Morning, brothers and sisters.
Morning, Jim.
Let’s read a few verses from the New Testament, shall we? In 1 Corinthians, chapter 1.
First Corinthians, chapter 1. Paul is telling the Corinthians about his coming there the first time, starting with verse 17.
Paul writes:
For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with the wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
And then in chapter 2, verse 2. Well, again, speaking of his first time in Corinth, he says:
For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
And then I want to just go back to Romans, chapter 12 and verse 2, where Paul writes, after sharing the whole gospel:
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Let’s pray.
Father, we are just grateful that You are kind. We’re grateful that You love the world so much that You would redeem it to Yourself, that we might know You and find who You are for us, why You’ve created us. We want to thank You. We want to thank You for that way You’ve made for us through Jesus Christ. And we give You our thanks and our praise.
And now we ask, Lord, as we come to Your Word, Lord, we don’t want a teaching. We want You speaking to our hearts. And only You can speak to our hearts.
Lord, we’re asking that You would, by Your Holy Spirit, use Your Word to speak into our hearts those things that You want us not just to know, but, Lord, to take in. And Lord, we pray by Your Holy Spirit that those things You want to say, we can take in, and You’ll be pleased. In Jesus’ name.
Another wonderful cloudy day. Gotta love cloudy days. Beautiful.
Okay, as all good teachers do, what do they do? They review. Okay, very quickly, though. Last week, remember, I’m not giving an exegesis on 1 Corinthians. But as we’ve been studying 1 Corinthians, the things that I’ve read in preparing for our fellowship times have just spoken to me in different ways. So these are just some of the things that I feel the Lord has put on my heart to share with you.
Last time, we looked at the Corinthians. We know they’re in bad shape. We use that nice religious term: they’re a carnal church. They’re worldly. The world is in them.
But we also noticed that Paul didn’t start right out after them with a corrective ministry. He first brought before them who they are. “This is who you are,” and he spoke to them in that way.
And if you remember, it is them as a group. Now, we can always take what the Word is saying and individualize it, and we should do that with many portions of Scripture. It is meant for us to take it in that way. But we also have to remember that this is to the whole group. Everybody is included in this, whether they are in better shape than others or in worse shape. The thing is, they are all put in this place.
Paul writes first to “the church of God in Corinth.” We made a little point about this: it is the church of God in Corinth, but in this letter we find out that Corinth is in the church of God. But that is not what Paul is saying. Paul comes right out and says, “You. You are the church of God.”
He brings them to the common place, the thing they all have in common, and that was their calling. Remember, “calling” was used three times, and just in the word church are the words that mean “called out.”
That is what we looked at: the calling of the church. It was called out of Corinth, called out of this world system that has been brought about by fallen man. We have been called to be saints. In other words, we have been called to a destiny, to an end. There is an end; there is a reason for our being called out.
We likened it to being drafted into the service. You’re drafted into the service to be made into a soldier. Now, you are a soldier as you’re drafted in there, but you are made into a soldier.
Then we are also called into fellowship, called into the fellowship of His Son. A lot of times we look at fellowship as sweet communion, this relationship: “I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear falling on my ear.” This is what we think of fellowship, but fellowship is even more than that.
Out of that sweet communion that we have with the Lord, we find that He has also called us into a partnership. Even the Lord Jesus, as a young boy, realized this. He said, “I must be about My Father’s business.”
Our fellowship is not just some sweet, mystic communion, although it is. But out of that communion comes this partnership, where we are called to be doing the will of God in the time that we live in. We are called to work with Him in what He is doing now.
We have to understand this: He is doing something now. We get into a routine of just going to church, and we think that just going to church is what Christians do. No, we’re in partnership with God in what He’s doing within our assembly, within the city, the community we live in, within the state. He has a huge work He’s doing, and we are called to be part of it. We’re called to be in partnership with that.
Now this morning, as you can tell by the verses I chose, we’re going to be talking about the cross. The cross is never a happy thing to talk about, but it is something that Paul said.
As the Lord’s herald, Paul came to call those who were in the church through this message. They came through the cross. We want to look at that, because we want to see the message, see how that applies to us, and see the testimony that comes out of that.
