Let us turn to the epistle to the Galatians and chapter 6. Paul's letter to the Galatians, the sixth chapter, and we read from verse 9. And let us not be weary in well-doing. For in due season we shall reap if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith. Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand. As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised, only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God, From henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. You can always tell when a religion is false or corrupt. It is showy and ostentatious. You've only to look at the religion of Islam and see their great mosques and see the way they pray five times a day so prominently bowing down with their foreheads on their mat and how that when they are stirred up in their zeal they shout do all kinds of things that are loud, draw attention to themselves. Hinduism with its great temples and its statues of their gods and the painted bodies of the priests and the way they make offerings to the gods. And then Roman Catholicism of course with its great churches and temples, its vast wealth, statues and images and processions and all the things that are gaudy and colourful and ostentatious. The glitzy health and wealth Pentecostalists with their satellite TV channels, the televangelists and all that kind of thing. It is like this because all these things are really of the world and they prosper and grow by appealing to the world. And that is what John means in his first epistle, chapter 4 and verse 5. They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world and the world heareth them. remarkable isn't it how much attention the world gives to Islam, to Hinduism, to Roman Catholicism, to the victory and power ministries of the health and wealth preachers and so on. But you know there is nothing new in all of this because in the early church in the time of the New Testament there was the equivalent. In Paul's day there was a group of false teachers who were menacing the Gentile believers in the churches of Galatia. And they too had their showy and ostentatious aims. And we have it in verses 12 and 13 of Galatians chapter 6. As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh. They desire to have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh. It means that these men were professed converts, Jewish, professed Christian converts who nonetheless wanted Gentile Christians to submit to certain aspects of Jewishness. in order to be entitled, to be called, full Christians. These converts from paganism, as the Gentiles were, they had nothing of the Jewish background and so these Judaizers, as they were called, insisted that these should be at least circumcised and keep certain aspects of the Law of Moses, that they might be considered fully-fledged Christians. And circumcision was their great hallmark. They constrain you to be circumcised and make a fair show in the flesh. Only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. Verse 12. You see, these professed Jewish Christians, they didn't want to be persecuted by their fellow countrymen. So they, by getting Gentiles, Gentile converts to be circumcised, they could tell their fellow countrymen that they were great ones for circumcision. And therefore it kind of offset the persecution that they would have received if they had preached purely the gospel and salvation through faith in Christ alone. They wanted the Jewish credentials so that they could be spared the persecution. And they made these Gentiles, therefore, submit to circumcision, or they would have done if they had listened to their teaching. To make the fair show in the flesh. And verse 13, that they may glory in your flesh. More! people we've got circumcised, more Gentile Christians that we've got to be like Jews and have this great hallmark that we represent. They're false teachers, they're legalists and they're very, very dangerous. But you see, anything that concentrates on outward show, badge, hallmark, drawing attention to itself, it's often the evidence that these things are not real Christianity. And that is because real religion has no outward show, neither does it seek any. It glories in something entirely different. Verse 14, Paul writes, but God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And you see, he's saying it's the exact opposite to the world. Glorying in the cross. Glorying in the message of Christ crucified. And it's not only the opposite of the world, or worldly religion, with its show and ostentation, it actually separates us from the world. by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world." Real Christianity, therefore, proudly rejoices in what is central to the faith, our Lord Jesus Christ and His cross. It's a trust and it's a confidence from our hearts in Him. It's not an outward and a carnal thing, is it? The Gospel is the very opposite of all that, and the Gospel crucifies us to all that. We can't be worldly, carnal, showy, proud. You glory in the cross, the place which is called Calvary, and He who died for our sins and rose again from the dead. We glory in that, the truth of it, the message of it, the efficacy of it, the saving power of it, the glory of our blessed Lord who loved us and gave himself for us. We don't even have crosses in church or crosses around our necks on chains because that's going back to the worldly side of it again. No, no, we glory in the cross, the preaching of the cross, the power of