The Message of the Cross

Transcript

He is risen. Good morning family and welcome friends. If you would please turn with me in your Bibles to 1st Corinthians chapter 1 verse 18. If you’re here this morning and you don’t have a Bible, there are some Bibles in front of you. Under the seats in that little basket area. If you don’t own a Bible, you’re welcome to take that Bible as our gift to you. The book of 1st Corinthians is towards the end of the Bible. And if it’s your first time navigating the Bible, the big numbers are the chapters, the little numbers are the verses.

For the word of the cross 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.

— 1 Corinthians 1

(ESV)

For consider your calling brothers and sisters. 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 the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are. So that no human being may boast in the presence of God. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God. Righteousness and sanctification and redemption. So that, as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.

— 1 Corinthians 1

(ESV)

And I, when I came to you brothers and sisters, did not come preaching to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom. But in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, this morning we submit ourselves under the wisdom of Your Word. We herald it as wisdom. We declare it as divine wisdom. We receive it as divine wisdom. We also recognize, Father, that in order for us to truly understand the wisdom contained in Your Word, we must be helped by the power of the Spirit. And so we pray that You would be our help. That You would be our guide. That You would be our wisdom. As we seek to understand all that You have for us this morning.

The Cross and Resurrection

We pray these things in Christ’s name. Amen. Family, this morning we join with Christians all across the world in celebrating what we understand as the most significant event in human history. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. But I would submit to you this morning that there is an event equal in significance to the resurrection. And that event is the cross of Christ. In fact, for Christians to fully appreciate and understand the significance and overwhelming joy that the resurrection brings, you must first have a proper understanding of the significance of the cross and what it brings. Because they work in tandem. The glory and the beauty of the resurrection only makes sense when placed against the backdrop of a gruesome and bloody cross. Though the cross, from a human standpoint, was a brutal instrument of execution in the ancient world, Christians understand it as the very means by which Christ secured the necessary sacrifice to pay for the sins of humanity.

A sacrifice that not only brought forgiveness for sins and peace with God, but also gave us life and friendship with God. It was the cross of Christ that in every way paid for our sins. And family, the resurrection serves as a divine confirmation that the debt for our sin was paid in full. And these two events, the cross and the resurrection, together constitute the good news, which we call the gospel. Which means that without the cross of Christ, we have no gospel. And without the resurrection of Christ, we have no gospel. And it is this message of the gospel, the cross and resurrection that Paul refers to in our text as the message of the cross, that we are confronted with this morning. In God’s providence, we pick up in our sermon series this morning dealing exclusively with the message of the cross. And what better Sunday than Resurrection Sunday to see and celebrate how the cross and the resurrection put on display the infinite wisdom of God

and the power of God to a world that views this message of a dying Savior as an incomprehensible and foolish message. And so if you are here this morning and you are not a Christian, our greatest hope for you this morning is that you would come to see the wisdom of God and the power of God as it’s plainly preached to you. And that you would believe this message of the cross and that you would trust in Him. Our text this morning sets in contrast God’s wisdom and the world’s wisdom. And just by way of reminder, the people in Corinth, the ones to whom this letter was written, were a particular people, not unlike the people in our world today. They were preoccupied with human wisdom, especially when presented with the most eloquent of speech. Corinth was a culture that prized human wisdom and human power above everything else,

which again is not any different from what we see in our world today. And yet, what is so interesting is that if you remember from last week, Paul told the Corinthian Christians in verse 17 that Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. So Paul already told them that he didn’t preach with human wisdom or with eloquent words because the power was not meant to be in his persuasive speech or his intellectual arguments, but rather in the power of cross, which is shorthand for the gospel. And it is so strange that those in the Corinthian church who were the recipients of Paul’s gospel message that came to them in a less than polished delivery, believed it and were saved, but now, for whatever reason, they thought that Paul’s message of the cross was insufficient

