The Meaning of the Cross — Rolfe Barnard

Thank you so much for this privilege. Will you turn in the Bible to 1 Corinthians, Chapter 1, if I can tonight, as the Holy Spirit will help me, give me something to think with and a heart to feel with, I want to talk on the meaning of the cross, the meaning of the cross.

The Cross as the Power and Wisdom of God

The passage of scripture that we'll have before us tonight tells us that religious people in the generation of Christ was here on the earth were scandalized by the message, the content, the truth, the meaning of the cross.

Now, the intellectuals represented by the Greeks, the people who thought they knew something, things that people that wouldn't believe anything said they could understand, they had to reason everything out, the word of the cross, the message of the cross of Christ, the content of the cross of Christ, was to them foolishness.

But unto some people it was the power of God and the wisdom of God. No greater tragedy to be experienced by any human being than to live his life, stand down here on the earth, and not face the cross of Christ until its wondrous meaning, that which God meant it to be, should be true of you.

If you miss out here, you've missed out on everything. God has no other remedy, this is it. We do not need a Bible to tell us that there's a man named Jesus, lived in the little country of Nazareth, and that he died a tree outside the city of Jerusalem, any history book can tell you that.

But we do need a Bible to tell us who he was, who he is, he hung on that cross. And so, these thirty-six years I've been hiking up and down the country, and one thing will be as narrow as the Bible, I'll forget the old white-haired preacher that preached the sermon when I was ordained, a lot of what he said I didn't have the least idea what he was talking about.

He said, call me by my given name, and he said, there'll be nights when you'll walk the floor and you'll cry, and everything will be as brash, and you'll want to die. And what it's getting into, I wouldn't have had the courage to do it, none of us would.

Is that right? The Lord's good to us. But one thing he said, stuck in my cross, always be as narrow as the Bible. If the Bible says hell, you say hell. If the Bible says the cross, that bloody offering, you stick with it.

Just be as narrow as the Bible. That's the only thing that's going to endure, as always in the heart of God, the cross of Christ. Every clan of men will go by the board, but people who face the cross experience the power of him who hung there.

Bless God. Satan can never destroy that. Was the subject the meaning of the cross before us? Let's read, beginning with verse 17. Paul says, For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not to preach it with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.

For the word of the cross, the message of the cross, the content of the cross, is to them to perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. And yes, some language, you listen to it one more time, you'd be persuaded to maybe to prick up your ears.

This message of the cross, to experience the power of the cross, you might miss out on it. For up to now, doing the very best that he has chosen to do, has never been able to save God and save any saver remnant.

Never had the message looked at in the face, contemplated, decades go into centuries and centuries into millenniums and millenniums on into the changing tides and billions of people have lived in God's world ever so, masses in every generation, on the meaning of Christ hanging on the cross.

I look you in the face and I say for myself and for you, I covet that you'll come to experience the power of Jesus Christ. To some it's foolishness, to some it's patience. In the Old Testament it is written, that's God's word.

God says, I'll destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing, to nothing, the understanding of the truth. God says, I'll do that. Then he asks, where is the wise? Where is the disputer of this world?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? After that in the wisdom of God, God planned this now. This is solemn. And everybody seems like they're asleep. Satan got the world cocained and drugged.

Better get that wax out of your eyes. I had to preach last night, save yourselves from this untoward, godless generation. After that, the wisdom of God, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God.

Salvation Through the Foolishness of Preaching

Darker, more challenging. This statement we're going to read now. Don't ever get to God just using this, using this. You'll read now 2 and 2 is 4 and go to hell. It pleads God. It's according to the purpose of God.

God fixed it that way. All hell can't change it. Anybody on God's earth claims to be a preacher or a Christian, don't get excited about this. And let the devil lead him to use any other message, any other message.

Not worthy of the kingdom of God. It pleads God. God sends us more than we do. God's wiser than we are. God's more tenderhearted than we are. All this generation of people advising God and attacking His character, and they don't like what His Bible has to say.

And all of us put together don't love lost sinners as much as the God who gave His Son. Pleads that God. Brother, we'd better be pleased by that. If we, if I myself and just one more in all this world, discard the cross and think that we can get the job done by preaching anything else, we'd better not.

For this pleads God. This was according to the purpose of God. All hell can't shake God in that purpose. It pleads God. Foolishness of preaching. Them that believe never will be. Has been any other way.

Thanks in one basket. My beloved. It pleads God. By the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Somebody says that don't mean foolish preaching. But now if you, if I don't lose you, it is foolishness.

