2003 Ligonier Conference: The Myth of Influence, Part 2

• rich and wonderful days in the word of god speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of god and as you know i gave you half of what is on my heart yesterday morning and we want to complete the remainder this morning so i would invite you to open your bibles to first corinthians chapter one again familiar portion of scripture for us and we’ll jump right in sort of where we left off as i said last time perhaps the dominant myth prevailing in evangelicalism is that we must make the gospel acceptable so the perishing will be attracted to it
• and sort of seduced or lured into the kingdom and of course in the process the true gospel is struggling to survive the hammers and chisels of contemporary christianity the efforts to make it inoffensive and acceptable seem to be endless the myth is that this will result in more people being converted to christ a noble desire but cannot happen without the presentation of the absolute truth of the gospel no way to present the true gospel and make it easy to believe it is hard to believe and sooner or later the truth must come forward it alone can save and therefore in a sense
• all the rest is window dressing and so we’re looking at the shame of the gospel trying to steal ourselves for the reality of how it is that we must present this glorious gospel and when we proclaim the word of the cross built into it from a human perspective is shame shame and that’s kind of our theme as we’re working our way through this portion of first corinthians the shameful stigma of the cross we talked about yesterday the fact of crucifixion itself was an immense barrier to belief in the deity in the messiahship of the lord jesus christ the shameful simplicity of the cross that obviates
• and eliminates and cancels all human wisdom and the shameful singularity of the cross that is it is christ and it is christ alone and it is not only christ and christ alone but full submission as much as one understands to his lordship to the degree that one denies oneself and is willing not only to live for christ but if need be to die for him and with that attitude follows christ in submissive obedience from the heart at least makes the effort to do that willfully now let’s sort of add some things today and they won’t have equal balance in the time we have because i want to emphasize
• some more than others but i do want to mention the shameful sentence of the cross the shameful sentence of the cross because i think this is such a powerful point that must be made in verse 18 again the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness just grab that phrase those who are perishing those who are ruined those who are destroyed those who are on their way to hell as the old hymn says god is in the business of rescuing the perishing and this implies judgment this implies wrath this implies punishment