PAUL: A FOOL FOR CHRIST - The Message of the Cross
Men's Retreat: White Mills CC September 24, 2022
1 Corinthians 1:18
Introduction:
In 1978 I walked back into Lafayette High School as a junior…I’d been a dropout for a year…but even before I dropped out I hardly went…I only went to get together with friends to get high. Those 2 years before I left were lost in a hazy joy of smoke and rebellion. The friends I hung around did the same things I did, got in the same trouble I got in, and had the same rebellious nature I had…we knew each other well.
But something really weird happened to me in my 17th year…. While washing dishes as a High School dropout…and pursuing a life as a drug dealer…God began to pursue me…Cause I certainly wasn’t looking for Him. After totaling my car in front of Lafayette by hitting a mail truck while drunk, and then fighting with the police who were arresting me, I spent a night in jail…and the next morning after getting home, I saw my car. I don’t have any pictures…but it was bent in a V shape, totally destroyed. No one should have lived through it. As I got in the shower I had a thought…a thought I believe came from God’s Holy Spirit… “Rick, if you’d died in that wreck you would have gone to Hell.” It stopped me in my tracks. I’d joked about Hell…and going there…almost proud of how bad I was…But this was no joke…I felt an overwhelming sense of lostness…I felt it to my very core…God’s Spirit was calling to my soul…and that call always begins with my sin and my separation from Him.
This calling didn’t stop…it kept reoccurring, even as I tried to run from it…And God kept pursuing me. He sent people into my life that did more than share the gospel, they lived it. They invited me into a study group, long hair, army jacket and all…I was caught between my old life and the hope of something new…but I had trouble believing God could forgive me…my past was so horrible, so dark…how could He forgive it…Why would he even want to? I knew everything would have to change…but how?
For months I fought the Holy Spirit…and for months He kept calling…And I knew the call was “Come and die to your old self…and be reborn.” And on January 17, 1978 I did…I walked down the aisle at Southland Christian Church and Brewster McLeod baptized me into Christ…My life has never been the same.
I ended up being the lifeguard at Blue Grass Christian Camp that summer, protected and encouraged by other believers…And in August of 1978 I walked back into Lafayette High School. My old friends had no idea what had happened. And when they invited me to go get high, my response was “I can’t, I’m a Christian now.” Most of them looked at me like I was a space alien. They slashed my tires…put a hammer through my windshield…As I accepted Christ they hated that I’d rejected their lifestyle.
The Apostle Paul wrote: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
For me to make it through the newt two years and walk across the stage to receive my diploma, it took the power of God, two godly teachers, a couple of Christian friends and a youth minister and youth group that supported me…And a mom and dad that were there every step of the way.
Today is April 1st…April Fool’s Day. It’s also, more importantly Easter - Resurrection Sunday…The Apostle Paul was called a fool for following Christ…His friends thought…look at all you’ve given up to follow a man who died on the cross…my friends thought…you’ve stopped having fun to be a Christian…that’s stupid! I would have thought the same thing just months before.
Why is the message of the cross foolishness to those who are perishing…because of what we really believe and think!
I. THE CROSS SEEMS FOOLISH IF YOU THINK TEMPORARILY OVER ETERNALLY
What are some of those thoughts?
1. “I’m going to live for my pleasure now. I’ll worry about the future later.”
Like David with Bathsheba…sin presents itself…she’s beautiful (This word in Hebrew is used twice in the OT...once to describe Bathsheba and once to describe Joseph)…David wanted her intensely and thought. "I’ll worry about the consequences later."
Like the Foolish Rich Man in Jesus’ parable who fills his barns with all his stuff and thinks, “I’ll eat and drink and be merry…it’s party time…I’ll worry about tomorrow some other day.”
Satan knows that his time here on earth is short…and he knows ours is as well so he schemes to convince us to believe life is all about self gratitude…Grab all the gusto you can…Now. Find the meaning of your life in the pursuit of pleasure…and when that quick fix or numbness wears off…hurry up and feed it again or find another.
What we don’t know is that this keeps us in slavery to that thought process.
I promise you, the first time I got high with my best friend at 13 under that bridge down on Beacon Hill, I never saw myself at 17 selling drugs, dropped out of High School, and washing dishes at the Campbell House. Satan never shows you the toilet. He never shows you the car wrecks…He never shows you the divorce or the overdose. He’s a liar. He’s a murderer. He wants you to pursue immediate gratification and escape from life. His desire is “you perishing.”
