The Man
on the Middle Cross Said I Can Come - by Alistair Begg (sermon text with video clip)
I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians and to chapter
1 and to follow along as I read from verse 18.
As you turn there, a moment to say a sincere thank you for
the privilege of being here this evening. To come to a place that I’ve never
been, to be welcomed by folks that, by and large, I don’t know is another
testimony to the wonder of what it means to be united to Christ and to be part
of the body of Christ. It’s a happy thing for a Scotsman to be in the great
state of Texas, because we have a long history and association with Texas. If
you know your history, you’ll know that approximately 40 percent of the original
three hundred colonists who settled here with Stephen F. Austin at the
beginning of the nineteenth century were all of Scottish descent. And when we
began to export our famous Aberdeen Angus cattle from Scotland, we sent them
first of all here to Texas in 1883. I first made a visit here in 1972 for Explo
’72 when I was twenty years of age, and I remember very vividly so many things
about it. And so, to be invited back is, as I say, a privilege.
First Corinthians 1:18:
“For the word of the cross”—or “the message of the
cross”[1]—“is folly 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 discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one
who is wise? 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 did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what
we preach to save those who believe. 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. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and
the weakness of God is stronger than men.
“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were
wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of
noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God
chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and
despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things
that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. [He is the
source of your life] in Christ Jesus, [whom God made our] wisdom … [and our]
righteousness and sanctification and redemption[; therefore,] as it is written,
‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’”
Amen.
And a brief prayer, an old Anglican prayer:
Father, what we know not, teach us. What we have not, give
us. What we are not, make us. For your Son’s sake. Amen.
Well, my text is essentially the eighteenth verse, and my
topic is the power or the message of the cross. And I should say at the very
outset—especially if somebody says, “Well, why choose such a topic for this
evening? Is it really necessary to come to an event like this, to a place like
this, and address the matter of the centrality of the cross?”—well, I should
say that I have not arrived here to tell you something that you do not know,
but rather that we would remind each other of that which we must never forget.
In 1951, James Denney, who was a Scottish theologian, remarking at the
beginning of that decade: the cross “has less than its proper place in
preaching and in theology.”[2] One could only wonder what Denney would have to
say if he were to reappear at this point, certainly in my native Scotland.
Three simple observations by way of introduction.
First of all, the cross is rejected by other religions.
Islam rejects the notion of a sin-bearing Savior. According to the Qur’an, each
one shall reap the fruit of their own deeds. And therefore, there is no place,
there is no need, for the cross. And indeed, to the Muslim mind, it is
unthinkable that a major prophet of God should come to such an ignominious end.
Hinduism, while accepting the historicity of the death of Christ, rejects its
saving significance. And humanism, in all of its forms in contemporary selfism,
rejects the notion of the cross entirely. In an earlier era, a rather arrogant
professor from Oxford University remarked that Christianity is the worst of all
religions—he’d said, because it rests “on the allied doctrines of original sin
and vicarious atonement, which,” he said, “are intellectually contemptible and
morally outrageous.”[3] So the cross is rejected by other religions.
The cross is marginalized by liberal scholarship. In liberal
thinking throughout, certainly, the last 150 years, the essence of Christianity
is the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is an exemplar. He’s an ethicist. He is in
some places the leader of a liberation army. The incarnation is defined apart
from its relationship to the death of the Lord Jesus on the cross. It’s a kind
of Harry Belafonte kind of Christianity: that “man will live forevermore
because of Christmas Day.”[4] But in actual fact, the incarnation without the
atonement has nothing at all to say to us.
So, if it is rejected by religions, if it is marginalized by
liberal scholarship, what will we say further? Well—and this is painful—the
cross is in danger of being trivialized by the approach of much contemporary
evangelicalism. I’ll say again: this is bitter. We should examine ourselves in
this regard and recognize that the rehearsing of clichés and evangelical
mantras should not be equated with a central emphasis on the cross of the Lord
Jesus Christ—an emphasis which declares its necessity, which establishes its
meaning, and which does not shy away from its offense; the offense which is
clearly stated by Paul in this section: “The message of the cross is
foolishness to those who are perishing.”[5] But that is exactly what Paul
preached.
