A Message on the Cross — Rolfe Barnard

The Cross and the Savor of Life and Death

Now would you turn tonight to the word of 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 2, 2 Corinthians chapter 2. Last evening we spoke on the severity, the terrible, terrible, almost unbelievable severity of God's holy law.

We mentioned last evening that there are three truths deeply embedded in the word of God that we've sought mightily for the most part to ignore. Last 60, 70 years these truths form the basis upon which Christ can be preached acceptably to God.

They are the utter ruin of men and the fall, strictness of God's holy law, demanding absolute perfection not only of deed but of motive, severity of the penalty that men have to pay, pay break. If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous start building them back?

That's our job these days. We are foolish. We do not get quickly to the job of going back to the old truths and whether people here or not get the blood of people off our hands by establishing once again the mighty truths of God in the consciences of people.

They're not there now. An African Christian has said that America is a Bible-starred land, that American churches are Bibles. I'd wonder if he didn't know a good deal about what he's talking about. Tonight I wish to speak on the truth that wherever the message of the cross in its first message is brought, God's preacher leaves a trail of death.

I read from the second chapter of 2 Corinthians beginning at verse 14, Our thanks be unto God which always calls us in Christ and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ in them that are saved and in them the savor of death and to the other the savor of life unto life.

Tremendous word. Any child from the day God saved you, God calls you a proclaimer as far as in you is where the public join hands one with another with all of God's people the globe around proclaiming the act in Christ and the resurrection.

The challenge it is, challenging it is to think that you become an instrument of death and of life. God never set out to save everybody. If he did, he's the world's greatest faith. But he tells us in his word that he set out to save a people for the praise of his glory.

The Means of Gospel Proclamation and Intercessory Prayer

Since I cannot save anybody, I'm so glad that on purpose God set out to redeem out of all the haters, holiness despisers whom it seemed good in his name to tell us in his blessed word, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear of the means that a person of his eternal as it is the session of the saints of God.

I've been saying about the same thing since I've been here the second visit that it's long efforts pursuance of our best mind. We have not been faithful to God's means for two weapons to prosecute. Let's get it out by the public ministration anyway on earth to disseminate God's eternal word that tells us about what he's done for me and in the Lord Jesus.

That's getting the job done. Only one hand a weapon is the intercessory salted tearful prayers of his people. They must go together. You'll study that and not throw a book at me. You'll find that for the last 50 or 60 years, we've done about everything except these two things.

Constantly call you honestly believe that only God using the means at his disposal can convict the sinner and bring him home safely. In our thinking, we have treated God the Holy Ghost as almost a total stranger.

While we've given lip service to him in our plans and in our promotions and we were serious and I think well-intentioned but ignorant by it, we have all this work of the holiest will of God. And yet we've constantly tried to present a gospel as we've said that a little child can understand and that ever lived cannot begin to understand concerning yourself and believe understood.

When we remember that it's our task as people of God to go to a world and preach that which the natural man will receive because it's spiritually deserved, oh God isn't it time that knowing that and refusing longer to just quote it and not believe it, that our churches come back to intercessory prayerfulness to the word of God that has not marked our day, your day and mine.

The Sufficiency of God for a Ministry That Brings Life and Death

I said that, that's on our text, that's in our text. Make those who being served of the apostle Paul, remembering as he just said that we are savers of death unto death and life unto life, he'll ask the question who is sufficient for these things.

I'll tell you right now, all of us put together or not, we can summon up our best brains and our best promotional tactics and all of it, but not big enough to get one center to a saving relationship, is sufficient for these things.

And especially in view of the fact of what he says in verse 17, where he says there's one thing we cannot do, recognizing something of the solemnity of being representatives of the most high and thrice holy God in Christ, recognizing that our ministry damns as well as bless it.

Oh, he said we can't do it in our own strength for there's one thing we dead sure not gonna do said Paul, we're not gonna try to whittle down the gospel and we're not gonna try to wish Jesus off on anybody that don't want him.

Let's read this 17th verse, for we are not as many, even in Paul's day, we are not as many which corrupt the word of God. If that isn't a challenging thing, I'll choose up and take sides. Yeah, I am just a little old preacher, a sinner I trust saved by grace.