God. the object of our faith and our boast and our blessedness. Now let's look at this verse 14 and let's look first of all at the cross. The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's clear that it means not of course the object because it doesn't say by which the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world." Paul writes, by whom? The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. So it's meaning Him who died upon that cross. It's the person and the work of our Redeemer. And you see how careful Paul is to state it very precisely. the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that means Christos in the Greek, meaning the Anointed One. It's referring to the fact that what this was at the cross, what was done at the cross, did not start in time. It started in eternity. the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He lay in the bosom of the Father, did the Son, and He came into the world and the Father sent Him. And the Father sent Him equipped with the Holy Spirit, the Unction, the Holy Spirit who came like a dove upon our Lord at His baptism to service His humanity, the Mediator, enabling Him to do all He did as the Saviour in the provision of God, the Anointed of the Father. Anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows, He has received the fullness of the Spirit, enabling Him to do the Father's will. That's the significance of Christ. He did not come Himself. on His own authority. He might have done as God's Son, but He could say, the Father hath sent me. He whom the Father hath sealed and has come in the name of God and has come from heaven on this great heavenly mission. You see, you glory in it because it's God the Son. It's become incarnate and blessed with the Spirit, equipped and enabled to be the Saviour of sinners. And look, again, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus. The name given Him at His birth. The Divine Son became truly man, apart from sin. Because, you see, God must charge him with our sin. And him who knew no sin was to be made sin for us. And there is that substitution coming into our place. Human beings have sinned. Human beings are under the curse of the law. Human beings will go to hell, but this Great One, Jesus, Saviour, is fully human as well as divine. And He comes that God might lay our sins upon Him and all the wrath deserved and all the consequences of it unto eternity. Born there, on the cross. Jesus, oh that precious name, Jesus, who loved me and gave himself for me, bearing my sins in his own body on the tree. See, that's what we glory in. And then again, thirdly, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that speaks of the value of his sacrifice. It's emphasizing that here is deity, Lord, as the divine title. And it means, of course, that He is fully God as He is fully man. And it means that when He died upon the cross, my dear Christian friend, and when He bore your sins in your place and suffered all that you would have suffered in hell forever, what is it called? In Acts 20 and verse 28, the blood of God. Tremendous, isn't it? The church of God which He hath purchased with His own blood. The incarnate God. Fully man-shedding that blood which has a divine value and efficacy and power to take away sin forever. That's why it is that the sins, the accumulated sins, a lifetime of sinning of all the countless millions of the elect all meeting upon Him. He could bear the weight of it and absolutely how can you describe the weight of it? The collective sinning of all the elect people of God charged upon Him. What a weight that guilt and the wrath of God coming down upon Him with all the power and force and majesty of God's law and justice crashing down upon Him. And only He could bear that weight, the Lord, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why you see, if He is not a divine Saviour, He is not a Saviour. that Jehovah's Witnesses who deny the deity of Jesus Christ and say He's just a high, highest form of created angel, if they felt their guilt, if they knew they were under the wrath of God as sinners, if they knew they were going to hell, they wouldn't say that. Or at least, if they understood these things, they wouldn't. Because a Saviour who is any less than divine could not possibly bear all our sins. And could not possibly bear them away as the Lamb of God. And could not save us from everlasting hell. But, oh, He is the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a wonderful, wonderful Saviour. Glorying in this, you see. We glory in it. This is our hope. This is our blessed assurance. This is our confidence and the ground of our trust and what we have to be able to say that we shall go to heaven in the blood and righteousness of Christ, that chariot of the Gospel, the value of His sacrifice. And dear friends, isn't it true that this cross Him who died upon it. This is the place to which everyone must come alike. It is not a case that there is one way of salvation for the vilest and a modified way of salvation for those who are a bit better or much better. The fact of the matter is that the most scandalous and most polluted of sinners must come here, as well as the most moral and upright and religious and self-righteous must come here. And we know that it's harder for the self-righteous to come here. How hard it was for the Pharisees to contemplate this. And Jesus said, the publicans and the harlots enter the kingdom of God before you Sometimes, dear friends, it's