Paul's epistle to the Galatians
chapter 6. Let's begin with just looking
in verse 14. I want to look in verse 12 and 13 also, but
let's begin just here in verse 14, this wonderful statement
that Paul made. But God forbid that I should
glory except, say, in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by
whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. God forbid that I should glory
except in the cross. Paul often used these words.
They were some of the words that he used when he wanted to stress
something very adamantly. God forbid. In Romans he used
these quite often. Listen to how he said in Romans
3. Shall our unbelief, shall man's
unbelief, make the faithfulness of God of none effect? God forbid. God's faithful no
matter if anybody believes Him. God's faithful. And he said also
in that chapter, is there unrighteousness with God when He takes vengeance? God forbid. When He takes vengeance
on men's sin and on men's disobedience, is He unrighteous? No. He's righteous
in all His ways. and in all his judgment. And
he said in verse 31 in that chapter, do we make void the law through
faith? Do we make the law useless and
vain through faith? No, he said. The law is good. The law is holy. The law is just. We establish the law. And then
in chapter 6 of Romans, shall we continue in sin? Shall we
yield our hearts to sin? Shall we yield our bodies to
serve sin and iniquity? God forbid. God forbid. Grace delivers us from the power
of sin, doesn't it? God forbid. And then here in
our text, shall I glory in anything but the cross? God forbid. God forbid. To glory means to
give honor to. To admire. to make one's boast
of, to rejoice in, to make something the chief object of your delight. God forbid that I delight in
anything. This is my chief delight, my
joy, the thing that I give honor to above all things else, and
that's in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now Paul, before
his conversion, he had a lot of things that he gloried in.
And I can understand that if you're a lost man. Every lost
man boasts and glories in something, doesn't he? Listen, he could
have gloried and did in his heritage. He traced his heritage all the
way back to the tribe of Benjamin. I'm a child of Abraham. They
boasted in that, didn't they? He boasted in his morality and
his obedience to the law. He said concerning the law, I
was blameless. I rendered perfect obedience
to those outward rites and ceremonies. His education, he talked about
setting at the feet of Gamaliel when he was a very young man.
And he said, I speak with tongues, I speak with different languages
more than anybody else. Of zeal, boy he could have gloried
in that and he did when he was lost. He said in Galatians 1,
I profited in the Jews' religion above many of my equal in my
own country. I outdid all of them, he said.
I was exceedingly zealous towards the tradition of my father. When
Paul wrote there in Romans 10, the Jews have a zeal of God and
not according to knowledge, he knew by experience what he was
talking about because he had that zeal too and he gloried
it. But after his conversion, my, what he could have gloried
in. He could have gloried in his apostleship. He was the apostle
of Jesus Christ to the world of Gentiles, wasn't he? Nobody
wrote more epistles than this apostle. Nobody traveled more
miles, I doubt if anybody, had more converts than this man had. He says himself, I labored more
abundantly than all of them. But you know, he didn't glory
in that, did he? He said, God forbid that I glory, but in this
one thing. He could have gloried in his
experiences. Man, how the Lord used this man. He raised a dead man. He raised
a dead man from the dead. He healed people. He smote a
man with blindness one day. This man was caught up into heaven
itself. And he heard language there.
He said, I can't even tell you. I can't even speak it. It was
so glorious. And he came back down to earth
when he left heaven. But he didn't glory in that.
He said, God forbid that I should glory except in the cross. He could have gloried in his
suffering. Listen to just a few of these things this man suffered.
He said, three times I suffered shipwreck. He'd been in the deep
for days. He was stoned and left for dead. He said, five times I received
39 stripes from the Jews. Three times I was beaten with
rods. And you can read about his life
and a host of other times that he suffered for the cause of
the Lord Jesus Christ. He said in the last portion,
last verse of this Galatian pencil, He said, I bear in my body the
marks of Jesus Christ. What I've suffered for my Master,
you can see it on my body where they have beat me and where I
have suffered for His sake. And while I'm sure that he was
thankful for the grace that called him to be an apostle and strengthened
him to suffer, he said, by the grace of God I am what I am.
And he was thankful for the mercy that enabled him to be faithful. But here he emphatically and
with finality makes this statement, God forbid that I should glory
in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul tells us something here
before our text back here in verse 12. He tells us what other
men gloried in. Everybody don't glory in the
cross, do they? There's some people glory in their flesh.
