The Power and Message of the Cross

the following message by aleister begg is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthforlife.org i invite you to turn with me to first corinthians and to chapter 1 and to follow along as i read from verse 18. as you turn there a moment to say a sincere thank you for the privilege of being here this evening to come to a place that i've never been to be welcomed by folks that by and large i don't know is another testimony to the wonder of what it means to be united to christ and to be part of the body of christ it's a happy thing for a scotsman to be in the great state of texas because uh we have a long history an association with texas if you know your history you'll know that approximately 40 percent of the original 300 colonists who settled here with stephen f aust austin at the beginning of the 19th century were all of scottish descent and when we began to export our famous aberdeen angus cattle from scotland we send them first of all here to texas in 1883. i first made a visit here in 1972 for explo 72 at when i was 20 years of age and i remember very vividly so many things about it and so to be invited back is as i say is a is a privilege first corinthians 1 verse 18 for the word of the cross or the message of the cross is folly to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of god for it is written i will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning i will thwart where is the one who is wise where is the scribe where is the debater of this age has not god made foolish the wisdom of the world for since in the wisdom of god the world did not know god through wisdom it pleased god through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe for jews demand signs and greeks seek wisdom but we preach christ crucified a stumbling block to jews and folly to gentiles but to those who are called both jews and greeks christ the power of god and the wisdom of god for the foolishness of god is wiser than men and the weakness of god is stronger than men for consider your calling brothers not many of you were wise according to worldly standards not many were powerful 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 law 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 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 amen and a brief prayer an old anglican prayer father what we know not teach us what we have not give us what we are not make us for your son's sake amen well my text is essentially the 18th verse and my topic is the power or the message of the cross and i should say at the very outset especially if somebody says well why choose such a topic for this evening is it really necessary to come to an event like this to a place like this and address the matter of the centrality of the cross well i should say that i have not arrived here to tell you something that you do not know but rather that we would remind each other of that which we must never forget in 1951 james denney who was a scottish theologian remarking at the beginning of that decade the cross has less than its proper place in preaching and in theology one can only wonder at what denny would have to say if he were to reappear at this point certainly in my native scotland three simple observations by way of introduction first of all the cross is rejected by other religions islam rejects the notion of a sin bearing savior according to the quran each one shall reap the fruit of their own deeds and therefore there is no place there is no need for the cross and indeed to the muslim mind it is unthinkable that a major prophet of god should come to such an ignominious end hinduism while accepting the historicity of the death of christ rejects its saving significance and humanism in all of its forms in contemporary selfism rejects the notion of the cross entirely in an earlier era a rather arrogant professor from oxford university remarked that christianity is the worst of all religions he said because it rests on the allied doctrines of original sin and vicarious atonement which he said are intellectually contemptible and morally outrageous so the cross is rejected by other religions the cross is marginalized by liberal scholarship in liberal thinking throughout certainly the last 150 years the essence of christianity is the sermon on the mount jesus is an exemplar he's an ethicist he is in some places the leader of a liberation army the incarnation is defined apart from its relationship to the death of the lord jesus on the cross it's a kind of harry belafonte kind of christianity that man will live forevermore because of christmas day but in actual fact the incarnation without the atonement has nothing at all to say to us so if it is rejected by religions if it is marginalized by liberal scholarship what will we say further well and this is painful the cross is in danger of being trivialized by the approach of much contemporary evangelicalism i say again this is bitter we should examine ourselves in this regard and recognize that the rehearsing of cliches and evangelical mantras should not be equated with a central emphasis on the cross of the lord jesus christ an emphasis which declares its necessity which establishes its meaning and which does not shy away from its offence the offence which is clearly stated by paul in this section the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but that is exactly what paul preached somebody puts up their hand and immediately says but of course aleister we have moved a long way from those days time has gone by that was then and that was there but this is here and this is now wasn't paul just able to do this because that's the kind of thing that people in paul's day were happy to hear actually no if he had chosen to respond to the expectations of his listeners he would have spent the afternoon performing miracles and then he would have had a crowd over to his tent later in the evening when they could sit around and discuss philosophy it wasn't just that he chose not to give