The Cross and the Pulpit, Part 2 | Christ, His Cross, His Church

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Now fourth point here, we’ve seen the crucifixion was, was, common in ancient history. It was a sign of disgrace. It was sadistic. And now we dig even deeper into the spiritual connections that it has in the, the, lessons that it has for us here. And let me just preface it by saying this, I would venture to say that for most of you, as you hear this and you contemplate and identify with the, the, men who are being crucified, that there’s an element of sympathy that you have for them.

 Say what a, what a, terrible way to die. I’ve. It’s such a what I, I, feel so bad that, that, people died like that, and they suffered like that, and, you know, and they were, they were, humiliated like that. And there’s a sense of sympathy that we have for them and perhaps rightly so. Whether that’s right or wrong doesn’t matter for our discussion here.

Now, Gentiles and Jews scorned, despised these men, but they despised them for different reasons, and that’s critical for the exposition that’s still yet to come. They scorned them for different reasons. For Gentiles, non-Jews in other words, crucifixion was a virtual obscenity. Even the word crucifixion was a virtual obscenity, that was not to be discussed in polite company, which is kind of, kind of, an interesting juxtaposition. They do it publicly, but in polite company you would not talk about that at all.

 And so, in the environment, as the apostles and others began to preach, beloved, there was no possible way that the gospel was a means to profit, prestige, and glory. as they did that, as they highlighted in that culture that despised crucified men, and despised the very idea of a cross, they highlighted, lifted high the cross of Christ, and a great cultural collision was taking place, and Gentiles mocked it.

 And one Christian apologist, in his writings, summarize the Gentile attack on the gospel in this way, he said, “They proclaim our madness to consist of this, that we give to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the creator of all.” Now, in human wisdom, the Gentile critique makes perfect sense.

 We’ve been seeing men crucified by that point for six centuries. We despise these men. They’re weak, defeated men at the hands of the empire. And now you come preaching and telling me that it’s, it’s, laughable from the Gentile perspective. You come and tell me that, that, a crucified man is God and Savior and the only redeemer of mankind. Right! What have you been smoking? What is so distorted in your head that you would say something like that?

All of this, beloved, deeply ingrained on social consciousness at the time. As much as we have an instinctive, as much as, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is imprinted on our collective American consciousness. Multiply that by maybe a factor of 50 or 500 and understand that the, the, the, attitudes that I’ve been describing here, that’s how deeply ingrained it was on social consciousness in the first century. Those were the gentile attitudes.

 What about the Jews? Well, turn in your bibles to Deuteronomy 21, Deuteronomy 21. What about the Jews? For all that I’ve said about the Gentiles, the Jews held crucified men in even greater contempt than what I’ve already described about the Gentiles. Greater contempt, with biblical reason, the Jews believed that crucified men were cursed by God.

 Look at verses 22 and 23 of Deuteronomy 21. Moses writes, “If a man has committed a crime punishable by death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day. For a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”

 You see a hanged man, by biblical inspired definition, a man is cursed, in the Old Testament economy. And what Jews would do, Jews would hang corpses on a cross to humiliate the victims. They just put them up briefly to show that they would cursed, and then bring them down quickly. So, the men were already dead and they would use, they would use, that sign of contempt, especially for blasphemers and idolaters. And so, the crucifixion signified judgement against that deceased person.

 And a second century Jewish writing says this, he says, “Why is this one hanged? Because he cursed the name and the name of heaven was found defiled.” So Jews say he’s cursed. We humiliate him in order to vindicate the holiness of God, you could say. And this happened to him because the name of heaven was defiled by who he was and what he did.

 And so you have the Gentile contempt, a mocking, scorning contempt. You have Jews viewing these crucified victims as those under the curse of God, and that’s comprehensive of the world in the first century. You got Jews, you got Gentiles, that covers everyone, and there is this universal rejection of crucified men.

 In light of that, it demands us to ask, how then did the gospel ever advance in a society like that. In a culture like that. A gospel that features a crucified man, that says that this crucified man is God and Lord, that he is the only Savior of mankind, and he is raised from the dead. And you need to repent and believe and, and, receive this crucified man as Lord of your life, and submit to him, and entrust your eternal destiny to him. This is madness.

