Preaching the Cross

We humans tend to think rather highly of ourselves. Treated well, we generally think we have earned it. Treated badly, we may complain that we “deserve better.” And if we suspect that we might not be thinking highly enough of ourselves, we complain of “low self-esteem.” Christians, who ought to know better, are no exception. We often judge ourselves based on our own subjective feelings, as if having “peace” or “a clear conscience” indicates that we are right. Mark Dever writes:

Paul says . . . “I care very little if I am judged by you or any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Cor. 4:3–4). Paul is unaware of anything against himself, but knows that he is not acquitted by his self-assessment. It is the Lord who judges him. Of course, Paul is not saying that self-examination is wrong; in fact, he calls for it later in his letter (9:4–27; cf. 2 Cor. 13:5), but our self-assessment—a clear conscience—simply isn’t the ultimate issue. The nature of our fallenness is such that we can have a clear conscience and still be wrong, which is why our conscience must be educated by the Word of God. Self-esteem can’t be the final arbiter because we esteem ourselves too highly! We are called to make provisional judgments (so Matt. 7:6)—as Paul is about to do forcefully in 2 Corinthians 5!—but no mere human is our ultimate judge because, as Paul says in 4:4, we will be judged by the Lord (cf. 2:10–16).

—Mark Dever, Preaching the Cross (Crossway, 2007), 22–23.

Preaching the Cross is a collection of messages from the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference. You can download the entire message from which today’s quote was taken here.

When we think of the attributes of God, we generally think of things like omniscience and omnipotence, justice and mercy, or holiness and sovereignty, attributes that speak of power, authority, and glory. But God also has an attribute that seems quite incongruous with his more spectacular attributes. It is also one that completes his character beautifully. Ligon Duncan said:

Consider what we learn about God from 2 Samuel 7. It is right in the context of that Davidic covenant. But look at how it starts: David wants to build a temple for the Lord. He is dwelling in a cedar-lined palace, and he looks over at the ark of the covenant of God—the visible symbol of manifestation of the presence of God with his people in the old covenant—and it is in a tent. It is a glorious tent. It is a relatively big tent for a nomad. And David says, “It’s not right for me to live in a palace while the ark of God is in a tent.” And his humility leads him to say, “Lord God, I want to build a temple for you that is greater than the palace that I live in. It’s not right that I live in something more glorious than what the ark of God is housed in.”
   God sends Nathan to say, “Are you going to be the one who will build me a house to dwell in?” and notice what God says: “For I have not dwelt in a house since the day I brought up the sons of Israel from Egypt, even to this day; but I have been moving about in a tent, even in a tabernacle. Wherever I have gone with all the sons of Israel, did I speak a word with one of the tribes of Israel, which I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built Me a house of cedar?’” (2 Sam. 7:6-7).
   That’s a glorious passage about the character of God. Do you know what it tells us? It tells us that this majestic, awesome, transcendent, creating, redeeming God is humble. In effect he says, “David, I want to tell you something. When my people were going through the wilderness, living in tents, I lived in a tent with them—right in the middle of it—and I never asked them to do anything for me, other than to let me live with them right where they were.”
   What does this tell you about the character of God? It is the same thing that tells us: “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory” (John 1:14). But it was the Father who had revealed that part of himself in the old covenant.

—Ligon Duncan, Preaching the Cross (Crossway, 2007), 61–62.

Preaching the Cross is a collection of messages from the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference. You can download the entire message from which today’s quote was taken here.

It’s an Oprah and Dr. Phil world, in which bad things happen to good people, good people have environmentally-generated self-image “issues,” and the right attitude (and possibly the right prescription) is the cure for everything. What world is that? The secular world? The world of those other religions? No, it’s the world of the average evangelical, in which very little requires forgiveness, where Jesus is not the great physician, healing our disease of sin, but the great therapist, helping us to overcome our psychological hang-ups and fulfill our potential. Albert Mohler writes:

   Therapeutic modalities and answering questions with a therapeutic response have become the reflex of our society. If you doubt this, just go into your local Christian bookstore; what your are likely to find are rows upon rows of books that demonstrate this very therapeutic worldview, with just a few Bible verses added to make it Christian. We have to understand that for Americans this is normal. It is normal to be told that the self is the center of the meaning system, and that the self is a project that they undertake throughout the entirety of their lives. As a result, most Americans believe that their major problem is something that has happened to them, and that their solution is to be found within. In other words, they believe that they have an alien problem that is to be resolved with an inner solution. What the gospel says, however, is that we have an inner problem that demands an alien solution—a righteousness that is not our own. Once we begin to understand how that dichotomy comes together, we can see better how we can think we are talking about the gospel, yet people in this culture will hear it as merely a new form of therapy.