When we’re looking at this, we have a couple of phrases here: “the cross of Christ,” “the word of the cross.” But the whole thing is, everything points to the cross. It is the cross of Christ. Yet we are also going to find out that there is an application that is not the cross of Christ, but the cross He calls us to. These are things that are in the calling of the church. Every believer is called to the cross.
Now, the word of the cross. I have to say this: without the cross, Jesus of Nazareth cannot be called the Christ. He is just another man. Without that cross, He cannot be called Savior. He cannot be called Lord, because He is just another man.
At most, we could say He is a moral philosopher. That’s at most, but nothing more than that. Because if the cross is not connected with Jesus Christ in His death on the cross, there is no power in any of His teaching. There is no power to change any man.
We can agree that His teachings are right and good, and the world even agrees that the teachings of Christ are good and right. But that is as far as they would go: “That’s good teaching. Hey, I wish I would have said that. I understand it, I agree with it, but I can’t do anything.” We cannot go farther than that.
That is where the world system, under the prince of the power of the air, would have us. The world rejects the cross in this way: they say Jesus was martyred. He was a martyr for His cause. But like all martyrs, they die. They’re dead, and their cause might go on for a little bit, or it might die out with them.
Remember what Gamaliel said when he was talking to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem after Christ had risen from the dead and the apostles were preaching. He said, “Don’t be so fast at doing anything. Remember this guy; remember that guy. Once they were out of the way, their things just fizzled out.”
But this one did not fizzle out. It was the hand of God. The thing that made it not fizzle out was that cross and the resurrection that followed. We have to understand that without the cross, Jesus is not the Christ. But because of the cross, we know that He is the Christ—the Christ of God.
Now, it’s interesting. In studying for this, I was reading a compilation of A. W. Tozer’s essays from the Christian and Missionary Alliance newspaper that he edited. It is called The Radical Cross. Those are good little devotions, because they are only about two or three pages.
Ravi Zacharias wrote the foreword for this, and he brought out the Latin word for cross. Does anybody know what the word for cross is in Latin? Come on, Latin scholars. Remember high school Latin?
What do you mean, it was the native tongue when you were in school? Okay, you built roads, remember that Republic? It’s crux.
Now, do we use crux today? “It’s the crux of the matter.” What does that mean? I looked it up. It means the decisive or most important point at issue.
Isn’t that interesting? I never even thought of that. I read that yesterday, and I went, “Man, this is important.” The cross is the crux, the most important issue in the history of man.
When you think of it that way, it is big. It is not something that happened two thousand years ago in some little corner. It has the importance of the whole world hanging on its shoulders. The most important thing. Decisive. The most decisive issue. It is incredible to think about.
When we look at the cross, first of all, how can you explain the cross in forty minutes? Not only that, but who am I? How deep has it gone into me? The idea of the cross is like a many-faceted diamond, and I’m just pulling up a rock to you guys. But let the Lord shine on it.
There are two sides of the cross we want to look at today. I’m not saying those are the only two sides, but they are two sides that Paul is really bringing in here.
He says in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Through the cross, God redeems.
Colossians 2:13-14 says:
And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it away, having nailed it to the cross.
Through the cross, Christ redeems. What does redemption mean? I could give a list that T. Austin-Sparks gave in one of his books. He said that to those being saved, this is what the cross speaks to us as believers.
First, it speaks to us of substitution: the substitution of Christ on our behalf, or the punishment of sin. It speaks of the Lamb that was slain in our place.
In other words, it is like if we were Isaac, and Abraham had him tied on the altar and was lifting the knife. Then all of a sudden, the Lord draws his attention to that ram caught in the thicket. He says, “This will be the substitute.”
The end of man after Adam is death—total separation from God forever. But there is a substitute for us. Praise God. He has shown Him to us.
Secondly, it speaks about redemption. In Him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. But I want to go farther than just the forgiveness of sins. Our sins are judged. They are not just forgiven. They are not just overlooked. Full payment was made. Our sins were judged. We have redemption.
Justification: all our blame is taken away, and we have been made right. Reconciliation: right standing now with God. This is ours in the cross.
Regeneration: a new source of life. That corn of wheat was buried in the ground through His death on the cross, and out of that comes the life of the church. The life of every believer comes out of the cross—that new life. It is a new source of life.