Somebody puts up their hand and immediately says, “But of
course, Alistair, we have moved a long way from those days. Time has gone by.
That was then, and that was there. But this is here, and this is now. Wasn’t
Paul just able to do this because that’s the kind of thing that people in
Paul’s day were happy to hear?” Actually, no. If he had chosen to respond to
the expectations of his listeners, he would have spent the afternoon performing
miracles, and then he would have had a crowd over to his tent later in the
evening, when they could sit around and discuss philosophy. It wasn’t just that
he chose not to give them what they wanted; he continued to provide them with
the one thing they didn’t want. Now, what possible idea of church growth is
this, that you set your stall up to make sure that whatever it is that appeals
to people, you’ve decided, “I’m going to set that aside, and why don’t I talk
to them about something else? Why don’t I give them this story of a crucified
Christ?” Especially if I’ve got a number of Jewish people listening! Because it
stumbles them. And of course, the gentiles, they just thought it was absolutely
ridiculous. Why do such a thing? Why do it then, and why do it now?
Well, in large measure, it falls on from where we have been
earlier, in terms of this great paradox, not only revealed as it is outlined
there in 2 Corinthians 4 but also in this respect: that God’s power is seen in
weakness, and his wisdom is revealed in the foolishness of what is preached;
that the cross is actually not simply a central event of biblical theology, but
the cross is actually the pivotal event of human history. Can you imagine going
into the history faculty at one of the great universities here in Texas and
saying, “You know, I’d like to give a talk to the class. I’d like to explain to
them that whatever their perspective of ancient history and ancient Rome and
Greece and right through into the twenty-first century, I want to be able to
explain to them that they will never understand history as it is taught them
unless they have a Bible. And they will never understand the Bible unless they
realize that the cross is at the very center of God’s making himself known.”
We can tell people that Christ will come into their hearts
and live, but first they need to know that he has come into the world, lived
and died, and rose again.
You see, all the way through the Bible, God does this,
doesn’t he? We’re studying 1 Samuel at the moment—1 Samuel 16 and 17. I’m
struggling my way through it. If you doubt that, just go online, and you can
see how much I’m struggling. Or better still, phone my wife; she’ll tell you.
At least, she told me on Sunday night I was struggling. But there you have it.
I mean, Samuel says, “Well, Eliab, he’s the big, strong, tall one. He’s the
obvious one.” No, he’s not. We go through the whole seven brothers, and there’s
nobody there at all, till eventually the father, Jesse, says, “Well, there’s
another… We do have another one, just… That fellow. But I never even brought
him up for the interview, because clearly, clearly, he’s not the man.”[6] Oh,
yes, he is the man! Who would think that he would be the man?
And who would think—who would think—that the major problems
of our world and the troubles of human life find their ultimate solution in the
execution of an innocent man in AD 33 and in the preaching of that news about
him to the nations of the world? Who actually believes that? Who believes it,
you see? We do not expect people to believe it. We understand that their
immediate response to it is to say, “You know what? You are a major clown, and
we don’t know where you appeared from, but the sooner you go back, the better.
Because in actual fact, it is obvious to us that such a thing is folly.”
And yet everywhere Paul goes, he does the same thing. He’s
essentially got one string to his bow. He goes into the synagogues again and
again, and he labors to show them that the Messiah had to suffer and die. Check
it out, wherever he goes. And he goes in, and he says, “Now, I want to show you
from the Scriptures that the Messiah had to suffer and die.” And then when he
has done that, he then says, “And this Jesus is that Messiah. This Jesus is
that Christ.” In other words, the Jesus of history is the Lord of glory. He was
pointing out something that we need to point out in our preaching, and that is
that we can tell people that Christ will come into their hearts and live, but
first they need to know that he has come into the world, lived and died, and rose
again. And that historic foundation gives to us the platform upon which we are
then able to encourage them in that way.