They glory in their own flesh and they glory in the flesh of
other men. Look here what he said in verse
12. As many as desire to make a fair
show in the flesh, a show in the flesh." Don't it make you
sick to read this? It just makes you sick when you
read this, a show in the flesh. They constrain you to be circumcised
only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of
Christ. Everything they do is a show
in the flesh. The Lord Jesus said all their
works they do to be seen of men. To have men brag on them and
pat them on the back and give them praise. They pray to be
seen of men. They fast to be seen of men. They pay tithes to be seen of
men. They worship to be seen of men.
They even can pass land and sea to make one convert just so men
would brag on them and say, man, what a soul winner you are. A
fair show in the flesh. Their worship wasn't regulated
by the Word of God. It wasn't a heart worship. It
was based on traditions. It wasn't a work of faith and
labor of love. It was all about fleshly appearance. It was a religion of the natural
man. That's all it was. The Lord Jesus
said, you outwardly appear righteous unto man. That was their motives
for being religious. Their outward appearance You
appear so righteous, you appear so holy, you appear so good to
man, and your appearance is all the reward you're going to get.
But he said, listen, my Father knows what's in your heart. You
look good outwardly, but you're like whited separators. You're
like tombstones that they paint, but underneath that you're full
of dead men's bones. Hypocrisy. and lies, iniquity. And yet they gloried in that.
Isn't that amazing? Simon the saucer made a profession
of faith in Christ and Peter told him this. He said, your
heart is not right in the sight of God. And brothers and sisters,
isn't that the key right there? It has nothing to do with appearance,
does it? When the heart is not right,
nothing else is right. It is just a vain show. If the
heart is not right, worship is fleshly. If the inside is not
clean, service is not acceptable. All flesh can do is put on a
religious show in the eyes of those who are looking on. Fleshly
show. I was watching TV a few days
ago and I saw this man. He was dressed in this garb I've
never in my life seen. He had some kind of a huge hat
on and looked like a teepee on his head and all these religious
clothes. And he had this little can, this
little pot, and it was on the end of a chain and it was smoking.
And he was walking through all of this, had some kind of statues
on his right and on his left, and he had a whole bunch of people
following him. And they were bowing down and
he was swinging his little pot full of smoke. And I thought,
what is that? What is that? Well, you know
what that is? That's flesh. That's flesh. All they do is for a fleshly
show. And they glory in that. Have
you ever seen the Pope sitting in a chair and people coming
up kissing His ring? Next time, stop looking at them
and look at Him. You look how solemn He sits. I mean, man, He is glorying in
this. He looks at the long line and
his heart is lifted up in pride. He thinks he is somebody else.
And all it is is flesh. Flesh. Listen to what the Bible says
about flesh. They that are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh,
but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in
you. Listen to this one. By the deeds of the law shall
no flesh be justified in His sight. No flesh is justified
in the sight of God. Listen to this one. All flesh
is grass. And all the goodliness of that
flesh is as the flower of the field. And that flower fades. And the fashion of it withers
up. And it dies. Listen to this one. I know that in me, in my flesh
dwelleth no good thing. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors
not to the flesh, for if we live after the flesh, we shall die."
Flesh is nothing but sin. Death and all the deeds of this
flesh just leads to death. And the best thing a man can
do to his flesh is just crucify. is just keep it under check and
under control. And if a man does that, he does
well. And when flesh enters into our
worship, our worship is not acceptable. God looks on the heart. Paul tells us two things here
about these legalistic preachers. And they are preaching the law
for life. The first thing he tells us there
in verse 12 concerning themselves. Why won't they preach the gospel?
Well, you say they don't know it. Well, that's so. That's so.
But he gives another reason here that they won't preach the gospel.
They preach circumcision instead of the gospel. He says here that
they might escape persecution. See what he says in verse 12?
As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain
you, they insist that you be circumcised for this reason,
lest they should serve for persecution. In other words, when they preach
law, when they preach works for salvation, they know the world
loves that. If you mix law and grace, the
world will love you for that. The world loves Mother Teresa. You get on TV, you watch the
TV or the radio or the newspapers and when they talk about Mother
Teresa, they love her. They love her. They talked about
how she suffered. Oh, what a lady of God she was. You know what Mother Teresa believed?
That she was accepted of God by what she did. Oh yes, she
claimed Christ. He had a little part to do with
it. He made it possible for her to work her way into God's presence. And the world loves her for that.
