WIN BY LOSING
Text: I Corinthians 1:18 -25
1 Corinthians 1:18-31 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (19) For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." (20) Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? (21) For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. (22) For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, (23) but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, (24) but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (25) For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. (26) Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. (27) But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; (28) God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, (29) so that no one might boast in the presence of God. (30) He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, (31) in order that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."
The statement that we could win by losing is a paradox. One of the definitions of a paradox is usually something that sounds absurd but is actually true. Just think, the cross was a place of execution. It was therefore considered a place of defeat---the final word for the executed and a warning from those who did the executing. Usually, it was a criminal who was executed on crosses. Jesus’s crucifixion is an exception to that rule. Jesus, God’s only begotten Son---the Word made flesh, who was without sin (John 3:13 & John 1:14) died in the place of sinners who were God’s enemies because they were friends with the world.
The world tells us …
> that every man must be for himself.
> we win only if we play by the world’s rules.
> we can be self-sufficient and make our own way.
We would like to think that we have more control over our lives than we actually have. We like to think that “we are masters of our own fate.”(a line from William Ernerst Henley’s poem “Invictus”). What a contradiction to claim that we can be master of our won fate when beyond a shadow of doubt we are certainly masters of our own destruction! We might have perseverance but we are not unconquerable!
LOST
Have you ever been lost? Did it make you panic?
Billy Graham tells the story of a police officer on night duty in a city in northern England. As he walked the streets, he heard a quivering sob. Shining his flashlight into the darkness, he saw a little boy in the shadows sitting on a doorstep with tears running down his cheeks. The child said, “I’m lost. Please take me home.” “I’ll be glad to take you home. Where do you live?” the officer replied. But the little boy was so tired and so scared that he couldn’t remember his address. The policeman began naming street after street, trying to help the boy remember where he lived. He named the shops and the hotels in the area but the little boy could give him no clue. Then he remembered that at the center of the town stood a church with a large white cross that towered high above the rest of the city. The policeman pointed to the cross and said, “Do you live anywhere near that place?” The little boy’s face immediately brightened up. He said, “Yes, sir. Take me to the cross and I can find my way home.”
https://www.sumsacchurch.com/sermons/easter-14-1-cor-21-5-how-to-find-your- way-home-carlcrouse
How many are lost today because they have been deceived?
How many have lost their way because of the world’s wisdom?
1) The god of this world: How many have been blinded to the light of the Gospel by the enemy (2 Corinthians 4:4)?
2) Blind leaders: How many have have been blind leaders leading those who follow them into a ditch (Matthew 15:14)?
3) Inverted values: They see evil and call it good; they see good and call it evil (Isaiah 5:20).
4) Humanity’s mess: Poet William Worsdworth once pondered , “what man has made of man?” (an excerpt form Lines Written in Early Spring). Wordsworth would have agreed that man’s effort to make something of himself created a big mess. How can we succeed if we take the route that did not work for our biblical ancestors who built the tower at Babylon?
Would you choose to intervene and help those who are lost, troubled and heading for destruction?
1) God’s Choice: God did! God chose us---the lost sinners. That is why Jesus, God’s only begotten Son came to save us! God chose to save you through His only begotten Son Jesus who “ … endured the agony of the cross and conquered its humiliation, and … faced such intense opposition from sinners who opposed their own souls” (Hebrews 12: 2 - 3 paraphrased TPT).
2) Blissful ignorance?: How Vain are the Things We Save?
• I counted dollars while God counted crosses.
• I counted gains while He counted losses.
• I counted my worth by the things gained in store, but He sized me up by the scars that I bore.
• I coveted honors and sought for degrees.
• He wept as He counted the hours on my knees.
• And I never knew till one day at a grave how vain are the things that we spend life to save. Galaxie Software. (2002). 10,000 Sermon Illustrations. Biblical Studies Press. (origin: Source unknown).
3) Our ignorance and choice: The great Catholic scholar John M. Osterreicher says, “Anyone who denies his part in the crucifixion also thereby excludes himself from any need of, or share in the redemption”. (Quoted by George W. Cornell. The Way and Its Ways. New York: Associated Press, 1963, p. 135) The cross of Christ helps us to understand that we win by losing!
4) Rude awakening: Jokingly, the late musician David Crosby said just one day before he died at the age of 81 that “Heaven was overrated and cloudy”. https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/david-crosby-tweeted-heaven-overrated-cloudy-day-before-death” Wouldn’t be a rude awakening to die unsaved in this life, waking up in the hereafter in Hell because you neglected salvation?
STUMBLING BLOCKS
What does the cross mean to us if we are saved?
1) Crucified with Christ: Paul tells us that Christ died for us all and that all have [who believe in Him] died [with Him on the cross] (2 Corinthians 5:14).
2) Crucified flesh: All those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with all of its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24).
3) Crucified to the world: We have been crucified to the world and the world has been crucified to us (Galatians 6:14).
4) Crucified and transferred: Christ has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son (Colossians 1:13),
“When Jesus said, “If you are going to follow me, you have to take up a cross,” it was the same as saying, “Come and bring your electric chair with you. Take up the gas chamber and follow me.” He did not have a beautiful gold cross in mind—the cross on a church steeple or on the front of your Bible. Jesus had in mind a place of execution”. Galaxie Software. (2002). 10,000 Sermon Illustrations. Biblical Studies Press. [original source: Billy Graham in “The Offense of the Cross” (from Great Sermons on Christ, Wilbur M. Smith, ed.)
