The Cross of Christ

The cross of Christ.

Many people wear it.
Those who love the Lord.
Many who don’t.

But it is a symbol that the world recognizes.

We in the church do not worship the cross.
But when we see the cross, the symbol of Christianity, we remember what God has done for us: that Jesus died on the cross and shed His blood for our sin.

It is important because we know that the wages of sin is death.
But the cross represents the gift of God, which is eternal life in Jesus Christ.

Now, if you have your Bibles—and I hope you do—and if you do not have your Bible in front of you right now at home, it is probably nearby. Run and grab it really quick.
We will give you a moment.

We are going to be in 1 Corinthians, in the first chapter today. First Corinthians, chapter 1, is part of the Scripture readings for this Sunday, and we are going to focus on this passage, beginning at verse 18.

In the church, it is a message.
Its total message is Christ crucified for the sins of the world, Christ resurrected, Christ raised from the dead, Christ who now lives at the right hand of the Father.
And the cross is central to that message because Jesus came to die upon the cross for us.

Paul starts in 1 Corinthians, verse 18:

“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.’”

He opens that section with that bold statement: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.”
Let us qualify what he means by “perishing” first.
To those who are perishing—to those who do not believe in Jesus, who do not believe in God, who live unto themselves, for themselves, by themselves—the message of the cross is foolishness.

But to us who are being saved, to those of us who believe, it is the power of God.
The power of God to do what?
The power of God to save us.
The power of God to forgive us.
The power of God to redeem us.
The power of God to raise us from the dead and to give us life eternal with Him.

Verse 20 says:

“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.”

So Paul is bringing before us the fact that there are many people in this world—maybe folks in your friend group, your family, people you work with—who dismiss your belief in Christ as foolishness.
If you sit in a college class, chances are your professor may tell you it is just an old wives’ tale, a fable.

But not to us who believe.
Not to us who have experienced Jesus.

I can tell you without a doubt that once someone has experienced Jesus, he knows, she knows, without doubt, that Jesus lives.
That God is, that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus was God in very human form who died upon the cross.
That God is the Creator.

Today in the world, and even in parts of the church sadly, we live by what is called a “worldview.”
“Worldview, preacher? What is a worldview?”
It is the way that you view the world around you and everything that happens in it.

Some folks see and understand the world around them through the Word of God, through their relationship with God and through the Word of God.
They understand everything that happens around us through that lens, through the lens of the Word of God.

Then there are folks who dismiss the Word of God and see the world around them through the lens of everything else:
human wisdom, human works, individualism, independent thought, and a “truth” that is not absolute—a truth that is whatever you make it.

There are two worldviews:
the worldview of God through His Word, which brings Christ into the picture and the cross and salvation,
or that of man’s doing.

That is what Paul is saying.
He is saying that the message of the cross is foolishness to someone who does not believe in Christ.
Sometimes, as Christians, we get upset when there is somebody who thinks differently than we do.
We talk about Christ and they get in your face and say, “Ah, that’s foolishness.”

Hey, look: the cross is foolishness to one who does not believe in God and in the power of God, who does not believe in Jesus.
The cross to them is foolishness.

It would be hard for us to believe too if the Holy Spirit had not begun working on us and imparted that wisdom of God so that we could believe and understand.

But once you have it, once you have started to listen to the Spirit speak, once you have said, “Hey, let me just check this out,” things change.

Sometimes you hear people try to win folks to Christ by saying this:

“What have you got to lose?
You should go ahead and profess Christ just in case you are wrong in what you believe.
If I am wrong, it will not hurt me—I just remain dead.
If you are wrong, you miss life in Christ and heaven.”

Now, I want to say that there has probably been a lot of false profession under that premise.
People say, “Okay, then I am going to say that prayer with you just in case, just so I am good,” and there is no real belief that happens.

Now, that might get them thinking about it, and hopefully it does. Hopefully it gets them thinking, looking, researching, trying to find out.

“Why, preacher, is that not a great method to use?”

Well, if you are using it just to get them thinking, and then you walk down the road with them and help them explore and pray with them, that is different, because it is through faith.
Not a casual faith.
Not faith like, “Hey, I am going to do this just in case. I do not really think it is necessary, I do not think it will work.”
Faith does not work like that.
Faith is an assurance.
Faith is an assurance of belief.

So to really help someone come to faith, if you want to take them down that road, you need to spend time with them in the Word of God to prove to them what you are saying.
Spend some time. Show them. Get them interested in looking and seeing.
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, but it still requires faith.

What does that faith do?
True faith allows you to believe God.
That is key. It is key to a relationship with God.

If you go all the way back to Genesis, back to Abraham, you will find that the Word tells you that righteousness was credited to Abraham by God because Abraham believed God.
He believed what God said, and that built the relationship.

What did we learn last week as we were talking about the kingdom of God, about being born again and coming to Jesus?
It is through faith.
It is through belief.
You have got to believe.

So, if somebody takes you up on your challenge of “What have you got to lose? Just do it just in case,” that “just in case” usually does not bring change to a life.
“Just in case” usually does not make one stop and think deeply.
A lot of times that “just in case” is just so they can get you out of their face.

So, challenge their belief.
You can challenge their belief.
Maybe you say, “If you are wrong, you have more to lose. If I am right, I gain everything. If I am wrong, I lose nothing.”
You can say those things to help them start thinking.