them what they wanted he continued to provide them with the one thing they didn't want now what possible idea of church growth is this that you you set your style up to make sure that whatever it is that appeals to people you've decided i'm going to set that aside and why don't i talk to them about something else why don't i give them this story of a crucified christ especially if i've got a number of jewish people listening because it stumbles them and of course the gentiles they just thought it was absolutely ridiculous why do such a thing why do it then and why do it now well in large measure it falls on from where we have been earlier in terms of this great paradox not only revealed as it is outlined there in 2 corinthians 4 but also in this respect that god's power is seen in weakness and his wisdom is revealed in the foolishness of what is preached that the cross is actually not simply a central event of biblical theology but the cross is actually the pivotal event of human history can you imagine going into the history faculty of one of the great universities here in texas and saying you know i'd like to give a talk to the class i'd like to explain to them that whatever their perspective of ancient history and ancient rome and greece and right through into the 21st century i want to be able to explain to them that they will never understand history as it is taught them unless they have a bible and they will never understand the bible unless they realize that the cross is at the very center of god's making himself known you see all the way through the bible god does this doesn't he and we're studying for samuel at the moment for samuel uh 16 and 17. i'm struggling my way through it if you doubt that just go online and you can see how much i'm struggling but or or better still for my wife she'll tell you at least she told me on sunday night i was struggling but there you have it i mean samuel is samuel says well elia he's the big strong tall one he's the obvious one no he's not we go through the whole seven brothers and there's nobody there at all until eventually the father says jesse says well there's another we do have another one just that that fellow but i never even brought him up for the interview because clearly clearly he's not the man oh yes he is the man who would think that he would be the man and who would think who would think that the major problems of our world and the troubles of human life find their ultimate solution in the execution of an innocent man in a.d 33 and in the preaching of that news about him to the nations of the world who actually believes that who believes that you see we do not expect people to believe it we understand that their immediate response to it is to say you know what you you are a major clown and we don't know where you appeared from but the sooner you go back the better because in actual fact it is obvious to us that such a thing is folly and yet everywhere paul goes he does the same thing he's essentially got one string to his bow he goes into the synagogues again and again and he labors to show them that the messiah had to suffer and die check it out wherever he goes and he goes in and he says now i want to show you from the scriptures that the messiah had to suffer and die and then when he has done that he then says and this jesus is that messiah this jesus is that christ in other words the jesus of history is the lord of glory he was pointing out something that we need to point out in our preaching and that is that we can tell people that christ will come into their hearts and live but first they need to know that he has come into the world lived and died and rose again and that historic foundation gives to us the platform upon which we are then able to encourage them in that way well we had a lot why we had a little uh tour around corinth there didn't we thank you brother very very good commercial center lots of shops uh and uh the estherian games and the sea and the sailors and everything that comes with it and the temple of aphrodite with a focus on the pagan goddess of love all of the excessive immorality of the place so much so that it becomes a byword for sexual license and excess of every kind and then of course there were all the bright boys and ladies that lived there with their high sounding discourses and the ponderings of the intelligentsia that was the whole framework similar to athens wasn't it they spent their time doing nothing other than just talking about the latest ideas luke says of athens similar here that's the context and so it is into this significant decadent city that this little converted jew walks and he says to them i'm not going to talk about myself i'm not going to try and impress you in the way i speak to you because if i were to do that you might then just be fascinated by my ability by my rhetoric by my capacity with language by the philosophical notions that i can promulgate for you but i'm not going to do that at all i'm not here to build a crowd no i'm here just to tell you about the death of the lord jesus christ preaching the message in such a way that people would cease trusting in anything other than the work of god in christ we didn't read as far as verse five of chapter two but that's the point that he makes he says and the reason for my approach is straightforward so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of god and where is the power of god displayed in the weakness and where is the epitome of weakness in this death of a galilean carpenter jesus of nazareth nothing looked less like a messiah than that scene on the middle cross outside the city wall nobody would have walked up there and said oh this must be the messiah no they walked up there and said this paul couldn't possibly be the messiah after all the whole thing has come to a crashing halt in a palestinian tomb no the cross is not only a picture of weakness as revealed in jesus himself but he's actually prepared to to say to them you know if you have a mirror one of those things that we