Full text of R.C. Sproul’s sermon titled ‘Christ Crucified’ which was preached at Ligonier Ministries’ 2000 National Conference.
Listen to the MP3 Audio here:
TRANSCRIPT:
R.C. Sproul – Founder of Ligonier Ministries
Our Scripture for this evening is from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth. I will be reading from the first chapter, beginning at verse 17 through verse 25.
Hear then the word of God.
1 Corinthians 1:17-25: “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’
Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, Greeks seek after wisdom; But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.“
And then in chapter two, Paul says:
1 Corinthians 2:1-2:“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech, or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”
And he who has ears to hear the word of God, let them hear it. Let us pray.
Almighty, and everlasting God, You who have adopted us in the Beloved, we ask as we consider this, that the world deems foolish, that You will grasp us with its wisdom and with its power, for we ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.
ARCHIMEDES’ BOOK: ‘THE SAND RECKONER.’
In the year 212 BC, a very strange book was published. And its author was even more strange than the book that he published, because in this book, which the author dedicated to the king of the city of Syracuse, in the southern coast of Sicily, in this book, the author sought to calculate how many grains of sand it would take to fill the entire universe.
Can you imagine a work more bizarre than that? This was one of the very last things that this man did before he died, as he contemplated the number of grains of sand it would take to fill the universe.
Recently, I’ve been preaching through the Book of Acts, and I mentioned to our congregation that when Paul came to Athens and saw a city completely given to idolatry, and he began to proclaim Christ to the philosophers gathered at the Areopagus, the Bible says that they looked at the apostle and they said, ‘What will this babbler say?’
And it’s a strange translation, because the word that is translated, babbler, literally means ‘seed picker’. Seed picker was somebody who went around the streets scooping up seeds from the ground, eking out a subsistence from them, much like a modern street person does by sifting through garbage cans.
Well, if there ever was a seed picker in the ancient world, it was this man who tried to count the number of seeds that would fill this universe. The name of the book you may remember if you lived back then, or recall your history, was called ‘The Sand Reckoner.’
And again, as I say, written very shortly before the man died. He died when his city came under siege by a Roman general whose nickname was the Sword of Rome. That general was Marcus Claudius Marcellus.
And when he brought his troops and in fact the Roman navy, to move against the citadel of Syracuse, he was utterly astonished at the resistance that he met there during the siege. And he had to work feverishly to keep his troops from giving in to utter discouragement, because, to their astonishment, they encountered war machines that they had never seen before, that were far more sophisticated than any of the military equipment that the Romans had invented up to that point.
One of those war machines was the catapult. But another one that was perhaps even, not perhaps, certainly even more astonishing was that as the Roman ships approached the cliffs outside of Syracuse, the sailors looked up into the sky and they saw these huge jaws descending from the sky. And the jaws came down and gripped one of the Roman ships and then hoisted it 100ft or so into the air. The jaws were released and the ship and its crew fell to the rocks and were smashed to smithereens.
They couldn’t believe what they were seeing until the jaws moved to the next ship and came down and gripped it and then raised it into the air and dropped it onto the rocks. And the sailors under Marcus Claudius Marcellus were terrified.
Finally, the Romans were victorious. And the command of the general was that the engineer who had developed these new weapons for the Sicilians was to be unharmed.
But that mandate was ignored by one of the rank and file soldiers, who was so annoyed by this man’s ingenuity that he approached him as he was doing mathematical equations in the sand and killed him on the spot. And thus Archimedes met his death.
[read more]
And now you know the rest of the story.
Archimedes is famous for, after discovering the laws of buoyancy in his bathtub, ran into the streets naked, crying out, ‘Eureka’. I have found it.
And even his book, ‘The Sand Reckoner’, which seems so absurd to us today, estimated the number of grains of sand that would fill the universe matched almost exactly the estimates populated by 20th century physicists only a few short years ago.
I think it’s safe to say that Archimedes was one of the most brilliant men, not only in the ancient world, but who has ever walked on this planet.
And I think you remember the words that he spoke to the king of Syracuse on one occasion when the king was amazed at all of these machines that Archimedes had designed. Archimedes said to him, ‘Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the whole world.’
THE CROSS OF CHRIST
A little over 200 years after Archimedes made that statement, a lever was found that was long enough to move the world. It was a tree about 10ft high, and the place that it was placed was Calvary, because the cross was the lever that turned the world upside down.