to engage the rest of the unbelieving and sophisticated society in Corinth. What once was powerful enough for them to hear and receive was now somehow considered impotent and out of touch with the culture and even foolish compared to the wisdom of Corinth. And their rationale for this shift in conventional wisdom was that they thought that if their religion was to compete in the marketplace of other religions or ideas and philosophies in Corinth, then the message of the gospel and the method of delivering it needed an upgrade to be more culturally accessible. And you see, the problem with this kind of thinking is that these Corinthian Christians were not thinking like Christians, but more like Corinthians, putting all their stock in worldly wisdom and in the power of persuasive speech to make the message of the gospel more palatable to people. And family, this is good for us to see this morning,

especially on Resurrection Sunday, when churches are notorious for doing the exact same thing, appealing to human wisdom and building out strategies to engage culture or seekers where they kind of censor the message of the cross to make it more palatable and accessible because they know that many people who are not Christians will come into their churches on Easter Sunday. I mean, just listen to one marketing strategy from a very popular church for their Easter service this year. They say, for us, the most important thing on Easter is inviting people to church. This means reaching people who are far from God. So we’re not going to use words like Calvary, Resurrection, or phrases like the blood of Jesus. We won’t use that language that will immediately make someone feel like an outsider. But you see, family, however good the intentions may be, this is appealing to the wisdom of the world

to try and engage the lost and dying world. What might seem wise on the surface to omit the language of the cross omits the very power of the cross, rendering their strategy ultimately powerless to save. Appealing to conventional wisdom by omitting the cross to get people to embrace the cross doesn’t work because God has worked in such a way that the wisdom of the cross is necessary to save those who are lost. You can’t use conventional wisdom to find Him. You need wisdom from outside of yourself. You need true wisdom, God’s wisdom, which in every way subverts the wisdom of the world. And what was true for the Corinthian Christians in the first century is also true for every single human being in our world today. And that is that the message of the gospel, according to conventional wisdom, is in every way considered foolish.

A Foolish Philosophy

But that message that seems so foolish to the world is actually the message that saves. And this is precisely by God’s wise design. Because in a world that pedestals the wisest people among us, this message showcases to the world God’s wisdom. Though considered foolish by men, it is infinitely wiser than the wisdom of the world. And this, family, is what we’re going to see exactly by looking at our text this morning. And to help us along, I’ve broken up our text into three sections. We’ll look at a foolish philosophy, a foolish people, and a foolish proclamation. So let’s begin in verses 18 through 25 with a foolish philosophy. Paul writes in verse 18, For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. The first thing we see here is that Paul

separates all of humanity into two groups. Those who are being saved and those who are perishing, or what we might call lost. And the thing that splits these two groups has everything to do with how they understand the message of the cross. For those who are being saved, Christians, which has this past, present, and future reality to it, we see this message as the greatest demonstration of God’s wisdom and power. The cross has with it the transforming power that not only changes minds and hearts to hear and believe, but it also has the power to save us from our sin. And for those who consistently believe it, we are being saved. But for unbelievers, the message of a dying Savior makes no sense at all. It’s not logical, and it’s not reasonable. Because in their minds, that seems like a contradiction in terms, like a complete failure.

Why would the God of the universe, who is supposed to be eternal and transcendent and all-powerful, need to descend to earth and die on a cross for humanity? It just doesn’t seem to make any logical sense from a human vantage point. And you could see the root of the problem as to why people think this message is foolish is because man thinks that he is wiser than God. You see, human wisdom or philosophy places man and the mind of man at the center of the universe. And so only that which makes sense to men and their minds is considered wise, which stands in direct contrast with the wisdom of God, who in His infinite wisdom places the Creator of the universe on a bloody cross to save the world. When we see it from that vantage point, it’s apparent that God’s wisdom is greater than the wisdom of the world,

and that God’s wisdom will always cripple the limited minds of men. This is why Paul quotes from Isaiah in verse 19 and says, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. You can see what God is saying here. Essentially, God is saying to mankind, I made you, and I made your mind. And so no matter how wise you claim to be, your greatest and wisest men will infinitely pale in comparison to me. The wisdom of the immortal God will always smash the wisdom of mortal man. And to demonstrate the vast ocean that separates God’s wisdom from man’s wisdom, Paul appeals to the wisdom of the ages to showcase their insufficiency. He says in verse 20, Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?

