I'm speaking this morning from
the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 1, the first letter of Paul the
Apostle to the Corinthians chapter 1. Now, the Apostle Paul was
so unlike the average so-called preacher today. Number one, he
was truly sent by God, and that makes him different than the
average man. His message, his methods, everything
about him proved that he was come from God and God's true
preacher. So unlike what we see in here
today. Well, how do you know a true
preacher, a true God sent, God called, God equipped preacher? Our Lord said in one place, he
said, He that seeketh his own glory will speak of himself. That is, the man who comes in
his own name, who comes speaking of himself, his ministry. He loves to have his name at
the forefront, his picture, his face before the people. He speaks
of his own attainments, of his own ministry and work. He speaks of all the souls which
he has won, all the baptisms which he has performed. Well,
not the Apostle Paul. Not the Apostle Paul. He preached
Christ. He preached the person and work
of Jesus Christ and never spoke of himself, never talked of his
own ministry, never spoke of how many or how much. In verses
14 through 16, I read where Paul says, I thank God that I baptized
none of you but Crispus and Gaius, lest any of you should say that
I had baptized in my own name. Or that is, Paul says, I didn't
baptize a bunch of you people, lest you would go around saying
why the famous Apostle Paul baptized me. And Paul goes on to say in
verse 16, I baptize also the household of Stephanus. And besides
that, I know not whether I baptize any other. Paul names three people,
three persons which he baptized, and he says, I can't remember
if there were any others or not. Have you ever heard of such a
thing? How many preachers would admit to only three baptisms
in their ministry, in the course of their ministry? and not remember
any other. Well, the Apostle Paul did, because
he says in verse 17, Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach
the gospel. Christ sent me not to just see
how many people I could baptize, how many souls I could win, so
to speak, how many I could get to join the church or our denomination
or our fellowship. No. that he sent me to preach
the gospel. Now, baptism is important. Paul
is not diminishing the importance of baptism. Our Lord himself
instituted it. He said, he that believeth and
is baptized shall be saved. Baptism itself does not save. Incidentally, the word baptized
means to immerse. There's only one kind of baptism,
and that's immersion underwater, not sprinkling. And immersion
underwater is a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. And Peter said baptism is the
answer of a good conscience. That is, those who have true
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and they confess. This is a public
confession of Christ before all men. Not a testimonial meeting
or so forth, but baptism wherein a person stands before a crowd
of people in the baptismal water, and someone takes him and buries
him under the water and brings him forth out of it. And he's
saying to all that, I believe, I trust, I rest in the person
and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I died with him on Calvary's
tree, and I've risen to walk with him in newness of life.
That's what baptism is. But Paul said, Christ did not
send me to baptize. That's not my purpose. to preach
the gospel, to preach the gospel. He said, I'm sent to preach the
gospel. Now, if a man's message, ministry and methods is not solely,
completely, 100 percent for the preaching of the gospel, that
man is not a preacher. Paul said, I'm sent to preach
the gospel. Christ himself said that in his,
when he first began as a 30-year-old man preaching his ministry. He said, I'm sent to preach.
That's what a preacher does. He preaches the gospel. He's
not a socializer, an organizer, a visitor, a hand-holder, a babysitter,
but he's a preacher. And Paul says, I'm sent to preach
the gospel, not with wisdom of words. not with wisdom of words,
lest the cross of Christ should be made of no or none effect."
