Oakbrook Evangelical Free Church

Responses to Message of the Cross

B. I. The decisive act of God in Christ’s death will bring about a reversal of the world’s values concerning status, success, self-achievement and boasting. We have to decide whether or not we will embrace the treasure of the world that is coming or cling to the values of the world that is on its way out.

“the message of the cross” = the gospel = “Christ crucified”

2 Effects:

1. for those on the way to destruction it is foolishness

2. for those on the way to salvation it is the power of God.

(at the last day)

The cross redefines wisdom.

The cross is meant to impact our whole way of seeing the world.

The cross creates an earthquake in personal faith.

Anyone who embraces Christ can never look at the world in the same way.

Power to save

Romans 1:16 ” For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” ESV

The people’s of the world must here the message of the cross and place their faith in Christ or all will be lost. No other message saves.

Acts 13:38-39 ” Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.” ESV

From guilt, from condemnation, but penalty and from power!

Are some people saved by grace through faith in a merciful Creator even though they never heard of Jesus in this life? Are there devout people in religions other than Christianity who humbly rely on the grace of a God whom they know only through nature and non-Christian religious experience? The answer is no!

God rejects the wisdom of this world – its religions, status, power, skill. Because it did not and cannot lead anyone to the know Him.

Instead He sets forth his own wisdom in the message of the crucified Christ that has the power to save those who believe.

For those who believe the message of the cross is the power of God for those who are being saved. A process not yet finished.

Proof: OT quote

“I will destroy…” quote of Isaiah 28:14

Isaiah 29:13-14 ” Then the Lord said, “Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote, Therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous; And the wisdom of their wise men will perish, And the discernment of their discerning men will be concealed.” ” NASB95

God’s people have refused to listen to the wisdom of God proclaimed through the prophets. Instead, they have their own plans. But He will reverse and set aside their wisdom.

I will destroy = I will set aside the wisdom of this world.

The wisdom of this world = the wisdom that leaves God out.

It is man-centered

It is a way of speaking, 1:17

It is a way of thinking, 1:18f

Application: Never get over the impact of the cross on your own life. And never forget that those without Christ are lost without Him.

II. The Clash of Messages

A series of contrasts human wisdom and God’s foolishness in the message of the cross.

The world clamors for wisdom at the feet of modern pundits.

Not everyone fits in this category. And not everything they say is wrong. Some is legitimate counsel and advise. Some of it is the truth.

Where is… Just where has all the wisdom of the so-called wise brought us? How well have we done in solving the world’s problems?

The wise man = the religious man who is wise in his own eyes.

The scholar is simply an expert or professional.

~ a reference to the religious or Jewish expert in the law
~ a reference to the philosophers of the Roman world

The philosopher of this age is a debater – persons engaged in extended discussion of particular issues.

The message of the world is the message of those who are perishing

It is a subtle message.

It is the message of self-sufficiency.

It is the message of the educated, the expert, and the philosopher

The message of the world is that we are special. We don’t need God because there is a little bit of the divine in all of us.

Has not God made the world’s wisdom folly?

Means…

God has acted to expose what the world considers wisdom for the folly that it is. He has by passed the arrogant, self-assertive wise men, scholars and disputants.

Conversation with a professor of astronomy from the Chicago

Observatory at a wedding rehearsal dinner “The universe is at least 100 million years old. And we don’t know what happened during that time to bring into existence the world as we know it. But we do know what took place during the first 30 seconds.” And he still did not answer were that came from

Conversation with a professor of letters from UWO after a Kiwanian meeting. Discussion about his negative comments about the Bible. He ridiculed the idea of creation being in 4000 B.C. (a straw man which I nor anyone else I know holds to), the idea of a young earth (an idea I was not presenting nor defending) and the idea that the Jews built the pyramids (again, an idea I was not presenting). We do not know, in fact how the pyramids were built. That conversation is speculation.

How did God do this? By doing what the wisdom of the world could not do and by doing it in a way which the wise men of this world view as foolishness. 1:21

Ephesians 3:6 ” This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” ESV

Men on their own, through their own religion or wisdom will never truly know God. In this “now” of history knowing the gospel is the only way to become an heir of the promise of the gospel.

Bottom Line: Two types of wisdom:

1. The wisdom of this world that leaves God out.

2. The wisdom of God that leaves the world’s wisdom out.
A scheme, a plan prepared and carried out by God for the salvation of mankind. Man would never have thought this one up.

There is no manifestation of God that the self-regarding wisdom of man does not twist until it has made God into its own image. That is, no manifestation of God except the cross. Which can only be accepted by faith or rejected.

Not by wisdom, but by faith.

Since = a repeat of 1:21 but in sharper terms.

Jews ask for signs

A refusal to take God on trust.

He must present His credentials in a visible form and by

acts that are clearly identify his claim on men and his

ability to meet their needs.

This attitude is religious but is also skeptical and essentially

egotistical. And it will inevitably find the message of Christ crucified a scandal because God does precisely the opposite of what he is

expected to do. Perish the thought that the messiah would die a criminal’s death.

App: Stop looking for signs! Take God at His Word. Trust Him.

Greeks seek wisdom (not Greeks specifically but gentiles)

Unreligious The intellectual egocentric, wisdom-seeking gentile finds that same message to be folly because an incarnation crystallized in crucifixion means that man has not speculated his own way to God but that God has come down to where man is.

Man in the world

man alienated from God

man in his self-centered rebellion.

Both Jews and Gentiles are in error.