My brain is not very, I've never won't be till I get a new body entirely recovered from the awful blow that fell on me and Adam. And I haven't got much sense. And here I am reading, trying to preach out of a book that don't make a better sense on God's earth, except as a person is able to be taught by the one who wrote it.

Yeah, I'm trying to preach a word. Now listen to brother Barney that no unsaved person believe it is silly to think that unsaved people believe the Bible. They do not believe a word of it, not one single word.

And yet here we are called upon to stick through on it, take away from it, sit so I could understand telling you if they think it through, maybe some of us would burn it in as crazy as he's reported to be past time.

Since we're preaching out of a book, unsaved people do not believe a word of it. They can't. Natural, the natural mind is empty and he cannot receive it, doesn't understand a word of it. Is anybody going to get saved?

Ain't nobody going to get saved unless God Almighty works a miracle, something for that old man's mind and that man's eyes and that man's heart to enable him to see what he can't see and to act on what he can't act and to believe what he can't believe.

We are in the realm of miracle. I'm saying because we said, well, now that's a little too tough. And so we'll get our little pocket knives down and we'll whittle down the gospel of Jesus Christ until men can accept it.

I hear a lot, brother, about making the Bible to the modern mind, whatever that is. I don't know what the modern mind is, but the gospel cannot be made acceptable except as the Holy Ghost conquers a man and enables him to close with him of whom the gospel speaks.

Whatever we do, Paul said, we are not as many which corrupt of sincerity, but as of God in listening to a preacher who is not just exactly a novice. Sixty-one years now, thirty-nine have been trying to be a preacher.

Hear me, I deserve a hearing. Hear me, I know a little something about what I'm talking about. Deep conviction. I can't force it on anybody, ask anybody to share it. I just preach it and proclaim it. Conviction.

It's as real as I'm real and not a ghost. No one would fight. I wish no one would. Some of your strength to enter in and be sympathetic at least with what makes me tick. So help me, God. I believe that this generation has heard a whittled down, corrupted, perverted presentation of a part of the Christ of the Bible.

My deep conviction is that the Christ that's been preached for the last many, many years doesn't have power to save anybody. What I'm trying to say is, and I dig people and I go after people and I'm dead sure I'm not trying to entertain anybody, but I'm preaching with a view that I've got to face yet the judgment.

And I know I can't do a good job, but I want to do the best in the face and tell it. People have got saved in these last few years when we've whittled it down and whittled on his claim. I tell you, it takes a whole Christ, fully received by faith by a whole center to bring salvation to pass.

The Whole Christ: Savior, Lord, and King

But for many, many years, the many did the gospel, pulling this out of it, taking the heart of Jesus of his honor and his exalted position on the throne. We are not as many, said Paul, who corrupt the gospel.

Purity. I'm going to try to preach on that tomorrow night, in its purity. I believe that a man could possibly get saved as long as Jesus Christ is preached only as a savior, while his ministry as God brings his flesh to men is ignored.

And I do not believe a man can get saved by accepting Jesus, almighty God, sitting on the throne of the universe with the very reins of your destiny in his hands. In other words, I honestly believe that this accepting Jesus as your personal savior is a corruption of the gospel of Christ.

I do not see how a Christian now, that's the only chance you ever get out of about to him and to his absolute rule in your life, they know less who the Christ must be. And anything short of that is not the Christ Paul talks about, who's the only begotten son of God.

Oh, I want tomorrow night to preach, if I can, the gospel in its purity. But tonight I just want to say one thing. The gospel must be preached in its proper order. In its proper order. Hear me now. If a man preaches the gospel in the proper order, if he don't preach it in a proper order, it's just like pouring water off a duck's back and we've fell fallen in this trap for many, many years.

God's Holy Law Must Precede the Gospel

I know what I'm talking about. What is the order in which the gospel is to be preached? First, the proclamation and enforcing of God's holy, just and perfect law must precede the preaching of the gospel.

When the preacher says that all Bibles is wrapped up in the cross of Christ, he's speaking the truth, for everything leads to or stems from that. But the first message of preaching the cross of Christ is the proclamation of the holy law of God.

The young man said before he sang, a truth could this generation have any conception of its utter need of a substitute to die in our stead and a Lord to rule our every thought and daily expression since for so many years we've thrown the law out of the window.

