Pain. We’ve all felt pain. Pinch yourself or pull on your hair and you’ll feel a certain amount of pain. But how many of you have felt excruciating pain? Come on, you can admit it. I once sprained my right ankle so badly in a basketball game that as it happened, I heard it ripping … and others around me said they heard it, too. The pain was excruciating! Maybe you broke a bone or had an operation or something else happened, and the pain was so bad that there was only one word for you to describe it – excruciating.
Excruciating. Do you know what this word means and where it comes from? It doesn’t just mean really really bad. No, the Romans actually made up this word. You see, the Romans mastered the art of crucifixion, killing people on crosses. Over the years they learned where to pound in the nails through the hands and feet and how to hoist the body upon a cross, all so that the person would suffer in a way unlike any other, and yet death would be prolonged for hours and hours. And so great was this pain with every breath taken that it was called excruciating, which means “out of the cross.” Excruciating pain is literally pain that comes “out of the cross.”
Being a Christian is excruciating, in its own sense. And as we dig more deeply into this Word of God before us this morning, I pray that you will see just how excruciating it really is. Because not only is it excruciating to our smarts, but also, it is excruciating to our strengths. So let’s consider this thought: OUT OF THE CROSS. And what is it that comes out of the cross of Jesus to us? First of all, (1) Foolishness Flows to Show Us God’s Wisdom, but then also (2) Weakness Works to Give Us God’s Greatest Power.
I need some help here from you. All you have to do is answer “yes” or “no” to a few statements; yes is you agree and no if you disagree. #1. God is eternal; he always was and he always will be (yes). #2. God is almighty; he has the power to do anything (yes). #3. God is omnipresent; he is present everywhere all at the same time (yes). #4. God is omniscient; he knows everything, even our deepest thoughts (yes). #5. God is the creator of this universe and all that is in it, both the visible and invisible (yes). Good job! But now comes the tricky one: God is foolish (wait for answers).
How dare we call God foolish, huh? But the truth is, God calls himself foolish right here in his Word: “For the foolishness of God.” This is the irony of ironies, an oxymoron, if you want to call it that. The all-powerful, the all-knowing, the all-wise Creator God who rules over heaven and earth has a foolish side to him. Did you know that? And the foolishness of God is found right here in that which gets the center place in our church – the cross. In fact, on Thursday morning I did a quick walk through the church proper here and in less than two minutes I counted more than 50 crosses. And what is it that is at the highest point of this church? A cross. Think about it, that which gets the most important place in our worship of God is that which we’re told right here by God himself is the foolishness of God – the cross. Wow!
But all of these crosses mean nothing, absolutely nothing, if the true cross of Jesus Christ is not also in our hearts. Here is where it matters the most. In fact, this is the only place where it really matters at all. But also, if the cross of Christ is not in our hearts, then everything else about God is worthless and will do us no good. You see, I can worship God as the Creator God or the almighty God or the all-in-control of everything God. But God says the only way that I can have him as my Savior God is through the cross. There is no other way! It’s either through the cross of Christ that I’m forgiven of my sins and saved, or else I’m lost forever to hell. And the same holds true for you and every other soul in this world.
And that’s why … that’s why the cross takes center stage here, doesn’t it? That is why we have the cross of Christ in our hearts, don’t we? And yet, we cannot overlook the fact that the cross of Christ in our hearts is excruciating. Being in Christ and living in Christ is painful. What does God’s Word say? “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). We crucify the sinful nature with its passions and desires. We don’t just slap the sinful nature on the wrist and say, “Bad boy!” or “Bad girl!” No, we are to crucify the sinful nature. We are to overcome our own sinful opinions that are constantly calling the cross of Christ foolishness.
But not only from within ourselves, but also the world looks at the cross and says, “That’s foolishness! You mean to tell me that I can go to heaven because some man named Jesus Christ died like a criminal on a cross about 2,000 years ago? Come on! You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?” The world, in its own mind, with its sin-corrupted wisdom, says to God: “God, you should require us to do good. You should demand us to do certain things for you. You should set up a whole bunch of rules and regulations. Have a check list. And if we’re able to do enough of them, then you should save us. Yah, God, you should make us to save ourselves by what we do so that we take the credit for being saved. God, look at how smart and wise we humans are that we can tell you how we should be saved.” Why do you think there are so many religions in this world and even so many different “brands” of Christians? Because man wants to take the credit for himself: “I saved myself by what I did! God, look at how good I am!”
But to all of this made-made-up wisdom, God responds, “You want to tell me how you should be saved? Well, let me tell you how you would be saved. I will take what the world calls the height of foolishness and I will use that to bring my salvation to you. Out of the cross I will show you just how foolish you really are because you’re lost in your sins, but how wise I am in my holiness. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom.”
It’s awesome, people, it’s awesome that the God of all creation, the God over all creation, could take something as foolish as a cross, a means for executing a criminal, and through that act of dying in our place he could bring to us his gift of forgiveness and eternal life. That’s awesome! That’s the wisdom of God! His foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom.
Oh, but don’t stop here. Because out of the cross not only does foolishness flow to show us God’s wisdom, but also Weakness Works to Give Us God’s Greatest Power.
When is man at his weakest? The answer is: when he dies. There is no strength in death. Death is the pinnacle, the height, of weakness. Man has discovered ways to prolong life, to cure illnesses, to heal injuries. But funeral homes are still staying in business, aren’t they? Death can not be conquered even with all of our strengths put together. “The wages of sin is death,” God says (Romans 6:23). And his Word holds true, as it always does. Death, the price that must be paid to God for our sins is just as real today as it ever has been. And the truth is, the wages of sin is not just death to our bodies, but also death to our souls in the eternal punishments of hell, absolute and complete separation from God.
To prove to us that his weakness is even stronger than our greatest strengths combined, God committed himself to our greatest weakness. God died. And he died for us, taking our place in death. And he died the most excruciating death there is – death on a cross. But with that death on the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ also took our every sin upon himself and he died our hell for us. This is what the Bible says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24).
Being handed over to his haters, being whipped by the cords of wickedness, being nailed to a tree for our transgressions, being crucified for our crimes against his holiness, Jesus placed himself into the weakest of weakness. There is no greater weakness than what Jesus went through. But out of that weakness we see the greatest power of God at work – the power of love. The cross, that’s the power of God’s love! He loves us unworthy sinners to this extent, that he committed himself to our greatest weakness, so that he could rise from death as the Lord over life and death.
The almighty God created this world by saying, “Let there be,” and it all came into existence. What awesome power! Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead by saying, “Come out!” and Lazarus walked out of his tomb, alive and living after four days of decay had already set in. What awesome power! But to save us from death and hell, God couldn’t just say, “Let there be,” or “Come out.” He couldn’t just say, “I love you so I forgive you.” No, God himself had to take our place and love us, not with mere words but with action. And here’s the action of God’s love at it greatest; it comes out of the cross to us who don’t deserve it in the least. What awesome power – God’s loving power!
“Foolishness,” that’s what the perishing say about the cross. Foolishness and weakness is what the lost see when they look at a Savior dying for them. “But to us who are being saved it is the power of God. … Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”
Yes, our lives in Christ are excruciating – excruciating, in a most wonderful and awesome way. Out of the cross foolishness flows to show us God’s wisdom, and out of the cross weakness works to give us God’s greatest power. Amen.