2 Timothy 3:7 ” always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. ” NASB95

If you refuse to see God in his gift of Christ & His crucifixion…lost

1 Timothy 2:3-4 ” This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

And if either Jews or gentiles come to embraced Christ crucified it is because of God’s doing. 1:24, 30 The initiative is God’s.

What God has done contradicts human ideas of wisdom and power.

Is it wrong to eat chocolate? Slender woman who enjoyed…

Quote: C.S. Lewis, Piper, page 58

Galatians 6:14 ” But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” ESV

App: Strive for excellence in education but only boast, exult, rejoice in the cross of Jesus Christ. This is a single idea. A single goal for life. A single passion. Only boast in the cross.

May the one thing that you cherish, the one thing that you rejoice in and exult over, be the cross of Jesus Christ.

“You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on into eternity, you don’t need to have a high IQ. You don’t have to have good looks or riches or come from a fine family or a fine school. Instead you have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things – or one great all-embracing thing – and be set on fire by them.” Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life, p.44

III. Living Proof of the Message – Exhibit 1!

Who Does God Choose? Look around you!

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful (politically or socially), not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus (by His doing you are ‘in Christ Jesus), whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” ESV

You can see what I mean when you take a look at those in the church.

Think of what you were when you were called…

The circumstances in which you were called.

The kind of person called, the nature of the community of believers

It is obvious that God uses different standards than those used by either the religious or secular world.

Not many wise according to human standards

Not many powerful

Not many of noble birth.

1 Cor 7:21 – the Corinthian church included slaves, a synagogue ruler (Acts 18:8) and Erastus (Romans 16:23) who probably was not poor.

Acts 4:13 ” When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”

The rag-tag gang.

God is clearly engaged in over-throwing the worlds false values.

God chose what the world counts as foolish.

In the world’s estimation

God has chosen those who unpromising to put to shame the

world’s rich and famous.

Kirt Warner and …

He shames the world by proving them wrong!

The foolish

The weak

The lowly (opposite of nobly born)

The despised

The things that did not exist

When God set his plan in motion there was no church in Corinth except in his intention. Now it exists!

God’s wisdom is validated by the existence of that which did not exist. Now there is a new creation!

God has a purpose in the world to humiliate its wisdom and power.

And God has a purpose in the church that none glory in the church except in the cross of Christ!

It is not the world’s false wisdom and ability that caused Paul to write this letter. But it is the false boasting in the church where Christian have gotten off base and are glorying in men and wrongly evaluating their own gifts using them for themselves and focusing on the spectacular.

They can only do this because they’ve forgotten that they are Christians only by God’s doing! 1:30

In Christ God has given us all we need. Christ is the personification of

Wisdom True wisdom is not found in religious precision, eloquence, or Philosophical speculation and debate but in Christ. It is Christ’s wisdom that created the world and holds it together.

It is ‘in Christ’ that God turn our knowledge into wisdom

Christ becomes for us the wisdom we do not have.

The world’s wisdom cannot transform us but Christ can.

The world in its wisdom worships the creation.

Righteousness

The world in its wisdom had fallen away from God and become morally bankrupt. Man is arraigned in God’s court of

justice and found wanting. He cannot produce righteousness and is therefore unable to justify himself

But ‘in Christ’ righteousness is restored. And it is ‘in Christ’

that mankind has been restored to God.

It is ‘in Christ’ that God gives us righteousness. Christ becomes for us righteousness we do not have. The world’s wisdom cannot transform us but Christ can.

Sanctification

Used in a similar way as righteousness. It is a reference to

holiness without which no one can approach God.

Heb 12:14 There is no doubt that the world’s wisdom and power cannot produce holiness.

It is ‘in Christ’ that God gives us holiness.

Christ becomes for us the holiness we do not have.

The world’s wisdom cannot transform us but Christ can.

Redemption

When God ‘in Christ’ gives us wisdom and righteousness and holiness it is not merely a legal transaction or a magical reality. The transference of righteousness and holiness to those who are unrighteous, immoral rebels can only be accomplished by the act of a divine, infinitely valuable sacrifice – Christ crucified, the only hope of the world.

Redemption refers to entering a dangerous world, coming under hostile fire, paying the ultimate sacrifice to drag some out of the line of fire, and liberate enslaved captives.

Wisdom, righteousness and holiness are available to us only through Christ’s infinite payment for sin.

If anyone is to glory, boast, exult, rejoice, celebrate, it must be in Christ alone.

IV. Living Proof of the Message – Exhibit 2!

“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. ” ESV

A. He did not come with eloquent oratory designed to impress an audience.

There is a rhythmical parallel construction in this paragraph that shows polish and balance. But that is not his focus!

B. Paul’s single focus and passion!

Robert the bobert the big bellied man!

He ate a cow, he ate a calf, he ate a butcher and a half

Paul the apostle the single focused man!

Galatians 2:19-200 “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”” NIV

Philippians 3:7-11 ” But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” NIV

“I decided”

“Jesus Christ and the crucifixion” is the basis and sum of everything Paul says. He pushes us to chose a single focus.

Mark 8:35 ” For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” ESV

Vision of Louie Giglio, page 47

“yes, Lord, walking in the way of your truth, we wait eagerly for you,
for Your name and Your renown are the desire of our souls.” Is 26:8

“passion exists to glorify God by inviting students everywhere
to seek God wholeheartedly in an atmosphere of corporate worship.
through His grace and in His presence we ask that God change us,
and ignite in our souls a passionate pursuit of Him
and a desire to declare His glory in our lives, our campuses,
and the ends of the earth.”