I have a message today that I
want you to hear, and I want you to hear it carefully and
prayerfully. I hope that I have your attention.
This is not an easy message to bring, but I believe it's a message
that needs to be preached. Most of us know that these things
are true, but not many people are expressing them. Now, my
text is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 20 through 24,
and I'm speaking today on this subject, We Preach Christ Crucified. This is our message. This is our gospel. We preach
Christ and Him crucified. Now Paul, writing to the city
of Corinth, to the church at Corinth, says, where is the wise?
Where is the scribe? Where is the scholar and the
debater of this world? Hath not God made foolish the
wisdom of this world? For when the world with its earthly
wisdom failed to know God by means of its own wisdom and philosophy,
it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. For the Jews, and that's speaking
of the religious people, those who were given to the ceremony
and the rituals and the law, the Jews require a sign, some
sign. And the Greeks or the Gentiles
seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified. Christ crucified both the power
and the wisdom of God. Now in the city of Corinth, where
Paul had preached and this letter was addressed to the church of
Corinth, the apostle was faced with the religious crowd. Religious
people with their show of piety, with their ceremony and their
form and their outward morality. There were a lot of religious
people there. There were synagogues and temples and ceremonies and
peace days and much religion. And also he was faced with the
intellectuals. Those were the people who were
interested in logic and debate and reason. And they were interested
in religion only as it could be explained to the satisfaction
of the natural mind. They were interested in religious
questions and religious discussions. but only as they satisfied the
natural wisdom and philosophy of the intellectuals and of the
mind of that day. And then another group that he
contended with were the materialists. Those were people who were taken
up with greed and covetousness and materialism and easy living.
Paul described them this way, he said, their God is their belly.
People who think that a man's life is consistent what he has,
what he owns, and not what he is. Now, is not this a picture
of our day? The people actually to whom I
preach, to whom everybody preaches who attempts to preach. Is this
not a picture of our day? We have a very rich and affluent
society. None can deny that. In America,
it's a rich land. A prosperous land and a fluent
society. John wrote over in Revelation
chapter 3, he said, Thou sayest I am rich and increased with
goods and have need of nothing. That's our day, rich and increased
with goods and really have need of nothing. We have good health,
we have food, we have clothing, we have shelter, we have cars,
we have houses, we have health care, we have social security,
we have retirement, we have all that we need. And we are prone
to judge our spiritual state. by this material state. We're
prone to judge our spiritual welfare and well-being by our
physical and fleshly comforts. And we say we have need of nothing.
We're rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing.
And God comes back and says, you do not know that you're naked,
poor, visible, and blind. Most people only pray when they're
in trouble, which isn't very often, is it? And when we do
pray, we're praying for something material or something physical. So we have a rich and affluent
society to which we preach. And then we have a, today we
have a popular religion also. We have a God who's all love
and no wrath. We have a God who is all love,
no righteousness, no judgment. We have a heaven for everyone
and condemnation for no one. Everybody's in heaven. That's
what I'm told. And we have an accommodating
creed today, an accommodating religion. It's live and let live. Everyone's right, no one's wrong.
We have resolved all of our differences. People say, well, you worship
your God, and I'll worship my God, and he can worship his God,
and we'll all meet in heaven someday. And the church, most
churches are not houses of worship. Our Lord Jesus Christ came into
that temple, drove out the money changers, and he says, says,
my house shall be called a house of prayer. a house of prayer,
but you've made it a den of thieves. How many churches are places
of prayer and places of worship and places of preaching, just
dedicated and separated to fellowship and communion with God Almighty?
No, this is not true. Most churches today are social
centers, places of entertainment, places for weddings and suppers. Ball teams, we advertise our
churches this way. We don't advertise them as a
place where you can hear the gospel, a place where the Word
of God is preached, where the Word of God is taught. We advertise
them the friendly church. The friendly church. What difference
does it make if a church is friendly if the gospel is not preached?
We advertise it this way, the church where everybody is somebody.
