I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to our text this morning. It is in 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, and we will be reading together verses 22 to 25. 1 Corinthians 1, verses 22 to 25. Paul writes to us, saying, "For indeed, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified. To Jews, a stumbling block, and to the Gentiles, foolishness. But to those who are the 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." May God bless His word. Please be seated. Paul is revealing to us here, as he is writing to Corinth, that the cross of Jesus Christ is the one truth, the one fact that, if not understood and believed, you will be a fool. An eternal fool, a fool in hell ultimately rather than a son in glory. Paul is setting before the church in Corinth what is, you could say, the most profound and ultimate truth to ever be known and believed. And if you miss the truth of the cross, ultimately you will be a man or a woman who is abjectly lost, both spiritually, morally, intellectually, in every way, eternally. That is a bold statement. It is quite a claim to sort of thunder forth, but after all, I mean, there are lots and lots of claims on what is ultimate truth. For many educated people throughout the ages, there have been many different opinions about what is most essential to believe and know. They have said things that are vastly different and, in the end, vastly empty, dry, and hopeless. Paul, as he was writing to the church in Corinth, was writing into that Greek culture of intellectualism that had been present for centuries. People like Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, along with all the Greek philosophers, each had their own ideas about what constituted ultimate truth. For someone like Aristotle, he believed that the meaning of life and the greatest truth was to achieve a state of happiness, which he called flourishing through virtuous living. Plato believed that the greatest reward or ultimate goal in this life was to find a life of purpose and meaning, whatever that might be. In the New Testament world, there were often two main schools of thought in the philosophical realm. One group, known as the Epicureans, believed that life was difficult, and the only solution was to seek as much pleasure as possible. Their motto was simply, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Then there were others, known as the Stoics. They also believed that life was hard, and the best way to cope with its difficulties was to do one's best, not to give in. They advised keeping a stiff upper lip, putting one's head down, and just keeping going. And there are really a hundred other versions out there in the world of what men would say is ultimate truth, the meaning of life, and the purpose. In our day, we have Jordan Peterson, a well-known psychologist, who recently said that the purpose of life is to find the hardest burden you can bear and to bear that. Because he sees that bearing a hard responsibility is going to make you strong and a helpful person in society. And you say, well, that's not bad. But it's not ultimate. In all of these other philosophies, whether it's Aristotle, Plato, the Epicureans, the Stoics, or Jordan Peterson, in all of those, there is looming in the background this question, almost like a hurricane on the horizon: Vanity, vanity. Meaninglessness, meaninglessness. For the rich man and the poor man both die. The words of Ecclesiastes lay bare all of these philosophies and answers to life. In Ecclesiastes chapter six, he says, "There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is prevalent among men: a man to whom God gives riches and wealth and honor so that his soul lacks nothing of all that he desires. And yet, God does not empower him to eat from them, for a foreigner eats from them." This is vanity, a sickening evil. If a man becomes a father of a hundred children and lives many years, however many the days of his years may be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, better the miscarriage than he. For that one comes in vanity and goes into darkness, and that one's name is covered in darkness. Indeed, one that never sees the sun and never knows anything, that one has more rest than he. Even if another man lives 1,000 years twice and does not see good things, do not all go to the same place? They all die. Vanity? Vanity. The Bible teaches us that all of these other approaches to life, all these other answers to what is ultimate, are like a bottle rocket, those little ones that you shoot off on the Fourth of July, which zip up, make a little pop, and then they are done. Death comes and makes everything else meaningless. All of these philosophies. Vanity, vanity. They make them all like sitting in a lounge chair on the Titanic as it sinks. Sure, you are comfortable for a few moments. But that is it. Or maybe you keep yourself afloat in the waves for as long as you can, but no matter how long you tread water, you are still going under. The lights go out, you die, the waves sweep over you, and even if you did a million good things in life, enjoyed a million things, had a million pleasures, life is over and you have nothing. All you have is wrath. And so, Paul writes now to the church at Corinth, setting before them the cross as ultimate. The cross of Christ comes into life, into this meaninglessness and vanity. Vanity. Christ comes in like a sunrise after a long, dark night and rises with all purpose, all meaning. The ancient world of men that Paul is writing to here is not all that different from our world. It is because people are exactly the same as they have always been. The same heart, the same character. Our only advantage