It is not like New Year’s resolutions: “Oh, I’ve got a new start. It’s a new year. Now I’ll make resolutions, and I’m going to change for the better.” That works for a couple of weeks, and if we’re lucky, it might work a couple of months, depending on how strong we are in our wills.
Sanctification: we are set apart and made holy in order that we may worship and serve God. It is not sanctification just to be holy. It is being set apart so that we might worship and serve God, not sanctification for sanctification’s sake.
Lastly, glorification. Through the cross, we are brought all the way to completion, all the way to God’s end, where God is satisfied. We want to hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It is like He said in creation when He finished: “It is very good.” It is complete.
This is what we celebrate here at the Lord’s Table, isn’t it? As we come here, we don’t trust in our own understanding and ask, “What can I do?” We take hold of what the Lord has done for us, and we celebrate. All this has been done for us through the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is what is ours. All these things that Sparks listed—this is what is ours. This is our possession.
When we fail, how many of us come back to this? A lot of us want to grovel for a while, or we think we have to grovel, or we feel that we have to make ourselves right with God in some other way. But the only way to make us right with God again is through the cross.
What does 1 John say? “Do not sin, but if anyone does, we have an Advocate”—the One who became the propitiation for our sin, the payment. It is all right here. We get back into the place of life again. We get back into the place of fellowship again, because that is what God has done for us in the cross.
Our understanding is like this: if I make a mistake and make my wife mad—which, you know, I never do—it is like I have to wait until the boiling is over. Then we can get back into good graces. I’m going to walk gingerly, and then everything will be good again. That is not it.
We come back to the cross immediately. We are put in right standing, and that takes faith. It is a step of faith to come in and say, “Lord, I believe in You. I have failed, but Lord, I thank You that You have given me an Advocate. You have given me Someone who has made propitiation for me. I am in right standing with You.”
“I will stand here, and I will worship You. I know I don’t feel like worshiping You, but I’m standing here and I will worship You. I’ll worship You with my lips.” That is what we are to do.
All of this has been purchased by blood—not by perishable things like silver and gold, as Peter tells us in 1 Peter, but by the blood of a spotless Lamb, through the Son of God made man, who laid down His life for us.
All of this has been purchased for us. All of this has been done, not by us, but by the hand of God, by His mighty hand for us. In Exodus, it talks about how He saved us with a mighty arm. This is the cross as the mighty arm of God. It brings us to Him. Hallelujah.
The cross also has a negative side. Through the cross, God seals the condemnation of man. He seals the condemnation of that Adamic nature and system. It is all condemned.
He condemns the whole Adamic race and the whole Adamic world system, which was created by way of the sin of Adam. The cross is a picture of that condemnation.
When we see the Lord Jesus on the cross, He is standing in the place of man condemned. He is in the place of man condemned and forsaken by God, because that is man’s end under Adam.
You can read it in Genesis 2:17: “In the day you eat of that fruit, you will surely die.” That is the condemnation. That is the sentence of death that is on man. The cross says, “This is the seal of it. This is what I am showing you about that Adamic race that is lost to sin. They are forever going to be out of My presence.”
That is a scary thing to think about. Thank the Lord for those of us who have seen the hand of God in redemption. But for those who have not, this is a scary thing.
He is condemning the Adamic race and the Adamic system—the system that came out of sinful man. Everything that comes out of sinful man, all of his philosophies, comes under judgment.
God says that man’s search for truth will never find Him the way man has it. That is what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians, chapters 2 and 3. The wisdom of the world cannot find God.
If you read Romans 1 and see what the wisdom of the world does find, you see that man turns everything around and worships not the Creator, but the things that have been created—even himself.
The cross condemns the morals, the right actions, and what the world thinks is right. It condemns the world’s thinking about greatness and value. All of that comes under judgment.
It condemns government. We could really have a field day with this. Do not think that one government is better than another. They all come from man. You might say, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t think about socialism. I don’t know about democracy.” What is the end of democracy? Man rules man.
That sounds pretty good, but remember, man is sinful at best. How great can you get? We do not want to think that some type of government is what God wants. God wants to rule.
It is economic systems. When Babylon is judged in Revelation, and Tyre is judged in Ezekiel, one major thing that is judged is the economy of the world. Economic systems are man’s ideas about wealth and trade and all that kind of stuff. It is all under judgment. It is all going to be condemned. It just does not match what God would have for man.
