Thank you for this opportunity and for all your hospitality. Our text words are from 1 Corinthians 1, and we'll read verses 10 through 25, especially concentrating on verse 23. Hear the word of the Lord. 1 Corinthians 1.10. Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household, that there are contentions among you. Now I say this, that each of you says, I am of Paul, or I am of Apollos, or I am of Cephas, or I am of Christ, Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius. Lest anyone should say that I'd baptized in my own name. Yes, I also baptized the house of Stephanus. Besides, I do not know whether I baptized any other. 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 and 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. Amen. Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we praise and honor you, and we thank you for all that you have done for us, your superabundant grace to us in Christ. and by your Spirit. And we ask you as we approach you, sinners as we are and guilty and condemned in ourselves, we approach you boldly in Christ and we ask you by the mediation of our great high priest and the declaration of his prophetic office and by the power and grace of his Spirit sent down on Pentecost that you would help us now as your people for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, dear brethren, in the 17th century, the early to mid-17th century, when our particular Baptist forefathers were rising in England, over in India, there was an emperor, Shah Jahan, who was building what would come to be known as that great wonder of the world, the Taj Mahal. And as he constructed that great building there, that great property, He did so, the story goes that he did it for his beloved wife who had passed away. He did it in honor of her. The story goes that years later, the emperor was walking across the property of the Taj Mahal and he tripped over something and he told his servants, he asked them, what is this? What is this in my way? They said, sir, it's the tomb of your wife for whom you built this whole monument. He had forgotten why this monument was there in the first place. Well, this is a similar condition to what the Corinthians were experiencing spiritually. They, as the temple of the living God, and as that local expression of the body of Christ, had forgotten that they're there only because of the glorious gospel of Christ who was crucified and rose again for them. They divided into party factions, as we read, and they were rallying around their favorite preachers instead of looking unto Jesus Christ. And it's amid this spiritual amnesia, this gospel amnesia and spiritual anarchy. that Paul writes to them to correct them. This was only one of a vast host of problems they had. What would Paul tell them? What would Paul preach to them to address all of these problems? Well, he told us in his text words. And with this in mind, I want to preach on this subject and open this text, especially in verse 23. and consider this subject, We Preach Christ Crucified, Paul's ministry manifesto. We'll see it in two basic thoughts and spend most of our time in application. First, consider the contrast of this message, this message of Christ crucified, the contrast of it. Here, Paul sets up the message that he preaches in jagged contrast to the message of Jews and Gentiles. It contrasts with their expectations of the gospel. What did the Jews expect to hear when Paul would preach and he would say, I'm going to announce to you good news? What would that sound like to the Jew that heard him say that? Well, they wanted signs and wonders. He told us the Jews seek a sign. When pagan Greeks heard that there would be good news preached, what did they expect? They expected sophisticated wisdom. But when Paul preached the gospel, what he gave them was in such contrast of what they wanted and expected. that the Jews stumbled over it as a stumbling block. To them, it was a scandal. The one who claimed to be their Messiah executed under the Roman government and dying the most shameful death possible on the accursed tree. To the Jews, it's a stumbling block. To the Greeks, it's foolishness. But Paul, in contrast to this, tells the Jews, no, Christ himself is the power of God. He tells the pagan Greeks, Christ himself is the wisdom of God. And here in verse 23, Paul uses a strong emphatic construction in the Greek where he says, but we preach Christ crucified. We could say it like this, but as opposed to Jews and pagans. as opposed to what they preach or what they expect. We, as for us, we preach Christ crucified. We, unlike Jews and Greeks, preach the message of the Son of God enfleshed, dying in the place of guilty sinners. So over against worldly expectations of what the gospel is and should be, Paul sets up this banner, And under this, he can subsume everything else about his ministry, and the banner is this, we preach Christ crucified. This is the contrast of Paul's ministry manifesto. Consider with me the centrality of it, the centrality of the message of Christ crucified. When Paul says, we preach Christ crucified, he's not saying, I preached a sermon one time, on Christ crucified. He's not saying, well, Corinthians, you already know the gospel of Christ, so I'm not going to waste my time and yours in rehearsing it to you because it's just kind of a subconscious thing that works in the background. No, when he says we preach Christ crucified, he's saying this is the sum of my entire ministry. Paul is implying that you, dear Church of Corinth, you're thinking and acting in a worldly way, and you need to be reminded that rather than taking the gospel of Christ off the playing field and sidelining it like you've done, that this message actually is the very heart of the Christian faith. Now, as we think about these verses, This is not to advocate what some have called Christomonic preaching, where we preach Christ to the exclusion of the glory of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit. It's not to say that we preach Christ in the neglect of law and our duty. So we reject all antinomian preaching. But it is to say that all doctrine and duty flows to Christ's church. from Christ. And it's only and exclusively through Christ that we have access to the Father and the gracious work of the Spirit in us. So far from preaching antinomianism, Paul here urges upon the Corinthians throughout this letter a vast host of doctrines and uses, doctrine and duty. But in doing so, as he preaches to them the whole counsel of God, every point of that whole counsel of God, Paul ties to Jesus Christ and whom crucified. Consider this with all the dumpster fire of problems that the Corinthians had. We read about their party factions, how that they're relegating Christ to the level of one of Christ's ministers in their practical way that they're acting. We would read if we read through the epistle in chapters 12 to 14, they were strutting like peacocks with pride over their spiritual gifts. We'd read in chapter 11 of problems concerning public worship in various places that some of them were coming to the Lord's Supper drunken, eating up all the bread, drinking all the wine before the poor members could get there. And it was so serious, God had killed some of them for it. and stricken others with sickness. We read that their women were acting in an unruly way in public worship, usurping authority. They had doctrinal problems. They were imbibing dangerous heresy, denying the bodily resurrection, which by implication would deny the resurrection of Christ. They had problems in their practice. Some of them were dabbling in their old pagan idolatry. And most urgently for Paul, they had a member in good standing who was living in incest. So Paul writes to them to address these problems. But for all this plethora of sinful problems, Paul sees one answer, Jesus Christ and His gospel. You could hear the Corinthians as Paul begins to address these issues. Well, Paul, what's wrong with rallying around our favorite preachers? Paul says, this is why, because Christ is not divided. You're not baptized in the name of Christ, or you are baptized in the name of Christ, not the name of Paul. It's not Paul that was crucified for you. They may ask, well, you write to us in chapter 6 about these sins that are so popular in our day. Everybody lives this way. Why is it so serious that we don't live in gross sin? Paul tells them, because it's in Jesus' name you've been justified and washed and sanctified. They could ask him, well, what's such a big deal about the Lord's Supper that we should be so cautious about partaking worthily of it? Paul would say to them, the big deal about it is you're not discerning the body of Christ rightly. Why should our women be careful not to usurp authority in public worship, Paul? Well, Paul tells them part of the reason is because Christ in his incarnation submits to God. What's the big deal about the Bodily resurrection, Paul, well, here's the big deal, he says, because by implication, if there's no resurrection, Christ is not raised, and you're still in your sins. You have no hope apart from Christ crucified and resurrected. Why is it so serious that we should not ever dabble in our old pagan religion? Paul tells them, because you can't drink of the cup of devils and the cup of our Lord Christ. What about the member living in incest? Why must we excommunicate him the very next time we assemble, Paul? Well, Paul tells them part of the reason is this, because Christ, our Passover, is sacrifice for us, and therefore we must keep the feast of unleavened bread and purge out the old leaven. So for Paul, the answer to all the Corinthians problems, these terrible, Sinful problems, the answer is Christ and his gospel. Paul saw Jesus Christ, his person and work, as the one medicine for all their diseases and the one solution for all their sinful problems. And now from this, let us draw out some doctrine and applications for us, especially as ministers. Our application can be summed up this way. If Christ crucified was the theme of Paul's ministry, then Christ crucified ought to be the theme of our ministries. As we endeavor to unpack this, I want to give four basic points of application. When Paul has told us we preach Christ crucified and summed up his ministry this way, this reminds us that the gospel of Christ is just as important for the edification of the saints as it is for the evangelization of sinners. When Paul says we preach Christ crucified and tells us that the gospel is, in verse 18, the very power of God, this is just as true for saints as it is for sinners. This reminds us that believers need the gospel just as desperately as unconverted sinners do. We may say, well, they already know the gospel of Christ. Yes, our people do. We hope they know it very well. But the way the gospel is, the more we know it, the more we know we need to know it. The more we know it, the more we love it, and the more we need it. If the message of Christ crucified was so central that Paul could sum up all his preaching in this one phrase, then the gospel of Christ, far from being an elemental baby stage in the Christian faith, is the very heart of the Christian faith. And oh, may our preaching always reflect this. I fear that sometimes we can think about the plain preaching of the gospel of Christ, Christ crucified and resurrected and ascended. We can think of it like the baby's milk bottle when he's first born. He needs that milk, but he outgrows it. It goes on to bigger and better things. We need it when we're first converted, when we're a baby Christian. But you know, we get beyond that, and that's somewhere in the past. We remember it, but we don't really dwell upon it or rehearse it often. But far from the gospel being like a baby's bottle, it's more like oxygen to that baby. I can never forget when my firstborn son was born, and in that moment, watching him gasp in that first breath of air, and his whole body began to flush red as the oxygen went into his lungs for the first time, and he began to cry. When he breathed in that first breath of oxygen, he never outgrew it. He's never outgrown it. The more he grows, the more mature he is, the more oxygen he needs because the bigger his lungs are. And he'll never outgrow that till the day he dies. He'll be breathing every moment of his life. This is how the gospel is for God's people. It's not an elementary stage. It's the very air we breathe. And without the incarnational mission of Christ to save sinners, we have no communion with God, no access to God, no saving knowledge of God. Without the gospel of Christ, we have absolutely nothing. And if you take this away, you've taken it all away. So it's not possible for us to remind our people too much of the gospel of Christ. It is not possible for us to make too much of the Father sending the Son and the Father and Son sending the Spirit for the salvation of sinners. And we confess this, that the foundation of all our communion with God and our comfortable dependence on Him flows from and it has as its foundation this blessed doctrine of the Trinity with its redemptive implications. It's the foundation of all. And may our preaching always reflect that. So, oh, dear brethren, every time we preach, let us give our people the fresh, pure oxygen of the gospel of Christ without which they cannot survive. So we know that we must preach Christ crucified, but how do we know if we are, if we're preaching Christ crucified? I want to give five diagnostic questions, how we may know if we're preaching like Paul preached. First of all, do we preach Christ explicitly? This is opposed to what has been called synagogue sermons. If we're preaching, especially from the Old Testament, and an unbelieving, Christ-rejecting Jew could say amen to the sermon, then we've not preached Christ. The Puritan Philip Henry. Put it this way, Christ is all in all to be preached, and certainly it is the best preaching, the most affecting, the most edifying, and the most saving. To read or hear a sermon by a Christian minister before a Christian congregation, and Christ not once be named from the beginning to the end, how absurd is it? And yet too many such there are, tell it not in gath, How unlike herein to blessed Paul, who did breathe Christ in all his sermons. When we preach like Paul, we do not mention Christ subtly, but explicitly, not just in passing, but in dwelling upon his person and work. So we can ask ourselves each Lord's day, Have saints and sinners been clearly instructed that they must come to Christ and how they're to come to Christ? We can ask ourselves if an unconverted sinner came in and sat with our congregation and heard the preaching, would there be enough gospel for them to be converted? Spurgeon said that there ought to be enough gospel in every sermon to save a soul. May it always be. So with Paul, when we preach Christ crucified, we preach Christ explicitly. Second diagnostic question, do we preach Christ thoroughly? This is opposed to what we could call finger food sermons. You know how it is to be at a wedding for two or three hours, and you feel like you're