Well, we had a little tour round Corinth there, didn’t we?
Thank you, brother. Very, very good: commercial center, lots of shops, and the
Isthmian Games, and the sea and the sailors and everything that comes with it,
and the Temple of Aphrodite, with a focus on the pagan goddess of love. All of
the excessive immorality of the place, so much so that it becomes a byword for
sexual license and excess of every kind. And then, of course, there were all
the bright boys and ladies that lived there with their high-sounding discourses
and the ponderings of the intelligentsia. That was the whole framework. Similar
to Athens, wasn’t it? They spent their time doing nothing other than just
talking about the latest ideas, Luke says of Athens.[7] Similar here. That’s
the context.
And so it is into this significant, decadent city that this
little converted Jew walks. And he says to them, “I’m not going to talk about
myself. I’m not going to try and impress you in the way I speak to you. Because
if I were to do that, you might then just be fascinated by my ability, by my
rhetoric, by my capacity with language, by the philosophical notions that I can
promulgate for you. But I’m not going to do that at all. I’m not here to build
a crowd. No, I’m here just to tell you about the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ, preaching the message in such a way that people would cease trusting in
anything other than the work of God in Christ.”
We didn’t read as far as 2:5, but that’s the point that he
makes. He says, “And the reason for my approach is straightforward: so that
your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”[8]
And where is the power of God displayed? In the weakness. And where is the
epitome of weakness? In this death of a Galilean carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth.
Nothing looked less like a Messiah than that scene on the middle cross, outside
the city wall. Nobody would have walked up there and said, “Oh, this must be
the Messiah!” No, they walked up there and said, “This couldn’t possibly be the
Messiah. After all, the whole thing has come to a crashing halt in a
Palestinian tomb.”
No, the cross is not only a picture of weakness as revealed
in Jesus himself, but he’s actually prepared to say to them, “You know, if you
have a mirror”—one of those things that we were hearing about earlier—“if you
have a mirror, you can prove what I’m telling you. Because think about
yourselves. Think about yourselves. You’re not really a particularly fantastic
group of people.” It’s not very nice to say, but I mean, it’s true. He said…
You’ve got to make sure that you keep the consonants in this. He doesn’t say,
“Not any.” He says, “Not many.” “Not many.”
It’s true. I mean, look at this choir. It’s a very nice
group—still awake, most of them, as far as I can see. That’s the only reason I
turned around, just to check. But I don’t want to be unkind. This is a very
nice church and a nice choir. But you take the average choir on a Sunday, and
you look up there, and you go, “Look at these people. What a funny group of
people.” Right? And they are representative of the larger group of people. And
you say, “We’re going to turn the world upside down with this group? I mean,
they can sing, but…”
And he says, “And if you’re feeling bad that I mentioned
you, why don’t I just mention me? ’Cause I’m no great shakes myself,” he said.
You know, whoever had picked him up at the donkey port or whatever and brought
him home for tea, you know, if, you know, while he was waiting for his evening
meal, the wife said to her husband who’d picked him up, said, “Well, what do
you think? I mean, he hasn’t done anything yet, but…” “Oh,” he says, “he’s a
weird guy, man. He’s got sweaty palms. I don’t know whether he’s nervous or
what it is, but we didn’t have much of a conversation. I don’t know if he’s
going to be much good.”
Weakness! Weak group, weak preacher. Weak! “The word of the
cross is folly to those who are perishing.” They look at that and they say,
“No, it’s never going to happen.”
The Message for the Unbeliever
Now, when we apply this, we have to say first what this
means to the unbeliever. Why this message for the unbeliever? Well, let me
suggest a couple of things.