But Paul said, if they preach the cross like I preach it, the
world would hate them. But they preach circumcision.
They preach the merits of men. They preach the power of free
will. Therefore, the world don't persecute them. There's a lot
of men, there's a lot of preachers, brothers and sisters, that knows
a little bit about the grace of God, but they're not going
to preach it. I was talking with a lady one
time, and she went to a church out not far from here, and I
was opening the scriptures up to her about election, and I
said, and she said, I've never in my life seen that in the Bible.
I said, don't your pastor preach this? She said, no. I said, go
ask him why. And she went and asked him the
next time I seen her. I said, did you ask him? She
said, yes, he says he believes it. But he won't preach it. And I said, why? Did he give
you a reason why? You know what she said? At least
he's honest about it. The congregation don't like it.
It confuses them. You know why he don't preach
it? He's afraid. You know why men don't preach
the free and sovereign grace of God? Even if they're acquainted
with it mentally, they're afraid. Why? Their flesh. Flesh. They glory in their flesh. And
they love flesh so much, they can't endure to think it might
suffer. That's what Paul said. In verse 13, he told another
reason. concerning their converts. Look
here. For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the
law. They desire to have you circumcised
that they may glory in your flesh. They glory in their own flesh.
They are afraid to suffer, so they preach works. And now they
glory in their converts. Boy, every time they saw a convert
submit to circumcision, they gloried it. Come up there and
circumcise the man, and boy, they're just smiling. We got
another convert. Look at him. He's submitted to these outward
rites and ceremonies. He's been circumcised. Now if
we can just get him to fasting twice a week and paying tithes
of all that they possess, that's what they glory to. You know Billy Graham? They kept
tracks of the numbers that made decisions under his ministry.
Do you know they kept those numbers? Every town they went into, every
country, they could tell you how many made decisions for Christ
in their crusades. They kept a record of that. There
was another fellow that kept another record of Billy Graham's
crusades. He got some folks together and
they started tracking their converts down to see if they lasted. And you don't see these statistics,
but It was single digit that lasted after they made the decision. And a great portion of those
single digits that made a decision went to Catholic churches or
Charismatic churches. But they kept statistics of all
the thousands. A thousand made decisions for
Christ in Detroit. Ten thousand in China. Why do they keep those statistics?
They glory in that stuff. They glory in the flesh. They
glory in other men's flesh, the converse. When Paul went preaching
all over the Gentile world, the gospel of Christ, he was concerned
about one thing. When he preached to men and women,
he was concerned about one thing. Them coming to the saving knowledge
of the Son of God. That's what he was concerned
about. Listen as he wrote to the Thessalonica church in Thessalonica
chapter 1. He said, Our gospel came not
to you in word only, but in power, in much assurance, in the Holy
Ghost. And you turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God. You didn't make a decision,
he said. The gospel came to your heart. And it searched you out. And
it found you. And it brought you from your
sin, your idols, to serve God and to wait for His Son from
heaven. Even Jesus, which was delivered
for your offenses. And you know he wrote a second
epistle to these same people? And they were still on the way?
And here's what he wrote to them in second Thessalonians. He said, I write unto you and
I pray for you, for your faith groweth exceedingly, and the
love of every one of you abounds. They were still on the way. He
wrote to the Colossian church and said this, We thank God,
the Father of our Lord Jesus, for you, brethren, praying always
for you. And listen to this, Since we
heard of your decision. He didn't make that, did he?
Since we heard that you decided for Christ. since we heard of
your faith in Jesus Christ, and of the love which you have to
all the saints, and for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven,
whereof you heard before." You heard before in the Word of the
truth of the Gospel. That's what Paul wanted men to
hear and believe because he knew nothing else would save a man. And he went on to tell the Colossians
this, "...this gospel came into you, as it is in all the world,
and it brings forth fruit, as it does also in you, since the
day you heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth." I
don't know how much they knew about the grace of God. But they
knew this, the grace of God had saved them. And that's enough
to start with, ain't it? When the Lord saved me, I couldn't
go into depths about the theology of God's grace and when it was
purposed for me and all of that. But I knew this much. I was an
awful sinner and the Lord, by His grace, had saved me. I knew
that. He was writing to the Philippians
and listen to what he told them. I thank God upon every remembrance
of you and in every prayer of mine make a request with joy
for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. As soon as you hear the gospel,
there is that fellowship. And you know the ministry of
the Lord Jesus Christ was the same way. He never did concern
Himself about numbers, did He? He never did. There was a multitude
following Him one day. And He turned to them and said,
Listen, you come to Me and you don't hate your father and your
mother and your wife and your sisters and your brother and
your own life also. You can't be My disciple. Man,
that's tough, ain't it? Lord, you ain't going to have
many disciples. He's concerned about the heart. He's preaching
that message in John chapter 6. Except ye eat the flesh of
the Son of Man, and drink His blood. And the whole multitude
left Him, didn't they? And He never went screaming after
them. Come back and I'll make it easier. Come back and we'll
widen the gate. He looked at His disciples and
said, you going with them? There's but one way of life,
and it's not flesh. It's not accepting Christ in
the flesh. It's knowing Him in your heart.