starving to death, and you go to the reception, you finally get there, and they've got those little bitty toothpicks with an olive and a piece of cheese. It's not enough to fill you up, it's just enough to make you mad and wish you had something to eat. May we not preach Christ in this way, but may we give our people enough that they may feast upon Christ every Lord's Day. Philip Henry said, value that preaching best that hath the most of Christ in it. And if we preach Christ thoroughly, we'll give God's people enough to feast on. As Benjamin Keech wrote concerning the parable of the prodigal son and the father brings forth the fatted calf, he applied it this way about the father bringing the fatted calf. He says this concerning ministers, Christ must be the main subject of all their ministry. And he tells us that it reproves us if we do not bring forth the fatted calf. of Christ crucified to the people. He also reminds us that Christ must be the main subject of all our ministry. And not only the duties of men one to another or the simple principles of morality, but the great fundamentals of Christianity, namely, the saving knowledge of God in Christ, the holy doctrine of the blessed Trinity and the mystery of the incarnation, the great doctrine of Christ's satisfaction, reconciliation, and justification by the imputation of His righteousness to all who believe. Our particular Baptist forefather, Benjamin Keech, reminds us this must be the main subject of all our ministry. Another of our forefathers, Nehemiah Cox, reminds us in his preaching, as he's preaching to elders and deacons, at an ordination of an elder and deacons, he says, remember that the duty of your position is not to preach yourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord. His glory must be the mark aimed at by all your labors, and his grace the principal subject of all your discourses. It is not a philosophical harangue that will save the souls of men, but the preaching of Christ crucified. His gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, and His holy name is the ointment that perfumes all religious exercises. Therefore, I will not say, let there be something of Christ in every sermon, but let Christ be the beginning and the middle. and the end of your discourses. For in Him are hid all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God, and in Him is the fountain and head spring of all true comfort and holiness. So Nehemiah Cox reminds us that this ought to be the mark aimed at and the principal subject of all our preaching. Thirdly, do we preach Christ universally? If we preach Christ crucified, then we'll preach Him in all our exegesis, in all our theology, and in all our exhortation to duty. In all our exegesis, we preach Christ crucified. Even when it's in the Old Testament in a passage that doesn't mention Christ explicitly, we always must clearly connect the passage to Christ and lead the hearer out of himself to Christ through that passage, which is the point of all Scripture. And that is to bring men into relationship and reconciliation with God through Christ. And thus, it is the point of every passage of Scripture. Nehemiah Cox put it this way, so in all our search after the mind of God and the Holy Scriptures, we are to manage all our inquiries with reference to Christ. So if we preach Christ crucified as Paul did, we'll preach as much Christ from Obadiah as we do from the Gospel of John. In preaching Christ universally, Not only in all our exegesis, but in all our theology, we preach Christ. This helps to keep us from what you might call equestrian sermons or hobby horse sermons. Even if it's a good hobby horse, if we are substituting anything for Christ and not connecting it to Christ, then we've abandoned the apostolic preaching. If we can ever say, we preach fill in the blank, with our favorite particular doctrine or practice, then we've missed the mark. And while there are ancient and medieval and Reformation and post-Reformation doctrines and truths that we are recovering and that we need to retrieve and recover, may it be that in all our retrieval and recovery, we preach Christ crucified. In all our exhortation to duty, we preach Christ crucified. We saw this with Paul in the Corinthians. And we never need to fear that when we preach Christ in this way, that it will somehow put a wet blanket on our people's zeal for sanctification. That's what antinomian preaching does. We preach Christ to the exclusion of duty, but if we preach Christ in this way, we need never fear that it would hinder their sanctification. Rather, it fuels it like nothing else can. Far from discouraging our people from good works, Christ's preaching will fuel their sanctification. To fear preaching too much Christ, we may compare it to somebody that's trying to get a brush fire started. Like I was on a job one time, and the boss had somebody back his truck over there and start pumping gallon after gallon after gallon of diesel fuel on that brush pile, and then had the workers come and force oxygen into that burn