Come, because here everybody is somebody. And another way
we say, we advertise that this church is a place where friends
meet and get acquainted. Well, where is the church where
the Gospels pray? Where is the church where the
Word of God is declared? And then, unfortunately today,
we have a professional ministry. People enter the ministry. They
enter a professional ministry. Now, the day of prophets is gone,
the day of preachers and evangelists. It's out of style. The Elijahs
and the Pauls and the John the Baptists, they're not welcome
today. They're disturbers, they're troublemakers. And a man doesn't
dare lift up his voice anymore. He just goes along, you know,
and today's preachers, most of them, A hirelings, they're hired
to conduct a beautiful service. They're hired to visit the hospital,
have to visit the same people a half a dozen times or they
get their feelings hurt and quit church. They're hired to marry
the young and bury the dead, to counsel the trouble, the divorcees,
to speak to the PTA, to give benedictions and devotions and
invocations, and in general, just keep the peace. Just keep
everybody happy. And they dare not preach the
naked Word of God. They'll lose their jobs. They
dare not reprove and rebuke and exhort with all longsuffering
and preach doctrine because they are professional ministry. And
then we have a whole nation. These things are just true. You
know they're true and I know they're true. But nobody says
anything about them. Nobody does anything about them.
And nothing may be done about them because I'm saying something
about them, because we have a limited outreach as far as this program
is concerned, but they've got to be said. We have a whole nation
of religious people, religious people. This whole nation is
a religious nation, people who have a zeal for God, but who
are totally ignorant of the God of the Bible. They're ignorant
of His holiness, they're ignorant of His justice, they're ignorant
of His righteousness, they're ignorant of His grace, and especially
ignorant, Paul said, of His righteousness. And they're going about to establish
a righteousness of their own. They're going about through religious
works and duties to make themselves acceptable before God. Paul said
they have a form of godliness, a form of godliness, but they
deny the power thereof. He said they're ever learning,
ever learning, ever learning, ever studying, and never really
coming to a knowledge of the truth. You see, the truth is
a person. The truth is Jesus Christ. He
said, I am the truth. And then our Lord said this to
the religious people of his day. He said, you neither know me
nor my father, and these were very Highly religious people,
moral people. They wore the uniforms of religion.
They kept the feast days, the Sabbath days, and the laws. They
stood on the street corner reading their scrolls and saying prayers
so they could be seen and heard of me. But our Lord said, you
don't know me. Do men today, answer me this,
do men today know the true character of the living God? They call
Him the man upstairs. They call Him somebody up there.
One man said, well, God, you know, he, she, or it. Do men
know God? Like David said in Psalm 50,
Thou thoughtest I was altogether such a one as Thyself. I'm saying
that the average preacher and the average religionist today
does not have the slightest conception of the true character of the
Holy God. Men of the Old Testament feared
the Lord. Holy and reverent is His name.
The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence
before Him. God is in heaven, thou art upon
the earth, let thy words be few. Where is the reverence and the
fear and the awe of Almighty God? Today's religion speaks
of an unholy familiarity with God that's unbelievable. Men even stop on the stage in
the middle of a message and look up and say God spoke to them
and said something to them. They have visions and dreams
and all of this sort of thing. Do men today know the true nature
of sin? Do they know what sin is? I'm
saying they don't know who God is and they don't know what sin
is. Sin to the average person is a material thing. It's something
you wear or don't wear. It's something you do or don't
do. It's something you say or don't say. It's something you
eat or don't eat. It's something you drink or don't
drink. All material things. How did Adam ever fall in the
Garden of Eden when he didn't have any of these things? There
was no liquor there, there was no tobacco there, there was no
drugs there, there was no picture shows there, there was no dances
there, there was none of these, and he had no clothes on. How
did he sin? What did he sin? Our Lord said,
it's not what you put in your mouth that defiles you, it's
what comes out of your heart. And the religious people got
very offended at this. They were all upset because they
had their idea of sin all catalogued. And laid out, sin was eating
meat on a certain day, and walking so far on a certain day, and
eating without washing your hands, and stuff just like we talk about
sin today. It's all outward things. But
my friend, sin is who you are more than what you do. It is
why you do what you do. It is a principle and a nature
within. It is a rebellion in heart and
soul and nature against God. It's coming short of the glory
of God. It's not what you put in your
mouth that defiles you. It's what comes out of your heart.
