But it’s Resurrection Sunday, it’s Easter Sunday. Some pastors get like angry. If you call it Easter Not me, you can call it Easter, it’s fine. But today we’re not going to do like a super special sermon. Because here’s the thing if you have a church and you win people with like special exciting things, like smoke and lasers, you have to keep doing those things to keep them here. So what we’re going to do is we’re just going to study the Word of God, like we do every single week. And how about that that work. I like that because I love studying the Word of God. So we’re going to continue our time in 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, where we ended up last time. So we’re going to continue our time in 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, where we ended up last time. We’re just going through 1 Corinthians. So we’re going to be starting in verse 10 this week and going through oh, I think we’re going to get through like verse 13 or so, I don’t know, we’ll see. And today’s sermon is called how to Focus on Jesus. It will be a little resurrection-y. We’ll talk about the resurrection. So it worked pretty well. I was pretty excited about it actually. So, how to focus on Jesus?
Now, nothing really matters that we do unless we pray. So I’m really unconvinced of that. So let’s take a moment and bow our hearts before the Lord. Father, we humble ourselves greatly before you because you are to be feared, because you are so wonderful, magnified, glorified. You’re perfect. You’re the creator and we have been created to serve you and honor you. But, father, you also love us so dearly and we are complete as people and our identity is and honor you. But, father, you also love us so dearly and we are complete as people and our identity is completely in you. And so, lord, we love you, we worship you, we honor you and we pray that your kingdom come and your will be done, that we would be aligned with your will in all things. So if there’s something that we want or we desire that doesn’t line up with your kingdom, father, we surrender it. We surrender, we give it up, lord, because it’s your kingdom that matters, not ours. It’s your fame that matters, not ours. It’s you, jesus, that is the king. We are your servants. So we give you all this, lord, we worship you, we praise you and we ask you to teach us, open the understanding of our minds and our hearts and help us be ready to serve you today In Jesus’ name. We pray Amen.
So, as we opened the book of 1 Corinthians last time a couple weeks ago, we learned that the grace of God is completely life-changing. Okay, the grace of God will change your life. It’s like a new pair of glasses. These are my new glasses. So since I was here last time, I even got newer, new glasses. So these are my newer, new glasses.
And it changes how we see everything in our lives, from our identity to our thoughts and our actions. It’s all transformed by grace alone. It’s never law. So grace and law we’re going to study this a lot are two opposites, okay. So the law, where you do what’s right because you’re supposed to, it’s the rules. Okay, that’s the Ten Commandments. So Jesus actually set us free from that way of living, which is by grace, which is his spirit and life within us, lives for us and transforms us, and so that’s this grace that we’re studying about. We’re going to dive deep into this. So we’re saints, not sinners. We are saints who sometimes sin, though. Okay, but it’s not our identity anymore. So how do we get this grace?
And the answer is, like Matt said last week, just Jesus. Right, were you guys here for that sermon that Matt did last week. It was a great sermon. Just Jesus. Well, yeah, the grace of God comes through Jesus alone. As we look at Jesus alone Whoa, calm down, sean. We look at Jesus alone. It’s really not that hard. We just look at Jesus alone. It’s really not that hard. We just look at Jesus alone.
Paul mentions Jesus 11 times in the first 10 verses that we read last time. Do you think Paul is trying to say something? It’s kind of like a toddler. How many of you guys have kids, grandkids maybe, and you get them to focus on you? You say, hey, focus on me, right here, right here, right, look at me, focus on me, look at me. How many times do you have to say look here before they actually look right? Paul’s like for us. He did it 11 times. He’s like look, look, look, look, look, blah, blah, blah. That’s what Paul is doing. He’s like focus on Jesus, don’t look anywhere else. Focus on Jesus. This is the way, this is what the gospel is. Jesus said I am the the and the man. You guys have been well taught. Good job, good job, it’s. It’s really so easy. Look at Jesus, just look to him. Put your faith in confidence in him alone and and it’s that easy In his world, with this gospel.
