The Gospel is Folly for Those Who Are Perishing

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Date: 3rd Sunday in Lent Text: John 2:13-25 www.kongsvingerchurch.org

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern
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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins in salvation by grace through faith alone.
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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the second chapter.
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The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the moneychangers sitting there.
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And making a whip of cords he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen.
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He poured out the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold pigeons, take these things away.
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Do not make my father's house a house of trade. His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me.
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So the Jews said to him, what sign do you show us for doing these things? Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days
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I will raise it up. And the Jews said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days?
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But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Alright, here are the words of our epistle text.
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The word of the cross. You know that message that God the Son, second person of the
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Holy Trinity, incarnate of the Virgin Mary, came, suffered, bled, died on a cross.
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What a terrible ignominious death it was. In fact, Galatians says that cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree, which is one of the reasons why
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Jews stumbled over the stumbling block of the cross, because they thought how could
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Christ be the Son of God and yet was cursed in such a terrible way as being hung on a tree.
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It's not a bad question, right? But you'll note the text says the cross is folly, but folly to who?
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To those who are perishing. The cross is folly to those who are perishing.
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Now when we talk about self -righteousness, we have to distinguish different forms of self -righteousness.
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Think of it this way. The person who can say, I have earned my salvation by being good.
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I got all of my Boy Scout badges or Girl Scout badges. Are there even Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts anymore?
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That seems so politically incorrect. But I helped that old lady across the street.
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It was like the movie Up. I got my woodchuck badge. You get the idea, right? I did all these good things, therefore
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God is going to bless me with salvation. I have merited the forgiveness of my sins.
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Well, that's called self -righteousness. And if you hold your good works up to God and say to God, aha,
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I have earned this. Your good works will be held against you on the day of judgment.
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But there's a second, more subtle, if you would, more subtle form of self -righteousness.
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And that's the reason why the cross is folly to those who are perishing. Because we like to think we're smart enough to figure it all out.
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All right? And you're going to note here, there is no human philosopher in the entire history of philosophy who's ever sat down and worked it all out and said, you know what?
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We're saved by the fact that the Son of God bled and died for our sins. Instead, all the wise human beings of the world seem to be in some kind of a continual match to try to outdo each other and overthrow the generation of philosophers that came before them.
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You think of Plato and then Aristotle and then every philosopher after that, right? All the way down to the current postmodern group, which is really abysmal.
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But you're going to note then, our text says specifically that God chose what is foolish in the world in order to shame the wise so that nobody can say, aha,
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I figured it out. In fact, think of it this way. Tell the greatest philosophers of our time, here's the most important thing of all.
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Jesus died on a cross, suffered and bled and died for your sins, and they're going to sit there and go, you're just whack.
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That's not going to help anybody. And that's kind of the point. And so note here, the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
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As Paul says in Romans 1, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
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In Romans 10, he says faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ. But you'll note, for him to have to say
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I'm not ashamed of the gospel, there are plenty of people who are. And so I thought it'd be kind of fun today.
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And if you don't think it's fun, you can let me know afterwards. You can say, no, that wasn't really that fun. But I thought it'd be fun today to do a postmortem on modernist liberalism.
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Sitting there going, huh? Have you guys ever heard of Harry Emerson Fosdick? Have you ever heard of this fellow?
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103 years ago, he preached a sermon titled, Shall the
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Fundamentalists Win? And Harry Emerson Fosdick was one of these fellows who, when seeing the scientific evidence for evolution, buckled and thought, you know, it's time for Christianity to adapt its messaging to conform with the science of the time.
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And one of his big arguments was, how can we preach that Christ suffered and bled and died for our sins in the age of, get this, the electric razor?
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That's not a very compelling argument. As far as I know, Norelco is not the big enemy of Christianity.
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But all of that being said, in this sermon he delivered in 1918, Shall the
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Fundamentalists Win? He speaks out his contempt for, of all things, the cross.
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I'll explain. It's a little deeper than that, and there's a few nuances, but we'll take a look at this.
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I'll read portions of it out. And here's how he begins the sermon. This morning, we are to think of the fundamentalist controversy.