Perishing people also think…
2. “I don’t want anyone telling me what to do!”
Every single one of us wants to be our own king…We want to control our own lives.
Jesus tells a parable…one you’re probably not as familiar with as many of His stories. It’s found in Luke 19…Listen to it…It takes place right after Zacchaeus, the tax collector is changed by Jesus.
LUKE 19:11-27
Verse 14 is the key verse in this parable…“They hated him…they sent a delegation to say…“We don’t want Him to be our King.”
Life is the gift of God…It’s the Mina. He gives to us all. Most of us would spend it on ourselves because we hate anyone telling us what to do. We view God as harsh…but life can only be spent once. You cannot spend it on your kingdom and God’s. But if you spend it for God He multiplies your joy in abundance here. And one day we will all give an account of how we spent this “Mina” life.
Perishing people want no other King but themselves. We live in a world that thinks like this!!!
Finally perishing people think:
3. “Death is the worst thing that could happen.”
If you saw someone in 1st century Jerusalem walking down the Via Dolorosa with a cross you knew without a doubt they were headed toward their death.
People carrying crosses are headed toward death…whether you are a thief or the Son of God.
This world believes death is the worst thing that could ever happen to you…It’s to be avoided at all cost…postponed…we don’t even like to talk about it…it’s so final…so painful…it’s the end.
But, the resurrection is the proof that it’s not.
Satan tries to convince us we are living people headed to the Land of the dying…Jesus knew we are dying people…and through His cross and the empty tomb, we become people headed to the land of the living.
If Jesus has not been raised from the dead we have no hope…but if He has conquered death…then “when He comes we belong to Him. Then the end will come. When He hands over the Kingdom to God the Father, after He has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet…The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:24-26)
You see…
II. THE POWER OF THE CROSS AND RESURRECTION DESTROYS THE POWER OF SIN
AND DEATH
In August of 1978 I didn’t just head back to Lafayette High School sober and straight. I headed back born again, and filled with the Spirit of Christ Himself.
“I chose to be his follower…to deny myself, take up my cross and follow Him.”
It took a cross to save me…and it took me dying to sin, being buried in Christ, and rising to walk in new life through the Holy Spirit . I had to come to that cross and surrender it all.
Dann Spader in the book 4 Chair Disciplining writes: Romans 6:23 tells us “the wages of sin is death.” I was a sinner by birth and by choice, and that meant I was spiritually dead. Inwardly I felt like I was better than most people because I attended religious services and stayed busy in church activities. For all my busyness I was spiritually dead. And spiritually dead are incapable of doing anything.”
Unlike Dann I knew I was dead spiritually…The prodigal in the pig pen understands his unworthiness to even be the Father’s servant much less His Son. The older brother thought like Dann…I’m good…I deserve my inheritance. My brother is garbage…The problem is, both were dead spiritually.
Every one of us is dead spiritually before salvation…Jesus didn’t sacrifice himself and rise again so good people could become better. He did this so dead people could have life.
“Lost people don’t need to be rehabilitated. They need to be resurrected.” (Dann Spader)
I think about this often…God began to call to me through His Holy Spirit…That call involved my sin…my complete unholiness…I heard the truth from Christian friends that Jesus can forgive you, cleanse you, give you life. And finally, I believed it and repented.
Repentance is always linked with baptism in the scriptures because repentance is a change of our hearts and minds and actions…and baptism is a clear picture of our death, burial and resurrection to new life. One without the other doesn’t complete the real picture…of dead people being brought to life through Jesus.
[It’s been 45 years since I died…3 months before my 18th birthday…It’s been over 4 decades since I was made alive in Christ. My friends thought I was a fool for giving up my old life to follow Jesus…But what they didn’t realize is that I didn’t give up my old life…I accepted Jesus’ offer of a new life…After I graduated Lafayette in 1979 I entered Johnson Bible College on Academic probation…and I met Kari Pascal that summer. We were married in 1981…I graduated college in 1983 as the Valedictorian of my class. The first person in Johnson’s history to begin on academic probation and graduate valedictorian. I was President of my class…and Ricky was born just a few months after Kari and I left Tennessee for a youth ministry in Paris, KY. I only share this because not only did I die on January 17, 1978 but I was born in Christ on that same day. 40+ years of living for Christ…I’ve disappointed Him hundreds of times, but He’s never disappointed me.
It’s a privilege to be His fool!]