Being smart and talented is not even helpful. In fact, they can detract our ability to be able to easily trust in him. That’s why there’s a, you know some people are like well, like, how do mentally handicapped? How does that work with God and with God’s kingdom? And how does God view people who have challenges mentally and physically and all that? What do we think about that? Well, in God’s economy, humility is what is exalted. So the easier you can trust in him, the more you’re going to experience him in his reality in your life. Because God gives grace to the humble but opposes the proud. So being smart and talented isn’t really helpful in the church or in God’s kingdom, which is great for us Subtle slam on all of us, me too.
Okay. So here’s my sincere question what in the name of Peter and Paul has happened in the church over the past 2,000 years? And Paul has happened in the church over the past 2,000 years? If being humble and just focusing on Jesus is what the church is supposed to do, what has happened in the past 2,000 years? Because I think there’s been quite a deviation from that, right? Okay, so you guys want a brief history lesson, church history, one of my favorite things. If you want a podcast to listen to, communio Sanctorum,
which is Latin for history of the Christian church, just look up history of the Christian church. It’s a great podcast, great podcast. But anyway, that’s for free. You need to pay extra for that one.
So the church started to really spread around the world right after Jesus. So just explosive growth, even when everyone was trying to kill him for like 300 years. Then, after 300 years, this persecution got so bad the church was like we’re not doing this anymore and we’re never doing that again. So the Roman emperor gets saved I’ll put in quotation marks, his name is Constantine. You guys heard of him. So, and then that moment the church Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire and this ended all the persecution. But really sucked, because then the church was lame, because the church started was just the government and so just everything wrong with the government was now part of the church, and so there was no like purity in the church and it was really bad.
Eventually, the church became so corrupt that all the true believers were being killed by the Catholic church leaders and the church said we’re not doing this anymore. So one group split and we call them the Eastern Orthodox Church. Then the Catholic church got so focused on not letting anyone split again that they became even more corrupt and overbearing. So the church is like we’re never doing that again. So then Martin Luther came in like the 1500s and he started another movement of people trying to reform the church and eventually they just ended up splitting from the church the church that was there at that point and so they formed a whole new denomination, which became 10 denominations, which now became thousands of denominations, where everyone just was free to start their own little denominations. Then, basically, in this recent age, the church is like we’re not doing that anymore, we’re never doing that again. So everyone is now non-denominational and we all basically just believe the same thing and practice the same thing around the world. Basically like a lot of the church is pretty united.
That sounds really messy, right? I think so, and it sounds like a lot of strong-willed, strong-minded people and opinionated people got involved in something that was supposed to be really, really simple Right Focus on Jesus. That was supposed to be the live by his grace. That was supposed to be the thing. Now, all through history there have been people and bright spots in the church, different random people in different spots. Like there was a time like St Patrick we just had St Patrick’s Day Like that homeboy like cast out all the evil out of Ireland at one point it was so cool, like just by focusing on Jesus and living by grace. And all throughout history there’s been these revivals and every single revival was about grace, every single one of them.
So guess what we’re going to focus on? Jesus and his grace. Okay, you know, living by his grace is going to lead to loving God and loving others. Which our name right, one, two church, do you guys know? I just want to be very clear. Those are not rules that we live by. That’s not. Here’s our two rules love God and love others. That’s what we will look like, that’s what our life will. That will be the fruit of our lives as we receive his love. See, he loves us first, which our response to that is loving him and loving others. It’s not supposed to be hard. We keep our eyes on him. He transforms us. How? By keeping our eyes on him. So that’s how his grace works. So that’s my introduction.
Now let’s get into 1 Corinthians 1, verse 10. Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you speak the same thing. Paul says that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind, with the same judgment. So Paul heard even at the beginning of the church there was divisions going on. Divisions mean to tear or rend, and basically they were. He’s saying that they were ripping each other apart. They were tearing up the body of Christ and he wants them to see that you guys are, should be joined together. And joined together was a medical term for setting a broken bone, so it’s like he wants them to understand that they are one body and divisions are bad. Joining together is good, unity good. Divisions bad. Okay, how to get there? He says this is how you get there. Speak the same thing About what? About Jesus? The name of Jesus? He says speaking the same thing about the name of Jesus. That means focusing on Jesus, and his name or his identity is what that means. That’s the only solution for all this mess that people cause in the church.
Now, has the church been perfect for the past 2,000 years? Obviously not. The church has been a giant mess. There’s been, like I said, wonderful high spots, wonderful beautiful parts, and it’s the body of Christ and we love it and he loves it. You can’t not love the church because it’s Jesus’ body. But there have been people who make a mess of things. Right, well, I don’t go to church. You know why? Because the people suck. How many times have you heard that? How many times have you said that I’m going to find a church in a bar or something? I’m going to find a church
in a bar or something?
He says the solution for all our church hurt, all our church problems, is get your eyes off the church and get them on to Jesus. That will transform you, which will make you part of the solution to what is wrong in the church. You know what’s wrong with the church? It’s full of people and people get self-centered and we need people who are not self-centered but Jesus-centered, and they will help the people who are self-centered to see Jesus’ life. So Paul just finished giving us 10 verses, the first 10 verses about Jesus and his grace, and this is truly the way to do. Everything we’re called to do in the church is by his grace. We’ll study more about that, but let’s look at verse 11. For it has been declared to me, concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe’s household so he’s totally throwing them under the bus that there are contentions among you. Now I say this that each of you says I’m of Paul, or I am of Apollos, or I am of Cephas, which is Peter’s other name, or I am of Christ. Verse 13, is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God.
So here’s the conflict that was going on in this church. It was an identity conflict, which is really the essence of all conflict. In every church. It’s an identity issue. Some people were focused on men and some were focused on Jesus, and when you’re focused on men, it skews your identity of who you think you are. So they were focused on Paul. Paul was their church founder. He was their original first pastor. Great guy Moved to Idaho. Nobody knows what happened to him. I hope Matt’s watching, all right.
Apollos, the second one mentioned. He was like this great new teacher that came in and everyone loved him. He had tattoos and he was cool from Colorado and again people were focused on him. They shouldn’t have been right. And then there was Cephas, which is like Peter. You know he’s Peter, right, and so that’s what Jesus is homeboy. And so, yeah, there was people that were like we don’t care about any of you, we just want the original.
Like priest down the street, paul says focus. He’s like to the toddler, focus on Jesus, not your pastor. The toddler focus on Jesus, not your pastor on Jesus. He is the head of the church there. He’s the head of the body. He knows how to build his church.
Look at Jesus, not men. This is vital to understand that we are one body. Each of us have equal representation. We are equally parts of one body. We do have different roles. Some of you work at, renew and serve the Lord as like the hands of the body. You know, I’m like the mouth, the joke teller. You know I’m a teacher, really a pastor, you know. But there’s all the vital, most vital parts. We’ll get into the body part later, but we are one body.
And then he asked this question was Paul crucified for you? Was Paul crucified for you? He says look at Jesus. Jesus was the only one that was crucified for you. There should be no other star in this show. There should be no other person any church ever talks about except Jesus. We don’t need ever to talk about anybody else. You don’t need to talk about presidents. You don’t need to talk about anybody else. His love is the thing that birthed all of us into this kingdom. He is the seed that was planted in the earth when he was killed and laid in the tomb and that produces millions of seeds when it goes into the ground and then it rises from the dead and then Paul brings up baptism. Then Paul brings up baptism Like out of nowhere. It seems like, okay, so what is baptism?
Baptism is something that we receive like a gift. Some people think baptism is something you do. Oh, I need to go baptize myself or I need to go do baptism. That’s actually not how it works. Baptism is something we receive. We say you get baptized, or actually that means you receive baptism. Why is that different? Because it’s not a job to do baptism. It’s really nothing we do.