pile with the backpack leaf blowers, and that flame began to rage. For us to fear preaching too much Christ that it may chill our people's sanctification would be like somebody saying, no, stay away from that brush pile of that diesel fuel and that flame and those leaf blowers, because you might put out the fire. It's the exact opposite. So in all our preaching, our exegesis, our theology, our exhortation to duty, we preach Christ crucified. And this is not to the neglect of the law, but it is that when we preach the law, we must always leave our people looking to Jesus Christ and His fulfillment of it and His salvation from the curse of it. A fourth question we could ask is this, do we preach Christ experientially? Not just in speaking about Christ as the healing balm of Gilead, but applying that balm to the sick and dying and inviting and exhorting them to take Him, to take Him now as their healing medicine. We preach Christ in a way that invites and pleads with every hearer to be drawn into the sermon for himself and to taste for himself and see that the Lord is good. We preach The whole Christ to the whole man, mind, emotions, and will. The truth of Christ illustrated and applied so that even a child may understand. And the truth of Christ driven home to the heart by exhortation as we urge the hearers to lay hold of Christ for themselves. Our fifth diagnostic question, do we preach Christ habitually? Not rarely, not occasionally, but habitually. There was one elder Reformed Baptist brother who had traveled extensively and had been in congregation after congregation in Reformed Baptist churches across the United States, and he said that he lamented that on any given Lord's Day morning, it was a rare thing to hear Christ preached in the sermon. May it never be. A Christless sermon in a Reformed church, how could this ever be? May it never be in any of our churches. But if along with Paul, we preach Christ crucified, we'll preach him often and continually. So we've considered what our preaching will and will not be like if we preach Christ crucified. Our third point of application, our third main point is this. This reminds us that we need a hermeneutic that allows us to preach this way. A neglect of preaching Christ and of the people, a neglect of their remembering the gospel of Christ was already a problem in Paul's day. We skip forward all the way to our Puritan and particular Baptist forefathers. It was a problem in their day, and this is why they remind each other so much of it in their preaching, as we read from Benjamin Keech and Nehemiah Cox. If it was a problem in their day, how much more so since the Enlightenment, where we live on the wrong side of the Enlightenment, where the climate has so changed that There's radical difference now as to how they tell us scriptures to be interpreted. Between the time of our Second London Confession and our modern day, something happened that changed the hermeneutic, and the Enlightenment tells us you're not allowed to preach Christ from any text. But our forefathers didn't think so. They believed every text was meant to bring the hearer to Christ. And this was Paul's way of interpreting the Old Testament. One example is 1 Corinthians 10, 4, where he's exhorting the Corinthians to be content and to not go after idolatry. And one point he uses is that the reason they should do that is the rock in the wilderness. That rock was Christ. And then he applies that to them. This interpretation would fail a modern hermeneutics exam today. But it's the apostolic infallible interpretation. And like Dr. Barcella said, if we don't get our hermeneutics from the apostles, who are we going to get it from? We need a hermeneutic that will allow us to preach this way. And our particular Baptist forefathers and the Puritans had that hermeneutic. And without shame or hesitation or academic embarrassment, they preached this way. Our fourth and final point of application is this. Let us remember the outcome. What are the stakes? Is it really that big a deal as to whether we preach Christ or not? What's the outcome if we don't preach Christ? Well, we starve our hearers of their only life-sustaining food and We remember how Keech exhorted us that if we do not bring forth the fatted calf, the preaching of Christ, that it reproves us as ministers. He says that do not preach Christ as the sum and substance of all their ministry. This is a mother would be held guilty for withholding food from her children if they starved. So would we be as ministers if we withhold Christ the bread of life from hungry souls. If we don't preach Christ, we commit the spiritual equivalence of medical malpractice. John Owen likens it to this, where he laments and says, It were sad for men to keep corn from the poor, medicine from the sick that lie a-dying, but to keep the word of God from the souls of men that they might be saved. Lord, lay it not to the charge of any. These comments are his comments in opening wording of this text, we preach Christ crucified. He views it as spiritual medical