were hearing about earlier if you have a mirror you can prove what i'm telling you because think about yourselves think about yourselves you're not really a particularly fantastic group of people not very nice to say but i mean it's true he said yeah there's you you've got to make sure that there you keep the consonants in this it doesn't say uh not any says not many now many it's true i mean look at this choir it's a very nice group still awake most of them as far as i can see that's the only reason i turn around just to check but uh but i i don't want to be unkind this is a very nice church and a nice choir but if you take the average choir on a sunday and you look up there and you go look at these people what a funny group of people right and they are they are representative of the larger group of people and you say we're gonna we're gonna turn the world upside down with this group i mean they can sing but he says and if you're feeling bad that i mentioned you why don't i just mention me because i'm no great shakes myself he said you know if whoever had had picked him up at the at the donkey port or whatever and brought him home for for tea you know if if if you know while he was waiting for his for his uh evening meal the wife said to her husband who had picked him up said well what do you think i mean he hasn't done anything yet but oh he says he's a weird guy man he's got sweaty palms he's i don't know whether he's nervous or what it is but we didn't have much of a conversation i don't i don't know if he's going to be much good weakness weak group weak preacher weak the word of the cross is fully to those who are perishing they look at that and they say no it's never going to happen now when we apply this we have to say first what this means to the unbeliever why this message for the unbeliever well let me suggest a couple of things first of all because the message of the cross establishes the gravity of the human condition the message of the cross establishes the gravity of sin says that the story of humanity is the story of man's rebellion and man's alienation and man's brokenness and the death of jesus and the picture that is then given to us in the bible causes us to ponder and then to proclaim that it took the death of god's perfect son to deal with my sinful life with my alienation and with my brokenness and with my rebellion now i'm pretty sure but i haven't checked because i'm not here but i think if you let me loose tomorrow morning anywhere in your city i can get agreement from just about anyone that i meet about one subject and it is this that our world is broken that it is broken you can you can broach the subject in starbucks you can broach it on the airplane anywhere you want to go you will get general agreement that something has gone amazingly wrong you get agreement on that when it comes to the issue of not simply dealing with the symptoms but actually a diagnosis of the cause then the opportunity for evangelism explosion is just kicking in at that point but the point i'm making is straightforward people are prepared to acknowledge something is badly odd if you if you saw at eternity's gate the movie actually if you did you you're in a very small group but um it's a movie that was made about van gaal most recently called at eternity's gate and part of that involves his interaction with gogan who ended his life in a miserable situation down in the islands and gogan who was brought up as a roman catholic and catechized all through his life and painted and abused his his circumstances in all kinds of ways his his largest painting is in the boston museum of fine arts and he wrote on that painting and he doesn't write on his paintings and he wrote three questions up in the corner where do we come from what are we and where are we going and he didn't have an answer to the question and the average millennial out in texas tonight has no answer for that question either they've no answer for the question they've been they have been raised believing that they exist as a result of time plus matter plus chance they are a collection of molecules held in suspension there is no ultimate destiny towards which they are moving therefore there is no arc that they are able to navigate through their lives and they are at sea and if the message that is then offered to them is a kind of watery substitute for the message of the cross then we are not be surprised that they just walk away from it because what we have to face up to is the fact of our rebellion against god that no part of our lives is left intact our emotions our affections our minds our wills the anti-god bias which is part and parcel of our human existence comes in at the level of our understanding and our intellect and there is no intellectual road to god david wells who has been a friend to me over the years has a purple passage in one of his books i can't remember where it is but he talks about how the how god is beyond the realm of our intuitive radar as he puts it it's a wonderful a wonderful line so he says there is an invisible boundary between ourselves and god god in his holiness and we in our rebellion and in our alienation there is no intellectual road for us to get there and so it is that the only way that it is possible is for him to come in down as it were underneath the radar we cannot access him on our own terms we cannot access him in our own time no we need him to come and cross the boundary so that we might know him savingly and what is the message of the cross it is that god in christ has done exactly that that he has crossed that boundary and that he has made himself known and so when we think about it in terms of its gravity in in the predicament that we face it also is possible for us to explain to our friends the absolute necessity of god's grace which means that we either in our proclamation and in our conversation preach what the bible says that human beings are rebels against god by nature under his judgment and lost and that jesus crucified who bore their sin and