The Power and Wisdom of the Cross

Ron, well, it’s good to see you from here. This is a first. You look good this way. And Ron, thank you for the opportunity. I’d like to begin with prayer, if you would bow with me, please. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gathering of your church, for the blessing that you have woven into our lives to have one day in seven, for worship and for works of service and for rest. We thank you for this congregation and for this moment in this congregation. Lord, as we open your scripture, we ask that your spirit would bless each one of us, apply your word to our hearts, give us clear understanding and give us the determination to follow through in applying your word. Our prayer is that you would be glorified in our response to your truth.

We pray in Jesus’ name, amen. We’re going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter one, verses 18 to 25 today. I invite you to turn there and see for yourself what God’s word says to you. As has been mentioned today is Palm Sunday. This is the day of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem one week before his resurrection.

He was fulfilling prophecy by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, by receiving loud praise from a huge crowd of people. And among the many thousands of people, it seems that Jesus was the only one who understood that the loud cries of Hosanna in the highest would morph into crucify him, crucify him on Friday of the same week. This day is called Palm Sunday because the crowds were so worked up that they paved his way into Jerusalem by taking off their coats and laying them on the ground. And then not having enough of that, they started cutting branches from the trees. so that he wouldn’t have any dust as he entered Jerusalem on that donkey.

Jesus ministered in Jerusalem that week until Thursday night when his enemies arrested him. They held an illegal trial in the middle of the night at the private residence of the high priest, breaking at least seven of their own laws, and found him guilty and condemned him to die. But the Jews at that time were subjects of Roman rule and had no power to execute anyone legally. And so Friday morning, they took him to the Roman governor and with some significant political maneuvering and getting the crowd worked up to yell, crucify him, crucify him, Jesus was condemned to die. And so on Friday, Jesus was taken by Roman soldiers and nailed to the cross.

Now the cross and its implications will be the focus of our time today as we look at 1 Corinthians 1. Now the cross is something that is sometimes neglected and sometimes misunderstood by the church. The cross has taken on connotations now that it did not have in the early 1st century. And these new ideas about the cross would have been very perplexing to 1st century citizens. Now the cross might be a beautiful piece of jewelry or a cherished feature in a beautiful building or a marker on a grave to tell everyone on earth who it was that the deceased hoped in. Now the cross is a symbol of hope and of victory.

But the cross is only those things because of what Jesus did in going to his cross, dying there for sinners and being raised on the third day victorious. Before Jesus’ victory over death came to be understood, the cross was something else altogether.

It was an instrument of execution. It was only that. It was a form of execution reserved only for the very worst offenders. It was used by Roman authorities to strike terror in the hearts of subjugated populations all across their empire, and it was a very effective technique for keeping those populations under control. Death by crucifixion was a horrible process. By law, no Roman citizen could be crucified. This was only for the non-Romans.

A person who died on a cross, endured the cruelest form of death that anyone could have imagined, that human ingenuity had come up with. This was as bad as it was. It was shameful. It was horrible to behold, and very much more horrible to endure. Death on a cross was a very slow and agonizing death, and to maximize the intimidation for the populace, The Romans carried out their crucifixions in the most public possible way. They usually put the crosses at a crossroads so that the maximum number of people going about their business as usual could be exposed to the horror. They could hear it. They could see it. No one would ever have dreamed of decorating with a cross in the early 1st century. No one would ever have considered wearing that shape to enhance personal beauty.

That came later, after Jesus’ work was understood, after his victory was embraced by many. In the early 1st century, the cross was a reproach. It was a shameful thing. Now the people that the early church were trying to reach with the gospel understood the cross that way. It was a reproach, it was shameful. And because the cross was so uniformly negative then, some Christians in the first century began to downplay the cross as a part of the Christian message. No matter who they were talking to, the cross was a hard sell.

So to the Jews that the Christians were witnessing to, it was a real stumbling block. The Jews of that generation were looking for miracles. They wanted to repeat some of those Old Testament victories. They wanted tangible proof that God was in it. They wanted bread from heaven to meet their needs, fire from heaven to destroy their enemies. They wanted something grand that would bring them victory.

And the cross was the exact opposite of that. It was an embarrassment. It was the ultimate weakness. Their thought would be, why would you follow a guy who died that way? But the cross was also a hard sell to people influenced by the Greek culture, which was pretty much the rest of society. They wanted worldly wisdom in their religion. They wanted it all to make sense. They wanted an appeal to their intellect. They wanted a neat system that they could buy into and be proud of.