If you just use this thing. There isn't a human being here tonight, if you'd be honest. Wouldn't have to admit. That the idea that a little baby that was born in a cow stable in a little insignificant country.

Way off from everywhere else. And lived in Nazareth. And nothing ever good ever came out of Nazareth. And nobody that was anybody ever became his follower. Only fallen women and tax collectors, thieves and fishermen and folks like that.

Became his disciples. The religious people looked him over and turned him down. He wound up dying the death of a criminal. The most horrible death that the Roman Empire could think about. They put him in another man's grave.

They wrapped his body in somebody else's clothing. They perfumed his body with gifts of spice from somebody else. That ain't foolish to say that God Almighty. That God Almighty. That God Almighty in all of his wisdom.

In all of his eternal goodness. God Almighty put all of his eggs in that little bastard. And he not only invites and asks but he commands. That men and women believe that that was his only forgotten son.

And that he was acting in his name. And he commands every man and woman to lay themselves at his feet. In absolute day by day utter devotion and surrender. That's the most foolish thing I've heard of in my life.

It's the truth of God. And I'm going to look you in the face now. And tell you, you live in a generation where everybody believes the Bible. Makes us wonder if anybody does. And you're living in a generation now where everybody's a Christian.

It's a good question whether anybody is. We take for granted and never just swallow it down. And we'll never know when we'll swallow it and never know when we'll lose it. Why my soul, listen, no human being in his right mind.

Listen to Brother Barney. No human being in his right mind could possibly believe that this one I've described is the truth. God gives you a birth from heaven. That's the God's truth. You see, that which anybody believe apart from the Holy Ghost.

We've reasoned it out now the way everybody says they believe it. But if you believe this, it'll change. It'll change. But you can't believe this apart from a miracle. Brother Barney, that's terrible.

You mean I can't get saved apart from God working a miracle in my life? You dead sure can't. That's exactly what it means to be born from above. To receive life from Almighty God. Oh, how solemn it is.

It pleased God. This is God's way. It pleased God. By that foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Why did God choose that way, he says. For the Jews, that's religious people, require a sign.

And the Greeks seek after wisdom. And God will not cater to either. He'll not give the sign, nor he'll not cater to wisdom. Oh, I want you to keep your finger on that. And turn with me to Matthew chapter 11.

Judgment on the Jewish Nation and Christ’s Invitation

And I just want to read a passage of scripture here. And if I could understand it, I'd be ten million times smarter than I am. I don't pretend to understand it. I just bow to it. And I'm going to ask you to take the time as we look at it here in connection to what we've been reading.

What you talking about, Brother Barnum? I don't want you people to miss Christ. When I go and have big crowds, I rejoice. When I haven't had crowds like we haven't had yet, it just makes me say, Oh, God, please don't let any of the people.

But I tell you, I'd hate for somebody to sin and sin. I'm trying to stay with Christ's church. I'd hate for you to be a God, but a covetous of Christ. Everybody believes now. But the scriptures say, Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.

There isn't a way to get born of God. It happens just like that. But you have to both be born of God in order to be able to believe. That little baby over there says, Why, you've got more sense than that, haven't you?

He couldn't be the Son of God. That's what the Jews stumble at. They say, He couldn't be. And the intellectuals, the college professors say, He couldn't be. Well, that's it. The work of the Holy Spirit.

Quit using it as a doctrine and go to believe in it. Let the natural man receive it. Not the things of the Spirit. To be interpreted to him by the Holy Ghost. The Apostle Peter preached on the day of Pentecost to the very people still.

It's a fiction. But the Holy Spirit had to interpret what actually happened there. If you dare preach it, brethren, you can preach till you're blue in the face. But God's helpless preachers, we're as helpless as we can be.

Get truth into the hearts of men. The Holy Ghost has to do it. I'm going to read you this past scripture. This is what we're talking about. In the 11th chapter of Matthew, Jesus Christ turns in chapter verse 20 and pronounces judgment on the Jewish nation who through their leaders have looked him over and rejected him.

And in a moment, he's going to give the first invitation in the scripture to individuals. And he talks about judgment. For instance, Capernaum is going to be brought down. Tyre and Sidon, Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum, the cities of his day, are going to come to judgment.

In verse 24, he says, I say unto you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee. Now, here is the very strange language. And at that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, in this strange prayer.

Don't you laugh at this. Don't you get mad about this. Too deep for me. It makes me tremble. The familiarity that people have today. Church people are very familiar with Jesus. Familiarity with Christ proves one thing.

You don't know him. You don't know him. He says, I thank thee, Lord, what you thank in the Father about, Lord. Because, sweet obviousness, one might come over from Salva. You've got sense enough to look into this.

Oh, I can't. You know why the Jewish nation, you know why they rejected the Lord Jesus. They were responsible for it. But back of it was the action of Almighty God. He says so here. Jesus told the Father, he thanked him, that he hid these, that bunch of puffed up people.

He hid them so they were blind as bats and crucified the Lord of glory in their willful ignorance. You're living in a generation of people as blind as they were. Be careful you don't crucify them too.

Oh, how solemn scripture like this is. I thank thee. He died on his knees. My Lord Jesus Christ is. And he just pronounced judgment on that nation. And now he's thanking the Father. Thanks of God. Read the rest of the verse.

For thou hast hid these things from the wise and the prudent. And hath revealed them unto thee. The seraphs and the prostitutes and the tax collectors and the drunkards and all that crowd press in. Leave the religious folks to go on to hell.

You better watch out, my friends. This is still the day when men are trying to get to heaven by way of religion and by what they know in their heads. Please God to bypass both of them and to hide the things of the spirit from people who are going to reason things out and reveal the things of God to little bitty babies.

That's reading the Lord Jesus Christ said, ye become converted and become as a little child. You'll never make it. You'll never make it. The characteristic of a little child it believes what it's told.

And as long as you're trying to reason it out and work it all out yourself, you're just stepping on the rope to hell. God hides the things of the spirit from that crowd. He reveals them to little bitty babies.

I hope you'll get to be a little bitty baby. Just believe in what God says. Just looking up into his face through the Word and receiving the dewdrops from him. And then the next verse makes it a little deeper.

But this is what the Lord prayed. He said, even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. You know, I wouldn't want you to go away and misunderstand what I'm going to say now. That almost sounds like the Lord Jesus Christ and his humanity.

He had to join poor Brother Barnum and say, Lord, I don't understand this either, Father. But it's all right. Even so, for it seemed good in thy sight. You mean tell me all the religious people to which to whom the cross of Christ is scandalous?

If they think it's vulgar and they don't like you to talk about it? Yes. It pleased God to hide the things of God from them. You mean tell me the people who think they're all so smart, just a smart-ass generation, you know.

No, just enough to make fools of ourselves. You mean tell me that it pleased God to hide the things of the Spirit from them? I don't hide it from them, God. It pleased God to reveal the things of God today.

And Jesus said, that's all right, Father. Thank you. Even so, it seemed that it's good in thy sight. You could soon find out who's saved in the church if you, God, you watch and let something happen that you don't like, or you can't understand, you'll go to raising with God.

Jesus said, I don't quite understand it in the humanity. He limited himself, I reckon. But he said it, you did Paul, in the goodness of your sight, in the goodness of your sight, says the Lord. One thing the scripts say about old Job, he did not reveal God.

In the name of the Lord, the Lord give us, and the Lord take it away. Help us if we can do that. If you don't get it, God will just close up. The Greeks, if you don't make it to God that way, the Lord will just bypass you.

The Cross as Substitution and Redemption

Preach Christ crucified. Of course we know it's going to make religious people mad. It's a scandal. Tell them! People trusting in themselves that they're righteous. And under the Jews, it's going to be a bunch of foolishness.

But under them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, are God, and the wisdom of God. At the cross, if I look at it like a little baby, I'll try to reason it out. Not clutching my fist and holding up the face of God now.

Not being so blasphemous as so many people are now offering God so much advice. But just as a little baby, I try to look at it. I see Satan in action. He's behind that mob. I see men in action. Our kinfolks were wicked hands.

Took him and nailed him to a tree. But I see God in action. If I couldn't explain the meaning of it, I'd left to preach long enough to get to where I could at least quote it. Until the very quoting of it would break my whole heart.

And the heart of everybody that hears me preach, Isaiah says in Isaiah 53, I wish to answer the wonder of that heart where there's harvest through the glass, the hard-boiled, smart-ass. That isn't the most wonderful thing.

God, which is called His purpose, is in His plan. He did it on purpose. Men were responsible, but back to their actions, they can't get away from God. Jesus Christ hanged on the cross because of Satan's madness.

I'm on the cross because of the wickedness of my kinfolks, of me. Why did Christ hang on the cross? Because it pleased God to prove it. I argue about the love of God when you're blue in the face. Wish I could be a little like a little child once again.

