You know, I was, as you find in your way to 1 Corinthians, I want to share this with you. I was prayerfully considering what it was that God would have me to speak about today, and for several days, all that was upon my heart and my mind was, what did Paul preach? I could not get that thought out of my mind, was what did Paul preach? And if you look through the book of Acts, it's very clear what Paul preached, not just Paul, but All of the apostles, Paul and Silas and Peter and John, Philip, every one of them preached the same message. It may have been preached in different ways, but there was only, there was the basis of one message being preached, and that is the message of the cross. The very first time that the message of the cross was preached was by Peter in Acts 2, 3,000 people were converted. It's clear in my heart that preachers should be preaching the message of the cross. One thing about the message of the cross is it's a very controversial message. It can give rise to big disagreements in today's society about what the cross means. One Sunday, I was sitting at my desk early in the morning, and Grover likes to send text messages out early on Sunday mornings. Maybe some of you guys here receive them as well. But this is what it said. It said, may our preaching be as earnest as our message in the condition of those who set before us demands. Three things can be seen in that quote, and number one is the condition of the people that are hearing the message, the message that we preach, and the seriousness of the message being preached. And as we think about the gospel of Jesus Christ, is there anything more serious than the message of the cross or the message of the gospel that's being preached? What could ever be any more serious than the salvation of a lost soul? You know, God came himself into this world and made himself a man and began preaching himself. And he made a statement in one of the gospels. He said, I didn't come to judge you. You have what judges you. The very word that I preach to you, the very message that Christ preached will be the judge of mankind in the end. Depending on what translation you are reading out of, in our text here of 1 Corinthians, it says the message of the cross. The King James Version translates it the preaching of the cross. The New American Standard translates it the word of the cross. But it is all the same. So, let me read from 1 Corinthians. I want to start in chapter 1. And I want to read down to about the 25th verse. It says, Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, through the will of God, and Sophenes, our brother, to the church of God, which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints with all who, in every place, call on the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, both theirs and ours. Grace to you and peace from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come sure in no gift eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household, that there are contentions among you. Now I say this that each of you says, I am of Paul, or I am of Apollos, or I am of Cephas, or I am of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name. Yes, I also baptized the household Stephanus, besides I do not know whether I baptized any other. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. For 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. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified. To the Jews, a stumbling block, and to the Greeks, foolishness. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Chapter 2, verse 2, For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Father, we come to you, Lord, this morning, and we would just ask, Father, that you would be present in this place by the power of the Holy Spirit. I pray, God of heaven, that you would use me to speak to the hearts of your children. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. I want to ask you a question, just to answer it, something to ponder upon. What does it mean when you hear the message of the cross. If we were to poll all the citizens of Glasgow with that very question, what does it mean to you when you hear the message of the cross, we would get all kind of answers. Some of you guys know that's true because you've had that very conversation with some of your friends and your family and your coworkers, but concerning the Bible concerning people and from a biblical standpoint, there are two groups of people mentioned here in 1 Corinthians. In verse 18, our text briefly describes those two groups of people. We'll talk about those a little bit, but those two groups are those who are being saved and those who are perishing. I'd like to go beyond that just a little bit, if I may. this morning, and I don't want to talk just about people, but I came across a quote from an old 16th century Puritan, John Flavel, and this is what he wrote. I'd like to read it to you. He said, in respect to God, the death of Christ was justice and mercy. In respect to this world, the death of Christ was murder and cruelty. In respect to himself, the death of Christ was obedience and humility. And in respect to his elect, the death of Christ was wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And I'd like to look at those four things that Flaval wrote about for a few minutes this morning. In respect to God, how does And this had never crossed my mind until I read that quote from Flavel. I know what the cross means to me, and I know what the Bible says the cross means to unbelievers. I've never thought, not one time, what does the cross of Christ mean to God? So I started pondering that, and I want to share a couple of things with you. In respect to God, Flaval wrote that the cross was justice and mercy. And to look at that, I think we need to understand the justness of God. In Deuteronomy 32.4, it says this, He is the rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice. Righteous and upright is He. To be without injustice, means that you are perfectly just, doesn't it? There's nothing to be found in God that is unjust. Everything he does. You know, you can look for some injustice in God, and I know some people that do. They will say, if God's a just God and a loving God, why do so many people suffer? What they're doing is they are looking for some injustice with a holy God. But the Bible itself declares that God is perfectly just and without any injustice. It says, all his ways are justice. Now, we all know that the cross of Christ did not just happen. In the book of Acts, it