It was the cross that revealed the power, not of the ingenuity of Archimedes, but the power of God Himself to ride a topsy-turvy world. And it was the message of that cross that changed the world forever.
Now, the cross, according to what the apostle teaches us here in 1 Corinthians, had a visible and an invisible significance.
I remember when I was a college student being fascinated, more than fascinated, being absolutely gripped by the great American novel written by Herman Melville, ‘Moby Dick’. There’s a portion of that story when Ahab, in his monomoniacal quest to find the albino whale is running out of patience, is on the rim of hysteria in his passionate desire to find Moby Dick, that he wants to post a reward to the first person on board the Pequod who would sight this monster.
And so Ahab went to the main mast of the ship and he took out a hammer and a nail, and he nailed a gold doubloon onto the mast of the ship. And he said, whoever spots the whale first and cries, “There she blows!” will get the gold doubloon.
And then what follows from that moment in the novel is an insight by Melville into the ruminations of the crew members, who, one by one, come up to the center of the ship. They look at the main mask, they look at the gold doubloon, and they begin to think and to express what that gold doubloon would mean to them.
Starbuck, Stubbs, the various members of the crew looked at it and thought what they could do with the money that that was worth, how many cigars it would buy, what riches would be theirs. And they all had a completely different view. It was totally subjective until the irrational cabin boy, Pip came along and he sort of danced around the main mast and he said, “I see, you see. We all see.” And he made fun of the members of the crew because they all had a different view of the significance and the meaning of that gold coin.
I often think of that when I read the New Testament account of the cross of Christ.
Caiaphas looks at the tree and says, “It is expedient that one man dies for the good of the nation.” (John 11:50) For him, it is an event of political expediency to get the Romans off their back.
Pilate also looks at it from the vantage point of expediency, but in the reverse, when he says, ‘Oh, if I give Jesus over to the people and they allow and they kill him, then this will quiet this tumultuous mob of Jews and keep them under control.’
The Centurion looked at it and said, ‘Surely this Man was the Son of God.‘(Mark 15:39)
The people saw the execution of an impostor, others, the destruction of a dream. But if you were standing there and you were observing the death of Jesus on the tree, would you have seen in that event a cosmic act of redemption?
Would you have witnessed in the death of this Jew the propitiation of a holy God by a perfect sacrifice?
Would you have seen in that event the expiation or the remission of the sin of all who put their faith in Him?
Beloved, that was invisible to anyone who was a spectator of the cross.
HOW DO WE KNOW THAT THE CROSS WAS THE SUPREME ACT OF REDEMPTION?
Its meaning and its significance was not outwardly visible to those who were there in the flesh. To them, it was foolishness. It was not known through the wisdom of this world. It could not be known, save through the special revelation of Almighty God.
For all outward appearances, it seemed to display the weakness of Christ. And yet the apostle says, it was the power of God. The power of God to turn the world upside down, the power of God to turn you upside down. The power of God to turn me upside down.
Now, in Chapter 2, Paul says, ‘When I came to you, I didn’t come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, for I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’
Now, there’s a sense in which what the apostle is saying here is a bit of a hyperbole, because Paul spent much time explaining many things about the kingdom of God. He talked not only about the cross, but he talked about the Resurrection, he talked about the Ascension, he talked about the Return of Jesus, he talked about justification, about sanctification and all of these things.
And yet here he said, when I came to you, I was absolutely determined to know nothing except Christ and Him crucified. But that can sound like hyperbole. But if you examine the depths and the riches of the cross, everything else that Paul was teaching was simply a footnote to that central affirmation of the cross of Christ.
It’s the resurrection that demonstrates the efficacy of the cross, and all the rest of these things are inherently related to it.
Listen to what else he says.
1 Corinthians 2:2-3: ‘I was determined to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.’
I think there’s a secret there for ministry. I think there’s a reason why the Apostle to the Gentiles was so effective in his ministry. Of course, the first reason is because his ministry was the ministry of the Word, and it was in the power of the Cross, which is the power of God unto salvation.
But from a human perspective, Paul says what? When I came to you, I was with you. That’s what we want from our pastors, that our pastors will not be against us, above us or away from us, but will be with us. And Paul said, I was with you in weakness, in fear and in much trembling.