It is systems of learning, which I am a part of. It is religion—from the sacrifice of Cain to the religions of the Canaanites, to the deism of the Enlightenment, to the Eastern mysticism that came in during the sixties and seventies, to the New Age stuff that came in during the eighties and nineties, and to the postmodern stuff that is coming in now.
All of those are man’s ideas of reaching God. They do not reach Him, but they make men feel good. All these things, all the things the law commands man not to do, are manifest in man after the image of Adam.
We might think man is worse off today, but he is not any worse off today. He is the same. Go look at Genesis and what it says about before the flood. Is that any worse than today? No, man is just the same.
Except now, stuff is being more uncovered. We used to keep it under wraps a little bit. It is kind of like the Victorian age. People dressed really well; they seemed prudish and everything. But you read some of the histories, and you see adulteries and thievery and things like that coming out of high-class people who hid under this nice cloak of morality.
Now things are just coming out in bold relief for us. We are just seeing who man really is, and the cross condemns it all.
We have to understand that this world as it is, even though we want social justice and all these other things, man’s way of social justice is still not up to the standard that God would have had man to be. It just does not do it. It just does not make it.
We are looking at it through God’s eyes, not through man’s eyes, because man’s eyes are jaded. I see my stuff. I see that the stuff I do is good. But you might see it through different eyes and say, “Jim, you’re messing up there.” But I cannot see it because it is mine.
Now we want to apply this message to the Corinthians. When Paul came in, this was the message that he had for the Corinthians and for the Corinthian church.
If we look at the rest of 1 Corinthians, from chapter 2 all the way to about chapter 11, and if you apply the cross to each of these things, the problem is solved. That is his answer to all those problems: the cross, the cross, the cross, the cross.
But we do not want to be so simple as to say, “Oh, yeah, the cross is the answer,” just like saying the answer to everything is Jesus. Please do not think I am trying to be smart. I am just saying that a lot of times Christianity says, “Well, the answer is Jesus,” but we do not really know what we are talking about. We know that must be the right answer because we are Christians.
The application of the message to them now becomes the message that they are to carry. Not to mouth—to carry.
It is given to the church to bring the message of the cross to Corinth. Right now.
There are a couple of people I read who made a big thing of this—G. Campbell Morgan and Sparks: the word of the cross. When I think of the word of the cross, I think of preaching it. But they brought up that the idea of “word of the cross” here is the logos of the cross.
They were talking about the same idea as John 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
The whole idea is that the cross is manifested. The cross is manifested in the life of the church. The message of the cross has been given to the church to bring to the world, and the church is to manifest that—not just speak it, but manifest it.
We are carrying that Word into the world. As the Word became flesh, so it must become flesh in us. They were bearing the cross, taking it up into their own lives, and bringing it into Corinth.
In the same way, the message has not changed. That idea has not changed. The word to us is the same way: we are to bring that cross, carry it in our lives, into the world we live in, into the community we live in, into the fellowship that we attend.
What does it mean to manifest the cross? It is not something where we say, “Okay, I’ve got to do this.” It is not some kind of duty.
Listen. In Galatians 6:14, Paul writes to the Galatians—and remember, in Galatians he is dealing with all this legalism. At the very end of the letter, he says:
But God forbid that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
“By whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Now, the cross is an instrument of death. There is no doubt about it. Why did they have the cross? The cross was the way they killed people. They executed them.
You did not survive crucifixion. Put it that way. Even if you had to be up there for days, it was a slow, painful, cruel death. It was an instrument of death.
Now we are talking about dying. We are talking about the cross. How does this manifest itself? Paul says, “The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” The world crucified to me—let’s look at it this way.
Since I have been in Virginia, I have done things I never did in California. For example, having a fire in the fireplace. When I was a little kid, we used to have a fire in the fireplace, but once I hit my teenage years, there was no fire in the fireplace.
One of the most wonderful things I love is having a fire in the fireplace. I love to sit in front of the fire and gaze at it and feed it and do all that kind of stuff. It is so relaxing and cool.
Now, the cross is like a wedge that you use to split wood. I am not talking about taking a maul out there and splitting little hunks of wood. I remember getting some wood from Fontaine. Remember how Fontaine had all those big piles of wood in his backyard? Wasn’t that great, going there?