A believer receives it when another believer recognizes that you follow Jesus and you test, you declare that you believe in Jesus and that he’s your Lord and Savior. Then another believer says yeah, I see that in your life, I see it’s real, and they, with confidence, can place their hands on you and say, I welcome you, I celebrate your faith, and then you are like, welcomed into the you could call it the club of being Christians. Right, my grandpa used to be in the Lions Club. You guys, you ever heard of the Lions Clubs? Yeah, terrible breakfast every Saturday. But he would take me all the time and I was like, how do you get in this club? And he never would tell me. I was like I think they had to like kill someone to get in it or something, but I don’t know.
And here’s the thing For someone to baptize you. You could disagree with them on everything except for Jesus. I mean, you could not like them at all. But if you’re like-minded on the one thing of Jesus who Jesus is and what you believe about him you can be baptized. That’s crazy and it’s cool because, if you think about it, it’s kind of like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Have you guys heard of this game? You haven’t. Okay. So six degrees of Kevin Bacon is a real fun game where you pick a movie star and Kevin Bacon and you pick how they’re connected to Kevin Bacon. So, like Jack Black was in this movie with this thing, jack Black was in this movie with this thing, and then he was in this movie with this thing, and you can always get to Kevin Bacon within six movies. So it’s a game, if you like actors, and it’s a fun game.
But it’s kind of like us we have all been baptized all the way back to Jesus. Like someone laid Jesus laid hands on someone. Like people baptized you into the club, but it’s like all the way like they laid hands on you into it. So it’s kind of like we’re all part. I think it’s pretty cool. It’s like this connection that’s been literally laid down, passed down through all the generations, so we’re like one body that’s actually touched each other. I think that’s really cool. There’s no like I mean, there’s Christians out there that haven’t been baptized, so it’s not everybody, but I think it’s pretty cool.
So is baptism required for salvation? It’s a good question, but the answer is no. Just ask the thief on the cross, right Jesus said today you’re going to be with me. Oh, sorry, you didn’t get baptized. So good luck, no, but it is a helpful, encouraging gift that God commands us to receive, to identify in this life, to identify with him, with his life and death as ours and our union with him. And so, yeah, you don’t have to receive his gifts.
Like, he promises you peace,
you don’t have to take it. You can live stressed out and worried your whole life, you don’t have to take it. You can live stressed out and worried your whole life, you don’t have to take it. But he still promises you that he is your peace, that he is the source of it, and he’ll never take that promise back. But you’re going to miss out if you don’t take it by faith, right, right, so, but I don’t like Jesus.
Then don’t get baptized. That’s pretty much the deal here. Right, but I don’t like Jesus’ body, the church, then you probably don’t want to get baptized. I get it, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re in the body if you believe. So, gotcha, you don’t get to not be in the body. If you believe, so you may as well get baptized and serve your part of the body. So who wants to go get baptized? Well, we’ll talk about that later. So he’s in you, you’re in him, and so he’s in the church. So you’re in his church, whether you like it or not. If you believe.
So maybe the solution isn’t avoiding baptism, but it’s focusing on Jesus instead of man again. See how? That’s why Paul brings up baptism right here. He’s like if your focus is on men, baptism’s going to get all weird. You’re going to think you’re joining a man club like the Lions or whatever. But if you focus on Jesus, it’s him that you’re in, not the people.
Okay, so verse 17. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, not with words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. So Paul thinks baptism is so important that he doesn’t even care if he did Like. This is one of the points for why baptism is not required for salvation is because Paul like it wasn’t even that big of a deal to him. He’s like yeah, I don’t know if I baptize you, it’s not that important to me because I came to preach the gospel, right. But he says here Paul only wanted to preach the gospel, he only wanted people to focus on Jesus, not with words of wisdom, not with words of wisdom. I love when people think I’m smart, do you guys? You think I’m smart? Thank you, gotcha.
But the simple truth of the gospel is not complicated. It really is not. This is why there should be perfect unity in the church. It’s when we divide over things that we think we understand more than other people. That’s when we get all messed up. Well, at our church, we super understand the end times. At our church, we super understand communion. So we’re going to make a whole church that we just understand things better than other churches. We’re going to call them this special name. That’s what happens, okay, but the power of Jesus has nothing to do with being smart or trained or talented or anything like that. He says the cross is powerful all by itself. The cross can save anyone who looks to Jesus and believes Anyone. We don’t have to make it complicated at all. I don’t have to dazzle the island with my intellect and witty humor. The cross speaks for itself and I love that. I get in the way when I try to spice it up, but the message of the cross is so powerful.