talks about how the cross of Christ was a predetermined plan of God. Peter makes that statement when he talks about how they crucified Christ. It says in Acts, Him, being Christ, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death." Now we know that Christ voluntarily laid down his life for sinful man, but it was a predetermined plan of God, and if there is no injustice with God, the death of Christ upon the cross was a just and perfect thing. So when we are talking about how God views the cross in respect to an outlook that God may have upon the cross, it is perfect justice there. And what is that justice? That justice is that there was a requirement for sin, there was a requirement for payment for sin, wasn't there? That justice being carried out on the cross was Christ paying that penalty for sin. And as God is looking at his son dying upon the cross, he sees perfect justice being carried out. Not everybody sees that. If you watch the news today, many times you'll hear something about a murder victim or an accident victim or something, and the family member will be standing on TV And they'll say, we demand justice. You ever thought about in your heart for a minute how a wicked, hateful sinner, what right do they have to demand justice from somebody else? God is perfectly just and declared against sinful man that when you sin, you will die. Death was required. God being just in all his ways is the only one who can stand up and declare for justice to be made. We also see in God's perspective of the cross mercy. Flavel wrote that in respect to God, the view of the cross was justice and mercy. We see his justice in that Christ is the one who suffered for mankind. God didn't just forget about sin. Payment had to be made for it. But we see God's mercy in that Christ paid for the sin. We see God's mercy towards us, towards man, that we didn't have to pay that price. God is a very merciful God. Justice had to be served, and in God's mercy, He chose for His own Son to make that payment for us. The Bible says that He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. I heard it said one time that at the cross, Jesus and man both got what they did not deserve. If you think about that for a minute, Christ didn't deserve to die. He was sinless. And in God's mercy, man got what we didn't deserve, Christ's righteousness. So at the cross, Jesus received the punishment that he did not deserve, and we receive God's mercy that we don't deserve. God has been merciful to us, that's for sure. And I think we ought to be thankful for that. Without God's mercy, Each and every one of us would stand and face the wrath of God on Judgment Day. I heard a preacher one time say, God's not a God of wrath. I did ask him some questions about that. The Bible says that the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. So in respect to God looking at the cross or the message of the cross, we see justice, God's justice being carried out, and we can see God's mercy towards mankind. But how does Christ look at the message of the cross? How did he see the message of the cross? And I'm not sure how well I'm explaining this, but I hope it causes us to think a little bit broader than what we may always have. Flaval wrote that in respect to Christ, that the cross was obedience and humility. And when I read that, I thought of Philippians 2, and I want to read those first four verses of chapter 2. In context, in Philippians 2, Paul was writing about the humility that we should have towards one another. And he uses an example of the man who was the most humble person ever. But he says this, let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation taking the form of a bond-servant and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross." If we think about that a little bit, we look at Jesus, who was deity, who is deity, who knew he was deity from the beginning of time. that knew he was part of the Godhead, he didn't just give all of that up and make himself a man, but he came in the lowest form of a man that you possibly could be. The Bible uses the word bondservant. One of Jesus' greatest examples of being humbled or showing humility was when he washed the feet of the disciples. It is my understanding from that culture and that time that different people had servants or slaves and that that was the lowest form of a servant that you could be, was to greet guests coming in at the house and washing the dirt from their feet. So Jesus humbled himself, not just giving up his Godhead, not just giving up his deity in heaven and coming as a man, but he made himself the lowest possible form of man that he possibly could. Paul in 2 Corinthians is talking about giving and he uses the example of Christ as a pattern. He says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich. And that's not talking about the wealth or the rich of this world, it's talking about in a sense of being rich as being God. And he gave all of that up and made himself a man for us. That's humility. We might hear sometimes of somebody giving a great donation, maybe somebody that's well-to-do or wealthy. They might give a great donation to a hospital or to a church or to a organization of sorts. Christ just didn't take a little bit of what he had and give it to man. He took everything he had, everything that he had in heaven with the Father, and he gave all of that up to make himself a man. That's humility. That's giving of yourself. You know, Christ as God had everything. The Bible says that everything was created through him and for him and by him. As deity, Christ had all that there ever was to have. And he purposely and willfully laid it all aside, wrapped himself in flesh, and came to this world that he had created. There's a TV show on that maybe some of you are familiar with. It's called Undercover Boss. In general, what they do is the corporate executive officers of this business, those are these corporations, they go undercover and they disguise themselves as just an employee of the company and they come in and they try to determine things that's going on. They gave up their high society position of working in an office building and they come out and they work as janitors and general laymen or whatever. They're not doing that out of humility. They're doing that to further their company. They're doing that to decipher things that's going on that needed to be fixed. Christ, out of his humility, gave up his power and his authority and his position in the Godhead, maybe not literally, but he laid that all