The Glory of the Cross

 

LIMAVADY INDEPENDENT METHODIST CHURCH

SERMON NOTES FROM SUNDAY 16 APRIL 2023

GALATIANS 6 VERSES 1 – 18

This was a letter Paul did not want to write.  It is in fact a letter no Pastor would care to write.  He is writing to a church that has moved itself away from the spiritual experiences they had when Paul was present.  They were going into a backslidden state and didn’t see it.  As we think of Easter we are always thinking of the cross, Jesus riding into Jerusalem with people shouting and praising God.  Within a week he was crucified, his hands and feet nailed to the wooden cross and a crown of thorns was placed on his head.  Jesus knew all about it before it happened and he did it all for you and I this morning.  As we come together we dare not allow ourselves to get moved away from the cross.  It is the foundation of Paul’s life and the church in Galatia.  Is it the foundation of your life and mine?  Verse 6 Paul is speaking of the preaching of the cross.  We read here about every man proving his own work.  Paul gets down to the reason for his letter.  Here’s a people, a church gradually moving away.  What a message the gospel is.  John 3 verse 16.  Chapter 5 verse 7 “ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?”  Moving away from the position of the church.  False teachers came in taking people away gradually, wanted to draw them back to the keeping of the law.  Paul says in verse 14 “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. 

Paul gloried in the planning of the cross.  Do you glory in what God has done for you?  Have you stopped today to ask yourself ‘if God has allowed you to open your eyes on this glorious morning why has he given you the desire to be in the house of God today?’  The planning of the cross was not made in any government office but devised in the splendours of heaven, in the heart and mind of God.  We are not thinking of the relic of the cross, the wooden structure of the cross.  Thinking of the more profound meaning of the atonement paid.  The only person who could pay that price was the Lord.  He sent his son sent into the world to die for you and I.  The Roman Centurion at the shadow of the cross was given his orders to make sure Jesus was scourged and beaten.  He carried out his orders to the last word.  There on that middle cross Jesus’ hands and feet were hammered to the tree and he was lifted up between heaven and earth.  As the Roman Centurion looked on the Lord he said “surely this was the Son of God.”  Paul could say “he that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8 verse 32 Peter said “who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.” (1 Peter 1 verse 20)  Heaven gave the very best it had to offer – the Lord Jesus Christ.  The heart of God the loving Father who gave his only son and watched him die on Calvary.  It cost my Saviour his life.  Galatians 2 verse 20 “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”  The word crucified means to be dead to everything but alive unto Christ.  In chapter 3 verse 1 Paul paints the picture of the Lord Jesus hanging on the cross.  In verse 13 we see the payment of Christ.  Chapter 4 verse 5 says Christ came “to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”  In chapter 5 verse 11 we see the price that the believer is paying and again in verse 24.  In chapter 6 verses 12 to 14 Paul says he will glory in God’s plan.  God wasn’t caught out when sin came into the world.  The Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world.  In Acts 17 for 3 Sabbath days Paul went in to the synagogue in Thessalonica.  We are told that he “reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you is Christ.”  He added one verse onto another building a picture of what God’s plan of salvation is in a lost eternity.  There will be those who will be thinking back to when the plan was laid out before them regretting not acting on it.  Paul said the Passover involved sacrificing year after year until Jesus himself died on the cross.  The lamb was the central figure.  In Exodus 12 the firstborn was to die.  Pharaoh hardened his heart at every plague until the last when the firstborn would die in every house.  God told them to take the lamb out from the flock, keep it for 4 days.  It couldn’t be offered if there was any blemish on it.  That lamb had to be slain and the blood taken, poured into a basin then applied to the doorposts.  “When I see the blood I will pass over.”  We are talking here of the plan of God for all eternity.  I can imagine those homes in Egypt that night when the father would run in to see if his firstborn is still alive.  There would be crying and weeping in another home as no blood had been applied and the firstborn was dead.  Imagine the eyes of one man closing his eyes in death and spending eternity in a lost eternity. 

Paul says I will glory in the planning but also in the prospect of the cross.  When Paul presented this message there was no prospect.  It became a stumbling block to them.  People living by the law.  When Paul came he preached the gospel of grace.  The only way to receive a gift is by taking it.  The Jews were looking for a strong mighty deliverer who would redeem them from their enemies.  They could not imagine the cross as being the redemption.  It was the worst possible death imagined and yet Jesus did it because of our sin.  Peter says a stone of stumbling, a rock of defence.  “Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.”  The cross is still a stumbling block to many but it is the only way.  God says it is by the foolishness of preaching that men are saved.  The taking away of sin is what you and I need.  It is not turning over a new leaf, trying to do better.  The only way is through Christ.

We glory also in the power of the cross.  These people were turning back to the law but there is no power in the law.  James in his book says the pulpit is intended to be the pedestal of the cross.  Paul said to Timothy “preach the word; be instant in season, out of season.” (2 Timothy 4 verse 2)  He also said “I came not to baptise but to preach the gospel; not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.” (1 Corinthians 1 verse 17)  The cross has to be the foundation of our lives, of our church, if not it is just a gathering of people.