is that we live in our day is that we have more technology and we can do things faster. Be it good or evil, we are no different in our own thinking, our own sinfulness than the ancients. And so the world of men that we live in will always be faced with the issue of where do we find truth? The greatest truth, the ultimate truth, the meaning of life. Do we find it in our own struggles or our own pleasures? Or do we find it in the cross of Christ? Paul, as he is writing, says that the Jews ask for signs, and the Greeks search for wisdom. The worldview of the Jewish people in Paul's day caused them to demand that if something was true, they wanted to see miracles or power demonstrations to confirm it was true. They were not going to believe unless someone showed them something supernatural. And yet, the reality of the ministry of Christ is that they saw all manner of supernatural things that the world had never seen before. And they did not believe. They did not believe. And this is because, at the end of the day, miracles do not cause belief. They have never caused anyone to believe. They are simply, in the case of the Jews, an excuse for those who might say, "If I see, I will believe." They are a mercy to those who do believe, as God often will work wonders for his people, but we need to know they will never bring someone to the point of faith in Christ. We see this in the ministry of Jesus. Again, no one did more wonders than Jesus. No one healed the blind from birth. No one had done that before. No one healed the lame from birth. No one had ever done that before. Jesus raised the dead. Those who were four days dead. He calmed the raging seas and the winds with a word. He walked on water. He fed thousands upon thousands of people with just a few fish and loaves of bread. One of the things you read in the New Testament is that no one ever questioned the miracles of Jesus as though they were a hoax, magic, or a deception. And yet, the Jewish people, though they had seen all of this, still demanded more. This is why Jesus finally said to them through the parable of Abraham, the rich man, and Lazarus in Luke 16:31, "Even if someone should rise from the dead, you will not believe." He told them their problem was not with evidence. Their problem was not that you haven't seen something miraculous. Your problem was a dead, sinful heart. There is nothing you will see with your eyes that will ever change your heart. And so we need to know that evidence never convinces people to believe. Miracles never converted one person in all of history. God converts the soul through the preaching of the gospel, through the message preached, as Paul has said here in 1 Corinthians. Through the message preached. The Greeks, on the other hand, were more interested in rationality and wisdom. "Convince me on a philosophical basis. And if I agree with it, maybe I'll believe." All of these worldviews of men and of the Greeks in that day, we should know that they are all, even though they come across as very sophisticated at times, very detailed, at the end of the day, are all buckets that are full of holes. They have this appearance of being able to accomplish something, like holding water. But there are massive holes in them, and they cannot do it. "Vanity, vanity." Death comes riding along to conquer every philosophy of man. Death comes and it stands there as this grinning mocker to all of our philosophies, worldviews, and religions. It just smiles. It knows. It knows it has planted the flag over every life and over all accomplishments outside of the cross. This is why Paul says, in verse 23, "But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness." You see, the gospel, Christ crucified, is not just another philosophy of life that we set alongside all the other worldviews to be debated and argued. That is not how the apostles approached it. Paul reasoned from the Scriptures always about Jesus and the cross. But this was not Paul's dissertation. It was a proclamation. It was an announcement of the truth, not simply an offer of a rival philosophy to mull over in your mind. We preach Christ. We preach Christ crucified. Paul is setting forth the raw power of the message of Christ and Him crucified for sinners. He is not looking to appeal to the intellect with all manner of philosophical claims. Rather, he is looking to cause all of those other philosophies to collide with the message of Christ and Him crucified. He knows that that message will explode all of these worldviews and these false beliefs. We preach Christ crucified. To the Gentiles, foolishness. Foolishness. To the Jews, a stumbling block. The Jews stumbled over this message. It tripped them up because they wanted a Jesus who would perform miracles for them. A Jesus who would come and restore political power to Israel for them. And so for the Jews, a king who dies is no help. What a foolish thing. And so they find Jesus offensive. For the cross is very personal as it comes and tells every individual that you have no hope unless the Son of God dies in your place and for your sins. When the human heart hears that message, it says, "Oh no. Oh no, you offend me even in that message. You offend me by telling me that I am so evil that only the very Son of God could ever cover the depth of the wickedness of my sin." So the Jews stumbled over Jesus crucified. The Gentiles found it foolish. The Jews found it hurtful and offensive. The gospel, however, calls us to look outside of ourselves, outside of our own wisdom, outside of our own ability to make sense of life. For the proud heart of man, that is foolish, as man sees himself as sophisticated in his understanding of life. He is able to offer all kinds of