In other words, no one and nothing can compare or compete with the mind of God. Paul says, put the wisest in our world in a line, line them up, and God will crush them with the wisdom that surpasses the greatest minds of mankind. Paul addresses here this reality that really starts to make sense when you consider Paul’s immediate context. In Corinth, these people loved philosophers. They loved the scribes and the debaters. Those people were considered part of the intellectual elite of society. And it was those kinds of people who received all the praise for their perceived wisdom and philosophy. But God has taken the intellectual elite of society and brought their wisdom to nothing in terms of their understanding of the greatest and most significant questions. The questions that every human at some point must reckon with. Especially when death makes its way for them.

And those questions are, Is there a God? And if so, can He be made known? And how can I be made right with Him? God has made the wisest in our world blind to the reality of how to know God. And how to have a relationship with Him and how to be reconciled to Him. Making every philosophical attempt to answer these worldview questions completely foolish and contemptible. In other words, appealing to human reason and philosophers or thought leaders or podcasters or New York Times bestsellers who probe the depths of worldviews to answer these questions or to pave the pathway to Jesus will never work. It requires a supernatural help through a seemingly foolish and incomprehensible message of the cross. This is what God has decided will bring people to a saving knowledge of Himself. And God in His infinite wisdom does this to ensure that the praise and glory of God

are not given to man and their minds but to God who created the minds of men. Look at what Paul says in verse 21. 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. God has used what the world deems as weak and foolish to make Himself known and to save the world. And notice that it pleased God to save. God doesn’t save reluctantly but joyfully. God takes pleasure not only in using the foolish things of this world to bring Him glory but He takes pleasure in opening the eyes and ears to the message because He is pleased when He rescues sinners who are lost and dead in sin. Family, this is the kind of God that we worship. One who delights in saving you

and one who delights in keeping you. He is not an angry or capricious God but a loving and merciful God. In verse 22 Paul gives two examples of how the world from their limited vantage point seeks to understand the existence of God. He says, For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom but we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. You see Jews in the first century were in every way obsessed with supernatural signs as a means to validating their faith. The more they could see in terms of miracles the more they would believe. So their logical conclusion was show me the power and I will believe. So their human wisdom was in the form of this evidence based rationalism. But what’s fascinating is even with all the miracles Jesus performed with all the countless prophecies that Jesus fulfilled

it was still not sufficient evidence for them to believe. Because signs and miracles and evidence though powerful to persuade certain people in the moment they are not powerful enough to convince a skeptical world about their need for a suffering and dying Savior or the existence of God. And here’s the thing if you are convinced by powerful miracles then you will need to be kept by powerful miracles to continue to believe. So friends, evidence alone is insufficient. And then Paul addresses the Greeks, or the Gentiles, which is just the rest of humanity. These were the ones who were so concerned with the philosophical wisdom of the age. This would be like the Pacific Northwest. Philosophy that they believed could account for all the metaphysical realities of our world. But what’s fascinating about this group is that God’s wisdom is the only thing that can give an accurate account

for the world around us and the world beyond us. If God is altogether different from us and is so far beyond us would it not make sense that we need to appeal to a wisdom that is different from us and far beyond us to understand the God who made this world and us? You see, human knowledge philosophy or reason on its own can provide some things even good things but they can’t provide you what you need to know to understand a supernatural and transcendent God. Looking to only that which is reasonable from a human vantage point cannot save you. In other words, impeccable speech the gift of gab worldly philosophy and reason-based evidence as the primary path to understanding the existence of God or the plan of God to save it’s incompatible with the message of the cross. And so the cross becomes a stumbling block