—Albert Mohler, Preaching the Cross (Crossway, 2007), 81.

Preaching the Cross is a collection of messages from the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference. You can download the entire message from which today’s quote was taken here.

Summarizing the difference between the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone and the Roman doctrine of justification by faith plus merit, R. C. Sproul writes:

[T]he Roman view of justification starts with baptism. The benefits that accrue from baptism can be lost by committing mortal sin, but they can be recovered by penance. The regained justification lasts until another mortal son is committed, and the cycle repeats. According to the Roman view, a believer’s destiny is determined by the purity of his heart at the time of death. Even if the believer does not die in a state of impenitent mortal son, there may be impurities on the soul, necessitating purgatory until the impurities are cleansed.
   All of this is presented in the most recent Roman Catholic catechism. It states that if a believer has any impurities on his or her soul at the time of death, the believer will go to purgatory the soul of the believer may be in purgatory for only a week of he or she is near to sainthood, but more likely the believer will remain there for several hundred years, perhaps ever two million, three million, or four million years—until, in that place of purging, the believer is so cleansed from impurities that finally, when God looks at him or her, he sees an inherent righteousness.
   Is that good news? It is actually the worst possible news we can hear. If someone told me that the only way I could get into the kingdom of heaven and be adopted into the family of God is to get rid of all impurities in my soul, I would despair. So let me tell you what the good news is. I despair of my righteousness; I acknowledge my sin. I put my trust in Christ and Christ alone. And the good news is that at the very instant I do, all that Jesus is, and all that Jesus has, is mine, and for the rest of my days he has me covered. The Father looks beyond my impurities and all my sin, and he sees the cloak of righteousness of Jesus. For that reason, I am justified not for today, not for this week, not until I commit another sin, but for eternity. Is there any better news than that in the whole world?

—R. C. Sproul, Preaching the Cross (Crossway, 2007), 100–101.

Preaching the Cross is a collection of messages from the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference. You can download the entire message from which today’s quote was taken here.

The following excerpt from Preaching the Cross is addressed to pastors. Most of us are not pastors, so we may tend to read, nod our heads, and think, “Yes, that’s how they should do it.” However, I want us to replace the words “preacher” and “pastor” with our own names or personal pronouns, and “preaching” with our own witness or testimony. How do we present Christ to the world? Is there a weight to our witness? Do we provoke serious thought about the majesty of God, the heinous nature of sin, and the grave consequences for sinners? Or are we just talking cartoon vegetables?

   God did not ordain the cross of Christ or create the lake of fire in order to communicate the significance of belittling his glory. The death of the Son of God and the damnation of unrepentant human beings are the loudest shouts under heaven that God is infinitely holy, and sin is infinitely offensive, and wrath is infinitely just, and grace is infinitely precious, and our brief life—and the life of every person in your church and in your community—leads to everlasting joy or everlasting suffering. If our preaching does not carry the weight of these things to our people, what will? Veggie Tales? . . .
   God planned for his Son to be crucified (Rev. 13:8; 2 Tim. 1:9) and for hell to be terrible (Matt. 25:41) so that we would have the clearest witnesses possible to what is at stake when we preach. What gives preaching its seriousness is that the mantle of the preacher is soaked with the blood of Jesus and singed with the fire of hell. That’s the mantle that turns mere talkers into preachers. Yet tragically some of the most prominent evangelical voices today diminish the horror of the cross and the horror of hell—the one stripped of its power to bear our punishment, and the other demythologized into self-dehumanization and the social miseries of this world.
   Oh, that the rising generations would see that the world is not overrun with a sense of seriousness about God. There is no surplus in the church of a sense of God’s glory; there is no excess of earnestness in the church about heaven and hell and sin and salvation, and, therefore, the joy of many Christians is paper thin. By the millions, people are amusing themselves to death with DVDs and 107-inch TV screens and games on their cell phones, and slapstick worship . . .
   And yet incomprehensibly, in this Christ-diminishing, soul-destroying age, books and seminars and divinity schools and church growth specialists are bent on saying to young pastors, “lighten up,” “get funny,” and “do something amusing.” To this I ask, where is the spirit if Jesus? “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matt. 16:24-25). “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matt. 5:29). “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he had cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Matt. 8:22). “Whoever would be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:44). “Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt 10:28). “Some of you they will put to death. . . . But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Luke 21:16-19).
   Would the church growth counsel to Jesus be, “Lighten up, Jesus. Do something amusing,” and to the young pastor, “Whatever you do, young pastor, don’t be like the Jesus of the Gospels. Lighten up”? From my perspective, which feels very close to eternity these days, that message to pastors sounds increasingly insane.