1 Corinthians 2:4-5:“And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”
Last night, ladies and gentlemen, the Southern Baptist Convention concluded. 15,000 representatives were here in Orlando. Right in the hall, down the hall, right next to this [asp] wing of the convention center was an exercise in chaos this week in Orlando. I was surprised at how much attention the secular press and media gave to the Southern Baptist Convention.
I was not surprised by the pastime that was enjoyed here in Orlando this past week by the press of Baptist bashing. The hostility expressed by the media toward the positions taken by the Southern Baptist Church and various issues was exceeded only by their ignorance.
If you would read the editorials and the… I didn’t come to bash the press. I just want to point out that it stood out to me how little they understood of the issues, how theologically ignorant the press was. I read some editorials and some essays in the Orlando Sentinel. I said, ‘Where have these people been?’ I mean, they could at least ask one of the theologians why they’re taking the position instead of just reacting the way they are and making the assumptions that they make without any understanding of the things of God.
And then I thought, Wait a minute. That’s what we’re here for this week. The things that these people are prepared to die for, the secular press doesn’t understand at all. They look at the Southern Baptist Church and think that it’s a congregation of idiots, of fools who are so completely out of step with what is politically correct in our day and our time.
One article I read said, ‘that same book in which Paul says that he will not allow a woman to have authority over men, also tells women not to have braided hair. And the Baptists are all exercised about ordaining women and yet they don’t say anything about the braids that the women are wearing. They don’t really believe the Bible.’
And I thought to myself, well, there’s an expert in hermeneutics.
But if you love the Cross and if you love the Gospel, why? If you don’t see it as utter foolishness and weakness; why not?
I think, of course, the greatest theologian, the greatest philosopher, the greatest preacher that ever graced this land was Jonathan Edwards. When we hear about Jonathan Edwards today, he is known more for his sermon, ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ than for anything else.
But what put Edwards on the theological map was a different sermon that was preached much earlier than the sermon ‘Sinners in the Hands of an angry God.’ And that sermon was entitled ‘A Divine and Supernatural Light’, where Edwards talked about the sweetness and the excellence of the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, who illumines us that we may see the sweetness and the wisdom of the cross.
Without the Spirit taking the scales from our eyes, we would never behold the loveliness of Christ. We would spend our time marching in protests around the assembly of Christian believers.
But Paul goes into this in the Second chapter of First Corinthians when he says in verse 6…
1 Corinthians 2:6:“we speak wisdom among those who are mature, but it is not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing.”
Let me just stop here for a second before I go on with this text.
I think the greatest threat to the church in our day is based in our profound desire to be acceptable to the secular culture. We want to be accepted. Nobody wants to be considered a fool. Nobody wants to be deemed stupid.
Beloved, I’ve spent my whole life in the academic world, and I know that the greatest moral weakness of Christian professors is their intimidation by the world for fear that they will be thought of being less than academically acceptable if they hold such positions as the Inspiration of the Bible or the Exclusiveness of Christ, these ideas that the world abhors. And so we wimp out.
We lose our courage, because we don’t want to be thought of as being weak. But who is weak? And we are not weak.
Paul said, ‘I’m with you in your weakness.’ And the strength of God is greater than weakness.
Right now, as I speak, one of the closest friends I’ve had in my entire life is on his deathbed. In our hope, he was scheduled to be here this week, but it was not to be in the plan of God. And he is dying in faith and he is dying in triumph, and he is dying in joy.
But I remember just a little over a year ago when Jim Boyce and I were together alone, and he was looking at the landscape of the evangelical world, and he looked at me and he shook his head and he said, ‘RC, we’re surrounded by wimps.’
I don’t know how many times that’s gone through my mind. And I say, oh, God, don’t let me be a wimp. Don’t let me be a coward who runs when the world is hostile, when the world laughs, when the world considers me a fool. I mean, what would you rather be than a fool for Christ?
That’s the greatest honor that you can ever have is to be a fool for Jesus Christ, because this foolishness is the wisdom of God Himself. Let’s never forget that.
We speak wisdom among those who are mature. But it is not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. Why would you be concerned for five minutes about political correctness, the ideologies, the philosophies? The world views that mark this present world are coming to nothing.
1 Corinthians 2:7:‘But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory.’
What? Isn’t that strange? Because almost always when the Bible speaks of glory, it is that which is given to God. In fact, God says what? ‘I will share My glory with no man.’