to Jews and to Gentiles. And the reason why it was a stumbling block was because the cross in the ancient world was perceived as the most humiliating powerless and degrading form of punishment reserved only for the worst of criminals. It was the Romans’ chief prize of human ingenuity to showcase the power of men in the punishment of people. And so to have a message connected to something so grotesque and repugnant in a culture so consumed by beauty and eloquence seemed utterly and completely foolish. To use the greatest execution instrument made by men to elevate the power and beauty and wisdom of God seems completely backwards. To have a long-anticipated Messiah who believed that the message of a crucified Savior who died on a cross they would consider that to be foolish. This is why it’s a stumbling block and this is why they are perishing.

But to those who believe this so-called foolish message we see the cross not simply as a philosophy but to be the very power of God. This is why Paul recounts in Romans 1.16 for I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. The message Paul proclaims of a crucified Savior is a message that in every way is scandalous and inconceivable and this is not by accident. God has rendered the wisdom of the world as foolish. Because if knowledge of God in salvation came exclusively in the form of intellectual arguments or through the giftedness of great orators or their presentation or through evidence-based reason then only those who were smart enough to reason or deduce or gifted enough to understand would be saved. And this would give humans

the opportunity to boast that the mystery of God in salvation was owing all to their minds and their reason. And friends, listen, this would only perpetuate an endless cycle of spiritual gurus leading people to salvation through their unique spiritual and intellectual insight. But God’s glory will not be robbed. So He makes the wise foolish in regards to the wisdom needed to know Him. This is why Paul says in Romans 3, 10 and 11 No one is righteous, no not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. Conventional wisdom is not sufficient to understand the salvation plan of God. So God gives His wisdom at His own divine discretion to cause people to believe a foolish message of a dying Savior. This is why Paul says in verse 24 But to those who are called both Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

So where philosophy might persuade people God through His message calls people. And this call is what you might call an effectual call. Which is actually more of a summons that causes us to come to Him through His wisdom. Which means, friends, He opens their eyes and ears to this true wisdom of the cross to move them to Him. The good news of the gospel meaning the cross of Christ and the resurrection of Christ it’s declared to everyone. Freely. But only those who eyes and ears have been opened to receive it and believe it are those who are called by God. And if you feel compelled by this foolish message this morning friends, God might very well be calling you to Himself. If He is calling you then you must respond to His message. You see, salvation, friends is not determined by how much information you know

how many books you’ve read it’s not determined by whether it makes sense to your limited human capacity it’s not even determined by your spiritual sensitivity no, your ability to know the true and living God His gospel is owing all to the God who calls you. And if you hear Him this morning if you are being drawn to this foolish message then come to Him in faith and He will receive you. The cross, according to all human standards, seems like a complete failure, an utter display of weakness but in it, friends, is the power of God released to all that He calls. And this, family, is why we see in verse 25 that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. In the wisdom and strength of God we see the most foolish in the world are the ones who have come to believe.

A Foolish People

And we see this in verses 26 and 31 with a foolish people. Verse 26 says, For consider your calling, brothers and sisters not many of you were wise according to worldly standards not many were powerful not many were of noble birth Family, the wisdom of the cross is given to the most unimpressive people possible. He doesn’t just call the morally upright or religious elite of society but the most wicked and undesirable people in this world. He doesn’t just call the intellectual elite of our world but those with little to no understanding of how the world’s wisdom works. This is why children can embrace Jesus Christ. Because you don’t have to have a big adult mind to understand the wonderful wisdom contained in God’s Word. It’s not owing to our minds but to God’s power. Paul says, look at the various people that God has called from among you.

