THE CROSS
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:17-25, 1 Corinthians 2:1-6
OPEN WITH PRAYER AND THANKSGIVING
I love studying God’s Word. I absolutely love it. I would rather study God’s Word than watch football or go to a UFC fight, which is saying a lot, because I enjoy both of those things. I would rather study God’s Word than go fishing, which is also saying a lot, because fishing is one of my favorite things to do. Fishing is probably a close second… but its still way behind studying Scripture. But something else that I like to study is history – specifically Greek and Roman history. And one of the things about history that is just fascinating to me, is the brilliance of ancient man. And sometimes people hear me say that and they go, “Say what? Weren’t they all living in caves, wearing animal skins and carrying clubs?” And I have to tell them, “Nope! That’s not what ancient man was like at all. This notion that ancient man was some kind of brutish cave man, is all but gone from most upper level scientific understanding… sure it’s still taught to public school kids, but the scientific community – if they’re being honest, will tell you, “No that’s not accurate.” Cave men did not build ziggurats and pyramids. Mathematicians did. Cave men did not build Stonehenge, Astronomers did. The ancient city of Mohenjo Daro – that ancient city in the Indus Valley… it wasn’t built by cave men. It was built by amazing engineers.
Now one of the most brilliant minds of the ancient world was a guy named Archimedes. In 212 BC Archimedes wrote a book and dedicated it to the king of the city of Syracuse, which is on the southern coast of Sicily… And in this book, Archimedes calculated how many grains of sand it would take to fill the entire universe. Now why did he do that? Why did he take the time to calculate that, and then write a book about it? I DON’T KNOW? Maybe he just had too much time on his hands. Maybe because his brain was advanced he had to do something like this in order to keep himself occupied. I don’t know why he did it, but he did, but I also know that about 20 years ago, our modern physicists tried to calculate the same thing – how many grains of sand it would take to fill the entire universe, and they came up with nearly the same answer as Archimedes did more than 2000 years ago. Archimedes wrote this book just a few years before he died. What happened was the Roman Empire came to sack the city of Syracuse. They were under the command of a general named Marcus Claudius Marcellus. And what he did was sail a massive fleet of ships towards southern Sicily, along the coast. But what’s interesting about that battle, is that the coasts of Sicily were lined with cliffs. And for Marcus Claudius Marcellus to get to Syracuse, he would have to sail past those cliffs. What he didn’t know was that Archimedes had designed a couple of war machines that would prove very difficult to overcome. The first one was catapults. As the Roman navy approached they started getting hammered by huge boulders being launched by those catapults. Once they got close, they weren’t out of the woods yet. As they drew near the cliffs, the Roman sailors were mortified, when a huge crane situated at the top of the cliffs reached down, snatched up a Roman ship, picked it up, raised it up into the air and dropped it on the rocks. It happened over and over again… Brilliant engineering!
Marcus Claudius Marcellus was able to rally his troops, and he eventually got them on shore, and they managed to take the city. Now the general of the Roman armies told his men, “Do not kill the engineer who designed these war machines.” But one of the soldiers disobeyed that command because he was angry that this engineer had designed the machines that had killed his comrades and he found Archimedes, working – doing mathematical equations, and he struck him down on the spot.
Now I bring all that up because it was Archimedes who said to the king of Syracuse, “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the whole world.” He didn’t know it at the time, but a little over 200 years after he had made that statement, a lever was found that was long enough to move the world. IT was a cross – about 10 feet high, and it was placed on a hill called Calvary, and that cross was the lever that turned the world upside down.
It was the cross that revealed the greatest mind ever… not Archimedes, as brilliant as he was, his mind is nothing compared to the mind of an Almighty, All-knowing, Sovereign God. As intelligent as Archimedes was, it was the mind of God that had conceived the plan of redemption before time even began. It was the mind of God that conceived the cross, and like I said, it would move the entire world.
So let’s go ahead and open up our Bibles and let’s look at what another brilliant mind had to say about this… I’m talking about the Apostle Paul. Our text this morning is 1 Corinthians 1:17-25, and if you would follow along as I read, we’ll unpack this text and examine what God has to say to us this morning (READ TEXT).
So Paul says here that the Word of the cross, or the message of the cross, is folly or foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. He says in verses23 & 24 that the message of Christ being crucified is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolish to Gentiles, but to those who are called it is the wisdom and power of God.