He would have some that were this big around. You are not going to split that with a maul. So what you did was take a wedge. You know what a wedge is, kind of shaped like this. Remember, ladies, you had the wedge haircut in back? Yeah, you guys remember that, huh?
The wedge itself—you cannot just put in the wedge and say, “Okay, wedge, do your stuff.” You cannot. What you have to do is drive the wedge.
In my carpentry days, with a nice sledgehammer—a twelve-pound sledge—you beat that wedge. You need a hammer, and you need someone to swing it, to have the power to drive the wedge deeper and create the split in the wood. Finally, the wood is separated.
How do we apply that spiritually? The wedge is the word of the cross. The hammer is the Word of God. And the force behind the Word of God is the Holy Spirit.
God says about His Word in Jeremiah 23:29, I think: “My word is like fire. My word is like a hammer that shatters the rock.”
In the same way, we are not looking for ways: “How can I deny myself? How can I cut myself off?” In your relationship and fellowship with God, as you start to read His Word, the Holy Spirit takes hold of that Word and drives it into your heart.
It is always the word of the cross, because the word of the cross is going to separate. Finally, you are going to be separated from Corinth, so to speak. You understand what I am saying? All the worldly ways, all that Adamic stuff—you find it being driven apart from you.
Remember in the song, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”? What does the ending part say? “And the things of earth will grow strangely dim.” How does it grow strangely dim when it is always in front of me? Because the Word of God is putting that cross deeper and deeper in my heart and separating me from those things.
I find myself falling in love with God. And in falling in love with God, it is like when you are first in love with your significant other. All of a sudden, things that you used to do, you do not do anymore because you want the love of the one you are pursuing.
That is another part of this: what are you pursuing? Are you pursuing the things of the world? Then that just makes it really hard. But if you are pursuing after the Lord, even the hard things become acts of love. Not, “I’ve got to do this.” You want to please. The love of God constrains me.
It is driven deeper and deeper into my heart, and we are not conformed to the image of this world. That is why I read Romans 12. The renewing of your mind—we start to see things differently. We start to have the mind of Christ.
The mind of Christ, who wanted to please God, is ours. The Word and the Spirit begin to apply that Word to our hearts, and all of a sudden we start to act on what the Spirit is showing us. Our love for Christ grows.
Then it says, “I am crucified to the world.” Well, how do you do that? You do not do it. The world crucifies you.
Why did the world crucify Jesus? Because they rejected Him. They rejected everything He stood for, everything He said He was. In the same way, the world sees that wedge being driven between them and us, and seeing that transformation in us, there is a rejection: “You are not doing it the way we do it. You are not in on the plan here.”
The cross separates the church from the world, but it does not segregate it from the world. That is a big thing. We are not called into cloisters. We are called to live in the world, but not be of it.
It separates us by the things we think and the things we do as we begin to see what God is like and what God has for us. But it does not take us out of the time we are living in.
I wonder if the time we are living in is a refining and purifying time that God has for the church, where God is saying, “You know something? Corinth is in you. I want to take it out. And the only way I can take it out is the cross.”
Purging it out of you means that our testimony becomes more real. There are many in the church at large whose testimony is not very real. The world looks at the church as hypocritical. Am I right? They look at us as being full of hot air, bigoted, and everything like that. Whose fault is that? It is our fault.
We have not let things go very deep into us. We have lived an ethereal Christianity, or a surface Christianity, where we are mouthing things and saying things, but we are doing something else.
The Lord has to say, “I’ve got to take you to task.” Didn’t He do that with Israel? Is that not the reason the first temple was destroyed? They came in saying, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,” and thought that made them stand for Him. It does not.
Go and find out what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Or take Micah. He has told you, O man, what is good. What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?
That is the bottom line of what God is after in this word of the cross.
Secondly, Jesus said this in Matthew 16:24. It is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, so it has to be important, right? Three times, and it is almost verbatim in every one, with just a few nuances.
Jesus said to them all—and remember, this is after He said He was going to the cross Himself, and Peter said, “No, no, no.” Then Jesus said to them all. I want to emphasize all, could you tell?
If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?
