“The Glory of the Cross” Part One

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 894 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! I appreciate the Lord’s presence this morning and I appreciate the seeming emphasis in the songs. You know we get so bogged down with life and so pressed in with its details that we forget what it really is about. And I think this season perhaps is one of the worst in that regard. It’s so easy to feel the pressure of everything going on. It’s supposed to be honoring Christ. I don’t think it does much most of the time. But you know we need to come back to the cross. That’s the only thing that gives me hope. And if we get our focus, the focus of our life, what our life is about centered in anything else, it gets off kilter, doesn’t it?

And I thought of a simple scripture as perhaps a starting point in Galatians chapter 6. Paul has been dealing with a young church of new believers who had been called out of darkness. They had lived lives of heathen idolatry, but they had found in Christ forgiveness and hope and a new life. And then some people had come in and tried to corrupt the simplicity that they had, with adding in all…some of the rituals from the Old Testament, some of the…you got to do this, you got to do that kind of thing…trying to add in some of the elements of Moses law, not understanding that that had been fulfilled in Christ and that was a thing of the past.

And so Paul is trying to help them. But he comes down to this statement in verse 14. “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (NIV). And then he refers to some of the Jewish rituals. “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.” Praise God! The cross is the center of everything. If it’s not the ground and pillar of your life, then your life is not going anywhere. It means nothing.

And you think about Paul himself as a…growing up as a very self-righteous Jew, a zealous man. I mean, this guy was the type that would give it all he’s got. Whatever he believes in, he’s gonna go for it with every fiber of his being. And that’s what he did. And so he did it to the point where he, as you know, he persecuted Christians. He was so sure of his rightness and the rightness of everything that he’d been taught and believed, that he was willing to go out and literally persecute others that he believed were opposing what he did.

You know, I’m confident of what I have, but I don’t feel the need to do that, do you? I think we can trust God with such things. If we have the right deal, we can just rest everything in God’s hands. But Paul was certainly not in that realm, was he? What he had was something that was false. But you know, the very thing that got his attention as we know, one day he was on the road to Damascus. He had heard there were Christians there and he was absolutely set in his heart. I mean his heart was wrought up. I’m gonna go there and do something about this. This is spreading. We got to do something. And so that was what he was after. He had gotten a contingent of soldiers and he was gonna go there and deal with the situation.

And then all of a sudden as he got near the city, something happened that absolutely turned his life around. All of a sudden, there was a brilliant light shone from heaven and a voice thundered out of the heavens. Everybody around saw the light, they heard a thunder, but they didn’t really hear the voice and what was actually being said. This directed at Paul. Paul, Paul…Saul he was called at that time, why are you persecuting Me?

Up to that moment in Saul’s life, he had no idea who Jesus Christ was, ‘cause this wasn’t just…when he said I glory in the cross, it wasn’t just…oh that’s a wonderful way to kill people. It wasn’t just the idea of the cross. This was simply a method of execution that Romans carried out that was about as cruel as they could figure out to be. And of course, it was designed to keep everybody in line, to put the fear of God, if you will, into people. But it wasn’t just the idea of a cross. It was the cross of Jesus Christ. It mattered whose cross that it was.

And so the very beginning of Paul’s…of the transformation of Saul into the one we know as Paul, began with a revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul, you’re not going here just to persecute a bunch of religious people. You are persecuting me! I am so one with, I am so identified with those people, that when you touch one of them, you are touching Me.

Now I don’t know if you can imagine how that affected Saul, but his world was turned upside down. The shock…I’m glad he was a young man. It might have killed him. The sudden shock of realizing…oh my God, I’m persecuting…this is not somebody that I need to be messing with. And of course he immediately says, who are you, Lord? He knew this was something supernatural--Someone supernatural. And when the answer came…oh boy: I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. And suddenly he had an entirely different perspective on what this was all about.

But you know that’s exactly the same revelation, one way or another, that has to come to every human being who comes to God. Because Jesus, when He was in the days of His flesh, He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The Jews thought they had a pathway to God by the observance of the Law, the way they did it. They turned it into a man-made religion, of course. But they thought they actually had a corner on God. They just had no clue who Jesus was, or the fact that they had no access to God except through Jesus Christ.