curse is the only available savior we either proclaim that or we emphasize human potential and human ability with christ brought in to boost them but with no necessity for the cross except to exhibit god's love and inspire us to greater endeavor the latter is popular the former is true if you go over the latter no one will say you're a fool they say no that's fine god whoever he is i mean i preach every week to a congregation of people many of them because of their their their stages in life they are operating on this basis a good god if he exists will reward nice people if they do their best that's the story if there's a good god and he exists he'll reward nice people in other words if he's gradient on the curve i'm end with a chance because there's a lot of really bad people and they're all sitting just along the row from me so there there are definitely in the f category or the my d minus category and even if i'm only getting a good solid c plus as long as it's going that way i'm in with a very good chance no no no it's not going to work that way if that was the case why would we have jesus dying on the cross no see it doesn't make any sense at all so what it does is it establishes the gravity of sin it reveals the absolute wonder and necessity of grace and it allows us to say to people there is a wonderful opportunity for you now to close with this you see when when the the waft of the supernatural as james stewart on one occasion put it when the waft of the supernatural threw the apostles out onto the streets of jerusalem and they began to preach they didn't shelly shelly about did they no no no this jesus whom you crucified that's that you get yourself stoned for stuff like that this jesus whom you crucified he has made him both lord and christ and what did they say what do you want us to do what should we do the average response to the preaching of the word of god is not what shall we do but when can we leave it's like uh where are you going for lunch it's what's it's it's trivial or it's applause applause who started applause santa claus i don't know who started applause you said oh no you sh no you shouldn't say that because we've had a lot of applause i don't care if you've had a lot of applause this is not a performance this is not something that you get you get kudos for this is to quote tiliki again this is horrible tiliki says the pulpit draws the preacher the way the sea draws the sailor to preach and to really preach is to die naked and every time you do to realize that you're gonna have to do it again that's what it is to stand as mcshane said as a dying man in the face of dying men and women and the issue of eternity is at stake and in between a lostness in the grave and the opportunity for reality is the cross of jesus christ there stands the cross of christ with two arms outstretched to save and that's what they said what do you want us to do and peter says repent and be baptized every one of you because to put your confidence and trust in the person and work of the lord jesus is actually to believe the gospel well it matters this preaching of the cross for the unbeliever but i suggest to you that it matters also for those of us who believe which i think would be the best company this evening although i never want to assume that everyone who is here has actually closed with god's offer of salvation in jesus calvin in the institutes he says you know that um the idea that we simply know it intellectually does not mean that we have embraced it but you believe tonight and i believe what then there's this message of the cross well i suggest to you that it is that it's first of all a compelling force a compelling force for the love of christ compels us the love of christ compels us when billy graham was in transition many many years ago probably in the 50s again i think this is in the book by pollock the biographer and he and he didn't know whether he should stay up in minneapolis or wherever he was with the school there i don't remember the details or whether this tug in his heart was to to to to go out into the world with this great story of jesus christ and him crucified and he tells of how he walked out through the forest and as he walked out through the forest the hymn that just kept coming to him again and again rescue the perishing care for the dying snatch them in pity from sin and the grave weep or the airing ones lift up the fallen tell them of jesus he's mighty to save and he says i could not get that out of my heart or my mind and the love of christ compelled me drove me out with the story of the death of christ for sinners a compelling force and also for the believer a correcting force a correcting force in what way you say well in this way without the preaching of the cross without preaching the cross to ourselves all day and every day we will very very quickly revert to faith plus works as the ground of our salvation so that to go to the old fort lauderdale question if you were to die tonight and and you were getting entry into heaven what would you say if you answer that and if i answer it in the first person we've immediately gone wrong because i because i believed because i have faith because i am this because i am continuing loved ones the only proper answer is in the third person because he because he they think about the thief on the cross and what an immense i ca i can't wait to find that fellow one day to ask him how did that shake out for you because you were you were you were you were cussing the guy out with your friend you've never been in a bible study you never got baptized you nev you didn't know a thing about church membership and and yet and yet you made it you made it how did you make it that's what the angel must have said you know like what are you doing here i don't know what what do you mean you don't know well like because i don't know well you know excuse me let me get my supervisor they go together supervisor ranger so we're just a few questions for you first of all are you are you are you are you clear