And drink deep at the meaning. You've got to look at it. And if you spend a lifetime, if it takes you that long for the cross to mean this to you, it'd be a life well spent. I look at Christ hanging on the cross, and I see first that the world's all wrong.

It always has been, my friend. Since the time that every human being in old Adam doubled up our fist and tried to push God off the throne, this world's been all wrong. When in due time, God was manifest in the flesh and came so men could handle Him.

Oh, isn't that wonderful? God was manifest in the flesh, and men handled Him. One man put his hand in His side. God came down where men could get their hands on Him, touch Him, and carry Him. Oh, God help you if that don't save you.

Do you know what this world did to us? And it brought out, call the name of Barabbas, a rebel, an old pile that said, I'll give you folks a choice. This is a big feast day, and I'm going to release the nobles.

That's still the world. This is anti-everything. Separated from the very evil spirit of this godless age. Like a little baby. See that you are lost to the judgment of God in eternity. He hung there on that cross for some reason.

He hung there for some reason that God might be just and to justify them that are unjust. And that God Almighty made Him, I couldn't understand this for a million years, made Him to be sin for us, nor that we should be made the righteousness of God in Him.

Those scriptures you spend a million years thinking of them, God knows don't ever lose the thrill of them. The wonder of what God, I'm lost. I'm lost. I believe hell is nothing more or less than a place where men and women have to pay the severe penalty of God Almighty's holy law.

And I believe that without a mediator or a substitute, that substitute be all God and all man. I believe that unless by faith, not simply that you stand up and say, I believe something about Him. But I believe that unless by faith you are vitally united to Him, so He and you are one and Christ lives in you.

I believe you'll have to endure the awful penalty of God's severe law. And that'll be hell. Oh, this Bible tells us that believing Christ hung on a cross was to be a substitute for somebody. I want in on that cross the meaning of the cross, the world's own.

You better turn your back on it. You better quit claiming to be a Christian if you head over heels in love with the spirit of this age, talking straight to your Christ team to deliver us from this present evil age.

And any salvation that leads you in bondage to the onions and the leek and the garlic of Egypt is no salvation. Because the cross means that men and women are lost. And the law of God must be established and fulfilled.

And the best man that ever lived will have to go to hell to suffer the awful penalty of God's holy law. Yes, he's vitally joined to the perfect substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. The cross means something.

It's like a little baby. I'll not try to read it out. I'll just leave what God says about it. That's what faith is. God said it. Okay, that's sold. Here I go. I learned the cross with my redemption. It redeemed me.

The Cross, the Love of God, and Saving Faith

I thought that as they were singing tonight, nothing was said about it. A lot of times, fool song leaders would come up to me and say, Brother Barnum, you got any special songs tonight? It'll catch your message.

I always say in the spirit, it'll come along. But tonight, that was all arranged. You want to leave religious people? That don't mean anything to you. No hope for you either. You want to leave smart addicts?

That's foolishness to you. Ain't foolishness to people who are being saved. It's perilous. Terrible is perilous. The rest of my redemption comes back. How many Christ died for and all that to you? You're in the faith.

Why are you arguing at it? Oh, she died for somebody. And I say, Lord, let me in if you will. The cost of my redemption was the eternal, was the separation of the Lord Jesus Christ for a while from the very precious little baby.

If I quit being so smart and so religious, they're all going to hell, the wise acres. They'll bypass the cross. They say it's silly. The religious people say, I don't understand. I'm all right. They're going home to hell.

They bypass the cross on the little baby. The little baby is going to get this revelation, brother. And the reason I know if you are saved, something happens to you. You're saved not by your decision.

Your decision is fine in its proper place. But if you're saved, it's when the Spirit of God makes Jesus real to you. And brother, what the Spirit does, he makes Christ real to you. There ain't enough devils out of hell to undo that.

That's right. If it's all something you did, well, maybe you could undo what you did. But salvation ain't what you do. God bless your heart. It's Christ being made real inside by the Spirit of God. I stay that cross, like a little baby, looking up at the face of God.

I ain't trying to argue with him. I'm going to, I don't know if I can get from above. And that God loves me. When I was a kid of a boy, I was too nice and religious and dignified. Sing it now, we used to sing.

Just love me, Jesus. The Bible tells us on that cross to get God and a good humor. God loves me. You can try to explain what you want to while you explain it. I'm just going to be rejoicing in it. Oh, there it is.

Little baby, I pray now. God loves me. Every great thing from God now. We preachers long in our hearts to live long enough to see the wonder of the grace of God and the love of God and the mercy of God in Christ that it would cause us to be amazed and wonder.

