Turn in your Bibles this morning
to the book of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians. The second chapter. The second
chapter. Of course, this is the Apostle Paul being led by
the Spirit. His words would mean no more
than anybody else's words, but he is speaking as the Spirit of God
directs him. It's God-breathed, inspired. And he says, and I, brethren,
when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or
of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know
anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness,
and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration
of the spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. I've entitled this message, A Crucified Savior is an Accomplished Salvation. crucified savior is an accomplished
salvation. There was a small fraternity
of men that Paul desired to be a part of. There weren't any
council or ministerial committee or association. They were simply a group of nameless
personalities who only glory in and only preach
who Christ is and what he did. When he speaks these words in
verse 1, He tells us how he approached
these people. He says, and I, brethren, when
I came to you, I came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom,
declaring unto you the testimony of God. I didn't use big words. I didn't use big theological
terms to impress. He says, because I knew that
the message was so vital to the glory of God, so vital to the
salvation of your soul, all I had to say to you was the testimony
of God. It is no gospel if it is not
the testimony of God. And the testimony of God simply
stated is in that second verse. He says, for I determined not
to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. Paul was a very learned man. He had theological training. He had letters as far as education
were concerned. He was highly esteemed. But God brought him to this resolve. He says, I determined not to
know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He said it back in chapter 1
in verse 23. Look at that verse. He says, but we preach Christ
crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks foolishness. This involved the whole world
in their natural state, Jews and Gentiles. And he was not a charismatic
preacher. He was not a entertainer. He was not concerned about the
manner in which he preached. He was not loud and boisterous
and forceful like some would interpret powerful preaching. He wasn't like that. As a matter
of fact, in verse 3, he said, I was with you in weakness and
in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom. called other places,
the wisdom of this world. Man's wisdom, man's logic, man's
natural way of thinking. But he says, I was not with you
with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration
of the spirit and of power. I was with you in demonstration
of the spirit and power. When does the spirit of God visit
a place? When is the spirit of God present
among a people? Is it when they all get funny
feelings or they all get to shouting or they all speak in tongues
or some other such stupidity as that? No. Christ said that the Spirit
would take the things of Christ, the things of mine, and show
it to people. So where Christ is not preached
in simplicity, in clarity, then the Holy Spirit definitely is
not in that place or among the people. And the reason that he wanted
to preach with such clarity, with such plainness and simpleness,
only the testimony of God, Verse 5, that your faith should not
stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. I often think about what I heard
once that a man said when he was asked, what do you believe? He said, I believe what my preacher
believes. Well, what does your preacher
believe? He believes what I believe. And that's about the sum of this
belief in modern times. You see, Paul, in his preaching,
he did not set the person of Christ and the work of Christ
against each other or over each other. He preached Christ crucified. And one old writer said of that
very thing, he said, Christ crucified, that the Greek expresses, not
the mere fact of his crucifixion, but the permanent character acquired
by that transaction. Whereby now, he is a savior. Not merely Christ, but Christ
crucified, a crucified savior. That's what we need. A crucified
savior. And so Paul writes to the church
at Galatia and he states it like this. He says, oh foolish Galatians,
who hath bewitched you? There'd be a lot of talk these
days about witches and stuff, but he says, who has bewitched
you? Who has drawn you away into error,
fooled you? that you should not obey the
truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ have evidently been set
forth." They'd had Jesus Christ set forth before them. Jesus Christ crucified among
you. Don't be bewitched away from
anything else, to anything else, don't look to anything else save
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And beware because the preaching
of Christ is only the preaching of Christ if it's the preaching
of Christ crucified, of a crucifixion. Crucifixion was a way that criminals
were punished. And they were punished in this
way so openly and plainly so that it would be a deterrent
