I have a very important message
for you this morning on the subject, We Preach Christ and Him Crucified. I'm going to read a passage of
Scripture found in the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse
23 and 24. If you will, take your Bibles
and read along with me. I'd like for you to open your
Bibles to this particular passage of Scripture because we're going
to go back a few verses and refer to what Paul has written before
he wrote this text. But here's the text. 1 Corinthians
1, verse 23. But we preach Christ crucified
unto the Jews a stumbling block, unto the Greeks foolishness or
nonsense, but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Now, back a few
verses in verse 17, Paul made this statement. He said, God
sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Now, the apostle
did not intend to minimize either the place or the importance of
baptism. Our Lord Jesus Christ was baptized. Before he began his ministry,
he came to the River Jordan, and there he was baptized of
John the Baptist. He went down into the water and
came up straightway out of the water. And the Spirit of God
descended upon him in the form of a dove. And that's when the
Father said, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. And our Lord commanded his disciples
to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
And he said, he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be
damned. And then in Matthew 28, he instructed his disciples,
he said, all authority is given unto me in heaven and earth.
Go ye therefore and teach all nations, make disciples, and
baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. And lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the
earth. Our Lord was baptized, Paul was
baptized, when Ananias came to him and told him that the Lord
had chosen him to be a special apostle, a special witness to
the Gentiles. He said, arise and be baptized
and wash away thy sins. And then in Romans, the sixth
chapter, the apostle Paul gives us the meaning of baptism, identifying
ourselves with Christ. It's an identification. It's
an identification with Christ in his death, in his burial,
in his resurrection, and all the way through the New Testament.
When you read of the conversion of a person, you read then that
that person confessed Christ by following Him in baptism.
Ethiopian eunuch, the Philippian jailer, Lydia, all of these people,
the people in Antioch, the people in Ephesus, everywhere in Samaria,
everywhere that people were saved. They confess Christ not by walking
down an aisle, not by shaking a preacher's hand, not by standing
down at the front while people came by to shake hands with them.
That's not the way they confess Christ. They confess Christ by
following the Lord in believer's baptism. So when Paul says in
verse 17, God sent me not to baptize but to preach the gospel,
He is not minimizing either the place or the importance of baptism. This is what he's saying. He's
saying that the primary business of the preacher, the apostle,
the prophet, the evangelist, the missionary, the pastor, whoever's
preaching, the primary business of the preacher is to preach
the gospel of Jesus Christ. to preach the gospel of substitution,
to preach the gospel of salvation, not to minister ordinances. That's
not the primary business of the preacher. He's not an entertainer. He's not one who spends his time
practicing the ceremonies and rituals of religion. He is a
preacher of the gospel, and that's his primary business. And we
find in the book of Acts that when the first deacons or helpers
were ordained. They were ordained to assist
the preachers in order that the preacher might give himself to
prayer and to the ministry of the word. That's what Peter said.
There were so many duties and responsibilities laid upon the
apostles that they couldn't perform them and preach the gospel. So
they said, look out among you seven men full of faith and full
of the Holy Spirit whom we may appoint over this business. to
take care of the material needs and physical needs of the congregation. And we'll give ourselves, Peter
said, to the ministry of the word and to prayer. And that's
the preacher's business. He is not a doorknocker. He is
not a visitor. He's not a master of ceremonies.
He's not a toastmaster. He's not an entertainer. He's
not a promoter. If he is, he's not a preacher.
His business is to preach the gospel. That's what Paul is saying
in verse 17. God sent me to preach the gospel.
And then he said in the next verse, and this preaching of
the gospel is not to be done with eloquence and with enticing
words of man's wisdom, lest our congregation miss Christ. and
their faith and confidence be in our persons, in our gifts,
in our logic, in our doctrines, in human wisdom and tradition.
We don't preach ourselves, we preach Christ. And the aim and
object of our ministry is to bring people to look to Christ,
to believe on Christ, to rest in Christ and to build upon Christ. In 1 Corinthians 2, 1 through
5, Paul said, Brethren, and I, when I came to you, I came not
with excellency of speech, or of wisdom, declaring unto you
the testimony of God, the gospel of God, the mystery of grace. For I determined not to know
anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." My
friends, it's so easy to forget our first love. It's so easy
to depart from the one object of the ministry. It's so easy
to get involved in religious programs. It's so easy to get
involved in customs and traditions and doctrines and miss a heart
knowledge of Christ and miss a heart relationship with the
Redeemer. We need to be concerned, not
with form, but with faith. Now that's the key thing, not
the form of religion, but the faith. The old Pharisees had
the form, they had the rituals, Christ said, you draw nouns to
me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me. So it's not
the form, it's the faith that's important. And we need to be
concerned not with rituals, but with redemption, faith in Christ,
in his shed blood, in his sacrificial work on the cross. We need to
be concerned not with ceremonies, but with heart conversion. We
need to be concerned not so much with prophecy as propitiation. How can man be just with God?