You know, the Scriptures tell us in the beginning of John that, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” (KJV). The world…it tells us that the world was made by Him. I guess I’d better turn to it and read some of this. I think Chip used this recently, didn’t he, in the funeral on Tuesday? Very appropriate scripture.

Because this…you think about John…John is going to write about what it is that we Christians believe and what’s the foundation of all that we stand for, and this is the beginning. Because if you don’t get who Jesus, is then nothing else makes sense. Jesus is not just some teacher…not some religious teacher who had some nice philosophical ideas and if we follow them, our lives will be better. That’s not it at all. In fact that option is not open to you…because He claimed to be the Son of God. If He claimed to be the Son of God and if He wasn’t then He’s a liar and nobody has any business listening to Him. But if He’s who He says He is, man we better hear what He has to say. And that’s what happens.

“Through him…” verse 3, “…all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (NIV). And of course then he goes on to talk about the testimony of John the Baptist who came. But in verse 10, it says, “He was in the world…” Now he’s referring the Christ again. “…And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.”

Think about the condition of mankind. You know one of the hymns we sang this morning had concerned about Christ the mighty Maker who died for man the creature’s sin. That’s who we’re talking about. This is the One who made the stars…I mean God ultimately, but it was through His Son that He made everything…made you and me. The only reason we have life is because of Him. Oh if our life is founded on any other knowledge, it’s not…it has no foundation. Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God, and yet there He was.

Think about the implications of men who lived, well in their society much as we do. I mean, sure, the details are different. We’ve got technology and comforts and all kinds of things. Our culture is a little different, or perhaps a lot different. But really fundamentally we were just like them. Man is still in the same condition. He is blind to what everything is about, blind to what life is about, blind to the One who made Him, caught by the power of sin and rebellion against a holy God.

“He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” And that was the general condition. But oh what a tremendous promise! “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.…” That’s the issue. There is no other answer to life. We either go on with the world in blindness or we follow Him completely and enter into life and become the children of God.

And these children are not born of natural descent. Boy, that ought to answer the Jewish question right there. “…Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.” That’s what I need. That’s what you need. We need to have that which brings us…makes us a part of a brand new creation. Praise God!

So that’s the first knowledge that Paul had to come to. He knew all about the cross and to him Jesus was a false prophet, a criminal who needed to be executed. It was the right thing to do before God…to execute that man. He would have been right there, had he been there at the time…he would have been at the front of the crowd shouting, crucify Him, crucify Him! He’s not fit to live. That was the conviction of Saul’s heart.

I tell you that’s what the blindness of sin will do. That’s what it’ll do. We need to have our eyes…every human being who would come to God needs to have their eyes opened to who Jesus is. If He is who He says He is, then man, everything depends on how we relate to Him, because one day these scriptures, these same scriptures tell us that we will stand before Him--we will stand before Him to give an answer concerning this life. Oh I want to be one of those that says, yes Lord, here…opens my heart.

And that’s what God was bringing this young Jew named Saul to. But oh, it began with a revelation. This is the Son of God. You need to listen to Him. You need to follow Him with every fiber of your being. But you know, it is a message of a cross. It’s a message of the fact that this One who was the very Maker of everything would not only come, but that He would actually die the most ignominious, horrible death that man could contrive.

And the question, of course, is why? Why would such a thing happen? How was such a thing possible? Look who He is. Surely He would come and set up a government and a palace and rule over men and begin to teach them and bring them…no! There was something else that had to be done. And the cross was not only a revelation of who He was, it was a revelation of our condition. Can you imagine sitting in that house, being a fly on the wall and watching Saul for three days sit there and think about what had happened to him? And watch him fighting off the sense of despair. Oh my God, I thought I was one of the most righteous people on the face of the earth. I did everything they told me to do. I was a good guy! I looked down on the people that we knew were sinners. I was one of the ones who was serving God with every fiber of my being, and here I am in a condition of blind rebellion against the very Author of life. Oh God, is there any hope for me? Is there any hope?