We've invented Bible teachers that have done away with it and God help us. This lawlessness is everywhere in your home and in your church and in your school and on your streets and everywhere else. How could it be any other way since for so many years God has acted in Jesus Christ?

What is the law? What's the message of the law? Well, look at Jesus Christ hanging on a cross. That's what it is. How come is that? Because of God's holy law. What nail the son of God's holy law has sworn he'll never go back on his law.

He has admitted he made a mistake when he said thou shalt not. That he is wrong about it. One thing's dead certain. One thing's dead certain. Interested in hearing the gospel until they are utterly slain by the holy law of God.

Somebody says, well, we ought to preach the gospel. Yes, sir. But the scriptures don't say we ought to preach it first. Nowhere in Old Testament or New Testament is this principle violated. So first faithfully proclaim and enforce.

And that's the cause that we are so constituted that on the hoop as I said, until we've absolutely been brought face to face with God's holy demands and find ourselves able to meet them. The gospel, my friends, is called good news.

The Gospel as Good News to the Convicted Sinner

Good news to who? Is the gospel good news to sinners? Well, they think it's silly. Yes, sir. What sort of sinners? To the giddy and the unconcerned? Oh, no. Yeah, that's not good news to them. They say, what's that fool talking about?

Is the gospel good news to them? No, sir. It doesn't sound good to them. It has no music in their ears. They're dead. For they don't have any sense of a need of a savior. Christ died and God raised him.

For sinners is the gospel, but who cares? The gospel's good news to what kind of people? It's good news, hear me, to those who have some sense of the holiness of God and of their vileness in his sight.

That's when the gospel's good news. The gospel's good news to people who've known something of his righteous requirements and of their criminal neglect to try to meet, conscious of their deep sinfulness and their utter inability to recover themselves.

The gospel's good news to those whose consciences intolerable load of guilt and who are terrified by the imminent danger to come. The gospel's good news to men and women who come to know that unless the almighty redeemer saves them, they cannot save themselves.

The Law Reveals Sin and the Need for a New Birth

The law is the first message of the cross. And the great need of this hour is for this generation. And I'm not lying when I tell you they haven't heard much of it. Just once you take Jesus and they say, why?

Furry on you, what I need him for? Or they go through some of the motions, but it never changes the way they live. And it never changes the way they feel and the way they talk and the way they walk. And that won't get the job done.

Why must the law of God be preached first? That's the first message of the cross. Because men will not listen to your gospel. They'll not be interested in your gospel. They'll have no interest in your gospel until they're utterly slain by the holy demands of the law.

Why must men, must the law be preached first? Because man will stay ignorant of his true condition. If American pulpits keep silent forever, as they've been doing for 40, 50 years, about the actual truth of God's holy requirements.

The schools are not going to teach it. Most of them make fun of it now. They, the homes are not teaching it. The family altar is a dead relic now. The newspapers are not going to teach it. They don't, they're not doing that.

The funny papers don't teach it. The picture shows don't teach it. The television don't teach it. God, Hippos is just one institution. God help us to get busy, honey, get best. The law of God is faithfully prosecuted and proclaimed.

Men will die ignorant of their actual condition in the sight of God. Just leave God. Just let God take his hand off and let all mention of his holiness. For that's what the law means. The law, those 10 commandments don't amount to anything except who gave them stands behind them and of his righteous demands.

And there's no way on God's earth for a man to find out the truth about himself, except to look in the mirror God's provided. And that mirror is God's holy law, just left alone of the requirements of God's law.

And men and women will not respect it as the sickness of their souls. For spiritual health means personal holiness. Claim. I don't mean everybody gets saved if they face the law, but some would. I don't mean everybody would say I need a savior, but some would.

If we began faithful in Sunday school classes and radio and public everywhere and personal work and home by home and doorbell by doorbell to preach the first message of the gospel, the holy law of God to this lawless generation, maybe somebody gets so mad they try to get them a club or a shotgun, kill God, they'd get a hold of them.

I don't think they could. But others would say, oh my, I tell you, I'm in a bad shape. I'm in a bad shape. And so by the law, men can find out their need. They need a new nature, but they don't believe it except as their old nature is exposed and aroused and kindled in its hostility by God's holy law.

