The message that I will be bringing
to you this morning is entitled, The Offense of the Cross. The Offense of the Cross. Paul wrote in Galatians chapter
5 verse 11, Brethren, if I preach circumcision, that is the works
of men for salvation, why am I persecuted? For if we preach
salvation by works, then is the offense of the cross ceased."
In other words, Paul is saying there's no offense in works.
It's the cross that's offensive. It's the gospel of grace, the
gospel of substitution that's offensive to natural men. The
preaching of the cross, he said in 1 Corinthians, is foolishness,
sheer nonsense to them that are perishing. to us who believe
it's the power of God and the wisdom of God. You see, my friends,
religion is not offensive to natural men. I've traveled to
many countries in this world, and everywhere I go, I find religion. Natural men are religious by
nature. It doesn't matter what country
you visit, what village, or even what tribe. You'll find religion
in some form. You'll find people going through
some form of worship, worshiping some God, doing things religiously. So religion's not offensive.
Religion is a worldwide thing. All natural men are religious
by nature, and there's no offense there. Let everybody have his
own religion, you know. Let well enough alone. Don't
bother, don't fool with a man's religion. And then actually,
good works are not offensive to natural men. Morality is not
offensive. No, it isn't. Now, there are
different ways that men might go about trying to enforce it,
enforce morality and legalism that's offensive. But morality
itself and good works are not offensive to natural men because
all men will applaud a hero who sacrifices to help a person in
distress. Everybody loves a hero. Everybody
loves a person who will sacrifice himself to help someone else.
People will applaud. And all men applaud kindness
and generosity, and most all men abhor and hate dishonesty
and greed. They hate dishonesty in public
officials, they hate dishonesty in the business world, they hate
dishonesty wherever they find it. So religion's not offensive,
and good works is not offensive, and morality is not offensive.
Now listen carefully to me. Natural men do not even object
to Jesus Christ being a part Savior. He can be a prophet,
He can be a healer, He can be an example, He can even be a
sacrifice for the sins of the world, and no one will be upset. No one will be offended. It's
Christ, the full, complete, and only Redeemer of sinners that's
offensive. That's where the offense is.
You see, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel of free
grace, the gospel of His glory, is a message of mercy, mercy
for the miserable, It's a message of love, love for the unlovely. It's a message of grace, grace
for the guilty, grace from God to sinners. It's good news and
glad tidings. That's what the gospel is. It's
the free gift of God, the unspeakable gift of God, the gift of life
for Jesus Christ our Lord. You see, the gospel of Christ
announces life to those who are dead in Adam. It announces peace. to troubled hearts and troubled
souls. It speaks of the forgiveness
of sins in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins according
to the riches of His grace. So the gospel of Jesus Christ
is a gospel of peace and mercy and love and grace. And yet,
and yet the history of the gospel of substitution, the gospel of
God's grace, its history is one of being hated and despised and
rejected by men in this world? I'm telling you the truth. It
is no different today. The world is the same and the
gospel is the same, but the gospel of grace, the gospel of Christ,
the gospel of substitution has always been despised and hated
by men. It's a gospel of peace. Christ
is called the Prince of Peace. He went about doing good. And
yet Christ Himself, the Savior, was despised. Isaiah 53 says
He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, acquainted
with grief. We hid, as it were, our faces
from Him. There was no beauty about Him
that we should desire Him. He had no comeliness. And everybody
who was anybody turned thumbs down on Jesus Christ. Why? The disciples were men of goodwill,
they were men of mercy, they were men who went about helping,
healing, aiding the sick, aiding the depressed and the deprived. They were men who brought the
good news of mercy from God through Christ, and every blessed one
of them was killed, except John, the Apostle John, who was exiled
to the Isle of Patmos. The world hated them and slew
them, martyred them. weren't satisfied just to let
them die. They had to murder them. And
you can call the role of men who have preached the gospel
of God's grace. They've not interfered in politics.
They haven't interfered with government. They haven't been
war-minded men. They haven't interfered in the
lives of people. All they've done is stand in
the pulpit and preach the gospel, the free grace, the gospel. of
God's mercy in Jesus Christ, the gospel of substitution. Men
like Luther and Calvin and Knox, John Hus was burned at the stake. Latimer, Rutherford were killed.
Whitefield, hated and despised, cast out of the churches in England.