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You know, fundamentalists. Those are the people who, well, you know, believe the Bible. You know, when we confess that Jesus was born of the
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Virgin Mary, we actually mean she was a virgin. Right? Fundamentalists.
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He says, when we think of the fundamentalist controversy, which threatens to divide the American churches, as though already they were not sufficiently split and riven,
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I would note this, that Scripture is very clear in the Epistle of Jude. It is not those who hold to the Scriptures who are causing divisions in the church, but it is those who are bringing in destructive heresies.
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But he is playing the victim here. He's a victim of fundamentalists.
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But I would note, then, his hostility towards them, because he asks the question, shall the fundamentalists win?
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Which really proves he was out to defeat them in the first place. Notice that those who claim that they're all about tolerance are some of the most intolerant people on planet
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Earth. So he goes on to say this. A scene that is suggestive for our thought is depicted in the fifth chapter of the book of Acts, where the
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Jewish leaders hail before them Peter and the other apostles because they had been preaching Jesus as the
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Messiah. Moreover, the Jewish leaders proposed to slay them when in opposition
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Gamaliel speaks, quote, refrain from these men and let them alone, for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be overthrown.
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But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them, lest happily ye be found to be fighting against God.
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What an interesting idea here. So Harry Emerson Fosdick, in defending modernist liberalism, basically said we need to follow the advice of Gamaliel.
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If this is of God, we will succeed. If it's not of God, it'll fail. And if you're fighting against this and that this is of God, you're fighting against God.
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Well, 103 years later, I think we can say this wasn't of God.
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Because let me ask you this question right off the top of your head. How well did modernist liberalism bring, how well did it do in making the churches of mainline denominations relevant?
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I would note that the old line liberal Presbyterian church, they have these ginormous cathedrals that can seat thousands.
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And every single Sunday you have maybe 20, 30 old gray -haired ladies who join for worship in these abandoned cathedrals.
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Liberalism destroyed Christianity. And I would note this. To invoke Gamaliel as somebody who's teaching innovative doctrines is a form of twisting the
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Scripture. I remember very distinctly when Joel Osteen first came on the scene.
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You guys remember this? When his father had died, he had just taken over Lakewood, and he had written the book
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Your Best Life Now. And at the time
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I was teaching, and this is going to sound weird, I was teaching at a Baptist church. My family can remember this thing.
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I was teaching at a Baptist church. But I told them, I'm a Lutheran, and they said, that's not a problem.
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It eventually became a problem. But when Joel Osteen first came on the scene, I began warning people.
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It is not biblical to believe that you can have your best life now. If you believe you're going to have your best life now, then you believe you're going to hell.
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It doesn't make any sense. And I pointed out the false doctrines and teachings along the way. And after I had given them that warning, one of the ladies in the class that I was teaching came up to me afterwards and said, you know,
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Chris, don't you think we should take Gamaliel's advice, that we should not critique him because we might be fighting against God?
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To which I said, no, that's a misuse of that passage. And Scripture says to mark and avoid those who are teaching false doctrine.
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Well, coming back then to our Harry Emerson Fosdick fellow, he goes on to say this.
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Already all of us must have heard about the people who call themselves the fundamentalists. Their apparent intention is to drive out of the evangelical churches men and women of liberal opinions.
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But what does Titus say? Rebuke those who contradict sound doctrine and that God wills for them to be silenced.
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Were the fundamentalists off in trying to say that's not what the
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Scripture says? We need to not be listening to these fellows, but he's claiming to be the victim here.
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They want to drive us out. And so he then goes on and explains what it is that these fundamentalists believe.
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And he's quite, quite incensed, like taken aback, scandalized by their teaching.
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Are you ready? He says, it's interesting to note where the fundamentalists are driving in their stakes to mark out the deadline of doctrine around the church across which no one is to pass except for on terms of agreement.
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And he's not agreeing with them. He's thinking that this is outrageous. They insist that we must all believe in the historicity of certain special miracles, preeminently the virgin birth of our
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Lord. What a crazy thought. What?
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To demand that you believe that Scripture is telling us the truth? And I would note this, that modernist liberals denied, absolutely denied the historicity of all of the miracles of Scripture.