We were the least impressive people. We weren’t so intelligent that we just kind of figured it out on our own terms. We didn’t come from a long line of righteous and intelligent people. We weren’t born into it despite what many people think. Comparatively speaking, we were not wise and we were definitely not powerful. And praise be to God that the gospel doesn’t come only to this select group of wise and powerful people. Family, this gospel is given to people like us. Do you remember the kind of person you were before the gospel? I remember the kind of person I was. I was not wise. And I was not powerful. Family, we were the least of people. We were the most undeserving. None of us were impressive. None of us were smart enough. And none of us were righteous enough. But God in His infinite wisdom

saved us when we were nothing. When we were unworthy and undeserving. And why does God do this? What is His rationale for calling all kinds of people to Himself? We see that in verses 27-29. He says, 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 the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. God has lavished His grace and mercy on us. On the most unexpected people because He is God. Because He is good. And because He cares about His glory. He saves the most self-righteous and disenfranchised people. Because it brings Him glory. He saves drug dealers, racists, and prostitutes. He saves alcoholics and workaholics.

He saves public school kids and homeschool kids. He saves those raised in Christian homes and those raised in the worst kinds of homes. He saves New Age people. He saves hedonists and moralists and all the people in between. He saves people like you and me who recognized that we needed to be saved. Because He is God and He is good and He is glorious. He saves people like you and me. Praise be to God. And in so doing, family, He shames the wise. He shames the powerful. He shames the intelligent so that He alone gets the glory for this powerful and supernatural work. Aren’t you so thankful that your believing wasn’t dependent upon you and how smart you were? How powerful you were? He rescued us when we were dead in our sins and could do nothing for ourselves. Oh, He’s good. By God’s grace, He intervened

and caused us to believe and we were saved. And how exactly does believing this message of the cross save such an unimpressive people like you and me? Paul helps us to understand this cross-saving work in verses 30 and 31. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. So the first thing you see is that the cross of Christ purchases our righteousness. The very thing that separates men from God is our sin. This sin we inherited from our first parents Adam and Eve. This seed of sin spread like a disease into every human heart making us an unrighteous people. And God who is perfectly righteous must deal perfectly with sin. Because the Bible says all have sinned and fallen short

of the glory of God and that the penalty for sin is death. We are all guilty and we are all deserving of His perfect justice. So, friends, we are left with a big problem. Either we receive the due penalty for our sin which is eternal death or we need to be made righteous before God which means we need to be cleansed from all of that sin that makes us unrighteous. Listen, Jesus, the perfect and sinless one, died on the cross in our place to pay for our sin taking the punishment we deserve while at the same time cleansing us from our sin and unrighteousness and making us righteous. Friends, we call this the great exchange. His righteousness is given to us and our sin is given to Him. This is the beauty of the gospel. This is why, friends, the cross is so powerful and so unexpected.

It is the beautiful twist. But the cross doesn’t only make us righteous. It’s also the power to mature us. This is what it means when He says it sanctifies us. It makes us more like Jesus. So the cross not only makes us righteous but it makes us more like Him. And finally, the cross is our redemption. The redemption means our freedom from sin. Because of the cross, we have the freedom to live righteous lives that look like Jesus. So that sin that once shackled us and enslaved us, the cross of Christ has freed us from. And you see in this one event, in this one event of a gruesome cross, it shatters any human wisdom the world has to offer. Humans could never conjure up such a wonderful and powerful plan to save the world from sin and death and transform our lives to reflect the God who made us.

A Foolish Proclamation

Who is going to come up with that idea? No one. And to believe this message, friends, means that you didn’t come to it on your own. God called you to believe it so that our only boast is in Christ. God did the work on the cross to secure our salvation. And it was His work on the cross that reveals the message of salvation to us so that our boasting would be eclipsed by unending praise. But it’s not just the message and the people who are perceived as foolish. Even the medium in which the message is delivered is often considered foolish. And we see this in chapter 2, verses 1-5 with a foolish proclamation. Listen to what Paul writes. He says, And I, when I came to you, brothers and sisters, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Paul, reflecting on when he first proclaimed the gospel to the Corinthians, he reminds them that the presentation and the proclamation wasn’t given in the medium that was perhaps the most culturally relevant or culturally engaging. He decided, meaning he thought about it beforehand, I’m only going to give them the cross to showcase the wisdom and power of God so that nothing would be dependent upon Him. He didn’t come to them with a kind of rhetoric that the Corinthians were used to.