Knowing Him in your understanding. Knowing Him through faith. Well, there's something more
important than great numbers being decided and making decisions
and baptized and circumcised and joined the church. And that's
being brought to knowledge of the Son of God. And you know
something? Flesh and blood has nothing to do with that. It has
nothing to do with that. Flesh and blood has not revealed
this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I tell
you this, every plant that He's not planted, going to be rooted
up, ain't it? Going to be rooted up. So that's
what Paul said. They gloried in these things.
Everybody said, don't glory in what I glory in and the person
I glory in. But, he puts that but in there. He tells us about what they're
preaching and why they're preaching it. Then he turns in verse 14
and says, but God has stripped me of that. He has shut me up. He has hedged me in. And He refuses
to allow me anymore to glory in the flesh. God forbid that
I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I'll tell you something here
that you already know. I'm preaching to the choir when
I tell you what this cross is not. What is it? What is it not? It's not the material cross on
which the Lord Jesus died. We sang that old song, and sometimes
I'll go around humming it, about the cross on whence the Prince
of Glory died is a shelter in the time of a storm. But you
know, when you start thinking about that, this is just not
right, is it? The cross on whence the Prince of Glory died is a
shelter. That's not a shelter, is it?
The Prince of Glory who died on the cross, He's the shelter. And it's not a material cross. I keep forgetting to get this
one off the front down here. If somebody's got a knife, go
back and get a case knife after the service and take that off
for me. That's not the cross, is it?
It's not a cross you wear around your neck. It's not a sign we
make with our hands. This is not the cross. Paul would
have been repulsed to think about that being the cross. And it's
not the cross of self-denial. That's our cross. Take up your
cross and follow Me. This is another cross. This is
the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is this cross? Now, I could
define it. You could define it. Some of
you dear brothers and sisters could define what the cross is.
But let's see what Paul said it was here in this epistle. Let's just stay in this epistle
and look with me in two or three places. In Galatians chapter
1, now this is the day that you
ladies didn't cook, so I'm taking some of your time. When you don't
cook and serve, I get to take some of that time, so you bear
with me, okay? Look in chapter 1 and look in
verses 3 and verse 4. Grace be unto you and peace from
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. who gave Himself for
our sins in order that He might deliver us from this present
evil world according to the will of God and our Father. What is the cross that Paul gloried
in? Well, he gloried in that atonement
for sin. that the Lord Jesus Christ wrought
out upon the cross. He gave Himself a sacrifice to
atone for our sins. Pure substitutionism. What is
the gospel? It's the just for the unjust. It's one single man paying the
debt for several other men who could not pay themselves. Luther
has a commentary, Martin Luther, on Galatians, and I'd recommend
it to anybody. But let me read what he said
about this verse. He said, This word of Paul is
very thunderclaps from heaven against all kinds of righteousness. How may we obtain remissions
of our sins? Paul answers that the man, Christ
Jesus, has given himself for them, that our sins are taken
away by no other means than by the Son of God being delivered
unto death. With such gunshots and artillery
must all other notions be destroyed, that is, all doctrine of merit,
works and superstitious ceremony, for if our sins may be taken
away by our own works and merits and satisfaction, what needed
the Son of God to be given for them? But seeing He was given
for them, it follows that we cannot put them away ourselves. Again by this sentence it is
declared that our sins are so great and so infinite and so
invincible that it is impossible for the world, the whole world,
to satisfy for one of them. And surely the greatness of the
ransom, namely Christ the Son of God, declares sufficiently
that we can neither satisfy for sin nor have dominion over it. The force and power of sin is
set forth and amplified exceedingly by these words, Christ gave himself
for our sins. That's wonderful, isn't it? That
is wonderful. The very fact of Him giving Himself
tells us that there is no other way for atonement to be made
for our sin. And Paul gloried in this cross
because it was there the dear and blessed Son of God did for
him what all angels combined and all ceremonies of the law
and all the world combined could not do for him. And that is,
put away his sin. And there is something else.