As we mentioned earlier, crosses were for crucifying criminals. God’s only begotten Son, who was without sin died on a cross between two thieves.
One might ask, “How could one man pay the penalty of eternal condemnation for so many sins by so many people in just a few hours on the cross?” He could do it for two reasons. Jesus was infinitely valuable and could take the place of an infinite number of people. And because He was infinitely righteous, He could pay the penalty for an infinite number of sins. (Galaxie Software. (2002). 10,000 Sermon Illustrations. Biblical Studies Press.[original source: Joe Wall, Going For The Gold, Moody, p. 29]. ).
What does the cross mean to unbelievers?
Paul said it is a stumbling block. It is foolish to those who are perishing. It means death to those who will not repent because the wages of of their sin will lead to physical death first and then the second death which means eternal separation from God not by God’s choice but by their own choices because they refused to accept Jesus and the sacrifice He made for their sins on the cross!
Paul explains it well in 2 Corinthians 2:15-17 “For we are like a sweet-smelling incense offered by Christ to God, which spreads among those who are being saved and those who are being lost. (16) For those who are being lost [perishing], it is a deadly stench that kills; but for those who are being saved, it is a fragrance that brings life” (GNB).
How can anyone who does not believe succeed if they seek the world’s favor and sell their souls to get it? As Jesus put it, “What good is it for a man to gain the world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark 8:36 -37).
VICTORIOUS LIVING
So how can the cross be a place of victory? The cross was meant to be a place of extreme, long and strung out suffering.
1) Excruciating: In fact the word, excruciating is a word that had ties to the era of crucifixions. As a matter of fact, the word excruciating comes from the Latin world excruciare, and it was a Roman word meaning “as painful as a crucifixion or from/out of the cross.” The pain derived from crucifixion was so intense that the Romans had to create a new word for it, and that word is the root of excruciating. https://www.blackwelljournaltribune.net/articles/10642/view
2) Godly love: Can you imagine what why Jesus endured that for me and for you? There can only be one reason, that one reason alone is the unconditional love of God (Philippians 2:8)!
3) Godly stooping: Remember that Jesus came to us as one of us, humbling His Divinity in the flesh of our humanity for our salvation! As Paul said, He humbled Himself even to the point of death on a cross (Philippians 2:8).
Can so called believers be a stumbling block?
1) Watering down the Gospel: In a certain church marketing newsletter, called the Church's Advertising Network, a campaign has been developed to attract people to church during the season of Easter. In this public relations campaign, it is suggested that the cross be removed from the alter. According to the author, a survey has revealed that the cross is one of those symbols that the new generation of church goers considered too "churchy " One pastor interviewed for the campaign gave his wholehearted endorsement. "We are going to attempt to concentrate on the resurrection, and not the death of Jesus.
Easter without the cross. Rather an interesting thought. Is it possible to have resurrection without crucifixion? No. It distorts the entire gospel if crucifixion is separated from resurrection. The road to the empty tomb will forever pass by a cross. The one who is raised from the dead is none other than the crucified Christ. Easter without a cross is a hoax.
https://sermons.com/search/results?term=cross&category=sermon&sermon_filters=Illustrations&tab=Illustrations&page=1 Isn’t this what the world does?
2) Dangerous exclusions: Dietrich Bonhoeffer referred to such distortions as “cheap grace” because it leaves out the cross, the cost and the lack discipleship that follows in the footsteps of Jesus. Why are these exclusions so dangerous? They are dangerous because it echoes the secular world’s conclusions that you can save yourself without Jesus!
3) Faith or its lack: Addressing His disciples in their failure because of lacking in faith, Jesus once said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear with you? (Matthew 17:17). There are two in the New Testament that Jesus complimented on having great faith, the Centurion whose servant was healed (Matthew 8:10), and the Canaanite woman whose daughter was healed (Matthew 15:28). Both of these individuals were Gentiles and not Jews. So it would seem that it is no wonder that many Jews of the days of Jesus’s days of visitation were identified as being a faithless people.
So how do we win by losing? John 8:31- 32, & 36 gives us a really good answer to that question. As someone (William Barclay) put it disciples ….
> “begin with belief”,
> “remain in the “word of Christ”,
> “listen for the voice of Christ” in their decision-making process,
> are involved in the “constant learning” (the connotation of the Greek word for disciple [mathetes])
> “… constantly to study and think about what Jesus said” until His point of view becomes ours.
> Live lives that result in freedom from “fear, self, others and sin”. (Paraphrased from William Barclay [Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of John on John 8:31-32.]).
If Jesus makes us free, then we are free indeed! (John 8:36).
.> We win by losing because we know that we cannot get to the home that God intended for us to have in heaven without the cross!
> We win by losing because as His disciples the world’s ways are no longer our ways!
> We win by losing because we are disciples of Jesus Christ who conquered sin, death and the fear of death at the cross. Jesus was resurrected from the dead which also reminds us that like Him we win by losing. We are shaped by the cross of Christ who taught us that nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:37 -39).
> We win by losing because like Jesus, we pick up our crosses and follow after Him who conquered the world with His love which set us free!
In the Name of God, the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