 Viewed from a human perspective, this is utter madness. How could he be Lord and God and not, not, deliver himself from crucifixion? He’s going to deliver me, but he couldn’t deliver himself. That was the argument that, that, the Pharisees made as they mocked him on the cross. And if you want to make this your fifth point, the cross is the power of God. The cross is the power of God. You know, and the modern idea being come to Jesus and have a glorious, have a glorious life.

 Hear football coaches after a big win, giving glory to Jesus in, in, in, victory, as if, you know, and it’s just, it’s all the theology of glory coming out in boasting of a victory. Jesus was good to me. Nothing like that would have been possible in the first century. This is a direct, in the first century, this was a direct cultural collision of most fundamental consequence.

 And as you go back to 1 Corinthians now, now, you’ve got a background to grasp something of the magnitude of what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, when he says in verse 18, he says, “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing.” Well yeah, it is. It was utter folly to them for all of the reasons that I’ve outlined to you here.

 So he says, but there’s a contrast to the elect. There’s a contrast to the people of God. To us, it is the power of God. What the world despises, we embrace. And Paul, here’s where it gets so instructive for our philosophy of ministry, in the way and the content of what we preach. Paul did not evade that cultural collision.

Paul, Paul did not cater to what he thought the audience wanted. He gave them directly what he knew in their natural minds, they could only reject. Look at verse 21 of 1 Corinthians chapter one, where he says, “For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom.”

 It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. The world thought it was folly. Gentiles, Jews, they thought it was folly what Paul had to say. And what Paul says is that the theology of the cross is what pleases God; so that what men reject and say is foolish, is what God is pleased to use to save souls and bring men into his kingdom.

Then look at the core text here of what we’ll consider in the remaining time. Verse 22, “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

What Paul is saying here is that when Jews came for preaching, they wanted a display of miraculous wonders. They wanted signs to verify a messianic claim. Gentiles wanted verbal eloquence. They wanted rhetoric. And you can see this, Paul at in Acts chapter 17 and, and, how they would gather together just to hear something new.

 Gentiles wanted verbal eloquence to gratify their, their, intellect. So, so give us a sign from heaven, give us a, give us a, an eloquent display of rhetoric and maybe we’ll listen to you. Paul was having none of it. He preaches Christ crucified to them. He preached a crucified man as the God of the universe and the only Savior of mankind. And humanly speaking, it was something that they could only impulsively, by a knee jerk reaction, automatically reject in their natural minds. A crucified man, God and Savior, that’s absurd. I’m out of here.

Look at verse 23, Paul says, “We preach Christ crucified. A stumbling block to Jews,” a stumbling block. The, the, Greek word, Skandalon, means a temptation to sin or an enticement to apostasy and unbelief. Paul says the very content of what I preach tempts people to apostasy and turning away. To the Jews, it was an oxymoron.

 The Messiah could not be cursed, and the, the, offence of Paul’s message caused Jews to turn away, apart from a work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. To Gentiles, you read it there in verse 23, “it was folly to them.” That word, folly, in the original language, Moria. It’s the word that we get moron from.

To Gentiles, to say a, gr, crucified man was king was stupid. It was moronic. And they just throw up their hands, rejected, and walk away. Paul not preaching a seeker sensitive message. Paul not preaching a message designed to bring in the multitudes. Paul preaching a message designed to bring in the elect of God under the power of the Holy Spirit.

 Contemporary writers variously called Christianity a pernicious superstition, a sick delusion, a perverse and extravagant superstition. The gospel contradicted all prevailing thought. One modern historian says this. He says, “That to believe that the one pre-existent son of the one true God, the mediator at creation and the redeemer of the world, had appeared in very recent times, in out of the way Galilee, as a member of the obscure people of the Jews and even worse, had died the death of a common criminal on the cross, could only be regarded as a sign of madness.”

And yet, beloved, in the midst of a society like that, you read the Gospel of Acts. You know anything about early church history, the gospel flourished. The gospel spread like wildfire in a dehydrated forest. Point being, God uses what the world despises to achieve his purpose, to advance the gospel. The shame of crucifixion from the first century to now, that has been lost in the haze of time. It doesn’t strike our ears like it did in the first century.

 And so crucifixion, per se, is not the stumbling block or the foolishness that it would seem to be, that it was in the first century. It’s not the immediate stumbling block directly. But here’s what we need to see for this weekend, the Apostolic example of preaching the cross in the face and in the teeth of a culture and a philosophical system that was diametrically and unalterably opposed to it. That is our pattern for pulpit ministry here today.