Our Lord said, out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders,
adulteries, jealousy, envy, lust. All these things come out of
the heart, and that's sin. That's what defiles us. Is salvation,
you know today's religion is so far from the scripture, is
salvation and eternal life a gift or an offer? We keep talking
about God offering this and offering that. Is it a gift or an offer? Scripture says God has given
us eternal life. Eternal life is the gift of God.
Wages of sin is death, but eternal life is the gift of God. Are
believers His workmanship or a combination of their workmanship
and His workmanship? Is salvation by grace alone,
through faith, by the power of God, or is salvation a combination
of something God does and you do and you put it together and
there you have it? Have we not substituted in this day a decision
for the new birth? Church membership for commitment
to Christ. Have we not substituted just
plain old emotionalism, emotionalism for worship? Where's the worship? I know there's a lot of emotionalism.
I know there's a lot of hand-waving and shouting and dancing and
carrying on, but where's the worship? Where is the worship
like Isaiah in Isaiah 6 when he fell before God? John on the
Isle of Patmos, David when he prayed, Who am I? What is my
house that thou shouldest show such mercy to us? Have we not
substituted an emotionalism and called it worship? Contest and
competition for true communion with God Almighty. Where will
all this end? Where will all this... I was
thinking yesterday when I was watching all the different religious
programs and gimmicks and promotions and buying for the heroes and
buying for the dollar, and I thought, when will all of this high finance
and these telethons and giveaways and this deception, and that's
what it is, it's deception, Taking pictures of things that are not
being done. Begging for money to use where it's not used. It's
deception and it's entertainment and it's begging and bragging
and religious politics. When will the church quit talking
about a separation of church and state while they're trying
to run the state? and the corruption in the name
of God. Genuine corruption in the name
of God. High finance and corruption in
the name of God Almighty. When will it end? It's getting
worse. It's getting worse. And one religious
broadcaster said, well, when your competitor... And who said
we were competitors? When your competitor gets a program,
you have to outdo him. When he gets a big balloon, you
get a bigger balloon. It's show business, they tell me. I don't
believe preaching the gospel is show business. I believe it's
God's business. Our Lord Jesus Christ stood in
the temple, and Mary and Joseph came seeking Him, and they said,
you've had us worried. Where have you been? He said,
I must be about my father's business. And our business is the Father's
business. It's not show business. It's
not promotion. It's not program. It's not entertaining
men on the road to hell. It's not trying to see how many
television stations we can get, how big a building we can build,
and how big an entertainment center we can build, how big
a school we can build with our name on it. I'll tell you when
all this will end. It will end when people quit
supporting it. When people who know God recognize
that this is not of God, that God's not in it. But I'll tell
you, the religious hucksters, I believe it was Barnum of Ringman
Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, said there's a sucker born every
minute and somebody there to take his money. And this is what
I think. There's a sucker born every minute and a religious
huckster waiting in the wings to take his money. And they're
doing a good job of it. Fleecing old people, taking Social
Security checks, and rewriting wills. It's sad. And this is all, this high finance
and politics and programs and promotion and entertainment,
is in the name of God. And it's sad, but the Apostle
Paul And he stood there in that city of Corinth with its intellectualism
and materialism and its greed and its religion, and he said
this, he said, we preach Christ and Him crucified. He's our message. God always has His true preachers.
And I'll tell you, the sheep of Christ can recognize their
message, too. They can recognize it. They know
when a man's preaching Christ and when he's preaching himself.
They know when a man's preaching for the glory of God and when
he's preaching for gain and for greed and covetousness. Yeah,
we preach Christ crucified. God's always had His true ministers
that dare to preach Christ in Him crucified, preach His Word,
His Gospel, His Redeemer. To them which are called, called
to the Spirit of God, both Jews and Greeks, and God always has
His called sheep too. They're out there. They're out
there. You know, He said in the last
days perilous times shall come. Men shall be lovers of themselves
more than lovers of God. And He said these antichrists
and false prophets and preachers will come and they'll show great
signs and wonders in so much that if it were possible, if
it were possible, They would deceive the very elect, but it's
not possible. God's elect are not deceived.