Paul uses this often, the wisdom of words. He says this over and
over, this thought. In chapter 2, he says in verse
1, I came to you not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, Verse
4, he says, My speech and my preaching was not with enticing
or persuasible words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration
of the Holy Spirit and power. Verse 13, he goes on to say,
The things we speak, we speak not in the words which man's
wisdom teacheth. Paul the Apostle was a brilliant
man, a scholar, a theologian, a statesman, a diplomat, yet
he did not speak in lofty language or intellectual terms, high-sounding
oratory. He did not use words which no
one understood. He did not speak in a Latin liturgy
as his Lord taught him, as Jesus Christ, the Lord from heaven,
who could have spoken in a language which no human being could understand,
yet chose to speak in mostly one- and two-syllable words and
simple parables. Yet the wise and the prudent
did not understand him. The intellectual, the learned,
did not understand, because he said these things were hidden
from them and revealed. They must be revealed And they're
revealed to simple, childlike believers. Paul spoke in a language
easy to be understood. He said, I do not speak with
wisdom of words, high intellectual sounding words, lest the cross
of Christ should be made of none effect. Cross of Christ. Paul says, flowery speech will
make the cross sound like a flower garden. Flowery speech, lofty
language, will obscure what really happened on the cross of Calvary,
what really happened to Christ. Flowery speech will make the
cross sound like a flower garden and not what it really is. It
was a bloodbath. It was a bloody death. That's
what happened at Calvary's tree, something far different than
most people understand. And people, that's the reason
these pictures and so forth of Christ on the cross are wrong. Number one, God said make no
graven image of anything in heaven and earth. Any kind of picture
or statue or symbol or whatever is against God's command. And
furthermore, it cannot accurately, no picture can accurately describe
or depict what that scene really looked like. Chapter 52 says
his visage was marred more than any man. Christ was horribly
disfigured more than any man ever on that tree. To put the
actual depiction of Christ on Calvary's tree on our wall would
nauseate people. Paul says, I don't use flowery
language. The cross of Christ would be
made of no effect. And this is exactly what is happening
today in so-called preaching. All this flowery talk of Jesus'
love and so forth makes the cross sound like a beautiful thing.
And that's why people wear it around their neck as a symbol
of love, they say. People, the cross. Let me tell
you what the cross was. The cross was a horrible and
torturous device used by the Roman army who were masters of
torture, who had mastered the art of inflicting slow, agonizing
death on their criminals. And it was used on the worst
of criminals, and it was an excruciatingly painful, inhumane, and horribly
gory and bloody death. It's not unlike you would see
an animal hanging on a meat hook in a butcher's shop. That's what
Christ on the cross looked like. And when Paul speaks of the cross
of Christ, he's talking about that horrible, agonizing death
which Christ performed or accomplished on Calvary's tree. Now, there
was love behind that, but the cross was a bloody death inflicted
on Christ as a payment for all the sins of God's people, a bloody
death inflicted by a holy God on His own Son. Yes, it was God, the Scripture
says, it pleased the Lord to bruise Him in Isaiah 53. God's the one that killed Christ
on Calvary's tree. Peter preached at Pentecost.
He said, You with wicked hands have taken and crucified the
Lord of glory, but you did what God had determined before to
be done. What God determined to be done.
God Almighty made His Son. Listen to me. You remember the
story of Abraham taking his son Isaac up on the mountain to offer
him. God told him to take him up there,
Genesis 22, take him up and offer him as a burnt offering, a sacrifice
unto God. And Abraham took him up there
fully intending to plunge a knife into his son's chest and offer
him, burn his body on an altar. Now isn't that barbaric? Isn't
that atrocious? People, Abraham did not do that. God spared his son, but there
was a ram, that is a male sheep, caught by its horn in the thickets
behind him, and God had Abraham kill that lamb in the stead of,
or as a substitute for his son. Well, people, God Almighty did
in fact kill his son in just the way he instructed Abraham
to. The law of God, the justice of God, the holiness of God plunged
its might in the heart of God's Son as a sin payment for all
of God's people. Not all people, but all of God's
people. This is just what God Almighty
did. And this is what we preach. And
that's all that we preach. A holy God, angry, hating sin. took his only son, made him the
object of his wrath against sin, and put his son through hell,
because the soul that sinneth must surely die." And he put
his soul through hell. He made his soul an offering
for sin, Isaiah 53 says. A bloody payment for hell-deserving
sinners. Now, that's a horrible sight.
And to use lofty language and loving language in such a way
as to obscure the horror of what happened there is to make the
cross of no effect. And people we would not wear,
Abraham would not have worn that dagger around his neck which
he plunged into his son's chest. And neither do those who really
know what the cross stands for wear one around their neck. Well,
this preaching, Paul said, the world will say is foolishness.
Verse 18, the preaching of the cross is to them that perish
foolishness, but unto us which are saved is the power of God. This preaching of this message,
Christ crucified, is what God Almighty uses. Nothing more,
nothing less. It's the power of God unto salvation. It's what he uses. Not persuasible
words, not gimmicks, tactics and tricks, not begging and pleading
and offers and so forth, but just this message used by the
Spirit of God to prick the hearts of God's chosen people. This
is the power of God. Well, I hope you've felt this
gospel power. May God make it so. Until next
Sunday. Amen. Thank you.