How many of you guys have seen You’ve Got Mail? Yeah, if you haven’t seen it, where have you been for 30 years? But it’s a beautiful movie, right? Not as good as 50 First Dates, I will 100% agree. Is there a way I could make 50 First Dates my example instead of You’ve Got Mail? Was there like a message in a bottle? Oh, I don’t know. Okay, yeah, grace is new to everybody, all right. Well, the reason why you’ve got mail is my illustration right now is because she would get like that ding, you know you’ve got mail and he would get it and they would get so excited when they got that message right, you know, she would be like, oh, I wonder what he said. You know, and she didn’t even know who was sending it, but the things that were being said were so powerful and romantic that it was like touching her heart and his heart as they kind of developed this relationship and then realized that they knew each other but they hated each other, but they loved each other and it was beautiful and they had dogs.
Brinkley, barkley, brinkley what was his name? Brinkley? Yeah, okay, when I get a text message, I get a little excited. I’m like, oh, someone loves me. They sent me a text message. You know someone sends me an email. Depending on if it’s a complaining about the sermon or a good email, you know I get excited. Someone thought enough to like write me a longer message. Someone sends me a voicemail. They actually wanted to open their mouth and speak to me. Hey, that’s pretty nice too. But if someone, like writes you a letter, a handwritten letter, do I even know what I would do. I would like have to sit down and like get a cup of coffee and get a pipe and like so, then be written in cursive. Probably have to get my grandma to translate. That was a good one. Yeah, awesome, thank you.
Well, paul says here the message of the cross it’s it’s speaking a message. You’re getting a message in your inbox every moment, every time you see the cross, and not when someone wears the cross as a necklace. That’s not the message of the cross. I don’t know what that speaks and that’s not bad. Obviously, wear a cross if you want. I don don’t care. But what is the message of the cross? It’s the gospel, and the gospel is good news. And the good news is not try harder to be a good Christian. That’s not the gospel.
How many of you grew up thinking that was the gospel? I did. I absolutely grew up thinking that I was supposed to try harder, sacrifice more, give more, do more. That’s what God was looking for from my life. You know why? Because pastors told me that when they were teaching the Bible, they were like this is your response Do this, do this, do this, and I didn’t get to hear the message of the cross. And so the message of the cross for me was sad and foolishness. I was like I tried and I tried and I tried and I ended up burnt out. Anyone else ever end up burnt out following Christ? I can tell you every single reason.
Why was because we weren’t hearing what the cross actually said. Because what did Jesus say when he was on the cross? It is almost done, except for all the things you have to do. That’s not what he said. What did he say Louder? Yes, right. He screamed it, blood curdling, it is finished. He wanted there to be no doubt. He was finishing the work.
So what do we do? He said believe, I’ll come and live inside you. I’ll change you, I’ll do all the stuff you know you’re supposed to do. I will do it through you if you believe and give yourself to me. Give me your heart, give me your heart, give me your heart. That’s what Jesus asks for, not for more religion, not for more religion, not for more good works. He will do good works through you. He must have your heart, though. He can’t do it without your whole heart. That’s the gospel, the good news. Preaching a good, high moral standard, which is what people in the South love to preach. That’s not the gospel. Be a good person, follow the rules, is not the gospel. A big, universal God like the liberal, god of like, oh, everyone is acceptable. That’s not the gospel either. Neither one, left or right, is not the true gospel. The true gospel is Jesus alone.
Paul says there’s only two ways that people see the message of the cross, and the first way they see is foolishness. Why would the death of another man mean anything to me? So this is unbelievers. The cross
is foolishness to them. It’s not even a noble death. It was a shameful death. It was like saying someone died on an electric chair. No one’s like golf clap, well done. Electric chair death. Except it was even more shameful because dying on the cross, you were hung, naked, mocked, tortured, abandoned by everybody. So that means nothing to me because I don’t need him.
