The Cross at the Center

1 Cor 15:1-4

 

 

 

I want to shock you with something profound.  We are only 8 weeks away from Easter.  Yes, in less than 2 months we’ll be thinking about Easter eggs, lilies, bunnies and hopefully the resurrection of Christ.

 

For most of the next 2 months, I would like to look at what Easter is really about.  What the cross was about.  For several weeks we talked about common questions asked by people I have dealt with.  Let me read a story to you of a question that reaches into our very souls.  READ Now Wonder They Call Him the Savior p. 11-12

 

PRAYER

 

I.       What is the “Part that Matters” in the Christian Message?

A.   What that part is not:

1.                 It isn’t the ethical teachings of the Bible

a)                While we really need the ethical teaching of scripture in our culture today, that is the most important part of our message.

b)                We spend a lot of time pushing the moral aspect of the Bible to the world around us, but that isn’t what God was most concerned about as he prepared the Christian message.

c)                 That’s not to say that ethics don’t matter, only that they are a secondary issue not the primary issue of Christianity.

2.                 It’s not even the doctrines regarding the church and worship

a)                Again, very important once you understand the part that matters, but they aren’t that part.

b)                The religious world is full of people who have kept all the doctrines and missed what matters most to changing a heart.

B.   The part that matters most is the cross.

1.                 Paul, in our text recognized that the cross is what the gospel is all about.

2.                 READ vs 3-4

3.                 The cross and what it represented was of FIRST IMPORTANCE he says.

4.                 The cross is what all the rest of the gospel revolves around.

5.                 To understand the gospel, we must understand the cross and that’s what we will focus on for the next several weeks.

II.    The Cross at the Center

A.   The Cross as a symbol

1.                 Symbols are powerful.  Just seeing a symbol reminds us of a movement, a company, or an event.

2.                 Last Sunday, the Iraqi people voted in a democratic election for the first time.  The way to know who voted was a purple finger.  They dipped their index finger in ink that would last several days.  Picture after picture this last week showed these people proudly holding up their ink stained finger.  At the State of the Union Address Wednesday, an Iraqi woman was honored for her willingness to vote.  Guess what she did?  Yep, she held up an ink stained finger and the crowd applauded her in a standing ovation.  Many of the Senators and Congressmen had also dipped their fingers in ink as a show of solidarity for these people.  For a long time to come, an ink stained finger will represent the beginning of freedom for the people of Iraq.

3.                 The cross is the Christian’s ink stained finger.  It represents the beginning of our freedom from sin… and so much more.

B.   The Cross today

1.                 Many of us wear a cross around our neck, or on a key chain.  Some have a cross on their wall at home, on their car.  We have a cross here on our pulpit.

2.                 It’s much more than a superstition to ward off evil spirits or something. 

3.                 It is a constant reminder to us of what God did for mankind.

4.                 We sing and pray and preach about the cross.

5.                 Every Sunday we gather around the Lord’s Supper and remember what happened on that cross and in that tomb.

6.                 Our faith is wrapped around the symbol of a cross.

7.                 But we don’t think about A cross.  There were thousands upon thousands of crosses during the time of Jesus.  None of them have any significance to us today. 

8.                 It reminds us the THE cross.  THE cross of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. 

III.  The Cross at the Heart of the Apostles’ Witness

A.   The cross in the gospels

1.                 Each of the gospels climax with events surrounding the cross.

2.                 Matt, Mk, and Lk each spend 2 chapters on the last day of the life of Jesus.

3.                 John spends 9 out of 21 chapters looking at that time period.

B.   The cross in Acts

1.                 But the cross didn’t end in the Gospels.  Many of the sermons found in the book of Acts have the cross in them.

2.                 Peter at Pentecost in Acts 2

3.                 Peter at the Temple in Acts 3

4.                 Peter before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4

5.                 Philip and the Eunuch in Acts 8

6.                 Peter talking to Cornelius in Acts 10

7.                 Paul in Antioch in Acts 13

8.                 Paul in Thessalonica in Acts 19

C.   The cross in the Epistles

1.                 Again, it doesn’t end in the book of Acts.

2.                 The cross is a common thread throughout the Epistles.

3.                 They became commentaries explaining the meaning of the cross to the new young church and to the church 2000 years later.

D.   The Cross needs to be at the center of your heart

1.                 My goal is that over the next few weeks the cross will become the center of our lives as it was with Christians in the first century.

2.                 Really think about the words we will sing in just a minute.  Do they convict you that you need to put the cross at the center of your life?

3.                 If they do, and you want to do something about now, come forward as we stand and sing.