They recognize the gospel. They know a fraud when they see
one and hear one. They know a huckster and a flesh
merchant when they hear one. They know a man who's preaching
the gospel and a man who's not preaching the gospel because
to those who are called, Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God and
Jesus Christ is the power of God. And I'll tell you, I'm more
determined than ever in this day. We started here on this
station 12 years ago nearly. The same format, the same gospel,
the same message. And if God lets us stay on another
12 years, it's going to be the same format, the same gospel,
and the same message. The gospel of God's redeeming
grace through Jesus Christ the Lord. And it's not going to be
a giveaway or a gimmick. It's not going to be finance
or politics. It's not going to be a promotion
or entertainment, it's going to be the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And in the midst of all this religion and materialism and
intellectualism, with the Apostle Paul I declare, I am determined
to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. You know, what do you preach
about Christ, preacher? What do you preach about Christ?
Well, number one, I preach the glory of His person. The glory
of His person. John said in John 1, in the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,
and all things were made by Him. And without Him was not anything
made that was made, and that Word became flesh and dwelt among
us. And we beheld his glory, oh,
his glory. When Isaiah saw his glory, he
spake of him. We beheld his glory, the glory
as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The disciples said, well, show
us the Father and we'll be satisfied. He said, Christ said, he that
has seen me has seen the Father. And then in Hebrews 1, our Lord
wrote these words. by the power of the Holy Spirit
using the Apostle Paul to pin them. God, who at sundry times
and in diverse matters spake to our fathers by the prophets,
hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath
appointed heir of all things, by whom he made the worlds. who
being the brightness of his glory, and the exact image of his person,
and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had
by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of
God." My friend, I'm preaching the glory of his person. The
gospel is not a proposition, it's a proclamation of a person,
the person and work of Jesus Christ. That's what the gospel
is. The Gospels know what you do for God. It's what God through
Christ has done for us. Not only do we preach the glory
of His person, but we preach the excellency of His character. Jesus Christ is the righteousness
of God. He's the holiness of God. He
was tempted in all points, as we are, yet without sin. He had
no sin. He knew no sin. He perfectly
obeyed God's law in every jot and tittle. Abraham was the friend
of God, but not without sin. Moses was the meekest man, but
not without sin. David was a man after God's own
heart, but not without sin. John the Baptist was the greatest
man born of woman, but not without sin. Paul was the greatest apostle,
but not without sin. Mary was the mother of our Lord,
but not without sin. But of him, God said, this is
my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. Jesus Christ is the
righteousness of God. And if we have any righteousness
before God, it'll be because of a union by faith with him. It'll be as God considers us
and accepts us and receives us and regards us by faith in Christ. He is our righteousness. What
do we preach about him? The power of his blood, the glory
of his person, the excellence of his character, and the power
of his blood. His blood cleanses us from all
sin. Moses wrote in Leviticus 17,
I've given you the blood on the altar to make an atonement for
your souls. It's the blood that makes an
atonement for the soul. It's not the works of religion,
it's the blood. that makes atonement for the
soul, atonement that reconciles you to God. Without the shedding
of blood, there's no remission of sins. Jesus Christ died that
God may be just and justify you and me. You know, preachers,
you say, well, all the preachers say believe. Let me tell you
something. We've got to tell people whom to believe. It's
not just what to believe, it's whom to believe. I know whom
I have believed, Paul said. It's not I know what I believe
or when I believe, it's whom, the person. The object of faith
is Christ, the Son of God. And then we preach the efficacy
of his intercession. There's one mediator between
God and man, that's the man Christ Jesus, and he ever lives to make
intercession for us. You see, he's our redemption,
he's our wisdom, he's our sanctification, and he's our holiness, and he's
our hope, and he's our life. Christ is all and in all. In
Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you're
complete in Him. We've got to quit preaching about
the gospel and start preaching the gospel. And God will help
us, God will sustain us, God will provide for us. Almighty
God will open the doors. We don't need to beg men to support
God. He'll provide. And then we preach
the promise of His return. He said, I go to prepare a place
for you. If I go to prepare a place for you, I'll come again and
receive you unto myself, that where I am there you may be also.