to others who did so. It was public. It always had
to be public. And this thing, as one man was
told, this thing was not done in a corner. Christ was crucified. And when we are preaching about
Christ crucified, we're not talking about a crucifix. We're not even
talking about a cross. We're talking about a crucified
Christ. Look over in chapter one at verse
18. He says for the preaching of
the cross. This is the cross death of Jesus
Christ, and this is the method that God has ordained, the preaching
or proclaiming or declaring of Christ crucified is to them that
are perishing foolishness. If you're here this morning and
it really is just foolishness to you, you're perishing. You're perishing because the
preaching of the cross is to them that are perishing foolishness,
but unto us which are being saved. That's the part I want to be
in. To us who are being saved, it is the power of God. The power
of God. And so Paul says again to those
Galatians in which they were often being drawn by these false
prophets away from that cross, away from Christ crucified alone
as all of salvation, he says again in chapter 6, but God forbid
that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ
by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. We're either going to perish
with the world die as a part of the world that is under the
wrath of God, or either we're going to be separated from it
through and by the death of Jesus Christ. He says, unto the Jews a stumbling
block, and that because they had an entirely different conception
of the Christ. You can hear it in what we read
this morning. They said, if he's the king of
Israel, let him come down from the cross. No. Being the king of Israel, the
true Israel of God, that meant he had to stay on the cross. He couldn't save others by saving
himself. He had to save others by giving
himself to die. And then he says this, unto the
Greeks' foolishness, the Gentiles, Because it seemed to them that
one who died on the cross, one who died this cross death, he
couldn't be divine. But he is. And so vital, so important is
this that Paul says in 1 Corinthians, he says, for though I preach
the gospel, I have nothing to glory of. The preaching of the gospel doesn't
exalt a man, especially the one who proclaims it. God said he could raise up stones
to proclaim it. He could use foolish things like
Balaam's ass. He could speak it any way that
he wanted to. He says, for though I preach
the gospel, I have nothing to glory of, for necessity is laid
upon me. I can't do anything else. I can't
keep quiet. I can't preach any other message. I can't preach what you want
to hear. I can't preach what will exalt
you or what will make you feel good in your flesh. He says necessity
is laid upon me. Yea, woe is me if I preach not
the gospel. Can't do anything else. Well, what is the gospel, Paul?
If you've got to preach it, what is it? He said, we preach Christ
crucified. And this is the one truly scriptural. This is the one truly God-honoring. This is the one true flesh humbling
and soul saving message. Christ and Him crucified. Now it is true, it is true that
the Bible says, if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let
him be anathema. We're to love Christ. We will
love Christ if he saves us. But it's not my love for him
that saves me. It's not my love for Christ that
saves me. John said, herein is love, not
that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to
be the propitiation for our sins. You know the Bible says, believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. But it is
not our believing that saves us. It's not our faith that saves
us. It's the object of true God-given
faith, which is Christ crucified. Many men, many people, and even
right now I dare say it's being done, have been crucified. And none of them saved anybody,
and they didn't save themselves. They might have been put to death
by crucifixion. They might have died as martyrs,
but it didn't save them, and it didn't save anybody else. But the Bible says, through this
man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. Don't you want that? Don't you
need that? Of all the things that I need,
most of all, I need before God the forgiveness of sins. Well, you pray, don't you? Say,
Lord, forgive me of my sins. But praying won't forgive your
sins. The hardest thing to do, according
to this book, is to put away sin, to make an end of sin. But through this man is preached
unto you the forgiveness of sin because of who he was, who he
is. It is because he is none less
than God manifest in the flesh, and God manifest in the flesh
is God sinless so that he can be the Lamb of God, whereby to
take away sin by the sacrifice of himself. You might be unhealthy. You might
be poor. You might be disheartened. You
might be sad. You might be everything. But
you can be all those things and still not die in your sins. But what if you're all those
things and you still die in your sins? What if after this life of grief
and sorrow and heartache and failure and sin and everything
else imaginable, which characterizes us all, what if we then, short as it
is, brief as this existence is, what if we then die in our sins? And then we have eternity to
