

What did they actually speak about? But after she put down the phone, she came back in a different state of mind. She took a knife. She took her little child. And she cut its throat as you would cut the throat of a sheep.

And slaughtered her own child.

And then she went onto a mountain and there she committed suicide, stabbing herself with a knife.

Abortion and the Dignity of Unborn Life

When I was a child, there was a word I couldn't understand. I couldn't understand it. Can a mother forget her little child which she feeds? Even if she should forget it, I won't forget you. I said, no, my mother can't forget me.

A mother can't forget her child. But just when I grew up, I saw there is such a thing. My father had some farms and shops and now and then we had to go and help out in the shops or wherever it was.

My father had some farms and shops and now and then we had to go and help out in the shops or wherever it was. And then we went to a shop there at Kingscliff, close to Applesbush. And when we got there, we heard the story of a girl who was at the secondary school, at the high school there at Applesbush.

She lived a loose life, having many boyfriends and then she got pregnant. She didn't want her parents and the teacher to find it out. And so she would put on a belt and tighten it around her middle. Until the time of giving birth came and nobody smelt a rat.

And she brought this child into the world, early in the morning at home. She gave birth to it and then she took a dish, she herself, filled it with water.

Took the newborn baby, pushed it under the water and drowned it.

After the child had died, she took her home,.

Went outside into the fields, into the maize field, dug a hole there, put the little baby in and covered it up. And then she went back home and continued with her activities or duties. And then after some time, the people at home cried and said, My, what's that?

What's the dog carrying and dragging along there? The dog had gone and dug up that shallow grave and found that body of that little baby, dragged it out and dragged it home to go and feed on it. That girl was 16 years old.

That was the first time in my life when I saw how cruel a mother can be. That she can murder her own little baby,.

And the police came and took her off to jail.

That was still when the Afrikaner government was ruling. But today it's no longer a crime to kill an unborn baby. Anybody can do it, and you can do it with a dozen babies. It's no crime. The government today allows that.

And you can go to the clinic and go and get some pills there, or you can go and have this unborn baby aborted and slaughtered. It's no crime today. What does God in heaven say about that? Such a mother's heart can be so hard and she can be so angry that she can kill her own baby, which is close to her heart.

Millions upon millions of children are killed every year. The most dangerous place on earth is close to the heart of a mother. That's the most dangerous place. That's where the most people are slaughtered and murdered.

That's why Jesus was crucified, for such sin, for your sin.

Repentance, Confession, and Genuine Salvation

You may say, oh, by God's grace, I'm not so evil. But remember this. When Jesus comes, he will judge your thoughts. You are not what you think you are. You are what you think. If you want to know who you are, look at your thoughts.

And that is what he is. Look at your thoughts.

And you keep quiet about your thoughts. You don't confess them. You don't bring them into the light. And not even your thoughts, even deeds, you cover it up. But woe to you. God will pass you by while he's busy blessing others.

You will remain behind. And God will judge those thoughts. If we look at the cross, we see the seriousness of sin.

There are people that say they've accepted Christ into their hearts. And now they'll go to heaven. But they make no reference of their sin. There's no repentance, no remorse, no confession of their sin.

Sometimes tracts are written. Evangelism is done. But without repentance, there's no salvation. It's impossible. Christ died for sinners and for sin. And if you meet with him and come to the cross, sin must be dealt with.

And if you say, I've accepted Christ, I'm a child of the Lord, it's nonsense. It's not genuine. The whole meaning of salvation is that God deals radically and ruthlessly with our sin. You think it's simple?

This is not simple.

The whole meaning of salvation is that God deals radically and ruthlessly with our sin. In our lives. And Africa can help us with that.

In all darkness there is a little sun. I hope you understood that. There is no darkness like a little sun. The smallest sun is just as bad as the worst and the biggest. And the most terrible sun. May it be clear to you for the rest of your life.

There is no salvation without repentance. It's man made, it's a modern thing and it's worth nothing.

It's man made, it's a modern thing and it's worth nothing.

It's man made, it's a modern thing and it's worth nothing.

Where you repent there is remorse over sin. There is confession and there is a change of mind.

Some believe that they are saved. But never turned away from their wicked ways and their sin. And that's why they accept Christ and believe in him. So to say. But after that they fall into the gravest sin.

Sin that they've never done before. In spite of the fact that they've accepted Christ. Because they have accepted Christ without repentance. And that Christ didn't deal with the sin in their life. And they are the laughing stock of the devils.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. And if you meet up with the message of the cross.