We take everything for granted now. I've gone up and down this country and I see professing Christians just raving and caving and fighting over some doctrine. And I look you in the face and tell you there's not a person here tonight that knows enough about any doctrine to fuss much.

We're just like little children. We say, Lord, we understand and God will believe our unbelief. I wish we could. I wish like little children we could sing once again. I can't explain it. But Jesus loves me.

The Illinois Revival and the Power of the Spirit

One day, the train in Illinois City years ago, I had the flu. I closed the meeting on Sunday night in Statesville, North Carolina. I went home. I had to service to Winston-Pittsville, Iowa. The next day at 2 o 'clock, I got on the train.

I had the flu. I was going to the doctor. He pumped me full of dopes and hypo's and pills. I had to go start a meeting in Illinois on Tuesday night, sick as I was. Yeah, I went. By the time I got there at noon on Tuesday, I was a sick boy.

And the pastor met me and he could tell I was very sick. He took me quickly to the room, called the doctor, and he stuck some needles in me and pumped me up. And I got up that night, preached a little bit.

I was pretty sick. I couldn't preach much. But the pastor said, Now, Brother Barnett, I have to apologize. I had some sort of duke floppy up at the school, and my folks mostly be up there, you know, this gang of church members.

They'd be anywhere except the house of God, if they had the slightest excuse. He said, Some of them start trickling back winds tonight. So Tuesday night I got up and spluttered around a little bit. I was sick.

I couldn't preach much. And soon as the benediction was pronounced, the chairman of the board of deacons, he high-tailed it to the front and come in to cuss at me. I skedaddled out the back and went and got in bed.

Put the cover up over my head and tried to sweat some of that flu out. I didn't know what was going on. And they said later that he just, Whoa, he said, That man's a false prophet. He said, He's going to tear our church up.

And when the pastor got there, he said, I'll write a check for $400. You give it to that preacher. Send him on back to North Carolina. I said, Don't let him preach again. They didn't tell me anything about it.

They'll repeat. Wednesday night I went back and preached again, and I was still sick. And I found out later when it all came out that the pastor had gone to see the doctor and tried to talk him into coming down and saying I was absolutely unable to preach.

They'd handle it that way, but the doctor wouldn't do it. And so I got up and preached that night. I tried to preach a little better than I did Tuesday night, but I still didn't have much on the ball.

And when I got through, the pastor said, I'm going to leave the deacons down in the basement. And I went on home. I was sick. I didn't know what was going on. And they told me later, He just walked the floor and ran his hands.

He's a good man. He said, That man's going to tear our church up. What on God's earth are we going to do? And all the deacons said, That's right, brother pastor. We've got to get rid of him until he came to one old white-haired deacon.

And they said, What about it, brother? And I said, Better leave him alone. He said, He's preaching the gospel. You never heard it. Better leave him alone. And he scared them. I still didn't know anything about it.

Thursday night, the house was packed and jammed. I thought, Because I was such a big preacher, I still didn't know what was going on. That news had spread all over town. They came down to see who was going to get killed.

And I preached Thursday night. Friday night, I couldn't see them. I had a fellow singer solo. He seemed to do it. Full of spirit. Never did get, But the first line of the song, Congregation was melted by joy.

He began to sing, Love, Savior, The wonder of the love of God, The wonder of the grace. The organist began to sob, And then she began to scream, God, Lord. The second person began to scream, That is the pastor got saved.

The white pilgrims got saved. The chairman of the board of deacons got saved. Seven more of the deacons got saved. Thirteen Roman Catholics got saved. That's what happened. After a week of preaching. That's always our hope.

Always our prayer. You think you can read it out to yourself. Keep listening to this stuff. That's all up to you. You will miss out on this. You better be crying into your heart. Will the Lord God grant you The mind of a baby And the heart of a baby To enable you just to believe What God says.

Final Exhortation to Believe the Cross

Take the truth. Religious people say it's scandalous. Educated people say it's foolish. The power and wisdom of God. Sometimes we see it happen. We think we've seen it this week. Say that. The cross. Blessed Holy shall take the things.

Father this last night. Not that this is the wind up of everything. But it's the wind up of our ministry here. We have no promise of tomorrow. We may never see each other again. We're shut up. I bring this congregation of people to you.

Pray in thy wisdom. Thy love. Every person here. A stranger to Jesus Christ. Make him real to them tonight. For his blessed name's sake. That once again he may look at the travail of his soul. And be awful glad.

That he dies. It pleases you. In his dear blessed name. For his sake.