See, the unbeliever thinks it’s foolishness that Jesus would do that because I’m a good person. Why do I need that? I’ve been a religious person, or I don’t even need religion. I’ve got my life all figured out and I can’t trust anyone anyways, because everyone’s always let me down, especially God. That’s when you’re having those thoughts, that’s when the message of the cross is foolishness to you. When I die, I expect God to look at my life and compare me to all the other people in this world and I expect God to say you’re good enough. I mean, you’re not Hitler, right? Like that’s the argument that people always have. Like it’s Hitler, he’s the only one going to hell. If you’re not Hitler, you’re good to go. But that’s not the message of the cross, right? Am I perfect? No, but no one is right, at least I’m not Hitler.
The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, because the Bible says if you reject the message of the cross, you are perishing, which does mean going to hell. Right, and yes, that is exclusive. That is narrow-minded. People accuse Christians of being narrow-minded. Yeah, I guess we are narrow-minded, just like it’s narrow-minded to say you have to have air to breathe and live. You have to breathe to live. You have to eat to live, you have to drink to live. Those are narrow-minded. I don’t want to breathe, okay, I guess you can choose that way, but the only result is death.
Exactly, the message of the cross is foolishness because it says sin must be paid for, and people don’t want to be accountable to their sin. I don’t want to be accountable to my sin, but the cross says it has to be dealt with. And the standard of what needs to be dealt with is every person ever created is held to the perfect standard of perfection. The Ten Commandments is how every human being will be judged, and that is absolute perfection. Every human is held to the same standard. And the Ten Commandments is not measuring how good you are, it’s measuring how far short you fall from the perfect standard. And so God is perfectly just. He cannot let sin go without justice. That’s his job description as the judge of the universe. He must judge sin and it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love us, because his love is demonstrated by Christ on the cross paying for that sin. That he judges Christ on our behalf. So that’s the beautiful side. But that doesn’t make sense when it’s all foolishness to you, when you don’t believe in Jesus, when you don’t understand, because to us who are being saved, the message of the cross is the power of God. I’m going to give you three ways that it’s the power of God displayed for us. Jesus was sinless on the cross. How was Jesus sinless. He lived an absolute, perfect life, so his life was of infinite value, so the sacrifice was worth a lot. Infinite value, so the sacrifice was worth a lot.
Have you guys heard the story of the guy who was the train operator? He ran like one of those bridges that would lower for trains to get across and then we’d raise it and boats would go through. And it was like take your son to work day, and he took his kid to work and so he’s, you know, and he’s not expecting any trains to come by. And then all of a sudden he gets a thing on the radio, a message, and they’re like hey, there’s a train coming and it’s got like 1,000, you know people on it and they’re coming and they’ll be there in two minutes. And he’s like, oh my gosh. So he looks around to find his son and his son is not around because he was out playing. And he looks around and he sees in the gear mechanism of the bridge his son is playing in it and he sees that if he raises it, that his son is going to be smushed and killed. And so he calls out to him and there’s no way. So in like 10 seconds he has to make a decision and this is actually a true story and he has to make a decision on whether he is going to allow his son to live or whether he will sacrifice his son and the train will pass by. And he chooses to lower the bridge to allow the train to pass by. His son is killed and the train passes by and all the people he can see, all the people in the windows, and none of them know what sacrifice he just had to make for them to live. None of them know his love. And it’s a really powerful story that shows us the heart of God. Amen, amen. You can all stop crying now. You can all stop crying now.
So Jesus’ death on the cross. His life was of infinite value. He always obeyed God in every way. See, he wasn’t the kid that didn’t know. He willingly went to the cross, even when his father asked him to suffer and die and be abandoned, rejected, he went to the cross obediently. He offered himself as the sacrifice for our sins so that we could be set free, as we trust in him by faith alone. There’s absolutely no way we could save ourselves, because we couldn’t even pay our debt, but Jesus’s life is sufficient to pay all of our debt, including the debt of the entire world. That’s how amazing and glorious Jesus is. That’s why we sing to Jesus, that’s why we give our lives to him. That’s why nothing is held back from him. So the power of God is displayed for us as believers when we recognize the value of his life. His life is powerful. It can forgive sin.