But for someone to come to God, they’ve got to come to a place where they see what they are. You know there’s been a lot of debate, foolish I think, down through the centuries. Who was responsible for killing Jesus? Who…you know, as though certain classes of people, certain groups of people…they need to be shunned or persecuted or looked down on because they killed Christ. That’s a bunch of baloney. God killed Christ! God is the One who put His Son to death. The question is not who…which human instrument did it, the question is why. And the why is because of our sin!

( congregational amens ).

That’s what’s revealed at the cross is the enormity of human rebellion against the goodness of a holy God. Who do we think we are to chart our own course and say, God get away, it’s my life to do with as I please! I’ll live it as I please. I’ll do what I want. You have no right to tell me what to do. Oh God, if the cross reveals anything, it reveals the enormity of that. If there was no other way, short of what God did to put His Son to death on a cross…no other way to deal with the question except by that means. That shows me what I am.

You want to find out who’s responsible for Him being there, you go look in the mirror. If it ever dawns on you, it’ll change your life forever. You’ll look in there and you’ll be like Brother Thomas was when God opened his eyes. You remember how he testifies the next morning he was shaving, he couldn’t even look at himself in the mirror, and there were just tears falling down as he sat at his table eating his eggs, and there were tears falling on his…it was this sense, it was the realization. If you don’t, if you’ve never sensed, if you’ve never understood your own condition…there’s a blindness there that God has to deal with. God has got to show us why Jesus went to the cross. He went to the cross charged with your sins!

( congregational amens ).

You want to know how bad they are. Look at what happened to Him on the cross. That’s the measure of what you and I are before a holy God in ourselves. Oh, Praise God! That’s why Paul came to see. You can have all those rituals. You can do all that stuff. There’s only one thing that I’m gonna cling to. My only hope is the meaning of that cross. He took my sins upon Him. When He went there, He died because I had sinned and I was guilty before a holy God. That’s all I need to know. He did it, not because…not to sort of help me, give me leg up so that I could get a hold of that tree and pull myself up to salvation! No! He did it because I was helpless!

Not only was I helpless, I was blind to my helplessness. Oh, He opened my eyes and He showed me what He did through His Son for me. That’s the hope that just drove Paul. I glory in the cross! You can have all that stuff that we used to do in the Jew’s religion. Yeah, there was a point to some of it at the time for those who had their hearts toward God, who were doing it in faith. Yes, it had a meaning at one time! But all of that is culminated in Christ. We used to sacrifice lambs for sin. But the blood of animals could never ever take away sin! God had a lamb that He sent to be the one sacrifice for sins forever. That’s the one I glory in. That’s the one I need. That’s the one I need to put my hope and my trust in.

( congregational amens ).

Oh Praise God! You know, you think about the condition…you can see a pretty good illustration of it, I think in John chapter 8. Jesus was…well I was gonna say, He was speaking to, I guess speaking with is more of a way to put it. There were a crowd of Jews. I think this was in the temple area. But in any case, He would say something and they would ask Him a question…anyway there was a lot of give and take going on with some of the Jews and He was trying to express the message that His Father had given Him and who He was and how much they needed to be in a position to hear what He had to say.

And so in verse 30, the culmination of this particular conversation at this point, at least, it says this, “Even as he spoke, many put their faith in him.” Now if you put a period at that point in this story, it sounds great! It wasn’t just one or two, this was many…they put their faith in Him…come forward, sign on the dotted line, we welcome you in, brother, sister.

But oh, that’s not the end of the story here. Listen to where it goes here. It says, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said…” Now this was the ones…now He’s not talking to the crowd. Now He’s talking to the ones who said, I believe in You. “…If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.” Right there there’s an implication that they might not have been real. But if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

What they needed was a faith that was so fixed in Him that they would be willing to listen to everything that He said, take it to heart and that truth would then be the means of their being set free. This was not a salvation thing so much as it was a pathway to salvation. This was a matter of receiving Him, why? Because He was God’s messenger! He had the words of God. If you don’t receive the One that God sent, how can you have God’s message?

And that was…this is really saying the same thing that John said in chapter 1. As many as received Him…well they had to receive Him as God’s messenger, the One who had the words that they needed. Once they received Him, then they had access to the message, then through the message, they had access to salvation.

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