Oh, if God tells you to do something and it arouses hostility, it's showing you for what you are. If God tells you not to do something, you say, I'll do it or die. It's revealing your character. Oh, walk the streets of glory unless he becomes a lover.

And how can O 'Rough Barnet unless God Almighty gives me a new nature and makes me a new creation? How can I love that which I naturally hate? I can't. I can't. I need, in the language of the old book, I need a new birth.

I need a birth from above. I need a birth that'll take me out of one realm of darkness and put me over into the rule of God's dear son. I need a miracle to change me and make me love what I once hated, once loved.

And so the faithful proclamation of the holy law of God will make some people be concerned that God did hang his son on a cross. And they'll begin to inquire, maybe, maybe, maybe, who knows? Maybe he did something on the cross for me.

I'm going to see if I can find out if I can get in on the merits of the blessed son of God's life laid out in his shed blood. And oh, as we proclaim the cross, the law, some men will find out their condition.

Why? You deserve to be in hell. Why? You've broken God's law. It shows your rebellion and shows your lack of holiness. And then, please, God, some people find out their need. Oh, let me say one more time to encourage those of you who know the Lord.

Lawlessness, Judgment, and the Need for Revival

The only weapons we've got are the word faithfully proclaimed in prayer. I want to see the word beating into the hearts of people. I want to see men and women stricken. I want to see men and women come down off the high horses.

I want to see the whole chant change. It may be I'll never see it, but I want to. I think in the day, Brother Cole, my soul wouldn't be terrible. We may have to go through it. It may be God Almighty will never visit America.

I haven't made you any promises since I've been here. I said it's been over 100 years since it has. And I don't know whether it will or not. All I know is I want him to. But I'll tell you right now, honey, if you don't, this lawlessness, it's everywhere now.

It's going to be worse tomorrow. And it's going to be worse the next day. You have to read the newspapers about what's going on in the cities. It'll be happening in this town and everywhere else. It's spreading like wildfire and all hell's popping.

So what is it? It's just men and women thumbing their nose at the holy character and requirements of God. That's what it is. That's exactly what it is. What's the remedy? What's his word? So in the last word tonight, the holy law of God put it in there for the preaching of the gospel and reception of it.

The Law’s First Use: Exposing Sinful Rebellion

Let me mention quickly five things about how the law of God is used of God to be glad to hear that the Lord Jesus died on the cross. I call death of the Lord taken for granted. We are. We just take it for granted as if it's something we deserve.

And it's sort of something brothers start to argue about instead of to weep over and then having wept to rejoice. Knowing things between eternities is heartbreaking as the way people just do not care if the son of God was stretched out on a tree.

Isn't that something to break your heart? Oh, I long to do my little bit. God help us for another chance. Holy to this generation is somebody. Oh, my soul of the world. Game for somebody to be glad to hear the good news of what Christ has done.

Well, it does it in five ways. The law requires inward as well as outward obedience. Do anything very bad. How about the motives of the good things you do? Now, there's just two things to do with a statement like that.

That's throw it out the window or look at it. And if you look at it, it's a job done. What a baby enable a man and nobody's yet been able to do it. I'm going to say we are as sinful or as sinless as we conform or fail to conform to God's holy law.

Now, my stand is not worth much, but it's utterly high to be straight with one another. I could maybe think, boy, look how holy Brother Barnard is. But when I come, I can only say depart from me. I'm a sinner.

You see, my friends, there's a lot of fool talk going all over the country by a lot of fool preachers about the ability of men to save themselves. And there's a lot of fool talk on about this hyper Calvinism.

I believe what they call me. And they say I'm a hard shell. And they say I don't believe anybody can get saved even if they want to. And they don't know a thing on God's earth about the Bible. And I get sick and tired of the little old peanut ignoramuses going around spouting off something that no one knows anything about and speaking evil things of great truths of God's word.

Human Responsibility Before the Holy Law

But you listen to Brother Barnard tonight. The only reason on God's earth a fellow with Jesus Christ in the gospel is that he willfully, nobody keeps him from it. He willfully refuses to face the condition he's in in God's sight as revealed in terms of the law.