And the cross just doesn’t give any of that. So they tended to scoff at the idea of a savior who would die in such a shameful way. And so for some believers, even as they were faithful to witness, there was a tendency that was growing to try to work around this part of the message that was making everybody do this. It seemed to make the message too hard to hear.

And so they were trying to find a workaround. Now in the city of Corinth, that tendency among Christians to begin to diminish or ignore the cross had begun to have some effect. Corinth was a very cosmopolitan city. People there tended to be pretty sophisticated, pretty urban kind of folks. Many of them were very successful, they were worldly wise, and the shame of the cross just didn’t go well with these people. The danger was that the church would begin to neglect this part of the message.

And so God addressed that problem through Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 verses 18 through 25. I hope you’ll look at your copy of God’s word as we think about the power and the wisdom of the cross. 1 Corinthians 1, beginning with verse 18. Scripture says, for the word 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 the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

For indeed, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. to Jews a stumbling block, and to 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.

Paul uses this part of his letter to acknowledge that the message of the cross is indeed foolishness to a lot of people. Lancet verse 18 again, if you would. He says, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Now this means that the Corinthians had not just imagined this problem that people were repulsed by this message of the cross.

Paul does not say to them, now listen guys, it’s not as bad as you think. He doesn’t say, you’re making more of this than is really there. He says straight up, this is foolishness to those who are perishing. That needs to be acknowledged. The world still rejects this message. For those who are perishing, it is a message that seems utterly foolish, but it hits those who are being saved in a very different way.

To us, it’s the power of God. Now it’s interesting, but if we take the whole passage, it seems that Paul is lumping into this phrase, us who are being saved, even the people who have not yet heard the gospel, but who are going to respond well when they hear it. In verse 24, he calls us the called. Well, some of the called have not recognized being called yet, but they’re going to, and Paul seems to put them in this category, us who are being saved. God is already drawing some. God is working in their lives already.

So among those who have not come to salvation, that means there are two kinds of people. There are those who are never going to come. They’re never going to repent. And there are others. who will one day hear this message and respond in faith and repent of their sins and be saved. And we don’t know who’s who. All we know from scripture is that both kinds of these people are around us all the time.

But verse 18 refers to those who are perishing and us who are being saved. Some will hear this message of the cross and believe, but everybody here, is unbelieving when they hear it the first time. One group in the process of perishing, the other group in the process of being saved. And Paul’s assertion is this, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. To those who have no hope, they cannot process this message. It seems like utter foolishness, but to those who are being saved, the message of the cross is completely different.

It is the power of God. This thing that seems so foolish is the very thing that God uses to demonstrate his power to save. It’s an encouragement to the church to just realize occasionally there are people who respond well to this message and you will eventually run across some of them if you witness. It still works. God is working in them in such a way that their hearts open to this message. That response depends entirely on what God is doing in the life of the individual.

We have to understand that the message of the cross is the means that God uses to bring about salvation in people’s lives. Those who shy away from the reproach of the cross are being tempted to forget who has to work for anybody to be saved. This is the message he uses and he will use it faithfully. Now, I have to say, the more I meditated on this passage, the more I realized it’s very easy to, it’s surprisingly easy to begin to neglect the concept of the cross in your witnessing.

The thing that brings this about is you have a part in your witnessing. You pray like it depends on God because you know it does, but you have a part and you want to do your part well, and that’s good. And when you witness, you’re looking at a person that you care about. And you’re hearing and seeing and feeling that person’s response.

And if that response is unpleasant, if it’s not what you hoped for and prayed for, the natural tendency is to grope for something more you can say and to think about whether you might need to leave something out next time so things can go better. It’s because you’re interacting with real people that you care about and they’re responding to you and you see their displeasure that you’re attempted to adjust something.

Maybe if we change the message a little this will go better. Maybe we can get a better response if we tweak it a little. We care about these people we want them to respond well. And frankly some of the adjustments that we could make would be good things to make.

We want to work hard on our presentation. We want to be as articulate as possible on the truth of the gospel. We want to be clear. We want to have the most effective reasoning that our feeble minds can produce in that conversation. That’s a good thing to work on. We want to be sure our demeanor is right. We don’t want anything to come through that would make us seem harsh or judgmental. And if we’re really thinking hard about what am I supposed to say next, maybe we’re not coming across like we thought we were. Maybe we could change some of that.

