Christ the Power of God 1 cor.1;24 — Welcome Detweiler

The Gospel’s Power Made Available to All

Today we see stretched over our favoured land power lines, over the mountains and rivers they go, through the swamps and along the big highways and even trailing the little cow paths. What does this all mean?

Our government and the power lines want to make available for every mountain hut and farm home the blessing of this mystical electrical power. They have seen the great blessing it is to all and the way it changes homes and communities.

If this is true of electricity, how much more is it true of God's salvation? And while the power line cannot yet reach everyone, God found a way that the blessing of His salvation could be extended to everyone, none left out.

Christ the Power of God

In 1 Corinthians 1 verse 24 we have a very wonderful expression, Christ the power of God. The Lord Jesus Christ came into the world in order to display the wonderful power of God and in order to do it He went to Calvary's cross and died for sinners and there He provided a salvation that would release the power of God and bring it in touch with every human need and distress.

The Cross as the Power of God

Is it any wonder that when Christ, the power of God, did this work at Calvary, the very cross itself is called the power of God? In 1 Corinthians 1 verse 18 we read, For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is, listen, the power of God.

The cross was not a waterloo for Christ, it became a powerhouse and from that cross work there flows freely to every man the full blessing of salvation. It's a salvation of power, delivering power, saving power, keeping power.

The Gospel’s Power to Save and Transform

The gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. Do you say, tell me how it works? It's rather difficult, but it's so plain that you can see it. It works on all kinds of people.

The evangelist preaches Christ and tells the sweet story of Calvary, tells how the Lord Jesus loved sinners and died in their room instead as their substitute. Sinners listen, their hearts are moved, they become ashamed of their sins and they have a longing for deliverance from the power of sin.

They cry from their hearts, Lord, I'm a lost sinner, I'm going to a lost eternity, I want to be saved, I want to be in heaven. They open the heart's door, they trust the Lord Jesus as Savior and He saves them and peace and joy fills the heart as they go and as they continue to show a new and a changed life.

Dr. Ironside’s Challenge to an Atheist

It was Dr. Harry Ironside who tells the story how he was preaching to a huge crowd of folks in a city park and soon he saw a well-dressed man walk to the edge of the crowd, he began to whisper some questions to some of the people and then he began to write on a card.

The card was passed on to Dr. Ironside and eventually he read it and said, this man wants to challenge me to a debate in the theater and the subject that he wants me to talk about is, is Christianity a reality or a fake?

The man was a noted atheist and Dr. Ironside replied that he had an appointment for the afternoon mentioned, but he would cancel it and be at the theater for the debate, but he said, I have no time for foolishness and he would ask the debater to be sure to have with him on the platform, one man and one woman who would testify that they once lived very wicked lives until they met the lecturer and after hearing his lectures on atheism, there was a mystical power that came over them and their lives were changed and said Dr. Ironside, I will have 100 people who were once drunkards, thieves and just regular sinners, but when they heard the gospel of Christ, the power of God came over them and changed them.

The Gospel’s Record of Changed Lives

When the terms of the debate meant that the lecturer had to have two changed people, he smiled and walked off. He knew he could not find two such people in all the world and he also knew that in every city and town across the nation, there could be found hundreds and even thousands of those whose lives were changed permanently by the power of the gospel when they heard the story of God's love and grace.

The old-fashioned gospel of Christ has a record around the world that can only draw the admiration of any honest judge. It has brought peace and happiness to hearts and homes. The hopeless derelict has been changed.

Gospel preachers are made out of drunkards, Sunday school teachers out of harlots and this wonderful power of God is displayed in the lives of many, many thousands of people. I say I can't explain it because the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart is so far above human reasoning that we do not attempt to explain it, but one thing's certain, we see the effects of it daily and we must say that Christianity is not a fake, it's a deep and abiding reality.

Salvation Is Available to Every Person

When they turn the power line through the country, it is for every shop, every factory, and every home. None are excluded. No factory's needs are too great and no home is too small to have electricity.

So it is for the gospel of Christ. In its saving power, no job is too big, no case is too hard, no child or cripple is denied. The gospel of Christ is all-sufficient for every need and best of all, it's available to everyone.

How sad to see the power line run along the road right by a farmhouse and then you see a crippled woman pumping water, perhaps a lad going two miles to the store to buy some ice, and you see the entire family straining their eyes trying to read with a kerosene lamp.

The excuse is they can't afford it. Perhaps they don't realize the few dollars they might spend for the power line, they are spending more than that in these various things and the truth of the matter really is they cannot afford to be without it.

The Cost of Rejecting Christ

My unsaved listener, you cannot afford to be without Christ and his powerful salvation. It's true that it will cost you a little something to be a Christian. Some of your unsafe friends will sneer at you and in that respect there is a little cost connected to being a Christian, but look at what it will cost you not to be a Christian.

Can you afford the cost of a wrecked home, a miserable body, a ruined and a wasted life and then a soul lost for all eternity? No wonder the Son of God said, for what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? The man behind the prison bars can only look enviously at the man of liberty, but Christ has made his power, his salvation available to all. No prison bars can hinder it.

Receiving Christ by Faith

If you hesitate and say, I cannot see how the gospel of Christ can do all this for me. Tell me this, look at that small quiet power line running into your home. Can you understand how it can cook your meals, freeze your ice, how it can run the vacuum cleaner, air condition your home and make your radio talk?

Of course you cannot. When the power company wants you to use their mystical power, did they first school you in the physics of electricity? No. They just told you, it will do this for you and we ask you to hook on.

And the moment you had that power line connected, you found that all of these things were true. As we preach the gospel message, we invite sinners to lay hold of the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that this power is available only as sinners receive him as Lord and Savior.

Salvation Is Not Produced by Religious Activity

I'm afraid that some religious people are making the mistake of thinking that if they become religious, if they join the church, if they are baptized, if they work in the church, this power will be produced.

But this power is reserved only for those who are linked with the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who know him as Lord and Savior. And it's quite possible to be very religious and to work hard for the Lord without really knowing Christ being born again, being linked with him.

The New Life That Christ Gives

Religious people are trying to manufacture this change. They're trying to live a new life, trying to imitate Christians. But it's rather hard, because the new life that Christ gives is a life that flows voluntarily.

Those who know Christ, they find this new life just radiating from them. Those who are trying to produce it in their own strength without knowing Christ have a difficult time. And I trust you'll see the wisdom of this.

The Danger of Rejecting Salvation

Now, in closing, I think I should remind you that the power lines or the power companies will instruct people to be careful how they use the electricity. It is meant for their good. But if they do not use it properly, it can burn them.

It can even kill them. Just so it is with God's salvation. If you do not receive the Lord Jesus as your Savior, if you do not use this salvation properly, it will be your undoing in a lost eternity. For one of the torments in a lost eternity will be the fact, I had the privilege of being saved.

I knew how to be saved. I should have been saved. But I used this power in a reckless manner. I brushed it aside. I trust you'll not be guilty of that. I trust rather that you'll open your heart's door this very evening.

Closing Appeal to Receive Christ

And as a lost, guilty, needy sinner, you will receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your very own. And our gracious Father, we ask that thou will bless this message and grant to give this power to those that are still in nature's darkness, needy sinners.

We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.