That's the question. How can a sinner be clean? A man born of woman, how can
he be clean? That's the question. How can
sin be put away? These are the issues. And we
must not cloud the issue. We must not cover it with intellectual
words and eloquent statements and enticing words of man's wisdom
so that the cross of Christ is hid under all of these words
and these traditions and customs. Blessed is the man whose iniquities
are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to
whom God will not charge sin. So Paul says, God didn't send
me to practice ordinances. He sent me to preach the gospel.
And he sent me to preach it in such a way that I communicate
with the hearts of men. Not the form, but the faith.
Not the ritual, but the redemption. that I communicate with men in
their language, preaching the cross of Jesus Christ. Now, what
do we preach? Well, in verse 23, and that's
our text, he said, we preach Christ and Him crucified. Now, when Paul said we preach
Christ crucified, he said that twice. We preach Christ crucified
to the Jew a stumbling block, to the Greek foolishness. We
preach Christ and Him crucified. I determine and know nothing
among you save Christ and Him crucified. Does he mean by that
that he does not say anything about the pre-existence of Christ?
Does he mean by that that he just preaches Christ on the cross,
that he doesn't say anything about the incarnation of Christ?
That he doesn't say anything about the sinless life of Christ? that he doesn't say anything
about the commandments of Christ, or the resurrection of Christ,
or the ascension of Christ, or the mediatorial work of Christ,
or the return of Christ? Does he mean when he says, we
preach Christ crucified, that all he walks around talking about
and preaching about is the fact Christ hung on a cross 2,000
years ago? Certainly not. Certainly not. And I'm going to show you that,
to preach Christ and Him crucified, if we truly preach Christ and
Him crucified, we preach all of the work of Christ and all
of the magnificent attributes of this glorious person, the
Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm going to give it to you.
I hope I can give you all of these points. There's seven major
points that I want us to think about. Now, first of all, to
preach Christ and Him crucified is to preach Christ our surety
and Christ our representative. Christ our surety and Christ
our representative. Now, some of you may be immediately
saying, well, what does he mean, our surety? What does he mean,
our representative? Well, when Christ our Lord came
down to this earth, he represented a people. When he went to the
cross, he died for a people. He represented us. He was our
representative. He was our surety. And He died
on that cross as our substitute. He took our place. He took the
responsibility of our debt. He took the responsibility on
Himself to pay the debt, to pay the ransom. He took the responsibility
to fulfill before the Father all that was required of us.
Now, how long was He our surety? Well, the scripture calls him
the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The scripture calls
him the surety of an everlasting covenant. Not just everlasting
one way, but everlasting both ways. The scripture calls his
blood the blood of an everlasting covenant. So, the relationship
between Christ and his people. those for whom he died, those
whom he represented when he came to this earth as the Messiah,
as the Redeemer, as the Savior. The relationship between Christ
and his people goes back beyond Calvary, goes back beyond the
fall, goes back beyond the creation of the world. It goes back to
the beginning. That's right. When we preach
Christ crucified, We preach that wicked men with wicked hands
crucified the Lord of glory. But Peter said they did what
God determined before to be done. It says they carried out the
determinant counsel and foreknowledge of Almighty God. So when Christ
came down here to this earth as the representative of his
people, fulfilling the law, bearing our sins in his body, dying on
the tree, being buried and rising again for our justification,
and ascending to plead for us on the right hand of the Father,
he wasn't suddenly doing something that occurred to him after he
came. He was fulfilling a mission.
He said, for this cause came I to this hour. For this cause
came I to this hour. He said, I came down from heaven,
not to do my will, but the will of him that sent me. And this
is the will of him that sent me, that of all which he had
given me, I lose nothing, but raise it up at the last day.