But Paul is explaining in this passage that the message of the cross is not among those things that you can change or diminish. To make that case, Paul points our minds to the very purpose of God in salvation. Look, if you would, at verse 19, please.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. Now that verse is quoted from Isaiah 29, 14, recorded approximately 700 years before the birth of Christ. The ancient nature of that quote is a reminder to us that God’s design has always been to humiliate human efforts to produce righteousness.

His purpose was always to show that human wisdom is actually foolishness and that human power in the category of producing salvation is utterly futile. In attempting to gain acceptance with God under their own power, people only managed to demonstrate that they are foolish and weak. So God determined before time began that he would save people in a way that would completely humiliate all human efforts to produce salvation. He did that by making the cross of Jesus Christ the only hope of salvation. His purpose was to destroy the arrogant, self-serving wisdom of this world. And knowing that we would be tempted to alter the message to try to get a better response, God inspired Paul to write these words. Look at verses 20 and 21, please.

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God. God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. Through its own wisdom, the world did not come to know God.

They made up gods, but they never came to know the true God. No one has ever come to God under his own power. People are still trying, but it doesn’t work. It’ll never work. People cannot produce their own righteousness, nor can they produce a little bit of righteousness to add to what Christ has done and help God get us over the finish line. We got nothing to offer. Everything we do in attempt to impress God puts us further from him, not nearer to him.

So instead, God was pleased to save those who believe and to do that through the foolishness of a message in which the reproach of Jesus Christ is absolutely central. Now that’s not what is demanded by the world. Verse 22 points it out, saying, for indeed, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom. And these two types of demands are still very common today among the unbelieving. Some people want a miraculous sign. They want to feel the power.

They want something tangible so that they can know God is in it and they don’t have to live by faith. Insist on outwardly successful ministries, popular messages, powerful programs with great influence and a strong financial statement. They want signs. They want proof so they don’t have to act based on trust. Now the other cap of people who are perishing demand wisdom.

They want a system of belief that appeals to their personal pride. They want to be affirmed. They want their notions to be accommodated. They want an intellectually pleasing system of religion that appeals to their worldliness and seems wise according to the system they’re already in. Now, people can be very insistent in demanding these things. They have a strong consumer mindset.

Give me what I want or I’ll shop somewhere else is the attitude. And sadly, many, many people have tried to give them what they want. And in the saddest cases of all, those people have succeeded in drawing a huge crowd of people who are religious on the surface, and further from God than they were when they started. Scripture uses a different strategy. So having acknowledged what people want, Paul makes an assertion in verses 23 to 25. Look at those verses, please. But we preach Christ crucified.

To Jews, a stumbling block, and to 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.”

In other words, the message doesn’t change based on the demands of the audience. Paul acknowledged what the world wants, and then he said, but we preach Christ crucified. Despite all the demands being issued by the unbelieving regarding what they want Christians to be like and do, this is the message. Of course it’s a stumbling block to those who are asking for miracles. Of course it’s foolishness to those who lust after worldly wisdom. Christ crucified is the message.

We don’t know which people around us are perishing and which ones are being drawn to the Lord in the process of being saved. But we need to know that God uses one message to save those souls, and that is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The power of God and the wisdom of God are found in the cross of Jesus Christ. This cross that offends so many people shows us God’s power and God’s wisdom. Now let’s think for a minute about this power. What is this talking about? Well, the cross demonstrates God’s power to save.

It shows through apparent failure and human weakness, God’s power to accomplish salvation in the lives of sinners. Specifically, the cross shows God’s power to eliminate the problem of sin that binds people in their destruction. Now consider the magnitude of your own sin. Now sin includes rebellion against God, I think everybody gets that, but sin also includes neglecting to do what you should have done And it includes every thought that is in conflict, even for a moment, with a holy God.

How many times have you done that? Not really a fair question. Because every one of us has done that many thousands of times more than we even notice. We’re going about our day, we think we’re fine, we’re doing things that are offensive to a holy God, We don’t even know how bad we are.

But what you can remember, what you can think of, just think of that and then decide how many thousands to multiply that by for all the times you were oblivious to your own sin. And then consider the magnitude of all of the sins of everybody who has ever trusted Jesus or ever will trust Jesus in all of time. then think of the power demonstrated in this.

Jesus took on himself the punishment that was due to us for each and every one of those sins. Punishment that we deserved. He took on himself the punishment for every one of those sins. He took on that colossal mass of sin on the cross and in a single act, he put that sin away forever. How great is the magnitude of that body of sin, that incredible offense against a holy God?

That’s what Jesus took on on the cross. How much power did it take to put that away forever in a single act once for all? That is the power of God in the cross. What Jesus did on the cross was offer his perfect life in substitution for all of the people who would ever trust him for salvation.