—John Piper, Preaching the Cross (Crossway, 2007), 105–108.

Preaching the Cross is a collection of messages from the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference. You can download the entire message from which today’s quote was taken here.

Continuing through the 2006 Together for the Gospel messages (as compiled in Preaching the Cross), we come to a message of extreme importance from C. J. Mahaney: Watch Your Life and Doctrine. Citing 1 Timothy 4:16, Mahaney reiterates the importance of sound doctrine. Then he moves into the other half of the message with words of warning. This warning, though aimed at pastors, is surely applicable to us all.

[W]e can often forget that a knowledge of Scripture alone is not sufficient. Of course, James won’t let us forget that we must “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22). This verse tells us that apart from obedience, knowledge can be deceptive. This puts an interesting twist on some of the favorite activities of good evangelical pastors: attending ministerial conferences, listening to sermons, and reading doctrinally sound books. All such activities afford us the opportunity for serious progress in personal godliness and ministry effectiveness. Yet each one can also be an instrument of progressive self-deception.

. . . please understand: according to James, of you consume truth without applying truth, you risk the false and dangerous impression that spiritual growth was achieved without application. But it never is—never. We must be ever wary of the self-deception of which James speaks. Let’s recognize limitations of sound doctrine, and make the practice of truth a daily priority. Never stop watching your life.

—C. J. Mahaney, Preaching the Cross (Crossway, 2007), 120–121.

Preaching the Cross is a collection of messages from the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference. You can download the entire message from which today’s quote was taken here.

From John MacArthur’s 2006 Together for the Gospel message:

   Expository preaching that is theological is not easy. The stringent discipline required to interpret Scripture accurately is a constant burden, and the message we are required to proclaim is often offensive. Christ himself is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense (Rom. 9:33; 1 Pet. 2:8). The message of the cross is a stumbling block to some (1 Cor. 1:23; Gal. 5:11) and mere foolishness to others (1 Cor. 1:23).
   But we are never permitted to trim the message or to tailor it to people’s preferences. Paul made this clear to Timothy at the end of chapter 3: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). This is the Word to be preached: the whole counsel of God (cf. Acts 20:27).
   In chapter 1 Paul had told Timothy, “Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me” (v. 13). He was speaking of the revealed words of Scripture—all of it. He urged Timothy to “Guard . .  the treasure which has been entrusted to you” (v. 14). Then in chapter 2 he told him to study the Word and handle it accurately (v. 15). He then brings the epistle to its summit by urging him to proclaim God’s Word no matter what. So the entire task of the faithful minister revolves around the Word of God—guarding it, studing it, and proclaiming it.

—John MacArthur, Preaching the Cross (Crossway, 2007), 142.

The applications for us are multiple. The most obvious concerns how we should handle Scripture in our own study and witness. Less obvious, but more immediate and on point, concerns how we should receive the Word delivered to us by the shepherds of our churches.

Our pastors are called to work hard, diligently and faithfully studying, interpreting, explaining, and applying the Word for us. If they faithfully fulfill their calling, delivering the Word to us week after week, should we not also work hard to receive, understand, and apply it in our own lives?

Preaching the Cross is a collection of messages from the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference. You can download the entire message from which today’s quote was taken here.