aside and came to earth as a man in humility for us. You know, when Satan came and tempted Jesus, one of the things that he offered him in his temptation, he said, I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world and all their glory. Did Satan not know that that was already Christ? He laid all of that aside when he came to be a servant for mankind. That is humility. You know, we try to think that we will be humble towards one another and do things for one another. Christ was the most humble person. I'm not sure that's the right word. Talking about the obedience of Christ, this message of the cross to Christ was humility. He had to humble himself and come from where he was for the message of the cross. What about his obedience? Jesus, we know, was fully man, yet while he was fully God, we believe that. And Jesus is the only man who was ever fully and completely obedient to the Father. The only one. In Isaiah 50, it's talking about the servant of the Lord who is to come. And I want to read two verses, it says this, the Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious, nor did I turn away. I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who plucked out my beard. Clearly that passage of scripture is talking about the Messiah to come and of Christ who was crucified. And I think it's easy to see the obedience of Jesus even then in the Old Testament, even the obedience of Jesus even under suffering and of death. In John 6.38, Jesus made the declaration, he said, I have come not to do my will, but the will of the Father. In 8.29 he said this, I always do the things that please Him, talking of the Father. Now I would like to say that, I would like to be able to stand up and say I always please the Father, if I did that, you all would know I was lying to you. Now what I could say is, I sometimes do the will of the Father, and you might believe that. I sometimes do the things that please God. But you know, Christ wasn't, oftentimes in our lives, and in my life, oftentimes in my life, I'm obedient in some of the smaller things, and some of the greater things might be a little bit more of a difficulty for me. But Christ wasn't only obedient in the small things, He was obedient in everything. In the face of death, at the cross, the crucifixion, they say it's one of the worst deaths that have ever been devised, Christ was obedient, it says. In His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ had to know what was coming, He had to know all of the agony, all of the suffering, the emotional part that went along with that. Christ foreknew, and he could see all of that, but yet he was obedient in every part of it. He prayed to God in the Garden of Gethsemane. He said, Father, if there's any other way, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours. I think I know some men in life who have made a commitment to follow God to a certain point. But when the going gets tough, they say, I can't do that. Or they might say, I don't want to do that. Christ was fully obedient in the will of the Father in all things. Perfect obedience even unto death. You know, sometimes people wear a cross around their neck, and it symbolizes different things to them. I don't wear one, and I don't have a problem if you do. But if Jesus, and I think I can say this respectfully, if Jesus was here on earth and wore a cross upon his neck, it would symbolize his humility and the obedience. That's what the cross would mean to Christ. And we're talking about the message of the cross and what that means to people. Thirdly, Flaval wrote, in respect to the world, the cross was murder and cruelty. In Acts chapter 7, Stephen has been accused of blasphemy, and he's speaking in his defense to the scribes and the elders. Towards the end of the chapter, this is what he says. Which of the prophets did your fathers persecute, not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one, of whom you now have become the betrayers and the murderers. I'm not big on Greek, but I do like to look some things up. And that word for murderer in the Greek implies that something is intentional. And that's not hard to get that out of that. We think of a murderer today, and that's exactly what we think of, something criminal, somebody who plotted and planned to put someone to death. And that's exactly what the scribes and the elders did with Christ. In John 11, Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, and here's what they said at the end of that. If we let him alone like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come away and take our place in the nation. Then in verse 53 it says, from that day on they plotted to put him to death. The death of Jesus on the cross by the world was clearly a murder. It wasn't accidental. I've heard people say, well, Jesus' blood was spilt on the cross, or spilt. No, it wasn't. Christ shed his blood. But it was done at the hands of wicked men who murdered him. It was murder in its clearance form. If somebody plans and plots a murder today and is caught and arrested by the authorities, they charge them with murder, and then they put them in the jailhouse, don't they? Another definition for cruelty. is to willfully cause pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it. When they murdered Christ on the cross, they didn't have second thoughts about it. It was something they had plotted and planned to do. There were other men who were crucified with Jesus. We know that. The only difference between the thieves and Christ is that the thieves were making payment for their crimes against society. In a sense, you could say they deserved what they got. Christ was on the cross getting what he did not deserve that we spoke about. You know, Flavel's quote said that the cross was murder and cruelty. In our text here in 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. Those who are not of the church, There's those two groups of people that we mentioned in verse 18. Those who are not of the church say that Christianity is foolishness. Very intellectual people of this world consider Christ and the cross foolish. Our living through one who died, our being blessed by one who was cursed, our being justified by one who was condemned is foolishness. to the intellect of this world. Man's reasoning and philosophy is completely contrary to God's. What makes the difference between those who believe the message of the cross and those who don't? You either belong to the world or you belong to Christ. If you belong to the world, you will not nor can not hear As