So just think about that for a second… to the Jews who were there that day – Jesus death on the cross was a stumbling block. Just a week before, they were shouting Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord! But then on Friday they saw Jesus nailed to the cross, hanging there, and they thought to themselves, how foolish it was to think this man was the Messiah. You see; they though that the Messiah was going to come, and set up a throne in Jerusalem, and throw off the yoke of Roman rule. That He would come and M.I.G.A. (Make Israel Great Again). They were looking for a physical ruler and a physical aspect – they didn’t care anything about being saved from sin – they liked their sin, they enjoyed their sin, they just didn’t want to be under Roman rule and authority… but truth be told, they didn’t want to be under God’s rule and authority either…
The Gentiles that were there that day were looking at Jesus upon that cross, they were thinking that this was foolish… it was foolish of this man to die in this way. Had He just kept a low profile, he could have lived out His days as a carpenter, making a decent living, getting married, having a quiet life. But no… He has to go make all these claims, and rile up the Roman authorities, and the Jewish authorities… how foolish is that? And besides, what kind of Savior dies for His people? How does His death save anyone? That’s what they thought… To them it was complete and utter folly, for a man to waste his life in such a way. And had you or I been standing there that day, what would we have thought about it all? Would we have seen Jesus dying on the cross as the ultimate fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption? Do we even see it that way now? Would we have understood that this man – Jesus, who had lived a life without sin, did so on our behalf… and that this man – Jesus who was dying on that cross was doing so on our behalf? Would we have understood that by His sinless life He was satisfying God’s requirements for holiness and righteousness? And by His death, He was satisfying the justice of a holy and just Judge? Would we have understood that when darkness came over the land that God was pouring His wrath out upon Jesus, and that Jesus was taking the punishment for our sin. He was taking the wrath that we deserve… would we have understood that as we watched Him die on that cross? Or would we have thought to ourselves – This is foolishness. This is folly. Had we been there that day, would we have said, “This is the very wisdom and power of God.”?
Now Paul goes on to speak more about this in chapter two… Let me read it to you quickly, (READ 1 Corinthians 2:1-16).
Now Paul is not saying here that all he taught these Corinthians was Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We know for a fact that he taught them a lot of things. Just read through 1st and 2nd Corinthians and you’ll see that. What he’s saying is that his number one priority was that they understood the purpose of Christ being crucified, the meaning of Christ being crucified, the results of Christ being crucified. He wanted them to understand why it had to happen, and what it had accomplished for those who believed. He wanted them to know the grace, mercy, and love of God… but also the justice, and holiness, and righteousness of God. He wanted them to understand what God had to do in order to accomplish the salvation of wicked sinners such as they were, and such as we are. It wasn’t like God just snapping His fingers and saying, “OK, you’re saved now. Everything is A-OK.” No… no it wasn’t like that at all. Instead the demands of God’s justice had to be met. The demands of God’s love had to be met.
So Paul says, “I came to you, and I talked about these things with you, with fear, and trembling, and weakness… “ Why Paul? Verse 5, “SO that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”
And then in the next few verses he begins making the distinction between the wisdom of God, and the wisdom of men. And let me just tell you… Churches need to get back to a right understanding of this. It seems like over the last few decades the Church has relied more and more on “self-help” rather than the Holy Spirit… it has relied more and more upon pragmatism rather than prayer… it has relied upon marketing techniques rather than making disciples. That’s the wisdom of men being valued and employed more than the wisdom of God.
If you were to go to some of the conferences today and listen to some of the teaching on church growth, and church success, if you didn’t know it was a so called “Christian conference” and the guy speaking was a pastor or evangelist, you might easily think you were listening to a CEO from a fortune 500 company. They’ll tell you that you have to have the right kind of music, the right kind of parking, the right kind of programs, the right kind of preaching, the right kind of seating, climate controlled buildings, the pastor needs to be friendly but edgy, or maybe a geeky-kind of awkward guy but he doesn’t know it, depending on where the church is and the congregations personal preference… and you need some kind of theme that the congregation can unify around. And on and on it goes. That’s worldly wisdom. Here’s how God says a church grows. Christians who have been saved by the grace of God, go out into all the world, and preach the Gospel to sinners, and they invite those sinners to church where they can again hear the Gospel. Those sinners, once converted are made into disciples, who in turn go out into all the world and preach the Gospel to other lost sinners. PERIOD! End of lesson! That’s the wisdom of God – Preach Christ and Him crucified. And all those CEO “pastors” say, “That’s foolish” to which I reply, “You’re worldly.”
We are not entertainers, and the Church is not a business. We are Ambassadors of the Kingdom of God, come to a place that He is soon going to come and destroy, and it is our job to warn anyone and everyone to make peace with the coming King before it’s too late. The local congregation is like our embassy. It serves as a place for refuge, it serves as a place to be trained, equipped, and discipled, so that we can do our job and complete our mission. And we are to go and we are to preach this message of the cross, knowing full well that the “natural man does not understand the things of God.” That’s what Paul tells us in verse 14… let me just read it. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is NOT ABLE to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
So it’s not about how persuasive you are, or how winsome you are… it’s about simply being faithful in proclaiming it, knowing that God’s Word will not return unto Him void, but will accomplish all that He wills. In other words, our job – as ambassadors is to preach the Gospel, to proclaim the message of the cross to a lost world, and trust that God is going to use that, even though it seems foolish to the world, to sovereignly and mercifully save lost sinners.
So… what about you this morning?
CLOSING