So we were chosen in Christ. We were loved in Christ. We were
redeemed in Christ. We were accepted in Christ. And
all of this is the fulfillment of what God decreed and purposed
before the world ever began, before the world was ever created,
what God purposed to do in His Son, through His Son, by His
Son, for His people. And so when we preach Christ
crucified, when we look to the cross, Peter said this. He said,
what you did at Calvary was not on sudden impulse. It was what
God determined before to be done. So when you preach Christ and
Him crucified, you preach Christ the everlasting surety. His blood,
the blood of the everlasting covenant. It's the fulfillment
of a purpose that was decreed and ordained by God before the
world began. Secondly, to preach Christ and
Him crucified is to preach Christ the Messiah. Christ the Messiah. You know, when Simeon was standing
in the temple, the old man was in the temple, the old priest
Simeon. And Maron Joseph brought in the child Jesus to do for
him according to the law and put him in the hands of that
old priest. The old man lifted his eyes to heaven and the scripture
says that he said these words, Lord, now let thy servant depart
in peace. Mine eyes have seen thy salvation. This is what I've been waiting
for. Well, the verses before that tell us what he was waiting
for. He was waiting for the Messiah. He was waiting for the consolation
of Israel. He was waiting for the promised
Redeemer. That's what he was waiting for.
And the Holy Spirit had told Simeon that he would not die
until he had seen the Lord's Christ, the Lord's Messiah. And when he saw Jesus of Nazareth,
He said, I've seen the Messiah. I've seen the Christ. And when
our Lord talked to the woman at the well, she said, when the
Messiah comes, he'll tell us all things. He said, I that speak
to thee am he. Now Abraham, God called him out
of his father's house and made of him a special people. And
he promised to Abraham and to Abraham's people a Messiah, a
Savior. And all through the Old Testament,
promise after promise, Prophecy after prophecy, symbol and type
and shadow and picture after picture, God portrayed this Messiah. And He portrayed Him as a crucified
Messiah. Oh, Israel didn't see that. They
were looking for a king. They were looking for a kingdom.
They were looking for a monarch like David to come and restore
Israel to its glory days. They weren't looking for a Savior.
They weren't looking for a Messiah to die on a cross. But all through
the Old Testament, we have the pictures. Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness. That serpent was Christ. The
Passover lamb, the blood that was put on the door in Egypt,
when God said, I'll pass over, and when I see the blood, I'll
pass over you, that's Christ. That rock that Moses smoked with
the rod, and out of that rock came water, the Scripture says
plainly that that rock was Christ. And Christ is our Passover. And
the atonement which the high priest made once a year under
the veil into the Holy of Holies, the blood on the mercy seat of
the Lamb, that's Christ. Isaiah wrote hundreds of years
before Christ came. Isaiah, one of the major prophets
of Israel, he said he was wounded for our transgressions. He was
bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was laid upon Him, and by His stripes we're healed. All we
like sheep have gone astray. We turned every one to His own
way, and God had laid on Him the iniquity of us all. So the
preaching of the cross is no new message. It's no new gospel. These people, I know they look
for a king. They didn't look for a crucified Redeemer, but
that's how He came. They didn't look for a lamb.
They should have. If they had only looked into their own scripture
and into their own prophets, for the scripture says, to him
give all the prophets witness. So when we preach Christ crucified,
we preach Christ the fulfillment of all the messianic types and
the messianic promises and the messianic prophecies and the
messianic pictures. And then thirdly, to preach Christ
crucified is to preach Christ virgin born. Now I know there
There are some preachers who show their ignorance of God's
Word, and I'm afraid their ignorance of God's salvation by saying
that the virgin birth is not important. But let me tell you
something. Isaiah 7, 14, the Scripture says, Behold, the Lord
himself shall give you a sign. A virgin shall conceive and bring
forth a child. and thou shalt call that child's
name Jesus, or Emmanuel, Savior, God with us. Isaiah 9, 6, unto
us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The son's not born,
he's given, he's already God's son. The son's given, the child's
born, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty
God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And when
Joseph The angel came to Joseph. The angel gave him this name
for that child. He said, that holy thing which
is born of Mary shall be called the Son of God. And thou shalt
call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.
Now listen to me. If Jesus Christ is not virgin-born,
he's not the fulfillment of Scripture. Secondly, if he's not virgin-born,
he's not the fulfillment of that sign God said he'd give. Thirdly,
if he's not virgin-born, he is not the son of God, he's the
son of Adam. He's the son of Joseph or somebody,
but he's not God's son. God's sons are begotten by God,
not by men. If Jesus Christ is not virgin-born,
then he's not without sin. If he was born with a human father,
he has partaken of human sin and human corruption and human
fall. If Jesus Christ is not virgin-born,
he is not the Messiah. He cannot be the Messiah. The
Messiah must be conceived of the Holy Spirit. If Jesus Christ
is not virgin-born, His death is as worthless as mine. You might as well look to me
for salvation as look to Him. His bones are in Jerusalem, rotting
in a grave, and His soul is in hell if He's not virgin-born
because He lied. He said, I and my Father are
one. Now, Galatians 4 says, God, in the fullness of time, sent
his Son into the world. He sent his Son, his pre-existing
Son, his divine Son, he sent him into the world. And he sent
him by way of the virgin's womb. He didn't send him by way of
Joseph or Adam, but by way of Mary. He's the woman's seed. Genesis 3.15 says He's the woman's
seed. He's not man's seed. He's the
woman's seed. Nobody is the woman's seed but
the Messiah. You're man's seed. Jesus Christ
is woman's seed that bruises the serpent's head. Fourthly,
to preach Christ and Him crucified is to preach Christ the sinless
one. The sinless one. All right? 2 Corinthians 5.21,
He was made sin for us who knew no sin. He knew no sin. It doesn't only say He didn't
know sin, He knew no sin. He never imagined any sin. He
is God. He is holy. He's without sin.