But I do not think that is the point at which you get somebody to have a quick conversion.
I do not think there are really “quick conversions” unless the Holy Spirit has been working on them for a long time.

It takes us, as witnesses, as light, to continue to live in a manner that glorifies God, that witnesses to Him, to speak and share in a manner that glorifies God, and to bear up under the persecution of those who will mock you for your belief.
Do not get your feelings hurt when somebody mocks you for your belief, because the Bible tells us people are going to count it as foolishness.

Pray for them.
Pray for those people.
Continue to walk in your faith.
Continue to share your belief.
Continue to share passages of Scripture with them.
Be the witness.
Be the light.

After all, I am not going to save anybody. You are not going to save anybody.
It is the movement of the Holy Spirit in them, through the hearing of the Word of God, that leads them to believe and place their hope in Jesus Christ.

So do not be upset when folks do not grasp what you believe, when folks mock it.
Rather, we stand in our truth.
We do not let a co-worker or a family member or friend or a professor at school or a teacher shame us away from our faith.
We stand strong in it.

My first message here at Fulp Moravian came out of Romans, chapter 1, verse 16:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,
for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes,
for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith;
as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’”

So we continue to walk in our faith, no matter what anyone around us thinks of the gospel of Jesus, no matter what anybody thinks of the message of the cross.
We walk strongly in our belief.
We stand for our belief.
We share our belief.
We share the Word of God.
We share what God has done for us.

We are talking about sharing the witness.
One of the strongest ways to share the witness of the gospel of Christ is to have some of the verses that you love and believe and that have been proved over and over to you.

For me, those verses include Romans 8:28:
“All things work together for good to them who love the Lord, to them who are called according to His purpose.”
I have seen that work over and over and over in my life.
I can share that verse and I can share the different things that have happened in my life—things everybody would see as bad—that God has used for good, and how that has changed things that were big and heartbreaking and made them worth it all.

What about this promise of Jesus:
“Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world gives give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid”?
The peace that Jesus brings, when everything else has fallen apart—to experience that, to walk in that—is powerful.
I can talk directly about how God has affected my life through that promise.

So when we come to people with Scripture that we love dearly because it has proved itself to us, and we share what has happened in our life—the victory that Christ has brought, the ways He has proved Himself to us—that gets people thinking, even people who do not believe.
Sometimes it takes a lot of conversation.
Sometimes it takes years of conversation.
Sometimes it takes the Lord bringing five, six, twelve, twenty people across someone’s path with different stories like that.
Eventually they say, “There has got to be something to this,” and they start to seek God.
That is what we want.

But if we let those who view the world differently from us shame us, cause us to retreat, cause us to be silent, then they may never hear the gospel of Jesus Christ—the message of the cross.

That is our sole purpose as a church—whether it is the church at Fulp, the Moravian Church, or the worldwide Church: to take the message of the cross—Christ crucified, Christ risen—the message that He can redeem us and restore us and make us children of God and change us.

Wow.
The cross of Christ.
How awesome is that.

So I would just say to you: never be ashamed.
Remember what God’s Word has told us.
When somebody confronts you about what you believe, when somebody tries to tell you you are foolish, you are wrong, remember that the wisdom of God is strong.
The wisdom of God is strong.
He will open minds and hearts to it through the message of the cross and the work of the Holy Spirit.
Be faithful to bear that message.

I want to share with you an old song that we used to sing years ago, and it has been a long time since I have sung it. We will see if I can sing:

“Kneel at the cross,
Christ will meet you there;
Come while He waits for you.
Listen to His voice,
Leave with Him your care,
Start your life anew.

Kneel at the cross,
Leave every care;
Kneel at the cross,
Jesus will meet you there.

Kneel at the cross,
There is room for all
Who would His glory share.
Bliss there awaits,
Harm can never befall
Those who are anchored there.

Kneel at the cross,
Leave every care;
Kneel at the cross,
Jesus will meet you there.

Kneel at the cross,
Give your rivals up,
Look unto realms above.
Turn not away
To life’s sparkling cup;
Trust only in His love.

Kneel at the cross,
Leave every care;
Kneel at the cross,
Jesus will meet you there.”

Father, I just thank You for this time together, and I thank You for the words that we find in Your Scripture.
We thank You for the truth of it.
We thank You for the encouragement of it.

Father, we thank You that, all these years, You are still bringing folks out of the wisdom of this world into Your wisdom, into faith, into belief, into life—new life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And Father, we just pray in this day that Your Church, Your followers and believers, would not be upset when others challenge them in their faith, would not be upset when others belittle what they believe, would not be upset when folks mock or persecute them for their belief, but that they would remain strong and more encouraged and more determined to win folks to Jesus Christ through Your Word, through our testimony, through prayer, and through the work of the Holy Spirit.

So, Father, in the days, the months, the years that You have left for us, give us strength.
Give us courage to move forward with the message of His love.
Give us courage to lift up the cross to our family, our friends, our co-workers, to everyone around us.

You have told us the words of Jesus.
Jesus said, “If I am lifted up, I will draw all people unto Me.”

So, Father, let our lives be lives of witness, of lifting up the cross of Christ and the message of Christ before the world, that they may believe and that You would receive the honor and the glory forever and ever.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.