malpractice not to do this. And it reminds me of a dear friend that we had in Kenya, Pastor Joseph there, who was from that area in Kenya. His small child, his little boy, needed a medicine. He had fallen sick. He went to the pharmacy, and the people at the pharmacy knew him. He lived close to that area. But for some reason, he didn't have any money on him at the time, and they would not give him the medicine. It was a $2 medicine, and his little boy died as a result. What evil could we think of much greater of an evil than to withhold life-giving medicine to the dying? And yet, how much more so it would be if it were to be the case. that we did not preach Christ to our hearers. The losses would be unbearable. But what is the outcome if we do preach Christ? If we, with Paul, to the praise of God the Father, and by the help of the Spirit, preach Christ, then what is the outcome? Well, we can expect the pleasure of the Father, the Father's pleasure, and the Spirit's blessing upon our preaching. And I don't mean this in a way that we earn some kind of favor with God. The way I mean it is, remember in the New Testament at Christ's baptism, and then the Mount of Transfiguration where the Father spoke from heaven, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And at His baptism, the Holy Spirit came down upon Christ as a dove, just as the Father is pleased to honor His Son by speaking from heaven, and the Holy Spirit is pleased to draw attention to Christ by coming down upon Him and the anointing of his prophetic office, God is pleased to bless that preaching that sets forth Christ to the hearers. Charles Bridges in the Christian ministry put it this way, this is the one mode of preaching that God has promised to bless when all our sermons are made to set forth and magnify Christ the Lord. If we preach Christ, we can expect that every message contains that which is the power of God, the very power of God, verse 18 told us. You know how it is as a pastor, we've already heard it this week. You know what it is on Monday to be so discouraged about Sunday. And you know what it is during times that seem to be fruitless and you don't see any visible fruits from your preaching. It's so easy to become discouraged. But may we remember every time we preach that in one gospel sermon, there's enough divine power to convert 10,000 worlds. There's enough divine power in one gospel sermon to save the most impossible sinner that hears us and to help the most struggling saint of God in our congregation. and to cause God's elect. The gospel is not just to bring people to salvation and evangelism, but it is to cause the elect to persevere to glory. And there's enough power in this message to cause them to sail dark seas all the way to the heavenly shore. How this encourages us to make Christ the constant aim of all our preaching. You know what it's like on Monday to agonize over what was lacking in your preaching on Sunday, and you feel like you struck out. But if we preach Christ, we can have this consolation that if we struck out preaching Christ, it's better than hitting it out of the ballpark preaching something else. And God can and will still use it for His glory. And as my wife has had to tell me so many times, you need to listen to your own preaching. You told everybody to look to Jesus Christ, and now you need to look to Jesus Christ over the failing of your own preaching and telling them to look to Jesus Christ. And as we do that, may it be that we preached and left them looking to Jesus Christ while we're struggling to get back on our feet looking to Him. May we remember every time we preach, oh, what God may do in the hearts of the hearers. What sinner may the Lord pluck as a brand from the burning, from the very brink of hell? What believer may the Lord continue to gloriously transform into the image of Christ? What downhearted Christian who's just about ready to give up, may the Lord lift up? What backslider may he reclaim? What straying sheep may you bring back into the fold? Since the gospel we preach is the very power of God, there is no limit to what God may do every time we preach it, no matter how weakly we preach it because of our own sinful weaknesses and failings. So in light of all this, remember the emperor in India who had forgotten the very purpose for the monumental structure, the Taj Mahal, and how the Corinthians had done the same thing. May it never be as ministers that we trip over the plain preaching of Christ as a thing of inconvenience, but may we always remember that the substance of that gospel message is the whole reason we're here. Over against all obstacles and temptations to preach other things, may we always be able to say with Apostle Paul, we preach Christ crucified. And may we, as William Perkins wrote in his manual on preaching, at the very end, he ends it this way, preach one Christ, by Christ, to the praise of Christ. And then this, be glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now, and forever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.