Now, that is not talking to Christians about the loss of salvation. But the whole thing is this: it is not enough just to be separated from the world. We can all separate from the world. But the other thing is dying to self.
When you think of dying to self, I grew up Catholic, and some grew up Lutheran or Episcopalian. We all know that the Lenten season is upon us. You guys know what the Lenten season is. We are partying now, partying hardy, until Ash Wednesday.
For Lent, you are supposed to fast, right? You are supposed to give something up. And of course, what do we all do? We give up chocolate or candy or something like that. That is not what this is.
I am not denying myself something. You understand that? Myself—that is the possessive pronoun. I am not denying myself something. I am not denying something. I am denying my self, the self that belongs to me, the innermost being of who I am.
This is not an easy thing. This is the hardest thing, I think, in the Christian walk: to deal with self. Sin has been dealt with in the cross, and all these things have been dealt with in the cross. Even self has been dealt with in the cross. But this is the thing we struggle with, because we are trying to follow the Lord.
Who is in charge? It is kind of like Saul and David. God meant there to be a king, but Saul—if you read through 1 Samuel—knows that David should be the rightful king by the end, right? But can he give up his throne? He cannot, for the life of him. He cannot, even though he knows.
You could say, “You’re right. You’re the guy. You should be on the throne,” but he cannot bring himself to give up that throne. He himself, as who he is, will not do what God has wanted him to do.
Do not say, “I can’t,” because we get into that thing: “Well, I can’t do these things, and therefore that is why we have Christ.” But there is a part where there are things that He asks us to do. It is not that Saul could not have waited. Saul did not wait. It was his choice.
“I see the people running away. I’m going to make that sacrifice because I’m going to keep those people here, because I’m in charge.” How many times did I say “I”? That is part of it. It is just hard to do.
The best way to look at dying to self, I think the Scripture takes us to Jacob wrestling with the angel. You look at Genesis, and you see a synopsis of these things. You see the calling out of Abraham. You see Isaac being that saint, being that son. Yet you see Jacob being made into that son. You see Joseph ruling in fellowship with God. All of these things are there in the beginning. They are pictures for us. The Old Testament has those.
Jacob wrestles. We wrestle, because we do not want to lose that rule. That is just who we are. I am not condemning that. I am saying, this is who we are.
But it says, “If anyone desires.” Jacob desired the birthright, and God loved him. You desire those things, but he had to wrestle. He wrestled and he wrestled and wrestled until God touched him.
It is not by might and main that we get through this. A touch from God is a touch from God. They talk about him being touched in his strength; I do not know, being touched in mystery. But he got touched.
He got touched in a way that took the fight out of him and left a clinging: “Just don’t let me go. Just don’t let me go.” You may say, “Yeah, I want Your blessing,” but I think it is more than that. It is saying, “Don’t leave me.”
Because of that wrestling, you never walk the same again.
It says he walked with a limp. I used to think, like at youth conferences, “One foot in the world and one foot in the Lord,” but I do not think that anymore.
I think it means that we do not walk according to the world anymore. We do not have the same gait. We do not go by the same rules they go by. Now we are walking according to how the Lord would have us walk.
Every time we deny ourselves, in some way that limp gets more pronounced. It is not that Jacob is going, “Oh, this doggone limp; I could run faster.” That is not the case. The thing is that everyone else sees the limp, and they say, “His walk is not like ours.”
That is the bottom of it. His walk is not like ours. This is the circumcision made without hands. This is not us trying to build ourselves up and do things out of duty. This is our being dealt with by God in a way where we finally find ourselves submitting to His way for us.
Because of that, it changes the way we live. That is what “walk” means in Scripture. “Walk with the Lord” means live according to what the Lord is showing you. Our walk is different. This is following Him. This is Jesus being Lord in our lives. It changes our want completely.
Now, in closing, out of this comes a testimony. As God works that cross into our life and we become the message, we become those like the priests that Ed Miller was talking about, going ahead bearing in us the cross, the working of the cross.
We are ahead there, and it is not in word. We are not just going about preaching the cross. It is in truth and deed, bearing that before the world and before the others in the assembly. Not in a way that says, “Look at me.” It is just that we are going forward.
As God is moving, we are saying, “God, I want to go with You.” “If anyone wants to come after Me”—He is moving. “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him.” Not, “He must.” Not, “You better.” Let him.