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They claimed that it was a breaking of natural law. As if somehow, if Christ had performed a miracle, that some natural law police officer was going to ride up on his motorcycle and ride him up and cite him for breaking natural law.
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I'm sorry, Mr. Jesus, but you've broken natural law here. It's going to be a $1 ,500 fine, and we'll see you in front of the judge next week.
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It's ridiculous. So, in denying that miracles are possible, that means they denied the virgin birth of Christ.
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But more importantly, they denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
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But what does Paul say? If Christ has not been raised from the dead, then your faith is vain.
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Everybody who's in Christ has perished. That's what he says. In other words, we've got a problem here.
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And so, no, he considers this to be outrageous. This is outrageous that they would believe that, well,
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Jesus was born of a virgin. Not only that, that we must believe in a special theory of inspiration that the original documents of Scripture, which, of course, we no longer possess, were inerrant.
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How dare these people believe that Scripture is inerrant and authoritative.
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And then he goes on to say this, and this is where the scandal is. They insist that we believe in a special theory of the atonement that the blood of our
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Lord shed in a substitutionary death placates an alienated deity and makes possible the welcome return of the sinner to God.
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Say what? Isn't the gospel that Paul received from Jesus Christ himself that Christ died for our sins?
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Doesn't the prophet Isaiah say that he was pierced for our transgressions? He was bruised for our iniquities?
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The whole point of the Mosaic sacrificial system was a type and shadow pointing to the one sacrifice for our sins.
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And in the sacrificial system, did the sinner die? No. The animal died in its place or his place or her place.
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So you'll note, Harry Emerson Fosdick hated, and I mean this, hated, loathed, preached against Christ's substitutionary death on the cross for our sins.
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And there's a reason why, by the way. There's a reason for it. Because in the liberal way of thinking, it's the late
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Walter Martin who pointed this out first that I heard, but it may also go back to J.
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Gresham Machen, that in the liberal way of thinking, they've taken the passage of Scripture from 1
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John that says that God is love and they've reversed it. They believe that love is
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God. And in the liberal way of thinking, love being
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God, they've redefined love so that it is anathema to actually believe that God is wrathful, that God punishes sinners.
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In fact, they claim that Paul is wrong when it says in Scripture that we are saved from the wrath of God.
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They think it is unseemly for God to have anger or wrath. And modern -day, post -modern liberals basically say that that is something that humanity projected on God, and that's one of the points where the
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Scripture gets it totally wrong. Well, if Christ wasn't suffering the wrath of God in our place and in our stead on that Friday afternoon outside the city gates of Jerusalem while hanging on the cross, then
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I don't know what He was doing. Because He certainly wasn't up there singing, we've got to look on the bright side of life.
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Right? So you'll note, coming back then to our epistle text,
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I think our post -mortem has definitively showed that modernist liberalism was not of God.
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Our Scripture text says, the word of the cross is folly. It is absolute folly to those who are perishing.
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But to us who are being saved, the cross is the power of God. The word of the cross is the power of God.
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For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. So where then is the one who is wise?
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Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
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For since in the wisdom of the world the world did not know God through wisdom. And that's the point.
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You're not going to find God through the philosophers. You won't. You might find a deity, but not the deity.
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And that's the point. So then it pleased God. It was to His pleasure, through the folly of what we preach, to save those who believe.
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And you'll note that in our day and age, it's not just modernist liberals. Those folks have gone the way of the dinosaurs.
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It's hard to find those guys nowadays. But we have postmodern liberals and we have a whole bunch of people who are, well, how shall we say it, really kind of ashamed of the gospel.
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Ashamed of the word of the cross. I would note, this takes on many different forms.
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You see, Paul goes on to say, Jews demand signs. I would note that so do Pentecostals.
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Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the
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Gentiles. And there's a whole lot of guys out there trying to save Christianity from irrelevance.
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So what do they do? They take the cross and they get rid of it. They take the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins, won by Christ on the cross, and they, well, they tuck that away.
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It may be lurking as a message that they affirm in some deep, dark corner of their website.
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It's hard to navigate to it. So that they can pull it out at the right time. Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, we believe that Jesus died for our sins.