Brother Joe was talking about, you cannot hear or see or understand without the power of God. There's a verse in John chapter 8 verse 47. It's a very hard verse for some people to grasp and to accept. John 8 47 says this, he who is of God hears God's words Therefore, you do not hear because you are not of God. When Jesus was talking in John chapter 8 to the leaders and the rulers, he said, I am not of this world. And I want to say this. If you belong to Christ, you are not of this world either. Verse 21 to 25. And our text says this, for since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For the Jews request a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men. There are many great teachers, there are many great expository people, there are many great philosophers of this world, and sometimes when you listen to them you can be impressed by their words. Should I myself expound exemplary explanations of a particular passage with passionate and profound philosophical persuasions, you may certainly conclude my intelligence. And when you do that, you must ascribe greatness to my oratory abilities. It took me a while to get that down. But when you do so, you are diminishing the honor of the cross of Christ. Paul said he came preaching the cross of Christ not with wisdom of the words of this world, but Paul said he preached the cross of Christ in wisdom and in the power of the Spirit of God. In Acts 17, Paul was addressing, he was preaching to the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophers at Athens. It says what he preached to them was Jesus and the resurrection of the dead. Now you have to think about Paul. Remember who Paul was. He was born and bred in high society. He was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, who was one of the great Jewish teachers or leaders at that time. Paul, when he began to preach Christ and Him crucified, laid all of that aside and preached the message of Jesus Christ, death, burial, and resurrection. He preached a message of the cross of Christ. Stephen in chapter 6 and 7 preached the cross of Christ. Philip in chapter 8, talking to Ethiopia, and used Isaiah 53 from the Old Testament. And it was talking about being led as a sheep, or as a lamb to the slaughter. And it says that from that point on, Philip began preaching Christ to the Ethiopian. Listen, I'll say this, the church of God is founded upon the message of the cross and the church is built upon the message of the cross. There's a lot being built in some of today's churches that has nothing to do, or I say there's a lot being built in a lot of today's church houses that has nothing to do with the church of God. Paul, in closing his letter to the Galatians said, God forbid that I should boast in anything except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The cross meant everything to Paul. All of his learning, all of his hereditary rights, all of his legalistic, pharisaical rule following meant nothing to Paul. The cross of Christ is what he held dear to him. Everything he had, all of his Wisdom of the world that Paul had became nothing to him and he clung to the cross of Christ. The message of the cross is a message of old, isn't it? Today's church has a new message for you if you'll listen to it. It has little to do with the cross of Christ and what Christ has accomplished for mankind. The message that you hear in a lot of churches today tells man that he's okay no matter what he does. That has nothing to do with what Jesus represents on the cross where payment had to be made for sin. We often sing an old song sometimes. It's an old hymnal from way back, Victory in Jesus, but it starts out, I heard an old, old story. There's a phrase that I know you've heard from your pastor from time to time. He said, if it's new, it's not true. And if it's true, it's not new. Grover didn't come up with that. That came from Alistair Begg in Cleveland, Ohio. I've heard him say it too. But, you know, there's another song, The Old Rugged Cross. It says, where the Lamb of God left his glory above, to pardon and sanctify me. The message of the cross means much to the born-again believer. Flavel's quote was taken right out of Corinthians. It says that the message of the cross to us is wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Now I'm not saying that every time a preacher gets in the pulpit he has to preach the message on the literal cross itself, but every message should be based upon Jesus Christ dying upon the cross for our sins. There is nothing more important than the gospel of Christ, which is the message. I challenge you sometime to go through the book of Acts, and any time Christ was mentioned in a sermon mode, they preached the cross of Christ. Nothing else. For me personally, the cross of Christ means everything. Without the cross of Christ, I am lost. Without what Christ did for me on the cross, I am condemned underneath the wrath of God. But the cross to me, entrusting in what God said Christ did for me, pardons me. It sanctifies me. You know, a pardon in a legal form does not declare a man innocent, does it? A pardon simply says you can go free without paying the penalty. And when Christ died on the cross for me, pardoned my sins from me. It doesn't mean I'm not a sinner. It doesn't mean that I owe the penalty. It simply means that I don't have to pay the price. And if you can ever get that down in your heart, what Christ did for you, on the cross, it'll change your life forever. I've often seen some men who claim to have been born again, and that they have trusted Jesus. But nothing ever changes in their life. And I don't understand that. I'm not one to proclaim that they are born again or they're not. But I don't understand how God could reveal His Son to you and what He did for you and there never be a change in your life. I can't fathom that. I don't understand that. The message of the cross We looked a little bit about what that means to God himself. Justice and mercy. What that message of that cross might mean to Jesus himself. Obedience and humility. What it means to those who are lost. It's foolishness. It means nothing to them. I have a family member who is well educated. And He will simply tell you, He has told me, that is the most foolish thing I've ever heard. Those who know Christ, who God has visited and personally touched, the message of the cross is joy to your ears because you know what has been accomplished through the cross for you. Just some food for thought. What does the message of the cross mean to you?