He didn’t speak with a kind of eloquence and beauty that the Corinthians so desired. He didn’t appeal to a kind of philosophy that the Corinthians prized. And his reason for not doing so was so that the people would not be persuaded by this kind of cultural manipulation. That people might be captivated by the rhetorical wisdom of Paul. But that they in every way would be captivated by the power of God and the Spirit’s work to cause them to believe. Paul proclaimed the way he did because he cared about their faith. Not just in the moment for them to believe, but how their faith would carry them all the way to eternity. Paul knew what was true for everyone in this world. That what you catch people with is what you must keep people with. If you catch them with anything other than the gospel or the bloody cross,

then you’ve got to keep them with everything outside of the cross. So Paul’s proclamation, which was intentionally constrained to the wisdom of the cross, which sounded foolish to a world, a sophisticated and philosophical world. But he did it because it displayed the power of God so that their faith might be fixed on the power of God. And in the wisdom of God, what he proclaimed in weakness and in fear and in trembling, that became the very instrument God used to save them. And family, this should be our posture. We don’t need to be the kind of people who have a lock on the market concerning worldly wisdom or philosophy or even apologetics. Those things can’t unlock the human heart. We don’t need to be preoccupied with beautiful or clever speech. We don’t need to deploy church marketing strategies or omit the elements of the message

that we think might make it more accessible to a people. No, we proclaim the message of the cross and trust in the power of God and the Spirit of God to cause people to believe it. That’s the only way people will truly believe. God delights in using a foolish message. He delights in using foolish people like you and me. And He delights in using the weak and fearful and trembling, not only to shame the wise, but bring Him glory for saving lost people. And family, how was it that Paul could proclaim in weakness and fear and trembling, but at the same time have so much confidence in this message of the cross that all of these people considered to be foolish? Because Paul understood the part of the message of the cross which was the reality of the resurrection. You see, the resurrection of Jesus

vindicates the message of the cross. It declares to the world who perceives this as foolish, as powerful and true. You see, for Paul, he understood that the proclamation was not just empty words because he understood the reality of an empty tomb. The resurrection proves our faith. Family, do you understand that? You want to know why we’re so excited on Resurrection Sunday? Because it’s the proof of our faith that Jesus did what He said He was going to do. Praise be to God. Paul said in this same letter in chapter 15, if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Paul points to the resurrection as the very thing that validates our faith and that the payment for our sin

was paid in full. And brothers and sisters, the resurrection is not just for Christians to have proof of their faith. Though that is sufficient, the resurrection is also the proof that God will keep all of His promises to those who He saved. That’s what we need to hold on to for us to have mature, fixed faith. If Christ’s resurrection from the dead proved His power to conquer Satan and the grave, then His resurrection also proves His power to keep all the promises for those who have trusted in Him for salvation. And friends, do you know what these promises are that the resurrection secures? Listen, we have the promise of forgiveness. This incredible promise means that we don’t have to be haunted by our past sins, no matter how bad they were. You are forgiven. We have been washed clean by the blood of Jesus. This means that no sin can separate us from God.

We’ve been forgiven. Do you have a guilty conscience this morning? Are you weighed down because of your sin? Look to the resurrection. You have forgiveness in Him. We have the promise of the Holy Spirit who empowers us and guides us, giving us wisdom, comfort, and peace in the midst of this crazy and chaotic world. Friends, are you looking at this world the way I look at this world? This world is slowly deteriorating. It is broken. The resurrection reveals to us that we have His comfort and His wisdom to navigate the brokenness of our world. Through this promised Holy Spirit, we are equipped with the strength to live lives that glorify God. We have His resurrection power to overcome sin and temptation. We have His resurrection power to grow in holiness and obedience and to bear spiritual fruit that reflects the character of God. You don’t have to worry about doing that on your own.

