A Word in Season: God’s Gospel (1 Corinthians 1:23)

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God's gospel has at its heart Christ and Him crucified, the

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Son of God, the Eternal Son, who took flesh and blood and then obeyed and suffered as a man, laying down His life on the cross at Calvary to purchase our souls, paying for us the debt that we could never pay with His own blood and redeeming us to God.

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That's the very core of what we believe. It's the very essence of what we proclaim.

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It is the preaching of the apostle in 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 23.

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We preach Christ crucified. But that gospel is despised.

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To the Jews, it is a stumbling block and to the Greeks, foolishness. And though we may not have precisely the same audience as the apostle did, we do have the same attitudes that disgust and disdain that anyone should need a crucified savior, a sense of its foolishness and its emptiness, its powerlessness, according to the world's measure, that here is something that is vile, vulgar, distasteful, unnecessary, something that is simply irrelevant.

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But that same gospel, which is despised by so many, is not beaten, is not powerless, is not empty.

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Yes, it is to the Jews, a stumbling block and to the Greeks, foolishness. But there's a holy shift here.

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Although to many, it is nothing but a stumbling block and foolishness. That is not the whole story.

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There is more to it than that. God has ordained that it shall be something more than merely in the eyes of the world, a stumbling block and an empty folly.

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To those who are called, here is the gospel embraced. Here is the hope of those who know the power of God's word and spirit at work in their hearts.

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Those who, when Christ crucified is proclaimed, understand that this is not a fable, not a folly, not a fiction, but that this is the glory of God being made known for salvation.

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That here, the Lord of mercy holds out his hands toward undeserving, hell -deserving sinners.

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And in Christ Jesus, and by his death, makes a provision for us that we may be brought to God.

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And when that gospel is heard with spiritual power, when God issues not just the general invitation, but speaks to individual souls and convinces us of our sin and our misery and draws us to Jesus Christ, making us sweetly willing, opening our eyes to behold the sufficiency and the beauty of the sacrifice of our great

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God and savior, Jesus Christ. Then we come, we hear God speak to us in and through the word.

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The spirit works in our souls. Our eyes are opened, our ears are unstopped, our hearts are enlivened, our souls are drawn toward Christ so that we come to him, we close with him, we hold fast to him, we repent of our sins and trust in him entirely.

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And with that gospel embraced, so the gospel is esteemed by those who are called.

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Whether they were Jews who thought the gospel a stumbling block, whether or not their inclination was to self -righteousness and disdain for a crucified savior, or whether they were by nature

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Greeks with this esteem for their own wisdom and imagining that the cross of Christ was an ugly nonsense and an offense to all right reason.

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Yet their eyes being opened and their hearts being changed, they come to understand that this same

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Christ crucified is the power and the wisdom of God. And that is still the hope of the church as we preach

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Christ crucified. That is still the good news that we declare. Yes, we know that it is despised, but we also know that it is ascendant, that God is sending his good news out into all the world and that it comes to those who are being called.

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And when they are being called, when the power of God is at work in their souls, they will come to esteem that which before was emptiness and foolishness as the power and the wisdom of God.

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Now, have you grasped that yet? Have you seen in Christ crucified, God's power and God's wisdom for your salvation?

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For it is nowhere else. If you would know God, you must know him in this

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Christ, this crucified Christ, who suffered and died for the ungodly and rose again for our justification.