In order that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Righteousness could never be
provided by a man of sin. It has to be provided by a man
of holiness. Justice could never be satisfied
by a man who has sin. It must be satisfied by one who
has no sin. The suffering Savior must be
the sinless Savior. So when we preach Christ crucified,
we preach Christ the sinless one, the holy one, the perfect
one. The strength of His death lies
in who He is. That's the strength of His death
and what He is. He's the perfect Son of God.
That's the strength of His sacrifice. There are a lot of people who've
died for a cause. There are a lot of people who've
died for an idea. There are a lot of people who've
died in the place of someone else. But Jesus Christ could
satisfy God's holy justice for all His people because of who
He is and what He did and what He is. the holy, perfect Son
of God. Five, to preach Christ crucified
is to preach Christ the risen one. Paul said, who can lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies. Who
is He that condemns? Here are the four pillars of
faith. It is Christ that died, yea, rather is risen again. Not only died, but risen again.
who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession
for us." Now, he said Christ died, but rather he is risen
again. My friends, if Christ be not
risen, if Christ be just another religious reformer or martyr
who has died as an example, then our preaching is in vain. That's
what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15. If Christ be not risen, our
preaching is vain. And furthermore, your faith is
vain. And furthermore, those who believe
on Christ and who are dead, they'll never rise. For if Christ be
not risen, then the dead rise not. And what's more, you are
yet in your sins. And what's more, Paul said, you
are of all men most miserable. But the fact that Christ arose
declared Him to be the Son of God. He was declared to be the
Son of God by the resurrection from the dead. And His resurrection
not only says He's the Son of God, but it says that His sacrifice
has been accepted by God. God is well pleased with what
Christ did. And He proved it by bringing
Him out of the tomb in the sixth place. To preach Christ crucified
is to preach Christ the Exalted One. Paul wrote over in Philippians,
where is Jesus Christ now? I'll tell you where the Scripture
says he is. The Scripture says he's at the right hand of the
majesty on high. Let this mind, Philippians 2,
7, let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus, who
thought it not robbery to be equal with God. He thought it
not taking something that didn't belong to him to be equal with
God. But he made himself of no reputation. took upon himself the likeness
of sinful flesh, was made in the form and likeness of men,
and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which
is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, and every tongue should confess that he is Lord
to the glory of God the Father in heaven earth and under the
earth. God hath exalted him. Christ
is at the right hand of God. What's he doing there? Interceding. Paul said, who can condemn me?
Christ died, yea, rather is risen again, who is also at the right
hand of God, who maketh intercession. What is intercession? You know
what it is to intercede for someone. It's to be a go-between, a mediator,
an advocate. It's to represent someone to
another. And there the Holy Father sits on the throne. And here's
a sinful creature, son of Adam, fallen, guilty, vile, shameless,
sinful. And Christ Jesus is the mediator
between me and God. By His blood, by His cross, by
His death, He made peace with God. The Holy Spirit comes and
makes peace in my heart with God. I'm reconciled to God. Now
Christ makes my prayers holy, and my worship holy, and my praise
holy, and makes it possible for me to approach God. Wherefore,
seeing we have a high priest over the house of God, let us
come boldly before the throne of grace. Let us come boldly. Let us draw near with a heart
of full assurance that we'll be received in the seventh place. To preach Christ as crucified
is to preach Christ not only crucified, buried, and risen,
and exalted, but coming again. Before he went to the cross,
he said to his disciples, who were so sorrowful and brokenhearted
because he told them he was going away, he said, let not your heart
be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not
so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive
you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." So to
preach Christ and Him crucified, the preexistent surety, the crucified
representative, the risen justifier, the reigning Messiah, the reigning
mediator and the coming King.