He took our sins on himself. Then he took our punishment by sacrificing his life for us. Punishment for sin is death. He took that. He could do that for everyone because he had lived a perfect life. He was God in human flesh. He had never sinned. And so he offered an infinite life to satisfy the wrath of an infinite God. Having paid for our sins, he imputed to us the righteousness that was his own.

Second Corinthians 5.21 says, he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God. That transaction is the power of the cross. Jesus did it all in a single moment.

First Peter 3.18 says, for Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. power beyond human comprehension. For centuries, God had been holding back his wrath over sin. He said in Isaiah 48 and nine, for the sake of my name, I delay my wrath and for my praise, I restrain it for you in order not to cut you off. For centuries, God was holding back his wrath so that his purpose in our lives could be accomplished and we would not be destroyed. Think about all of those events in the Old Testament where God intervened and killed evildoers.

That was not but a glimpse of his wrath. Even the global flood was not the fullness of his wrath, just a glimpse. The only time that the fullness of God’s wrath has ever been seen by those who can see it with faith is on the cross of Jesus Christ. He did not hold back his wrath.

Jesus took all of it. all of it for all of the people who would ever trust him, took it on himself, endured it, and quenched the wrath of God on our behalf. That was his work on the cross. He quenched the wrath of God for everyone who would trust him. None of God’s wrath will ever be applied to any of us who believe because Jesus paid it all. That’s why all of our sins are forgiven forever the moment we believe. Well, this passage says the cross, the word of the cross is the power of God, but it also says it’s the wisdom of God.

In our lost state, we chased after every mirage of wisdom. What we found is that humanity doesn’t have any wisdom of its own. It was all an illusion. In the end, sin was there to plague us with guilt and condemn us before a holy God We were striving in our lost state, demanding things of religion, vigorously pursuing things, and we were getting further and further from God. Our form of wisdom blinded us to our need. Our pursuits affirmed us in our blindness and bound us even deeper in our condemnation.

We needed divine wisdom. And that divine wisdom is manifest in the cross. God demonstrated wisdom so far superior to ours that he could take the weakest, most tragic, most unjust human moment in all of history with his son dying on the cross and use that to redeem everyone who would believe. It’s only in the cross that the problem of human foolishness is solved. It’s only in the cross that strivings can cease and contentment can be found. In the cross, God’s wisdom works so that our spiritual blindness is healed, so that our hearts are reconciled to him.

By the wisdom of the cross, we learn to stop trying to create our own righteousness. We bow to God’s wisdom. We embrace the reproach that bought our salvation, and we learn to understand life according to God’s values. We gain the wisdom that enables us to know what to do, how to think about the world that we live in, how to think about the God that we serve. All of that comes from the cross.

For his own glory, God demonstrated his power and his wisdom through something low and shameful. He demonstrated power to save by undergoing weakness. He demonstrated wisdom to fulfill every human need by undergoing something that seemed foolish. In human wisdom, people seek to be saved by the things that damn them. They look to their own minds, their own pursuits, their own accomplishments, their own attempts at righteousness. And by these, they try to gain favor with God, and they get further and further the more they do. These are the very things that empower sin and bring condemnation. In the wisdom of God, he provided for salvation by the only thing that could strip us of our foolishness and bring us to God.

We must believe that the work of Jesus on the cross is sufficient to satisfy the righteousness of God, and we must acknowledge who Jesus is and what he did. Romans 10, 9 and 10 gives a promise. If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. That’s the power and wisdom of the crow. Power to save you, power to align you with God’s wisdom. It’s very important that the church not alter or neglect that message.

People still demand worldly success. They still want signs and wonders. People still don’t want to live by faith. They don’t want to have to trust. They want you to prove it. And they’re still very insistent that the church give them what they want. But we preach Christ crucified because it’s the only message that helps anyone. We don’t do that to be stubborn. We don’t do it out of arrogance. We don’t insist on preaching Christ crucified because we think the whole world has to adjust to us because we’re the ones. It’s not like that at all. We just recognize with Paul, only one message God uses to save souls, and we will not divert from that message.

We have to be true to it. First, embracing it as we come to salvation, and then by proclaiming it for the rest of our lives. Bow with me in prayer, please. Our Father, we pray that you would take your word and apply it to each heart within hearing today according to your purpose. Give us tender hearts, give us ready minds. Do your work in us, Lord, and be glorified. We pray in Jesus’ name.