And if he goes to hell, he's to blame but himself. And he'll split it wide open because he willfully would not look at himself in God's mirror. If you do it, brother, you come down off your high horse.

And you wouldn't be satisfied with somebody deciding you as a Christian. You'd hang and rattle and seek and pray and cry until the Lord spoke peace to your soul. And you wouldn't let anybody but him do it.

The Law’s Demand for Perfect Obedience

In the second place, the law demands perfect obedience. Or as we see ourselves in God's mirror, if we look at God's law as it reveals our awful disobedience. I just want two things to do about that. Just throw it out the window as we've done for years or look at it.

He can't save himself. No, sir. Can you read? No, I can't read. Can you get somebody to read for you? Yes, sir. I know somebody can read. Well, for God's sake, go get him and have him open the book and start reading to you about how in the word of God, the one who created this earth and owns your lock, stock and barrel, demands perfect obedience.

And just look at it. And that'll crush everybody that's ever lived. They'll have to say, I can't make it. My obedience is not perfect. I'm a goner. How does the law prepare the way for the gospel to be preached and received?

The Law’s Spiritual Exposure of Adultery and Murder

Because it's spiritual and strict. Imagination, according to Jesus, is adultery. Imagination is adultery. According to Jesus, you do not have to commit the act of adultery to be an adulterer. Just the imagination.

For the state of undress of this ungodly lawless generation, this nation is a nation of adulterers. A decent man dare not go to a grocery store now. The parade of naked flesh is so awful that it makes a decent man ashamed that the women of this country are so far gone.

Remember, ladies and gentlemen, especially you ladies, for it falls on you more than anybody else, in the making before Congress a bill to legalize homosexuality. Did you know that? They're going to make it now where it won't be against the law to practice homosexual prostitution.

Realize that the dressmakers of the world are homosexual. Dressmaking industry is control, lock, stock and barrel. Female are male homosexual. Something to think about. In addressing or undressing as ugly and vulgarly as they can.

I'll tell you exactly why. The dressmakers planned it that way. Why? They wish to make men doing a good job. Look as shabby as they can. The dressmakers have made it that way. You'll find that homosexuality, that sodomy, that's the bottom, brother.

When I tell you that one out of every ten people in New York City is a female or a male homosexual, I'm telling you the truth. When I tell you that there are 70 ,000 homosexual male, homosexual street prostitutes on the streets of New York City, I'm telling you something that ought to wake this generation that's been summoning its nose against holy living long enough.

If we don't wake up, we all ought to go to hell. It's getting serious. What you talking about? Imagination is adultery. Imagination is adultery. Imagination. How much anger against a fellow creature is murder.

Anger at somebody. The holy Lord God is. A man would face it. All he could say is, I'm a sinful man. As the Lord prepared to receive the gospel, the law thunders its awful curse. The soul that sinneth it shall die.

The wages of sin is death. Curse it is every man that hangeth on a tree. He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. As the law for the hearing of the gospel of Christ. The whole law itself just has one ultimate purpose.

The Law Leads the Guilty to Christ

Oh yeah, your need. Somebody. The law. You need its awful requirements and do it and endure its awful. Here's one man that's not anxious. I don't believe I got a chance. Come to the judgment. A man that comes face to face, not with Christ.

I can't handle it. Destroy me. It's awful severity. Almighty will plunge me into eternal hell. I can't deal with God's holy law. Somebody tonight who doesn't share my deep conviction. You, I know, wouldn't make fun of me.

Sometimes don't you think your heart will break? You know if you're a Christian, you're desperate. Jesus will lift sin in their stead. You know. You talk to people and they don't know it. They're not interested.

You just heartbreak. How you wish you could. How you wish you could. Shut them up. Not let them get out. And if you had the power, make them fall. Prostrate before the Lord Jesus Christ. Ladies and gentlemen, there's one truth between the eternities.

The Desperate Call to Flee to Jesus Christ

It is that sinful man. God's eternal. Unless you're able to close. Unless it can come to pass that you can say and say truth. He's mine. Of his eternal. Message is done. Now I'll have to meet it at the judgment.

The way the people have heard it. That's in the books. Now it's time. We tremble but don't know how to press it. We commit this thing to you now. With people even now. That desperate need to flee to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And wholly abandon an utter commitment. Beg it.