He always mentions this. There in the last portion of
verse 4. Notice the blessing obtained by this atonement death.
In order that he might deliver us from this present evil world. There is the effects of the cross.
Why did He die? To deliver us from this present
evil world. This world has ever been evil
since the fall. We say, boy, it's really gotten
bad in our day. It's been bad in everybody's
day. Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, this world has lived
in perversion. This world has lived in rebellion
against God. The course of the world is evil. The end of this world is evil. And the only hope of escaping
the course and the end of this world is to be delivered from
it. And the only way to be delivered
from it is through the cross. That's why Paul said, I glory
in the cross. That's where I was redeemed from
this present evil world. Look in another place. Look in
chapter 3 in verse 13. There's the cross. There's the
cross. Look in verse 13. Paul tells
us what the cross is here. Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written,
Cursed is everyone who hangeth on a tree. In chapter 1 verse
4 that I read to you, where it said that Christ gave Himself
for our sins, we learn something there. That He gave Himself a
sacrifice for our sins, to atone for our sins. But here in verse
13, we learn more, don't we? It was more than just a sacrifice
for our sins. Here we see what it is to be
a real substitute. To be a real substitute is not
just going to the cross, brothers and sisters, and dying. To be
a real substitute means more. It means he had to take those
sins. He had to bury them in his own body. He had to feel
the effects of it, the weight of them, the guilt of them, and
the curse of them. He was made a curse for us. Now I tell you what, this is
a mystery to me. I wrote an article a few weeks ago. You may remember
it in the bulletin. How do we view Christ upon the
cross? We have to view Him from two
directions. Two directions. One, when we look at Him, we
see Him as the Lamb of God. And as that, He's spotless. He
offered Himself without spot to God. We see Him hanging there
in His absolute holiness. He could never cease to be what
He was. But we can't stop there. Look
at it from another direction. And what do you see there? There
you see nothing but sin. There you see nothing but wrath.
There you see nothing but the pains of death. There you see
nothing but a cursed criminal. He was cursed to be a real substitute. He must take our place. He must feel what we felt. He
must come under the judgment of God. And God must look upon
him and say, there is Bruce Crabtree. Look what an ungodly man he is. There is Greg. Look at all his
iniquities. I am going to punish him to death. That is what we see in this verse.
What is the cross? It's Christ, the Son of God,
becoming what we are. You say, Bruce, I can't see how
you could say that. Look what an awful lie you're
setting him in. If we don't have a Savior like
that, we may not have a Savior. That's what substitution is about,
isn't it? And it's not his sin. It's ours. It wasn't the place
He deserved to be. It wasn't the punishment He deserved. He took what was ours. He was made a curse for us. And here's the blessing behind
it. That He might deliver us from the curse of the law. He was made a curse for us. in
order to redeem us from the curse of the law. See, every time Paul
mentions his cross, his dying, he mentions the effects of it.
He was made a curse so you and I who believe in Him would not
suffer the curse in ourselves. Every man that is born into this
world is not only born under the moral law, But they are born
under a broken law, and they live under the broken law, and
they must be delivered from it. And the only deliverance from
this law that curses a man is to be redeemed from it. All of
our struggling, all our prayers, all our religious activities
cannot deliver us from the curse of the law. There is one way
to be delivered from it, and that is redemption. And there
is but one redemption, and that is the cross. And Paul said,
that is why I glory in the cross. I glory in the cross of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He mentions the blessing that
flows from that. Look in verse 14. He said Christ
was made a curse for us. That the blessing promised to
Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus. What is
that blessing? That we might receive the promise
of the Spirit through faith. Boy, without the cross, There's
no spirit in dwelling us. He said, it's expedient for you
that I go away, that I go by the cross and descend to my Father
from the grave. If I don't, He won't come. And what happens if He don't
come? We don't have new hearts. We don't have new spirits. And
we don't have a revelation of the Son of God to our hearts.
And we don't have the graces of the Holy Spirit within us.