He couldn't even preach in organized religion. He had to stand on
his father's tombstone and preach. John Bunyan, I visited Bedford,
England not very long ago, and they've erected monuments to
John Bunyan. They've made him officially a
saint. I went in the church there at Bedford where John Bunyan
attended when he was a boy. But he wasn't allowed to preach
in that church. He preached on the streets. And they put him
in prison. He stayed in prison there on
the bridge in Bedford for 12 years. Why? He was no troublemaker. He was no rabble-rouser. He was
no rebel. All he did was preach that Jesus
Christ is the only, full, complete Savior of sinners. The salvation
is not in good works, it's not in the church, it's not in religion,
it's in Christ. And they put him in prison for
12 years. They made a hero out of him now because he's a famous
author, but he's David. Spurgeon, Edwards. Jonathan Edwards,
one of the leading preachers in this nation who was president
of Princeton University. was kicked out of his church
at Northampton, Massachusetts, where he pastored for many, many
years, because he demanded a regenerated church membership, because he
demanded that if people belonged to the church, they ought to
know God. I'll tell you this. Our Lord said this, Marvel not,
my brethren, if the world hate you. He said, They hated me before
they hated you. They don't hate religion. The
world's full of religion. They don't hate morality and
good works. They hate substitution. They hate the gospel of the grace
of God. They hate free grace. And the
popular religionists, you say, well, there are a lot of preachers
who are popular today. Of course they are. They don't preach the
gospel of Christ. They preach the gospel of denomination. They preach the gospel of sacraments
and the gospel of good works. They preach the gospel of man's
own free will. Of course they're not unpopular.
The offense is in the cross. That's what Paul said in my text.
The offense of the cross. Paul summed it up. He said, listen
to the Apostle Paul, if I please men, I am not the servant of
Christ. Because salvation by grace has
never pleased men. And then our Lord said, woe unto
you when all men speak well of you. And Paul said this, if I
preach works, if that's what I preach, then the offense is
gone. There's no offense. There's no
hatred. There's no animosity and no malice. Not in works, but it's in grace.
Now, wherein lies the offense of the cross? What is there about
the gospel of God's free grace that's so offensive, that's so
offensive? Now, if you listen to me, I've
been preaching a long, long time, and I preach this message. The
same message I preach to you on this television station program
is the message I've preached for 35 years now, almost 36,
the message of God's free grace. And I know from experience where
in lies the offense. I know what it is that makes
men angry. Now, here's the first point.
The gospel of God's grace, of God's pre-grace and salvation
through Christ alone, addresses all men, me, you, in the pulpit,
the few in the world, old and young, white and black, rich
and poor, learned and ignorant, Jew and Gentile. The gospel addresses
all men everywhere, all men and women, as sinners. That's what
we are, sinners in God's sight. We're guilty before God. We're
guilty by imputation. In Adam all die. We're guilty
by birth. In sin, my mother conceived me. I was shapen in iniquity. I was
brought forth speaking lies. We're guilty by nature. Paul
said, when I would do good, evil is present with me. I find a
law within me that when I would do good, I have evil thoughts
and evil desires and evil passions and evil intentions. We're sinners
by choice. We choose evil. Knowing to do
good, we do evil. We're sinners by practice, and
there's no difference. Romans 3 said there's no difference
between Jew and Gentile. They're all under sin. They're
all under sin. They're all together become unprofitable. There is none righteous, no,
not one. And that means you and me and
everybody under the sound of my voice. There's not a righteous
man in this world, in himself, by his own attitude and actions
and manner of life. No righteous man. Not righteous,
not God righteous. He may be a pretty good fella
compared to everybody else, but compared to God, he's a guilty
sinner. He doesn't love like God or or show mercy like God,
or forgive like God. And most of us are motivated
by selfishness and self-righteousness. There's none that understand
it. We don't understand the perfect ways of holiness. All religion
has their holiness today, but it's conformed to the way you
dress, or the way you say hallelujah or praise the Lord, or where
you go to church, or how you wear your hair, how long you
wear your sleeves, or whether you wear pants or not, or whether
you wear jewelry or makeup. It's all an outward thing. veneer
of holiness, and inside is malice and hatred and jealousy and bigotry
and prejudice and all these things, envy and all these things. That's
where it is. That's where sin is. It dwells
in the heart. It flows through the veins. It's
a principle and nature of the heart. And there's none that
really understand what holiness really is. And the man that claims
to be the holiest is the farthest one away from God. because he
knows the least about it. There's none that seek God. There's
none good, no, not one. Isaiah said the whole head is
sick. That's the mental capacity. The whole heart is faint. That's
the affections. We love ourselves. That's who
we love. You know that so, as well as I do. The whole heart
is faint. From the sole of the feet to
the top of the head, there's no soundness. In the flesh dwelleth
no good thing. Not good. Not good. In the flesh no man can please
God. By one man's sin entered this
world, and death by sin, and so that death passed upon all
men. For by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners. I'll tell you this, and it's
offensive. I know it's offensive. To call
men what they are and to tell them what they are and expose
what they are offends their dignity. Man has high thoughts of himself,
and yet God says if we say we're without sin, we're liars and
the truth's not in us. If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves. If we say we have not sin, we
make God a liar. I wish I could paint the picture
as black as it is. I wish I could expose these rotten,
evil, corrupt natures of ours for what they are in God's sight.