look forward to. But not really to look forward
to, but to dread and fear because all our days we will be separated
from God and that which we experienced on earth of everything evil in
our sight, we'll experience it for all eternity and much more. But this man, because he is the
God-man, he makes his sacrifice of such infinite worth as to
be able to actually redeem a multitude of sinners by the sacrifice of
his blood. Yes, he's a sinless man, but he's the God-man. And his Godhood adds to his sacrifice
such value, such an infinite worth, so as to be able to redeem
and save what God calls a multitude of sinners. If I was a sinless man, I could
die for one sinless man, or one sinner, but I'm not. But He comes and He dies, this
death of the cross, because He was the eternal Son, full of
glory, dwelling in the bosom of the Father before He became
flesh and dwelt among us. I want you to think about this. His becoming flesh did not save
us. He could have come in flesh,
send it back, we'd still be lost. His living a sinless life did
not save us. It might have rendered him able
to be the perfect sacrifice, but his living a sinless life,
he didn't just live it for example for us because that wouldn't
save us. His great example did not save
us. His faithful teaching did not
save us. He was a just God before He came
and as He lived on this earth, but He was not a Savior until
He was crucified for us. He had to die for us. And only by the death of the
cross, Could he be a just God and a Savior? Now, sometimes people seem to get
tired of that. And when they get tired of that,
I can only assume two things. Number one is you quit realizing,
quit looking at who died. God manifest in the flesh. And you must evidently be forgetting
who you are. Because if he wasn't crucified
for you, sinful you, vile you, worthless you and me, We'd all go to hell. Have to. Have to. And sometimes even believe
in grace and receiving grace from God whereby we are enabled
to live somewhat differently than we used to and appreciate
some few things more about God than we used to. We forget that if it were not
for Christ, our best day would have been enough to cast us into
outer darkness. Our best day. Man at his best
state is altogether vanity. On your best day, You know what you do? You forget
the Lord Jesus Christ. You're feeling so good about
yourself. Don't need to pray in a hurry. Don't need to worship. Don't need to read the Bible.
What hope have you got on those days? Christ crucified. That's why
Paul says in such utter despair in Romans 7, he cries out, oh
wretched man that I am. I am that wretched man right
now. What I would do that I don't
do, what I wouldn't do that I do, what hope have I? The last verse
in that chapter. Paul says, I thank God. Through
Jesus Christ, who gives me the victory. He gives it to me. Christ crucified. That's always
our hope. You see, Christ was crucified
for us, which means that he dissatisfied divine justice in our place. that he by his substitutionary
death bore our sins and brought in eternal life. And for this
to happen, there had to be a just and real transfer of the responsibility
of sin and of sin and guilt before God and by God to the substitute. He couldn't die for them. if,
as the Bible says, they were not laid on Him. I was looking in Isaiah 53 before
the service, thinking I might read a portion of Isaiah 53 for
our reading this morning. And Isaiah says, He has laid
on Him the iniquity of us all, all His people. So when you get to Romans 4, Paul begins to talk about what
Abraham, who was his father after the flesh and his father of the
faith also, he said, what's Abraham, fam? What's David? What's he called a blessed man? He says, blessed is the man to
whom the Lord will not impute sin. And God is such, if He does not
impute my sins to me, if He does not charge me with my sins, He's
got to charge them to somebody. He had to impute them to Christ. And so he says to us, he says,
reckon yourselves. Count yourself blessed. Count
all your sins to have been laid on the Lord Jesus Christ and
him to have been crucified for it. Because the wages of sin
is death. And Paul could say to the believers
in Christ at Corinth what he says in verse 30 of chapter 1. He says, But of him are ye in
Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption. What does that mean? That means
in Christ crucified, we have it all. We have everything. Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. Paul writes in Ephesians 1, he
says it so plainly. He says that everything that
Christ has done for us, He's done to the praise of the glory
of His grace, wherein He has made us accepted in the blood. You see, salvation is not even
in our accepting Christ. That's what all these preachers
want to do. Accept Jesus. No. It's God accepting us in Him,
in Him crucified. Romans 5, for as by one man's
disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall
the many be made righteous. Plain as day. You see, he was obedient to God
in all things, but here is Here's our salvation. He was obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross. That's what he says