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But why don't you ever preach it? Why don't you ever preach the cross? And see, when that becomes the issue, then you'll note that, you kind of see the idea.
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People are ashamed of the cross, either overtly, and they preach against it, or tacitly, and they just, whoo, we never preach it.
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It never comes up in casual conversation. But note then, we preach
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Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both
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Jews and Greeks, Christ then is the power of God, and He is the wisdom of God.
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For the foolishness then of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
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And that's the point. It's through the cross that God has chosen to make wisdom look foolish, because He does,
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God doesn't come to us in power, in strength, and compulsion. He comes to us in weakness, in servitude.
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So consider your calling, brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, and not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, and I would remind you,
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I come from a very sketchy line of human beings, so I can affirm this.
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But God chose then what is foolish in the world in order to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
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God chose what is low and despised, and the cross is.
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It is low and it is despised, and God chose it, even though things that are not, in order to bring to nothing the things that are, in order that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
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And that's the point. You'll note that that's a theme you hear regarding self -righteousness and justification based on works.
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God won't allow it, because men will boast in God's sight. In the same way, God brings us the message that we need to hear, and it is a despised, lowly, and weak message so that nobody will be able to boast in the presence of God.
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So because of Him then, because of God, you are in Christ Jesus. And He has become to us wisdom from God.
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He has become to us righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that as it is written, let the one then who boasts, boast in the
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Lord. Now the text continues, so I'll go a little bit past our pericope into chapter 2.
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It says then, Paul says, And then when I came to you, brothers, I didn't come to you proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or with wisdom.
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For I decided to know nothing among you except for Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Nothing.
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There is nothing else. In fact, if you were here last Sunday, what did
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I preach? Christ and Him crucified? How about the
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Sunday before that? Well, you know, Christ and Him crucified. Have you ever noticed
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I'm like a one -trick pony? Okay, I got like one message. Christ and Him crucified.
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Well, isn't there anything else? No, there's really nothing else. There's Christ and Him crucified. And this is good news for us because our problem is not that we fail to be good enough or smart enough.
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Our problem is that we're sinners, that we have all participated and rebelled against God. And here's the thing.
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Each and every one of us into one degree or another are guilty of actually being, well, you know, ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
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There's different ways in which we've done this. And so you'll note that Lenten season is not about them repenting.
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I must remind you, the Lenten season is about me repenting and about you repenting.
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So let us repent of all the ways in which we have thought we know better than God, that we think we're smart enough, that we think that we're strong enough, that we are not exactly so keen on hearing over and over again about Christ and Him crucified for our sins.
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And let us embrace the fact that Christ has become to us wisdom and strength from God. Let our boast not be in our clever thinking, in our clever ideas, in the ways in which we think we know better than God.
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Let us instead have our boast only in Christ, who comes to us not in strength and power, but in weakness, cursed, bleeding and dying on the cross for your sins and mine, so that we can be reconciled to God by grace through faith because of His great love with which
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He loves us. Now, before we wrap up the sermon, I told you to have hymn 850 marked.
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All right? Look at the bottom of 850 and tell me who wrote this hymn.
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Harry Emerson Fosdick. I'm going to note something here. Fosdick wrote this as kind of an anthem in his battle charge against the fundamentalists who believed the scriptures.
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And some enterprising Lutheran thought, you know, we could repurpose this thing. I love how
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Lutherans think. They're a little subversive. And so you'll note that our closing hymn today was written by Harry Emerson Fosdick.
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But we're not going to sing this against the fundamentals of the Christian faith. We're going to sing this gloriously to defend the word of the cross and make it a prayer as we proclaim
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Christ and Him crucified for our sins. So you'll note, if you're thinking, why are we singing that one?
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Because he left it loose enough that you can reinterpret it the other way. So we're going to sing it the opposite way that he intended it.
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So just keep that in mind. I love being a Lutheran sometimes. It's so fun.
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Anyway. So with all of that being said, may the grace of Christ, may the word of the cross bring you comfort this day, knowing that your sins are forgiven, bled for and died for, that your
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God and Savior has come to you as a servant, that He was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, and He was cursed so that you can be blessed of God.
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In the name of Jesus, Amen. We thank you for your support.
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