The love of God is not shed abroad in our hearts. We don't have
the strength to overcome our sin in ourselves. We're still
lost in our sins without the Spirit if He hasn't redeemed
us. Look what He says in chapter
4. Look over in chapter 4 and verse 4. Brother Larry talked
about this this morning, didn't he? When the fullness of the
time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made
under the law. to redeem them that were under
the law. Why? That we might receive the
adoption of sons, and because you are sons, God hath sent forth
the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Father, Father,
wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son. And look at this,
and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Oh my goodness, he tells us here,
not only do we have the adoption of sons, the spirit of adoption,
but now he tells us there's an inheritance laid up. An inheritance that's incorruptible. We're heirs, joint heirs with
Christ of that inheritance that's reserved in heaven for you. No wonder Paul gloried in the
cross. with all these blessings that attach to it. We would have
no hope of heaven without the cross. Our inheritance flows
from the cross, right out of the cross. Our glory in the cross. All my
blessings here and glory hereafter is built on nothing less than
Jesus' blood and righteousness. Something else Paul gloried in
this cross. He gloried in the cross and in
the gospel, the preaching of that gospel that springs from
the cross. Look here in chapter 3. Why do we have a gospel this
morning? It comes out of the cross, doesn't it? Because of
the cross. Look here in chapter 3 and verse
7. Know ye therefore that they which be of faith, the same of
the children of Abraham, Jew or Gentile, and the Scripture
foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached
before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations
be blessed." We have a gospel to preach that is such a positive
gospel. It pronounces blessings. Everybody
who believes this gospel is blessed. That's why we levitate. That's
why we glory in this gospel. It springs from the cross. The
Lord Jesus commanded His disciples to go into all the world and
preach the gospel to every creature. And upon their belief in this
gospel, they would be blessed, now listen to this, with every
benefit that Christ had Himself obtained. And buddy, He obtained. We could stay here for another
couple of hours if I had a mind to understand everything that
He obtained. But He didn't obtain anything
for Himself. He did it all for us. He got
the victory, didn't He? Over sin, over death, over the
devil, over darkness. And He says, now everybody that
believes My Gospel, I'm going to share My victory with them. Oh, my soul. Paul said, in the cross. But this seems a little bit selfish
because everything here he's talking about is because of the
blessings that flows to Paul from the cross and every other
elect soul. A little bit selfish, isn't it?
I glory in the cross because of what He's done for me. I glory
in the cross because of the blessings for me. Well, it's easy to see
why He glory in that. But listen, Christ Himself glories
in the cross. God Himself glories in the cross. The essential glory of Jesus
Christ in His deity, of course that's His chief glory. He has
some eternal attributes. That's His chief glory. We know
that. Who He is, is His chief glory. But you know He has a redeeming
glory? And that's God's glory. Redeeming
sinners. The cross. is His chief redeeming
glory. Listen to 2 Corinthians 4 verse
6. God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has
shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The cross is
God's glory, His redeeming glory. Our Lord has a creative glory.
He says the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament
shows His handiwork. And one of the reasons His creative
glory is so glorious, nobody else can do it. I mean, if you can take your
hand and swipe the universe into being, and decorate it, and just
speak in its soul, command and it stands fast, if you can do
that, you're the only one who can. You're unique, aren't you? He's creative glory. He has that. But He has another kind of glory,
too. And that's His redeeming glory. And He's unique in that. There is no God else besides
Me. A just God and Savior. There
is none else besides Me. He's the only One who had the
merit and the worth to redeem anybody. That's why it's His
glory. The cross of Christ is His glory
because all the attributes of God are revealed there at the
cross. I bet there's not a single attribute
that's not revealed there at the cross, even His wrath. I
guess His wrath is revealed more there than in hell against sin.
Boy, we talk about hell and it's the place of suffering. God puts
people there to punish them for sin. Boy, look at the cross. He punished His only begotten
Son, wrath. But chiefly at the cross, the
saving attributes of God are revealed. His mercy and His grace
and His goodness, His long-suffering and His love. here in His love,
not that we loved Him, but He loved us, and sent His Son to
be the propitiation for our sin. God commendeth His love towards
us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for his friend. Where is the love of God revealed?
There at the cross. Boy, the grace of God is revealed
there too, isn't it? You know the grace of our Lord
Jesus, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor. Mercy. And you know these things
are God's glory. Remember when Moses asked the
Lord to show him His glory? Lord, show me Your glory. What
did He say? He said, I'm going to put you
in a rock and I'm going to pass by and I'm going to declare the
name of the Lord before you. I'm going to show you My glory.