First of all, because the message of the cross establishes
the gravity of the human condition. The message of the cross establishes the
gravity of sin, says that the story of humanity is the story of man’s rebellion
and man’s alienation and man’s brokenness. And the death of Jesus and the
picture that is then given to us in the Bible causes us to ponder and then to
proclaim that it took the death of God’s perfect Son to deal with my sinful
life, with my alienation, and with my brokenness, and with my rebellion.
Now, I’m pretty sure—but I haven’t checked, ’cause I’m not
here—but I think if you let me loose tomorrow morning anywhere in your city, I
can get agreement from just about anyone that I meet about one subject, and it
is this: that our world is broken. That it is broken. You can broach the
subject in Starbucks. You can broach it on the airplane. Anywhere you want to
go, you will get general agreement that something has gone amazingly wrong. You
get agreement on that when it comes to the issue of not simply dealing with the
symptoms but actually a diagnosis of the cause, then the opportunity for
“evangelism explosion” is just kicking in at that point. But the point I’m
making is straightforward: people are prepared to acknowledge something is
badly up.
If you saw At Eternity’s Gate, the movie—actually, if you
did, you’re in a very small group—but it’s a movie that was made about Van Gogh
most recently, called At Eternity’s Gate. And part of that involves his
interaction with Gauguin, who ended his life in a miserable situation down in
the Islands. And Gauguin, who was brought up as a Roman Catholic and catechized
all through his life and painted and abused his circumstances in all kinds of
ways, his largest painting is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. And he wrote
on that painting—and he doesn’t write on his paintings! And he wrote three
questions up in the corner.:
D'où Venons Nous?
Que Sommes Nous?
Où Allons Nous?
“Where do we come from? What are we? And where are we
going?” And he didn’t have an answer to the question.
And the average millennial out in Texas tonight has no
answer for that question either. They’ve no answer for the question. They have
been raised believing that they exist as a result of time plus matter plus
chance. They are a collection of molecules held in suspension. There is no
ultimate destiny towards which they are moving; therefore, there is no arc that
they’re able to navigate through their lives, and they are at sea. And if the
message that is then offered to them is a kind of watery substitute for the
message of the cross, then we ought not be surprised that they just walk away
from it. Because what we have to face up to is the fact of our rebellion
against God: that no part of our lives is left intact—our emotions, our
affections, our minds, our wills. The anti-God bias which is part and parcel of
our human existence comes in at the level of our understanding and our
intellect. And there is no intellectual road to God.
David Wells, who has been a friend to me over the years, has
a purple passage in one of his books. I can’t remember where it is. But he
talks about how God is beyond the realm of our “intuitive radar,” as he puts
it. It’s a wonderful line. So he says, “There is an invisible boundary” between
ourselves and God[9]—God in his holiness and we in our rebellion and in our
alienation. There is no intellectual road for us to get there. And so it is
that the only way that it is possible is for him to come in down, as it were,
underneath the radar. We cannot access him on our own terms. We cannot access
him in our own time. No, we need him to come and cross the boundary so that we
might know him savingly. And what is the message of the cross? It is that God
in Christ has done exactly that: that he has crossed that boundary and that he
has made himself known.
And so, when we think about it in terms of its gravity in
the predicament that we face, it also is possible for us to explain to our
friends the absolute necessity of God’s grace, which means that we either, in
our proclamation and in our conversation, preach what the Bible says—that human
beings are rebels against God, by nature under his judgment and lost, and that
Jesus crucified, who bore their sin and curse, is the only available Savior—we
either proclaim that, or we emphasize human potential and human ability, with
Christ brought in to boost them, but with no necessity for the cross except to
exhibit God’s love and inspire us to greater endeavor.
The latter is popular. The former is true. If you go with
the latter, no one will say you’re a fool. They say, “No, that’s fine. God,
whoever he is…” I mean, I preach every week to a congregation of people. Many
of them, because of their status in life, they are operating on this basis: “A
good God, if he exists, will reward nice people if they do their best.” That’s
the story. “If there is a good God and he exists, he’ll reward nice people.” In
other words, “If he’s grading on the curve, I’m in with a chance, because
there’s a lot of really bad people, and they’re all sitting just along the row
from me. So they are definitely in the F category or the D-minus category. And
even if I’m only getting a good, solid C-plus, as long as it’s going that way,
I’m in with a very good chance.” No, no, no, it’s not going to work that way.