not the deep-dyed sinner that has problems with the cross of Christ and the precious blood that alone can take away our sin. It's the religious. It's the Pharisee. It's the one who keeps God's laws, they think. It's the vicar's wife. And it's the church warden. And it's those on the parish council. Those who pride themselves on being pillars in society. Ah, but you see, The preaching of the cross, it levels everyone, doesn't it? It puts everyone down on the same level. We have to bow to God's only way of salvation. And my dear friend, if we do not glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are not saved. Now let me ask you this. Is this your glory? Do you say, I am a poor sinner and nothing at all? Jesus Christ is my all in all. Do you say, what can take away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that washes white as snow, no other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus. There's power, power, wonder-working power in the precious blood of the Lamb. Oh, we can't stop singing about this. cannot stop thinking about it, praising God for it. When we come to prayer, we know that we're washed in the blood, clothed in His righteousness. We stand at the cross and we never depart from the cross. It's not a case of at our conversion, we have our eyes opened to see our need and feel it, and then have Christ revealed to us as the only Saviour. And that's how we begin. But we move on. To greater things and deeper things? No, no, we never move on. We stay here. It is true that more is revealed. Fuller, deeper things are made known. Greater and greater discoveries as God teaches us. But we are always at the cross. Never further than the cross. Never higher than thy feet. Do you know you hear of preachers who go around to various churches, sound preachers, preaching God's Word, preaching the Gospel, and some people in the church, they say, afterwards they come up to the preacher and say, God, you know, it's so good to hear about the blood of Christ. We don't hear much about it these days. Can you believe it? There's a retreat from these things, almost like these Judaizers. preferring the circumcision as it were, preferring the outward show, stressing the things that glitter and attract and command people's attention, instead of glorying in the cross. There's nothing else to glory in. If you don't have this as the message, the heart of the Gospel message, you've got no Gospel at all. This is the Lamb of God's providing. This is the only way that God has worked in order to save a people for Himself and take them to glory hereafter. Glorying, boasting, reveling, rejoicing in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ sent by the Father Jesus incarnated for me, Lord, equal with God, and able to save to the uttermost all that come to God by Him. Oh, this is the cross. This is a wonderful thing. Spurgeon used to say in his day, with the rise of higher criticism and liberalism taking hold of non-conformist churches, He used the phrase, the bloodless neology of modern thought. Bloodless preaching, bloodless gospel, bloodless good news. It's heresy, isn't it? But because it's offensive, especially offending the self-righteous, And because it's offensive to liberals who speak of it as slaughterhouse theology and all this blood and horrible, horrible offensive, they do not know what they're saying. Ah, to be humbled before the cross and to glory in this substitutionary atonement. Jesus in my place and God for His sake, pardoning all my guilt. justifying me by that blood and putting the whole obedience of His Son to my account. The cross. Do you hope to go to heaven by the cross? If someone were to ask you, what is your hope? What gives you to think that God accepts you? What gives you to think that you can go to heaven when you die? Do you immediately think Jesus died for me? He died for my sins. It's the cross. Do you think that? Is that your testimony? Can you really and honestly say that? You see there's no other way. You don't glory in this and you don't have this. This is the first. This is the ABC of Christianity, isn't it? And all the rest of the alphabet as well. First to last. Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the ending. Ah, childlike confidence and trust. Oh, the rest of my soul in the cross. The One who loved me, gave Himself for me. The bleeding sacrifice. The atonement. Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the cross. Let's look at the glorying. That I should glory, but only in this. Means to boast, means to rejoice in. It's not what you would normally do, is it? Because crucifixion was a horrible spectacle. in the ancient world. It was the most degrading, barbaric and painful method of execution reserved only for the lowest and the worst of criminals. Our English word excruciating, which we use to describe an extreme pain, the word excruciating is literally out of crucifying. But you see, it's not the outward. This is the action of God represented by the cross. In Romans 8, verse 32, for instance, God that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. The word means handed Him over, gave Him over. And who was He handed over to? He was handed over to the justice of God. He was handed over to the wrath of God. He was handed over to the vengeance of God against sin and sinning. God didn't spare Him. He gave Him up. We're told in Isaiah 53 and verse 10, Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief. God the Father was pleased to do