And what was it? The Lord. the Lord gracious, the Lord long-suffering,
forgiving iniquities and transgressions and sin. God's glory is the revealing
of Himself in His saving attributes. And where does that glory shine?
But in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, in His cross. Christmas Evans, I don't know
if any of you have ever read about Christmas Evans, the old
Welshman. He was a one-eyed Welshman, one-eyed preacher. And man could
that old man ever preach. Christmas Evans. I got a neighbor
that traced him back over to his descendants. He was my neighbor's,
some of his descendants came out of him. I was over at my
neighbor's house one day and I saw this, my neighbor's a religious
fellow. And he had this book, Christian
Evidence. And I said, boy, wonder who that
is. He said, well, take and read it. He said, I came out of his
lineage somewhere or another. And man, you talk about a gospel
preacher. He was a gospel preacher. And I took it back and tried
to tell him everything that guy was preaching. But he told, one
of his messages, he sent almost the whole message on mercy, standing
at the door of the graveyard. He was standing at the gate,
but he couldn't get in because justice said, no, no, no. And
mercy was wringing her hands. She desired, she longed to open
the gates and go in and raise these dead people out of the
ground. The justice said, no, no, no. And she said, is there
any terms on which you could let me in that gate? And he said,
yes, but only one. And that's the blood of Emmanuel.
You give me His blood and I'll let you in that gate. And Emmanuel
stood up. and said, I'll go. In the volume
of the book it's written of me, I delight to do thy will. And
Emmanuel gave justice His blood, and mercy with weeping eyes,
and rejoicing heart, O Lebanon, said, open the gate, and begin
to raise the dead. But mercy flew there on the wings
of satisfied justice. That's the way mercy must come.
On the wings. Let me wind this up. God shows us His jealousy over His glory. God is very jealous,
isn't He? Boy, He's so jealous, man. I
used to think my wife was jealous when we were dating. Man, she's
so jealous. Of course, I couldn't blame her.
You've got somebody like me, you don't want to lose Him, do
you? You don't want to take a chance on some other woman again if
you've got somebody like that. I tell you, I never could understand
why she was jealous, but she was. But you know God is jealous,
isn't He? You know what He said? I'll not
give my glory to another. I won't do it. And you know,
one of the ways, the old timers called it fencing, one of the
ways He protects His glory in redemption He refused to redeem
fallen angels. Man, they were much mightier
than we were, aren't they? I bet you they would have accepted
the gospel a lot quicker than we would have. But you know what
the Lord said? Nah, we won't get much glory
in redeeming them. Let them go. Let them go. I'm just going to reserve them
under chains of darkness. He didn't redeem them. He didn't
take on Him the nature of angels. And you know something else?
He fences His glory this way. He hasn't redeemed everybody
either. He hasn't redeemed every man without exception. Never
intended to, did He? But He's redeemed a multitude,
and you know who they are? The base. The weak. The despised. The know-nothings. The do-nothings. The no-goods.
The chief of sinners. Why did He redeem those kind
of people? That no flesh would glory in
His presence. Of Him, of God, are you in Christ
Jesus. And Christ has made unto you
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Everything you
need. Everything God requires. According
as it is written, He that glories, let him glory in the Lord. I mean to tell you, brothers
and sisters, the cross has it fixed where nobody is going to
glory in anything but the Prince of Glory. And we are going to
cast contempt upon ourselves. And he closes here and he says
in verse 14, "...by whom the world is crucified unto me, and
I am crucified unto the world." What Paul is simply saying here,
when I go preaching the gospel of Christ and the gospel of His
glory, I disturb men's peace. I disturb their self-sufficiency.
I disturb their self-security. I disturb their self-righteousness
and they count me as a criminal who deserves to be crucified.
Brother, marvel not if the world hates you. It is supposed to
hate you. And Paul said in turn, when I
look upon this present world, here is my estimation of it.
It is evil. It's living in rebellion against
God who created it. It's criminal. This world is
criminal and deserves to be crucified like criminals. So we're against
the world and the world is against us. And we're going to continue
to butt heads. And this is what it's all about.
It's no trivial matter. It concerns the glory of our
redeeming Lord. Our glory. in nothing but the
cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.