If that was the case, why would we have Jesus dying on the cross? No, see, it
doesn’t make any sense at all.
So what it does is it establishes the gravity of sin, it
reveals the absolute wonder and necessity of grace, and it allows us to say to
people, “There is a wonderful opportunity for you now to close with this.” You
see, when the “waft of the supernatural,”[10] as James Stewart on one occasion
put it—when “the waft of the supernatural” threw the apostles out onto the
streets of Jerusalem and they began to preach, they didn’t shilly-shally about,
did they? No, no, no. “This Jesus, whom you crucified…” You’ll get yourself
stoned for stuff like that! “This Jesus whom you crucified, he has made him
both Lord and Christ.” And what did they say? “What do you want us to do? What
should we do?”[11]
The average response to the preaching of the Word of God is
not “What shall we do?” but “When can we leave?” It’s, like, “Where are you
going for lunch?” It’s trivial. Or it’s applause. Applause! Who started
applause? Santa Claus. I don’t know who started applause. You said, “Oh, now,
you shouldn’t say that, because we’ve had a lot of applause.” I don’t care if
you’ve had a lot of applause. This is not a performance. This is not something
that you get kudos for! This is, to quote [Thielemann] again—this is horrible!
[Thielemann] says, “The pulpit draws the preacher the way the sea draws the
sailor. To preach, and to really preach, is to die naked, and every time you do
to realize that you’re going to have to do it again.”[12]
That’s what it is: to stand, as M’Cheyne said, as a dying
man in the face of dying men and women, and the issue of eternity is at stake,
and in between a lostness in the grave and the opportunity for reality is the
cross of Jesus Christ. “There … stands the cross” of Christ, with “two arms
outstretched to save.”[13] And that’s what they said: “What do you want us to
do?” And Peter says, “Repent and be baptized every one of you.”[14] Because to
put your confidence and trust in the person and work of the Lord Jesus is
actually to believe the gospel.
The Message for the Believer
Well, it matters, this preaching of the cross, for the
unbeliever, but I suggest to you that it matters also for those of us who
believe—which, I think, would be the vast company this evening, although I
never want to assume that everyone who is here has actually closed with God’s
offer of salvation in Jesus. Calvin, in the Institutes, he says, you know, that
the idea that we simply know it intellectually does not mean that we have
embraced it.[15]
But you believe tonight, and I believe. What, then, is this
message of the cross? Well, I suggest to you that it is first of all a
compelling force. A compelling force. “For the love of Christ compels us.”[16]
“The love of Christ compels us.” When Billy Graham was in transition many, many
years ago, probably in the ’50s, again—I think this is in the book by Pollock,
the biographer—and he didn’t know whether he should stay up in Minneapolis or
wherever he was with the school there (I don’t remember the details) or whether
this tug in his heart was to go out into the world with this great story of
Jesus Christ and him crucified, and he tells of how he walked out through the
forest, and as he walked out through the forest, the hymn that just kept coming
to him again and again:
Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,
Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;
Weep o’er the erring ones, lift up the fallen,
Tell them of Jesus, [he’s] mighty to save.[17]
And he says, “I could not get that out of my heart or my
mind, and the love of Christ compelled me, drove me out with this story of the
death of Christ for sinners.”