this. How do you explain that? Only in the sense that it was as if he loved us more than he loved his own dear son. If he was prepared to do this to his fair one, his beloved, eternally in the bosom of the Father, all His delight from eternity. If He was prepared to do this, give Him a body, send Him into the world in a covenant transaction, the Son promising the Father that He would do all this and the Father promising that if He did, He would have a saved people, God in love sending Him and Jesus in love coming and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. What a transaction was that! What an amazing display of love! That He loved me that much! He even prepared to love me instead of His Son! and put his son to grief and not put me to grief what a glorious thing what a glorious thing and of course there's not only the love there but there's the wisdom isn't there because the problem was if I may put it reverently the problem that faced God was how do you show mercy to rebellious vile sinners who have broken your law endlessly and outraged your justice and created such an offense to your holiness how do you show mercy to such people without setting aside the law and compromising your justice because sin must be punished, sinners must be punished How can mercy be shown? And if God just set it all aside, He would no longer be just. He would no longer be the judge of all the earth that did right. All heaven, if I may put it reverently, would be outraged at the thought if there stood in the dock, in a human court of law, a wicked, wicked criminal who'd committed some atrocious crime of murder and all the rest of it, and the earthly judge simply acquitted him and dismissed the court. It'd be uproar! Of course it would. God has put that sense of justice in our souls, hasn't he? In our consciences. And even on an earthly level, crime must be punished. Punishment must fit the crime. You can't just set aside the law of the land. You can't just dispense with the judicial system. You can't just say that criminals aren't criminals anymore. Just the wave of a hand and a judicial whim. How much more so in the court of heaven than the bar of God's justice. How do you show mercy as the God of love would want to do? and yet at the same time be seen to uphold your law and meet all the demands and requirements of justice. How do you do it? Well, you have a substitute, don't you? And you have someone in the place of all the guilty ones. Someone who's never sinned. Someone who's magnified that law and made it honourable and glorified God in all His life. Someone who's whose sum total of obedience is perfect righteousness. And then on that innocent one you put all the sins of all who are to be saved. And then you deal with Him in justice and judgment and everlasting punishment. And you put the whole of wrath divine on Him and he bears it to the uttermost farthing, and then justice is satisfied, and the outrage and offence is turned away, and it can be seen to be done, and then God, propitiated by the sin offering and atonement of His Son, can then turn in favour and mercy upon those who are sorry for their sin and who repent of their sins and break with it and look to Jesus alone for forgiveness and salvation. And there's wisdom! That's the wisdom of God! That's the power of God, isn't it, to do that? Oh, glorying in the cross where all this of God was displayed, His wisdom, His love, His power, all the attributes of God actually are exhibited and magnified together at the cross. You see more of God at the cross of Calvary than you do in creation, than you do in the works of His providence or in any other aspect of God's ways and God's works. Here at the cross, everything of God shines resplendently and everything is magnified. Oh, mercy, grace, justice, power, wisdom and all the rest of it. That's why you glory in it because it's of all the works of God, it's the greatest. And of all the works of God, it glorifies Him the most. See, if you don't glory in it, how can you be saved? Because you're not going to give glory to God. And so that's the place to come. Here's the place to be. Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling. And that justifies us on earth And that will glorify us in heaven. That will meet our every need. Satisfy everything. Ah, to believe and trust this alone. As Paul says in Philippians 3 in verse 3, coming back to these Judaizers, he says, I rejoice, we rejoice in Christ Jesus, putting no confidence in the flesh, circumcision, the law of Moses, these redundant things now. No, no. Verse 15, look. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature, new creation in Christ. That's the great thing. And so the glorying, it melts us, it moves us, it impels us. And we receive Him. And Jesus Christ is our All in all. And God the Father is pleased and satisfied. He gives glory to His own Son in this. And saves all who come unto Him through Christ. The glorying. One more thing. Look at the separation. Verse 14, By whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. You see how the cross is a sanctifying thing. How the cross delivers us from this present evil world. As it says in chapter 1 and verse 4 of Galatians, where Paul says, Christ gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world according to the will of God. and our Father. See, it works like this. By our saving relationship with Christ, trusting in Him to save us, it changes our relationship to the world. That is, everybody in it who's not a Christian. This world of people organized in rebellion, disobedience, sinning against God. It changes our relationship to the world. Look, it's as if, and it is true, the world has lost its power over us. By whom? Christ. The world is crucified unto me. That world that's so attractive, so seductive with its pleasures and its promises, what is it? It's like a gibbeted gibbeted man hanging there on the cross, writhing, dying, ugly, horrendous. It's crucified unto me. Horrible thing. That's what sin and worldliness and worldly ways would be to me when my Saviour is everything to me. What is the world to me? It's lost its power over me. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Its power over me is disabled by the greater power of Calvary. But look, it works the other way. We have lost our addiction to it and I unto the world. Union with Christ who died for us alters how we feel about the world. It's not that we're disillusioned with the world, it's that we're delivered from it. We're crucified to it. Something's happened. The change is complete. The world crucified to us, we crucified to the world. It's a two-sided thing. It's like the Pilgrims in Vanity Fair, isn't it? When they went through Vanity Fair in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Their dress was different, their talk was different, they were not interested in what was for sale. At that, there was an occasion taken to despise the men the more. some mocking, some taunting, some speaking reproachfully, and some calling upon others to smite them. You see, we're not of this world, really we're not. Although we are in the world, we're not of it. There has been a double crucifixion. Sometimes you're very conscious of it, aren't you? We were very conscious of it last Lord's Day morning. a week ago something happened in Hackney which really illustrated this very strikingly to me there was a half marathon that was being run through Hackney on that Sunday morning sadly and when that kind of thing happens roads are shut and stewards are positioned at roads to keep the traffic away reroute them to somewhere else, you can't come down this road, you know, and so there are these men there, so that the main route is kept open for the runners. Now the trouble was, this all was happening at the time of the morning service, around 11, it was actually quarter past 11 was the service, and the good people at Hackney couldn't get to church most of them had to rely on cars to drive into the church and the roads were blocked couldn't make it and it was very very frustrating They would come up to a steward and say, look, I want to go to church, can you just move the barrier just so I can go through? Go on, go on, you know, no sympathy, no cooperation at all, you don't count if you go into church, just get out the way, the only thing that matters is this half marathon. It's terrible. Anyway, what happened was that one of the men there was asked if he would collect Margaret and me from our hosts and drive us as near as possible to the church, park his car, and then we'd have to walk the rest of the way. He would lead us to the church on foot. So that's what was done. And he very patiently and cleverly sort of maneuvered his way and finally found a place where he could park his car. He said, I'm afraid we're gonna have to walk for the rest of the way. I'm very sorry about this. That's all right, don't worry. I don't know how many people are going to be in church this morning, they're all snarled up in this. Never mind, we'll get there. So he led us there and as we were walking along the streets, along the pavements, there were hundreds and hundreds of people in t-shirts and three-quarter length shorts and trainers and all manner of casual dress. And there was I in my suit and white shirt and tie, Margaret attired for church and our host in his suit as well. And we were walking down along the pavement. I turned to him and I said, you know, we Christians, we don't half stick out, don't we? We're not half conspicuous on an occasion like this. And he said, yes we are. And people were looking at us and we really felt, and it wasn't just that we were posh, it wasn't that we were posh, it was we were going to the house of God. and we had one thing on our minds as it was in God's providence nearly everybody eventually made it was alright but it was like going through Vanity Fair I thought to myself what a privilege to be a witness by going to God's house witnessing amongst this crass worldliness and if anyone had offered us to Stop and watch the race. We wouldn't have given it a minute's thought. Forget it. We're running the heavenly race. We want to get to the house of God. That's how we feel, isn't it? And the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. Farewell. I know it has its pull. And I know although we've been brought out of the world, the world is sometimes not out of us, and we have a struggle. But really, by God's grace, when we have grace, this is how we feel. And this is how we shall make our way to heaven by His grace. That better world, that glorious world to come. Glorying in the cross here, but oh, we shall see Him face to face there. and we shall fall down before Him and adore Him and bless Him and love Him with unsinning hearts and it will be glory, glory everlasting in a better world forever and ever. God forbid that any other object should be our glorying but Him and Him forever. Amen. Let us sing together hymn 203.