 Beloved, culture and philosophy will always reject the true gospel, and our postmodern society rejects it for different reasons. It rejects the very concept of absolute truth. People appeal to feelings to validate what’s true for them, always lead to God. We, we, must respect other opinions and all of that. And the message of Scripture is; no! There is absolute truth.

There’s only one way to God, “the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And any opinions that contradict the gospel, contradict biblical truth, are false and sinful by definition. A greater cultural collision in the 21st century cannot be imagined. Just as preaching a crucified man in the first century could not be, create a greater cultural collision, could be imagined.

 You see, beloved, and this is also so very foundational and fundamental to everything that we do. The message of Christ crucified tells us how to minister in this age. Whatever else we do, whatever we may do on, second, secondary matters of how we structure a church or, you know, what we do with ministry. What unites true preachers of the word of God is this, is that we do not ever yield to cultural demands! We do not ever yield to cultural presuppositions, in order to accommodate the message, so the people will not reject it. We do not seek to accommodate our preaching to men at all. We, we, go to Scripture, we study it, we see what God has to say, what God has revealed. We understand that. And then we preach it. Regardless of the consequences. Regardless of how men reject it. Regardless of what other false teachers are doing.

 We have a vertical responsibility before a holy God to whom we will one day give an account. And for those who teach and preach the word of God, that is the single and only ultimately controlling motivation that determines what we do. And so, we go out into this culture, this postmodern culture that mocks Christianity.

 In a, in a, similar way to what it was done in the first century, and without apology, without fear, without currying the favor of men. We insist on the principle of absolute truth. We insist on the exclusivity of the gospel. And, and, look beloved, we understand, as we do that, that this will not bring us glory with men. We understand that this will not give us platforms with the cultural elite, and we could not possibly care less about that.

What we care about is that God honors his word, that his word goes forth, and it doesn’t return void. What we care about, what I care about, is it the message that I preach, biblical message, it’s what saved my soul. I’m not going to give that up to anybody. And I know that it’s the message that saves other souls, and I need to love them enough to be true to the message, regardless of the rejection it might bring to me. And this is the way all men of God, true men of God, think.

 See, this type of preaching will be blessed with power, not as measured by attendance, not as measured by inflated book sales that are artificially ginned up by marketing strategies. This is the message. This is the preaching. This is the pulpit that is anointed by God, the Holy Spirit, with true spiritual authority. And the true man of God wants nothing else than that. Whether he’s preaching to an empty room or whether he’s preaching to thousands, it makes no difference. You’re loyal to the message. You’re loyal to the God of the message, and you let him do what he will with those who hear.

 Ian Murray says this. And it’s so helpful, he says, “To make the Christian message acceptable to unregenerate men. In other words, to take out that which is offensive and make it intelligible. To do that is to deny it. The nature of Christian truth is such that it requires a new birth in order to receive it, because man by nature is a hater of God.” End Quote.

 We cannot. We cannot, we cannot, we cannot. We cannot take the true gospel and accommodate it and make it something that men like. The natural man rejects the things of God. First Corinthians, chapter 2, verse 14, “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.”

 As soon as you, as soon as you try to make it something that’s appealing to the unregenerate man, you have denied the message altogether. And so, we preach the word, whether the world likes it or not. And those of you, younger men may be contemplating, should I go into ministry? Should I preach the word of God? God bless you. God give you wisdom. Understand, understand that if you were to approach a Christian pulpit, you do it with an unalterable, unshakable commitment that says, I will be loyal to Christ, I will be loyal to Scripture regardless of what men say about me, regardless of how men respond.

 Charles Spurgeon in a quote I’ve often used in over the years. Charles Spurgeon said this and with this I close. He says, “This talking about Christ crucified is said to be archaic, and not at all suitable to the refinement of this wonderful age. But our mind is made-up, and our foot is put down. If it be foolish to preach up atonement by blood, we will be fools. And if it be madness to stick to the old truth, just as Paul delivered it, we mean to stick to it. For we are persuaded that the cross of Christ, which stumbles so many and is ridiculed by so many more, is still the power of God and the wisdom of God. Yes, just the old fashioned truth. If you believe you shall be saved, that we will stick to and may God send his blessing upon it according to his own eternal purpose.”