Sermon Tone Analysis

“It is the audacity of it” writes non-Christian historian Tom Holland, “the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe — that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilisation to which it gave birth.”

Two things he mentions here: first, the strangeness of Christianity - which I alluded to last week, that we celebrate a cross, an instrument of torture.

And secondly, that Christianity, with the cross at the center, gave birth to a civilization.

His belief is that Christianity - and specifically the idea of God coming and dying on the cross - radically transformed the world.

Why is it that we measure the greatness of a man’s soul by the degree to which he shows compassion to the lowly?

That’s not how the Greek king Leonidas led.

He trained his soldiers in a peculiar form of eugenics, training their young to kill the socially inferior among them.

That’s not how Caesar thought, who was reported to have slaughtered over a million Gallic people and enslaved a million more.

Their worldview didn’t have any space for showing mercy to the lowly, the unfortunate.

Where did that worldview come from?

The cross of Christ was like an asteroid hitting the Atlantic Ocean, sending tidal waves around the world.

It introduced an entirely new way to think, to feel, and to live.

And last week we got more personal - we studied our own connection to the cross.

Because we are united with Christ by faith, we have a new identity, we have a new freedom, and we have a new inspiration, a new reason.

We are crucified with Christ, we are set free from sin - we can actually say no to sin.

We are not on Team Sin anymore, and Coach Sin has no authority over us.

And now we are compelled to live for him.

And now, we’re going to study the pattern of the cross.

An understanding of the cross gives birth to a certain way of thinking, a certain wisdom, a certain lifestyle.

We learn not only that the cross is the center of the universe - the primacy of the cross; not only is the cross the grounds for our new identity, our new freedom, and our new inspiration - the power of the cross.

But this morning I want to show you that the cross also provides the pattern for living in this world.

It is our example.

Let me say it in a different way.

All of Jesus' life is an example for us.

We learn from his life how to live - we should be compassionate as he is compassionate, we should be obedient as he is obedient.

But what I found incredible as I studied this cross more recently, is that the New Testament doesn't as much exhort us to imitate the life of Christ in general, but specifically, we are to imitate his work on the cross.

What’s very clear is that Peter and John and Paul - as they considered the last hours of Christ - in the upper room, in the Garden, being betrayed, being beat up, being accused, being silent before the accusers, being rejected by all, being nailed to the cross, being left to die - these events became the pattern for living.

That’s how I must live.

The life-changing, turn-your-world-upside-down reality is this: the place you should look if you want an example for living is the cross.

The person to imitate is a rejected, beaten, bloodied, battered, weak, dying man being shamefully humiliated as he lays down his life to rescue sinners.

This is our pattern for living in God’s World.

The cross is the key to living.

#1 The cross shapes our wisdom.

The cross - yes, the eternal Son of God, humbled to the lowest death - gives us the framework for understanding God’s World.

The cross turns conventional, worldly wisdom upside down and gives us an entirely new worldview.

Turn to 1 Corinthians 1:18.“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” God says that humanity is divided into two categories.

First, you have those who see that the cross is foolish.

They see a failure.

They see a defeated messiah.

They see weakness.

The world apart from God - called “those who are perishing” here - cannot see any beauty or goodness or value in the cross.

It’s foolishness to them.

Why?

Because they don’t know what God is like.

They don’t see things like God does.

They don’t value what he values.

They think God is like them, easily impressed by human achievement.

But there’s another category of person.

“But to us who are being saved.”

To these people, being saved by God’s grace, made alive by God’s spirit - they see the cross differently.

It’s not foolishness to them.

It’s not failure to them.

What is it?

“It is the power of God.”

These people understand the bankruptcy of human achievement, and thus recognize the cross as powerful.

Look at verse 22: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews” (it was unfathomable for Jews to think of the Messiah dying - and especially dying on a cursed cross).

“And folly to the Gentiles” - the sophisticated wisdom of the gentiles would have thought it utter folly to worship a religious leader whose life ended in a scandalous, shameful death.

Verse 24: “But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Let me just explain this.

The world is obsessed with human achievement.

We are all born builders of the Tower of Babel.

We want to build up, we want to be great, we want to reach heaven ourselves, we want to make a name for ourselves.

Through that lens, the cross is pathetic.

At the cross, you see a defeated man.

At the cross, you see a failure.

At the cross, you see hopes dashed, goals missed, dreams lost.

At the cross, you see a man and a movement utterly destroyed.

At the cross, you see is a flop, a cosmic blotch.

But that’s man’s perspective.

But the cross is something else.

On the cross is not a mere man, it’s God incarnate.

At the cross, you do not see someone thwarted, you see someone working out his perfect plan for redemption.

The cross is not hope crushed, but hope itself; the cross doesn’t happen because the goal was missed but because it was a bull’s eye.

The world sees defeat, faith sees victory!

The cross reveals God’s ways are different from ours.

He does not operate according to human expectations.

The cross reveals that humanity is so depraved it cannot come to God, God must come to us.

The cross reveals the sinfulness of sin, that it deserves the outpouring of his perfect wrath.

The cross reveals that human achievement is nothing, that God is not impressed by anyone, and that no one can feel their way to him.

The only way to be reconciled to God is by looking at the cross as seeing how holy God is, how serious sin is, how you could do absolutely nothing, and then embrace Christ’s death for you, and trust him entirely.

Has the world understood this?

No.

The wisdom of the cross is folly to the world.

People are totally infatuated by human achievement.

They evaluate themselves on what they can achieve.

So they give their lives to playing a sport and becoming a star.

Some seek achievement by diving into hobbies, beating levels on video games, or advancing in their career.

Every decision, all the time, is driven, even in small ways, by this compulsion to achieve something, to make someone of yourself - and the pursuit of happiness is always “more.”

More money.

More beauty.

More fame.

More comfort.

More opportunities.

More fans.

More followers.

More subscribers or likes or views or money or clients.

This is the wisdom of the world.

This is the wisdom of our age.

“Go for it!”

The world says.