And yet, from the foundation of the world, God determined and decreed that because of the cross and because of His only begotten Son, God was going to give His people a share and participation in His glory, that the world would think was crazy.
But none of the rulers of this age understood this mystery. This was a hidden wisdom.
1 Corinthians 2:8-12:“For had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. And now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”
Think about this passage: the Spirit searches the deep things of God. Now, that’s a text that we can easily misunderstand, because when we think of searching, we think of looking for something that is lost, or looking for something that we have not yet discovered. We’re trying to find out some truth that we have not yet penetrated.
What truth does the Holy Spirit have to look for? Beloved, the Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is the third Person in the Trinity who possesses all of the attributes of the Godhead, which means that just as the Father is omniscient, so the Holy Ghost is equally omniscient. So there’s nothing in the mind of the Father that isn’t already known, eternally known, absolutely known, and perfectly known by God the Holy Spirit.
So why does the Bible say that the Holy Spirit searches the deep things of God?
What Paul is saying is really simple. The Holy Spirit is not searching the deep things of God for the Holy Spirit’s benefit, for the Holy Spirit’s education, but the Spirit puts a searchlight on the Word of God for us. He searches out the wisdom of God and reveals it to us.
There’s a cliche in the Christian community that we say, sometimes glibly, ‘there but for the grace of God go I’.
When I look at people who don’t get it, when I read the articles that I mentioned earlier in the paper, and I see the groping in the darkness of the critics of the faith who have no understanding of what these things are about, I have to say, there but for the searching of the Spirit, go I.
That’s why we have to understand as hostile as the world may be to the cross and as hostile as the world may be to us, God has not called us to be the policeman of the world. But He’s called us to proclaim to the lost of this world, this mystery that is hidden from their eyes. Hoping that when we proclaim the word faithfully, accurately and boldly, God will attend the proclamation of that word with the power and with the insight of God the Holy Spirit.
My job is not to open up their eyes or to open up their ears or to open up their hearts. And I’m so glad, because I am totally illequipped for that task. I don’t have the power to open anybody’s eyes.
And if it could be done through eloquence, we would spend all our time learning how to speak properly.
If it could be done simply through argument, we could spend all of our time in debate.
But that’s not how Paul came. He came in the power of the Spirit of God. And his concern was, I don’t care if my grammar is perfect. I don’t care if I parse everything exactly, but I am determined to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified.
And so he went to the synagogue every day, and when they’d throw him out of the synagogue, he’d go to the agora, he’d go to the marketplace.
And what did he do when he went to the agora? What did he do when he was in the synagogue? He was knowing nothing but Christ, and Him crucified. He said, let me tell you about a lever that’ll change the world, the cross,
We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, in order that we might know the things that had been freely given to us by God.
1 Corinthians 2:13-16: “And these things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God.”
Why not? Say it again. “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.
But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet himself is rightly judged by no man. For ‘who has known the mind of the LORD, that we may instruct Him’, but we have the mind of Christ.”
You want to turn the world upside down? Look at the world through the eyes of Jesus.
I think it is the goal of the Christian in his sanctification to be so nurtured and grounded in this word, in the revelation of the truth of God, that we come to the place that we love what Jesus loves and we hate what Jesus hates. We embrace what Christ embraces, and we reject what Christ rejects.
And that’s what’s offered by the Holy Spirit to every believer so that we don’t come to the cross like this crew of the Pequod came to the gold doubloon and say, ‘I see. You see, he sees. We all see.’ But we see Christ, and we see Him crucified.
We see Christ not in the pluralistic American view of ‘one way among many’, but we see Christ as the only Begotten. We see Christ as the sole Mediator between God and man, because no one else was ever crucified for my sins.
And that’s what the Church has lost: her focus on the Cross.
And when we come back and we see the cross, the way the word of God reveals the cross to us, the way the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the meaning of the cross and we see ourselves in light of the cross, then maybe people will talk about us as those people who are turning the world upside down.
Let’s pray.
Father, you have given us a lever long enough and strong enough and a place to stand by which we can move the world. But we have dropped the lever and moved from that standing point. And the world does not change. But give to us a new passion for the cross, for Christ and for Him Crucified through that divine and supernatural light by which the Spirit searches all things, we will be completely grasped by the sweetness and the excellency of Jesus. We will not rest until His name is known throughout the world, for we ask it in His name. Amen.