FYI --- THE UNDERLINED SECTION BELOW IS WHAT IS INCLUDED IN THE
WIDELY CIRCULATED VIDEO VIDEO CLIP TITLED "THE MAN ON THE MIDDLE CROSS SAID I CAN COME" -- “(4:30) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ibqUrAjrZI
A compelling force—and also, for the believer, a
correcting force. A correcting force. “In what way?” you say. Well, in this
way: without the preaching of the cross, without preaching the cross to
ourselves all day and every day, we will very, very quickly revert to faith
plus works as the ground of our salvation; so that, to go to the old Fort
Lauderdale question—“If you were to die tonight and you were getting entry into
heaven, what would you say?”—if you answer that, and if I answer it, in the
first person, we’ve immediately gone wrong. “Because I…” “Because I believed.
Because I have faith. Because I am this. Because I am continuing.” Loved ones,
the only proper answer’s in the third person: “Because he…” “Because he…”
The man on the middle cross said I can come.
Think about the thief on the cross. What an immense… I
can’t wait to find that fellow one day to ask him, “How did that shake out for
you? Because you were cussing the guy out with your friend. You’d never been in
a Bible study. You’d never got baptized. You didn’t know a thing about church
membership. And yet—and yet, you made it! You made it! How did you make it?”
That’s what the angel must have said—you know, like,
“What are you doing here?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Well, ’cause I don’t know.”
“Well, you know… Excuse me. Let me get my supervisor.”
They go get the supervisor angel: “So, we’ve just a few
questions for you. First of all, are you clear on the doctrine of justification
by faith?”
The guy says, “I’ve never heard of it in my life.”
“And what about… Let’s just go to the doctrine of
Scripture immediately.”
This guy’s just staring.
And eventually, in frustration, he says, “On what basis
are you here?”
And he said, “The man on the middle cross said I can
come.”
Now, that is the only answer. That is the only answer.
And if I don’t preach the gospel to myself all day and every day, then I will
find myself beginning to trust myself, trust my experience, which is part of my
fallenness as a man. If I take my eyes off the cross, I can then give only lip
service to its efficacy while at the same time living as if my salvation
depends upon me. And as soon as you go there, it will lead you either to abject
despair or a horrible kind of arrogance. And it is only the cross of Christ
that deals both with the dreadful depths of despair and the pretentious
arrogance of the pride of man that says, “You know, I can figure this out, and
I’m doing wonderfully well.” No.
Because the sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God the just is satisfied
To look on him and pardon me.[18]
That’s why Luther says most of your Christian life is
outside of you, in this sense: that we know that we’re not saved by good works,
we’re not saved as a result of our professions, but we’re saved as a result of
what Christ has achieved.
So, it gives to the believer a reminder—and a very important
reminder—of the story of God’s love that we get to take out into a broken
world. It corrects my tendencies to self-aggrandizement. And it gives me a
confidence that I couldn’t otherwise have—a confidence in the gospel. In the
gospel. As a student of church history, which you will be if you’ve been around
at all, then you know that whenever the Church, big C—or wee c, for that
matter—whenever the church loses confidence in the truth, the power, and the
relevance of the gospel, it loses any compelling sense of mission. Because what
is it going to talk about? It’s got nothing to say. Nineteen fifty-two, James
S. Stewart, whom I’ve mentioned, is preaching to the faculty and students at
Yale Divinity School. And he warned them—1952, the year I was born—of “a
theologically vague and harmlessly accommodating” Christianity which, he said,
was “less than useless.”[19]
As I end, let me go back to where I started. And I’m not
here to try and say something that we don’t know. I’m just here… The ministry
of reminder is the pastor’s responsibility. “I intend always to remind you of
these [things],”[20] says Peter, and so do we. So I’m just reminding us of what
we know to be true: we are not charged with the political agenda of the left or
the right, but we are charged with the biblical message of Jesus Christ and him
crucified. To offer to a man or a woman a God who does everything in general
and nothing in particular—that kind of gospel is just absolutely hopeless. And
it is hopeless because it is not the gospel that is proclaimed by the apostles
who went before us.