His resurrection gives you the power to do that. You have the promise of peace and joy giving us His constant presence in the midst of suffering and pain. Are you wrestling this morning with suffering and pain? His promise is that He will give you peace and joy in the midst of it all. In the midst of sorrow and grief and sadness and depression and anxiety, we have the promise of His peace. We have the promise that He is in control of everything and everyone in this world. So friends, you have nothing to fear. Are you scared of this world? God controls it all. Guess what? He wins. And the resurrection proves it. You have nothing to be afraid of. You have the promise that He cares deeply for us. That you can come to Him and He is good and loving and He will embrace you.

You have the promise that He is faithful to meet our needs. So you can go to Him in prayer and ask outlandish prayers and He will answer those prayers that are perfectly and purposefully designed for your ultimate good. God promises to be near. He promises that He’ll never leave us or forsake us so that if you’re feeling lost or overlooked, God sees you this morning. If you are overwhelmed by the weight of this world, He is close. He is close. No matter how difficult the circumstances are, no matter how isolated you feel or how distant God seems, His promise of nearness stands firm whether you feel it or not. His resurrection proves that. And family, we have the promise of a new heaven and a new earth. A world with no more pain, no more suffering, no more sorrow, and no more death. No more loneliness.

No more fear. No more anxiety. So you can live in this present world with all the struggles of this world because they’re only temporary. They’re only temporary. Fix your eyes on the cross and the resurrection because all else will pale in comparison to the eternity that God has promised for us and secured by His resurrection. All of these promises, family, are confirmed by the power of the resurrection. They serve as the anchor for our hope and the assurance of God’s faithful character and His mighty power to fulfill His Word and keep all of His promises. This is what our faith needs, family. This is why Paul preaches nothing but Christ crucified so that our faith might not rest in the foolish wisdom of the world but in His cross and His resurrection. What is so considered foolish to the world is the very wisdom and power of God

Secured by Resurrection

to save us from our sin and to secure the promises in Christ. May this wisdom of the cross and the resurrection be what motivates our joy this morning as we celebrate the cross and the resurrection and what that means for those who are being saved. And if you are here this morning curious about this message of the cross, how Jesus, the Son of God, the transcendent One, so loved the world that He came from heaven to die on a cross in our place so that we might be forgiven for all of our sins and made righteous and reconciled to Him. If you want to know more about what it means to have Him as Lord and Savior, friend, you can have Him today. Today is the day of salvation. Trust and believe in Him and He will save you. And if you have questions, you want to know more about that,

ask anyone in this sanctuary. Ask them, are you a Christian? And if they say yes, they will answer all of your questions or they will point you to people who can help get those questions answered. Don’t leave today without having your answers. We want to provide them for you. Family, this resurrection secures our faith and it secures all of our future hope. May we be the kind of people that continue to trust in our faith, in Jesus, in His work, and in the promises that He provides in His gospel. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we thank You that in Your infinite wisdom You didn’t choose us because we were smart enough or righteous enough or good enough, but because You were good enough. We thank You for the cross and we thank You for the resurrection. And we pray, O Lord and God,

that the power of Your resurrection would permeate our lives and cause for us to give You all the worship and all the praise that is due Your name. No man can boast because man has done nothing. Jesus paid it all. We pray, God, that we would revel in that reality. And for those who are here this morning who are being moved by the message of the cross, Father, would You cause for them to believe. What better Sunday than Resurrection Sunday to raise spiritually dead people to life. Cause for them to believe, O God. Quicken their hearts and their minds to the saving message of the cross that they might be saved. We pray these things in Christ’s name. Amen.