in Philippians 2. He humbled himself, became obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross. so that nothing else besides
Christ crucified can stand as the foundation on any day at
any time for our acceptance with God. And I'll tell you this, you won't
find assurance on any day anywhere else. When you start thinking about
what you've done and what you've not done and how you've lived
the Christian life, and try to grasp hold of that for a tiny
bit of assurance, it will crumble in your hands. Because everything you've done
and everything you're doing is tainted with sin. So where can we find assurance? Look into Christ crucified. Look into Christ crucified. You
see, we're saved through faith in Christ, but it's said to be
faith in His blood. We're saved because of God's
love, but it's because he loved us and gave himself for us. He laid down his life. He gave
it for the sheep. The Bible is not full of universal
things. It has a few things that almost
to the natural ear sound universal, but it's always this Christ crucified
is always particular. He laid down his life. He said
it, I lay down my life with my sheep. Yeah, but preacher, who
are the sheep? I want to know. He said, my sheep
hear my voice and they follow me. This is his voice. This is his word. And if we follow it, we believe
it. We're his sheep. Says he purchased
the church with his own blood. And this is our only hope and
all our hope for all eternity is that all my sin and all my
guilt was charged to and laid on and imputed to and being made
an end of and put away and the debt fully paid by his cross
death. And at the same time, all his
merits, all his worthiness, all his perfect righteousness is
charged to me so that I am totally fit to enter God's holy presence
right now. When we read where we did there
in Mark, you remember it said both of the thieves reviled him. But a little while later, we
find out that one of those thieves had a change of heart. The Spirit
of God gave him faith and enabled him to see who this really was.
And he cried out, Lord, remember me. when you come into your kingdom." And then the Lord Jesus Christ
said to this thief, dying as a criminal, he said, today shall
thou be with me in paradise. Well, what in the world brought
that man from such a state of nothingness and sin to such a
state as to be able to be with Christ on that day? Christ crucified. Christ crucified. That old hymn writer said it
right. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. You see, Christ crucified exposes the awfulness of our
sin. What sinners we must be, what
sin must be to God, if to save us Christ had to die for And Christ crucified shows us
the helplessness of ourselves to save ourselves from sin, if
there was any way. But there isn't. Christ crucified shows the holy
hatred and justice and wrath of God against sin. If he'd do
that to his son. When sin is charged to him, he must hate sin. Christ crucified further shows
the love of God in Christ coming to die for us. You see, it's
all right there. It's all right there in Christ
crucified, in the cross of Jesus Christ, that God's hatred for
sin, our sinfulness, and yet His wrath bearing down on our
substitute, and His act of love toward us and sacrifice, and
it shows the justice of God in now requiring that all for whom
he died, being justified, that they shall now be brought by
his Spirit to the knowledge of it, the confession of it, and
to faith in him who accomplished it, and to the full comfort and
assurance of it." That's how powerful it is. It's powerful enough. that when the Lord causes me
to see the reality of it and to be assured of the truth of
it, the certainty of it, it can even give a sinner like me peace. One who has thought such wickedness,
done such wickedness, spoke such wickedness, One whose sins, if
they were all together, could not be measured or weighed, but
they were laid on all, all of them on Christ. And he was crucified. And here's the reason, the last
verse of chapter one, that according as it is written,
He that glorieth. Let him glory in the Lord. What is the reason for your hope?
Christ crucified. What is the theme of your praise?
Christ crucified. How do you worship him? Through
Christ crucified. I don't wear a cross. I don't
use the symbol of the cross. That's idolatry. God said, don't
make any graven images unto me. But I always look to the Christ
who was crucified. Christ came to save sinners.
He came to save his people from their sins. And this he did through Christ
crucified. And this is the good news. Our crucified Savior is all our salvation. You say, is that all? You know nothing about it. He's everything. He's everything
to God. He's everything to his people.
And to both, he is what he is through Christ crucified. And when he is crucified, he
accomplishes our salvation in its entirety. Father, we pray that we would
be enabled to look to the crucified Christ, to say as Paul, to determine
as Paul that to know nothing, to have nothing of a hope in
anything or anybody but Christ crucified. We pray that you would
reveal to us the majesty, the glory, the grace, the love, the
beauty of Christ crucified. For we ask it in his name. Amen. Amen.