God looked down from heaven and said, there's none good, no,
not one. Every imagination of man's, the
thoughts of his heart are evil. Once in a while, no sir, continually. If you take People's Magazine
or you have access to one, there was an article in one recently
about sin. And people estimated how many
times they sinned a month. Somebody said they sinned an
average of four times a month. If you make that four times a
second, I'll buy it because you are sinning. The natural man
is enmity against God. The natural mind and heart, the
heart's deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. Who can know
it? Blessed is the man who knows
what sin is and regards himself to be one. Because Christ said
he came to seek and to save the lost. Christ came into the world
to save sinners. Alright, I'll tell you the second,
the second place of offense, where the gospel's offensive.
And that is the gospel of Christ declares a full, complete righteousness,
which we don't have. But a full, complete righteousness
provided, purposed by God, and provided by God, and purchased
by His Son. and a full, complete atonement
that's accomplished by Christ Himself, or God Himself in the
person of His Son. And that's offensive, but it's
true. Romans 8, 1 through 3 says this, There is therefore now
no judgment, no condemnation, no damnation, no curse to them
who are in Christ Jesus. No curse. You see, these people
who are – you just talked about what sinners we are, by thought
and attitude and motive and nature, and yet in Christ we have no
judgment, that's what he says, no judgment to them who are in
Christ, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. For
what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the
flesh, the law wasn't weak, it was the flesh that was weak.
But what the law could not do, that is, could not give us righteousness,
could not establish a righteousness, could not make us acceptable
to God, What the law could not do because of the weakness of
the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh as a sacrifice for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. You
know what I'm saying? I'm saying that Jesus Christ,
the Lord, the God-man, our representative as a man on this earth in the
flesh, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, He perfected
by His obedience and fulfilled by His perfect life, all the
requirements of God's law on behalf of those who believe.
And He imputed to us a holy righteousness. By His obedience, we have a perfect
standing before God. Now, if you choose to stand in
yourself, you're going to be condemned, because you don't
have any righteousness. But if you choose by grace, by
faith, to stand in Christ, Then you have a perfect righteousness
because you're robed in His righteousness. And then through His death on
the cross, Jesus Christ satisfied God's justice. You see, the wrath
of God is against sin, and Christ satisfied that justice of God
and died. The soul that sinneth shall die.
I already died. I died in Christ. I'm crucified
with Christ. And He imputed unto us that perfect
standing before God and enabled a holy, just, and righteous God
to love and forgive and accept and justify you and me and still
be God. When He had by Himself purged
our sins. It's not Jesus and me. It's not
Jesus and you. It's Christ alone who purged
our sins. He is our holiness, all of it. He is our justifier completely. He is our acceptance, and nothing
needs to be added to what He did. We're redeemed with the
precious blood of Christ, redeemed fully, the ransoms paid. Nothing
needs to be added. Not by works of righteousness
which we've done, but according to His mercy He had saved us.
You see, Paul said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, it and
it alone. is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the
Greek. For therein, in the gospel, is the righteousness of God revealed
from faith to faith. For it is written, the just shall
live by faith, the doctrine of substitution. Total, complete
substitution is offensive. It offends a natural man's pride. But I'm telling you, the banquet
of mercy is served up by one host, the Lord of glory. The
royal bath in which black souls are washed white and cleansed
from all their transgressions and sin was drawn from the veins
of the Son of God. And nothing you do or anybody
else has done is going to enter that stream. It's without mixture. It's Christ's blood. All right,
here's the third thing. The gospel of God, the gospel
of God's glory and God's grace declares that God is absolutely
sovereign, omnipotent, almighty in the matter of salvation. You
see, eternal life is the gift of God, not of works, lest any
man should boast. And he said to Moses in Exodus
33, I will be merciful to whom I will be merciful, and I will
be gracious to whom I will be gracious. So then, it's not of
him that will it, it's not of him that run it, it's of God
that showeth mercy. Our Lord said, all that my Father
giveth me shall come to me. In John 17, He said, I pray not
for the world, I pray for them which thou hast given me. He
said, no man can come to me except my Father which sent me draw
him. And we know that all things work together for good to them
who love God, who are called according to His purpose. For
whom he foreknew, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image
of his Son. And whom he predestinated, he
called. And whom he called, he justified.