mental gymnastics, philosophical arguments, and religious efforts to make life make sense. But he is lost. Sinful man is like that proverbial man who refuses to ask for directions, even though he is lost. Or, to be fair, it may be like the woman who thinks that if she just turns up the radio louder, that thumping sound will not matter. We approach the problems of life as if we are either stopping our ears or pretending we really do know when we do not. But Paul says the cross is the very wisdom, the power, and the wisdom of God. To those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. The cross is ultimate wisdom. You see, if you do not understand and believe the message of Christ crucified from the Bible, you will be a fool of eternal proportions. No matter what kind of education you have, it does not matter if you are a Jeopardy champion. If you send men to Mars, if you have a PhD after your name, if you understand the theory of relativity, if you are the richest man in the world, if you are the most powerful man in the world, you are just playing at life as though it were a video game. And it will disappear as soon as the plug is pulled. Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God for those who are called. Christ is not a wisdom. He does not just come with wisdom. But Paul tells us he is the very wisdom of God. He is not just a wise expression of God, not merely a wise action of God. He is all of the wisdom of God set forth in human form. And that wisdom and that power are in his brutal death on a cross at the hands of sinful men, as a substitutionary sacrifice where God crucified his son for sinners. That message is completely beyond comprehension in terms of making sense to a rebel sinner. The message of the cross, Christ crucified, comes to the sinner as something so strange and so unusual and so incredible that unless the Spirit of God uses that message to awaken us to new life in Christ, we will not believe. The cross comes to be glorious and beautiful and powerful and the very wisdom of God only to the soul that has been called, as Paul says here, that is called by sovereign grace. God made you alive. That message will never make sense to the unconverted man. That is, if we present it to him as something well, we can make it appealing to him with fine-sounding arguments. Or perhaps, if he just sees enough miracles, he will believe. No, the only means by which anyone comes to see the cross as good and glorious and saving is when the Spirit of God comes through the message preached and he opens blind eyes and deaf ears, and they believe. It is all of grace. I have shared in the past that the preaching of the gospel is not like we might think, well, it is like someone who goes into a hospital ward to help the sick. Nor is it like a salesman who goes to convince his prospect to buy the product. If I just use the right arguments, the right approach, I can get him to believe. No, the biblical picture of the preaching of Christ crucified, beloved, is like going to a graveyard and calling men out of their graves with the message of Christ crucified for sinners. True gospel preaching, the kind that Paul is speaking of here, is not merely looking to heal people spiritually in some way. It is not just looking to convince the confused with better arguments. It aims to accomplish nothing short of raising the dead. Beloved, if you are a believer this morning, you must know that you have been raised from the dead. Just as Paul says to the Ephesians, "You were dead in your trespasses and sins, but God made you alive together with Christ." That is what the gospel does. That is what the preaching of Christ crucified accomplishes, like nothing else can. And that is the truth of all truths to center life upon, to rest our lives upon, to find all meaning in now, there in Christ and his work for us, in our union now with him. In all that he is for us, all he has done at the cross, all he is for us now in his resurrection and in his coming again for us. We were those who once were dead, without hope and without God, every one of us. But God made you alive, and he did it through Christ and him crucified for you. Where are you today? Are you alive? If you are not in Christ, if you have not trusted in Christ and him crucified for you, the Bible would say you are still absolutely dead in your sins. There is no hope in any other system, any other philosophy, any other ideas, any other pursuits; only Christ. And if you are still without Christ, this would be the day to look to Christ and believe. The Bible only gives you one day to believe, as we have said, one day. That is today. Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to look to Jesus because he comes through the message preached to the sinner like you and promises that if you will but look to him, turn from your sin and trust in him, you will move from the grave to everlasting life in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Let us close in prayer. Father, we thank You for the gospel. We thank You, Lord, that You have opened our blind eyes and our deaf ears. We thank You, Lord, that we are not those who are still wandering, Lord, through an ocean of unbelief, false ideas, empty philosophies, and empty hope. Lord, I pray that You would send us forth into the world with a confidence in Christ, knowing that the gospel is able to rescue men, women, and young people from any place, any confusion, any philosophy, any false belief, or any lifestyle. For we are not ashamed of the gospel, for we believe with Paul that it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Would you please stand as Aaron leads us while we sing "Cornerstone"? Just hold on until I get this.