Think about it. Either in Christ God, the Creator and
Redeemer, came right into human life and bore in his own body our sins—either
he did—or the gospel is a fabrication. Either he did… In our postmodern milieu,
this is the sort of “Well, that’s just your perspective.” No, it ain’t! Either
he did, or he didn’t. There is no middle ground. “Well, there are certain
parts, and this… I like a bit of this and a bit of that.” Did you ever read
Augustine, when he said, “Listen, if we believe what we like in the gospel and
reject what we don’t, it’s not the gospel we believe; it’s ourselves”?[21]
So, Paul, by the time he gets to the end of his long
letter—the first letter before we get back to the second letter—what does he
do? Well, he really comes full circle. By the time he gets to chapter 15, the
great chapter on the resurrection, how does he begin?
Now I would remind you, brothers [and sisters], of the
gospel [that] I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by
which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to
you—unless you believed in vain.[22]
All that Christ has done for us is of no value to us so long
as we remain outside of Christ.[23] And if ever there was a time in the crazy,
broken, beautiful, wonderful, fantastic US of A for those who have come to the
cross of Christ and have knelt down and have been transformed by the power of
the Spirit—if there ever was a moment and a time—surely, it’s this moment, it’s
this time, to go out and lovingly, kindly, imaginatively, creatively, crazily
say to people, “I’ve got a really good friend, and I’d love to introduce you to
him, if you’d be interested.” And then you can just tell them about Jesus,
mighty to save.
Now, you’re all frightened now about the clapping and
everything and stuff like that. I’m a guest. You can do whatever you want. But
I’m going to pray, and then we’re going to have a hymn, brother, right? Isn’t
that how it go? It’s “A Mighty Fortress.”
Lord God in heaven, look upon us in your mercy, we pray, and
grant that what is of yourself may find a resting place in our minds and
hearts; anything that is unclear, that you’ll clear it up; anything that is
untrue, that you’ll banish it from our recollection; anything that is
unhelpful, that we may forget all about it. Lord, unless we hear your voice,
the dulcet tones of speaker number one and the squeaky voice of speaker number
two will avail nothing, either now or for eternity’s sake. So we look from ourselves
and ask you, we who plant and water, to take care of the growth. To the glory
of your name we ask it. Amen.
[1] 1 Corinthians 1:18 (NIV).
[2] James Denney, The Death of Christ: Its Place and
Interpretation in the New Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: A. C. Armstrong and
Son, 1903), 9.
[3] Alfred Ayer, The Guardian, August 30, 1979, quoted in
John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986),
43.
[4] Jester Hairston, “Mary’s Boy Child” (1956).
[5] 1 Corinthians 1:18 (NIV).
[6] 1 Samuel 16:6, 11 (paraphrased).
[7] See Acts 17:21.
[8] 1 Corinthians 2:5 (paraphrased).
[9] David F. Wells, What Is the Trinity? (Phillipsburg, NJ:
P&R, 2012), 11.
[10] James S. Stewart, A Faith to Proclaim (London: Hodder
and Stoughton, 1953), 45.
[11] Acts 2:36–37 (paraphrased).
[12] Bruce W. Thielemann,The Wittenburg Door36 (April–May
1977), quoted in Joseph M. Stowell, “Why I Love to Preach,” inThe Moody
Handbook of Preaching, ed. John Koessler (Chicago: Moody, 2008), 69.
Paraphrased.
[13] Elizabeth C. Clephane, “Beneath the Cross of Jesus”
(1868).
[14] Acts 2:38 (ESV).
[15] See, for instance, John Calvin, Institutes of Christian
Religion 1.2.1.
[16] 2 Corinthians 5:14 (NKJV).
[17] Fanny J. Crosby, “Rescue the Perishing” (1869).
[18] Charitie L. Bancroft, “Before the Throne of God Above”
(1863).
[19] James S. Stewart, A Faith to Proclaim (London: Hodder
and Stoughton, 1953), 16.
[20] 2 Peter 1:12 (ESV).
[21] Augustine, Contra Faustum 17.3. Paraphrased.
[22] 1 Corinthians 15:1–2 (ESV).
[23] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
3.1.1.