It has to be your choice. It has to be your choice to lay your life down, your choice to give your life to Him and say, “I want Your life in return.”
Then the bearing of the cross becomes a visible separation. We are not trying to be something, but the world—Corinth—sees that there is a separation. There is something that separates us from them.
The way we think, the way we talk, the way we act, who we worship, who we follow, the things we imbibe—there is a visible witness to that altered walk. “This guy is not like us.” Or, as Floyd would say, “There’s a gray speckled bird in our midst.”
In these interactions with the world, we find that it is no longer our home. When you let the cross do its work, we start finding that this place is not our home. We find ourselves being pilgrims and sojourners, because we are looking for a better country, as Hebrews tells us.
In doing this, there is no compromise. When I say there is no compromise, it is not because something has been demanded of me. It is just that I am pursuing something else.
When you are pursuing something you really want badly, you are not going to compromise. When I was a kid and wanted to be a professional basketball player, basketball was first at all costs. Nothing got in the way of that pursuit. Nothing.
Now, the result of this is that there comes a fragrance out of that life. Paul talks about it in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, I think it is—maybe chapter 3. He talks about our being the message.
We are the message. In other words, the message of the cross—we are that letter written on human hearts. We have a fragrance of life.
People see us, and they see that we are not going according to the system, according to the plan. They ask, “How can you not buy into the system and still have the expectation of fulfillment?”
They see that you have something they do not have, and they do not understand it. What they are asking is, “What do you have?” Because I am drawn to it.
It is a fragrance. I was just reading one of the songs in here: “I cannot breathe enough of Thee.” I think it is hymn 212. It is a wonderful hymn: “I can’t breathe enough of Thee.” It is just so sweet, so wonderful. I want to be around it all the time.
Or we have a fragrance of death. Now, we talk about this. It is not a fragrance where someone says, “Oh my gosh, what is this? I have to get out of here.” That is not the fragrance of death.
The fragrance of death is like this: it speaks of a separation. When they wrapped the body of Jesus, what did they bring in to mask the smell of death? They brought in all sorts of spices and everything else, because they did not want to be reminded that they were now separated forever.
That is what it means, the fragrance of death. “I want to mask it. I smell the smell, and it reminds me of the separation that is coming my way if I do not repent, if I do not change.”
It is a reminder of that separation. It is a smell you want to get away from—not because it smells foul, but because it reminds you of something. It tells you of something, and you want to get away from it.
Brothers and sisters, that is the testimony: the fragrance that comes out of the cross. It is a wonderful fragrance, whether it is to death or to life. It is a wonderful fragrance.
Brothers and sisters, as a church, we are to be ministers of that fragrance. The priests—were they not in charge of the incense? Were they not in charge of bringing it in, carrying it before, and doing all those things?
But the priests also had to be holy. They had to have the garments of priestly service. Brothers and sisters, we are priests and ministers of this testimony. That is what the church is: priests and ministers of this testimony in the assembly and in our community.
We have the danger of thinking that our ministry and testimony are right here, that this is as far as it goes. No. The fragrance is not for the room. It is for the world to smell.
That is our ministry as the church, as we go out into the world. In these last times, do you not think God wants His fragrance going out so that whoever will, will come? He is not willing that any perish. Do you not think that is part of the church’s ministry? It is.
We need to be aware of our ministry. God help us. Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, how grateful we are for the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, because it has brought us to You. We want to thank You that we are Yours.
Yet, Lord, You have a calling for us. Lord, in our heart of hearts, we want to fulfill that calling. But Lord, we need Your grace, and we need Your help. Lord, who is fit for these things?
We could just say, “We’re not it. I’m out of the race, and leave me alone.” But You are calling us. You are calling us to walk with You. You are calling us, saying, “I’m going this way. Partner with Me. Yoke with Me.”
Lord, we want to hear You. Make sure we are hearing You. And if You are calling us, we thank You that there is nothing to stop us from responding except our own pride or our own self. There is nothing.
You are calling to us. You would not be calling to us if You did not want us to come, if You could not make it so that we are able to come. You would not be calling us.
So, Lord, we want to respond to Your call. We want to walk with You, and we want to do Your will. We want to be those ministers, those ones that carry You into our communities. We ask this in Jesus’ name.