The Message of the Cross

Tuesday of Holy Week, April 7, 2020

The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction!  But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.  As the Scriptures say, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”  So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters?  God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish.  Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.  It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven.  And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom.  So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.  But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.  This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.  1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Dr. Luther Dorr, my preaching professor in seminary often said that preaching is foolish enough; it’s the preacher’s goal to not make it any more foolish than God intended.  Perhaps Dr. Dorr hoped to save us from making the mistake of taking the “power of salvation” out of the preaching event.  Either way – there is something powerful about the message of the Gospel, whether presented with words or deed.

The late comedian, George Burns, is quoted as saying, “The secret of a good sermon is having a good beginning and a good ending.  And having them as close together as possible.”^[1]  

There may be some wisdom in the irreverent Mr. Burns’ words, but a quick check of John Wesley’s sermons from the late 18^th century reveals that he wrote approximately 5500 words in a sermon.  Typically, those sermons took a good bit more than an hour to preach.  Today’s attention-deprived minds prefer shorter; MUCH shorter.  My average sermon is about 4 typed pages, or 1500 words (less than 1/3 of Wesley’s), taking 20-30 minutes to preach.  Even this is longish by some modern standards. 

And that depends on whom you ask.  Ask a wise, know-it-all, who sits cross-armed, scowling through a sermon because he knows he’s going to miss the kickoff if the sermon goes 10 minutes over the hour…or a humanist-bent, revival-hating scholar, and they will gladly tell you most sermons are hot-air.  On the other hand, if you ask a hot-for-God Christian if the sermon was long today, he or she will tell you, how can a sermon be too long if it is holding-up the message of God’s saving, soul-refreshing grace to a thirsty, parched soul?

Now, considering it’s just the tip of the iceberg of importance the cross-message brings to humanity, if the foolish/powerful/very long messages of the 18^th century propelled the Wesleyan movement in America, spreading scriptural holiness across the land like a grassfire, what is the Scriptural A.D.D. 10-minute sermonette doing to our culture?

For You Today

If you are a believer it’s not a matter of the length of a sermon, but rather the depth it will reach to honor God’s gift.  That depth reaches down into the darkest realm of the human heart.  That’s not a long sermon; it’s the antidote for a long eternity without Christ.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on 1 Corinthians 1:18-24 see Against the Tide and This Holy Week – Part 2

Today’s post is an updated print of an original post dated July 11, 2013 entitled Scriptural A.D.D.