on the doctrine of justification by faith you guys said i've never heard of it in my life and and what about let's just go to the doctrine of scripture immediately this guy's just staring and eventually in frustration he says on on what basis are you here and he said the man on the middle cross said i can come now now that's the that is the only answer that is the only answer and if i don't preach the gospel to myself all day and every day then i will find myself beginning to trust myself trust my experience which is part of my fallenness as a man if i take my eyes off the cross i can then give only lip service to its efficacy while at the same time living as if my salvation depends upon me and as soon as you go there it will lead you either to abject despair or a horrible kind of arrogance and it is only the cross of christ that deals both with the dreadful depths of despair and the pretentious arrogance of the pride of man that says you know i can figure this out and i'm doing wonderfully well no because the sinless savior died my sinful soul is counted free for god the justice satisfied to look on him and pardon me that's why luther says most of your christian life is outside of you in this sense that we know that we're not saved by good works we're not saved as a result of our professions but we're saved as a result of what christ has achieved so it gives to the believer a reminder and a very important reminder of the story of god's love that we get to take out into a broken world it corrects my tendencies to self-aggrandishment and it gives me a confidence that i couldn't otherwise have a confidence in the gospel in the gospel as a student of church history which you will be if you've been around at all then you know that whenever the church big c or we see for that matter whenever the church loses confidence in the truth the power and the relevance of the gospel it loses any compelling sense of mission because what is it going to talk about it's got nothing to say 1952 james s stewart whom i've mentioned is preaching to the faculty and students at yale divinity school and he warned them 1952 the year i was born of a the of a of a theologically vague and harmlessly accommodating christianity which he said was was less than useless as i as i end let me go back to where i started i'm not here to try and say something that we don't know i'm just here the the ministry of reminder is the pastor's responsibility i intend always to remind you of these things we says peter and so do we so i'm just reminding us of what we know to be true we are not charged with the political agenda of the left or the right but we are charged with the biblical message of jesus christ and him crucified to offer to a man or a woman a god who does everything in general and nothing in particular that kind of gospel is just absolutely hopeless and it is hopeless because it is not the gospel that is proclaimed by the apostles who went before us think about it either either in christ god the creator and redeemer came right into human life and bore in his own body our sins either he did or the gospel is a fabrication either he did this is not this in our post-modern milieu this is this sort of well that's just your perspective no it ain't either he did or he didn't there is no middle ground oh well either certain parts and this i like a bit of this and a bit of that did you ever do you ever read augustine when he said listen if we believe what we like in the gospel and reject what we don't it's not the gospel we believe it's ourselves so paul by the time he gets to the end of his long letter the first letter before we get back to the second letter what does he do well he really comes full circle by the time he gets to chapter 15 the great chapter on the resurrection how does he begin now i would remind you brothers and sisters of the gospel that i preached to you which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word i preached to you unless you believed in vain all that christ has done for us is of no value to us so long as we remain outside of christ and if ever there was a time in the crazy broken beautiful wonderful fantastic for those who have come to the cross of christ and have knelt down and have been been transformed by the power of the spirit if if there ever was a moment in a time surely it's this moment it's this time to go out and lovingly kindly imaginatively creatively crazily say to people i've got a really good friend and i'd love to introduce you to him if you'd be interested and then you can just tell them about jesus mighty to save now you're all frightened now about the clapping and everything and stuff like that right i'm i'm i'm a guest you can do whatever you want but i'm going to pray and then we're going to have a hymn brother right it's not how we go it's a mighty fortress lord god in heaven look upon us in your mercy we pray grant that what is of yourself may find a resting place in our minds and hearts anything that is unclear that you'll clear it up anything that is untrue that you'll banish it from our recollection anything that is unhelpful that we may forget all about it lord unless we hear your voice the the dulcet tones of speaker number one and the squeaky voice of speaker number two will avail nothing either now or for eternity's sake so we look from ourselves and ask you we who plant and water to take care of the growth to the glory of your name we ask it amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living to learn more about truth for life with aleister begg visit us online at truthforlife.org

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 78,641

Rating: 4.9304347 out of 5

Keywords: The Cross, Death of Christ, Evangelism, Gospel, Jesus Christ, Preaching

Id: SL8mJQ39zjw

Length: 42min 24sec (2544 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/noveler7]

Begg is the best

^{please don't have a secret scandal I don't know about}

[u/aussiestogether]

I wonder what led you to this great message from Alistair!! 😆