Secondly, jesus was love on the cross. So the power of God in his love displayed for us by Jesus on the cross, even when I didn’t deserve love, jesus loved me, Even when I rejected his love. Jesus loved me Even when my identity was nothing but shame and pain and disappointment. Jesus ran to me, not away from me. He is the only one. He is love
personified. And that message only gets into my brain and my head and my heart by the power of God. God opens me up to be able to understand that love.
And the third way that God’s power is revealed to us as believers is that the last message of the cross was death. Right, everyone who ever was nailed to a cross died. It was 100% successful. People even lived electric chairs. Did you know that People survived electric chairs? I don’t know how, but they get a cool nickname afterwards Sparky. I just made that up. I don’t know if that’s true, but anyway, nobody survives electric chairs crosses, not electric chairs crosses.
But yet Jesus is alive and that shows the power of God, because obviously the greatest power ever shown was Jesus rising from the dead after being crucified on the cross. It is the most amazing power that’s ever been displayed. Science today is going through great, great, great pains and effort to try to produce life from something that’s dead. So they like shoot amino acids with like lasers and electricity all the time. If you read science journals and stuff, they’re always trying to produce life from like amino acids and stuff, and you know how many times it’s worked Zero Right. Because it can’t work, because you can’t make life from non-life, because you have to have the power of creation to create life. Like life doesn’t come from rocks, no matter what your evolutionist teacher tells you. So as you study science, as you see that life is the greatest miracle, you have this incredible power displayed. When God said, not only let there be life, but you can kill my son, and my power will be displayed when he rises from the dead. Okay so, and then he was seen by his disciples. And then he was seen by over 500 people at once and all of those people were persecuted and they threatened to kill them, because they’re like you can’t, you can’t come back from the dead and they’re like we know, but it happened and this is the power of God and that’s what the church is.
We are people who believe in the power of God to raise someone from the dead. So, jesus, the last thing for us today, this is the big point. We focus on Jesus. We focus on Jesus and then, because Jesus wants to share his life with us, he wants to pour his life into us and live his life through us, as you, he wants you, your body, to be his new temple. That’s the deal he wants to make with you temple. That’s the deal he wants to make with you.
He doesn’t he’s not asking you to sacrifice more, do more, give more. He wants you just to believe that you died with him on the cross, that you rose again with him,
that he wants to share all of that with you. He wants to share his death with you, forgiving your sins, his life with you, raised to live a life for God’s glory. God wants you to live for God’s glory. God wants you to do what’s right, to do good works, but how? By him living through you. He doesn’t want you to try to do it.
That could never work, or else why did Jesus have to come? Why did Jesus have to rise from the dead? He rose from the dead to be able to share his life with you, to live through you. And again, what’s our place in that? Our thing in that is to say you know what? Come, live through me, live through me. I give you my heart, jesus, live through me. And that, giving him your mind and your mouth and your hands and your body, everything about you. As you give those things to him, he takes control and he lives through you.
And that’s the power of God displayed in this world today is when a Christian finally stops trying to be a Christian and says I am a Christian. So, jesus, here’s my life, here’s my mind and here’s everything. I give it to you, and he will live through you. So, in your mind, is the message of the cross foolishness or is it the power of God? Amen, I think it is the power of God for all of you guys in here. But if not, and you would like to see the power of God in your life. All you have to do is call out to him and say Jesus, I believe that you were God, that you died on the cross, that you rose from the dead and I ask you to forgive me of my sin and live in me, and I want to give my life, my heart, daily to you, for you to live through me. Tell him you hear the message of the cross. If you hear the message of the cross, that was god that opened your heart. Jesus was perfect, jesus was love and jesus sacrificed.