And whom he justified, he glorified." Now, what shall we say to these
things? Well, we say, if God be for us, who can be against
us? Salvations of the Lord. In its planning, in its execution,
it pleased God to bruise him. In its application, it pleased
God to reveal his Son to me. In its sustaining power, we're
kept by the power of God, and in its ultimate perfection, it's
of the Lord. Herein is love, not that we loved
God, He loved us. We love Him because He first
loved us. "'Tis not that I did choose thee,
the Lord that could not be. If thou hast not chosen me, I
would have never chosen thee." What about Noah? He found grace
in the eyes of the Lord. Abraham said, Lord, I have found
grace in thy sight. You see, my friend, the new birth
is totally misunderstood by most preachers and religionists. The
new birth. You had no more to do with your
new birth than you did with your fleshly birth. That's right. You had no more to do. You see,
the new birth is not your making a religious decision. The new
birth does not occur at an altar. It does not occur down at the
front of the church. But God, in His sovereign grace,
gives divine life to whom He will. That's right. The new birth
is from above, totally, completely from above. That's what the Scripture
says. We're born from above. Now, when I was born the first
time 60 years ago, I had absolutely nothing to do with it. There
was a seed planted in my mother's womb that became me. My father
put it there. And I was born. And I could see
and hear and speak. And one day, by God's grace from
above, I was born anew. I was born the second time. I
was regenerated by the Holy Spirit. And that's a miracle of God.
It's a supernatural miracle of God. Now listen to the Scripture.
We are born of God. To as many as received Him, to
them gave He the privilege to become sons of God, which were
born. Not of blood, that is, not of
fleshly inheritance. Not of the will of the flesh,
not of the will of man, but we're born of God. And the agent in
the new birth is the Holy Spirit. And the seed in the new birth
is the Word of God, of His own will. Beget he us with the Word
of truth. Now, I know this is offensive
to natural men, but my friend, let me ask you something. Are
we going to go by the Bible or are we going to go by what we
think? If we go by what we think, we can have a thousand, ten million
different kinds of theology. But the Word of God is our only
rule of faith and practice. We do what we do because the
Word of God commands it. We believe what we believe because
the Word of God teaches it. If they speak not according to
the Word of God, it's because there's no light in them. And
this is offensive, but I'm telling you, salvation's of the Lord.
It's of the Lord. It's of the Lord from beginning
to end, from Alpha to Omega, salvation is of the Lord. And
the new birth is by the power of God. Yes, men call on God,
but He calls them first. Men do seek the Lord because
they seek Him. Men do love Christ because they
love Him, because He loves them. He said He chose us in Christ
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy
and without blame before Him in love. Now listen to this.
What is offensive about the gospel of grace? The gospel of Christ
declares the wrath of God against sin. I know today's preaching
emphasizes the love of God exclusively and leaves out the wrath of God.
But listen to the Scriptures. The wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men.
Listen to Psalm 5.5. God hates all the workers of
iniquity. Listen to Psalm 7.11. God is
angry with the wicked every day. Listen to John 3.36. He that
believeth not the Son, the what? The wrath of God abideth on him. The judgment of God fell upon
the angels that sinned. That was God's wrath. The flood
in Noah's day reveals what? God's wrath. The destruction
of Sodom reveals what? God's wrath. At Calvary, God
spared not His Son. The destruction of Jerusalem
in 70 A.D. reveals God's wrath. Explain
this to me. Eternal hell, is that a product
of God's love or God's wrath? My friends, God is love. Where? In Christ. What does the Bible
say? Nothing can separate us from
the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. And this
gospel declares that Christ is the way to God, the truth of
God, and the life of God, and denies that anyone can come to
God any other way. Now, that's offensive. I know
it's offensive. And Paul said it's offensive.
But he said, I'm going to preach it because I didn't come to please
men. I came to preach what God has
written in His Word and the glory of God in Christ. Now this message
is on a cassette tape, The Offense of the Cross. And next week I'll
bring a message on faith. I'd like you to have both of
them. Send a donation of two dollars. We'll send you the tape
with both messages on the same tape. God bless you.