I feel like the Lord would have me to bring, as I am able to preach several times this summer, a series on the person and work of Jesus Christ. This first message this morning will be on the worth of Jesus Christ, beginning in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 2. The apostle says, For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. In chapter 1, Paul had said that we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and a folly to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. When my wife asked me what I was going to be preaching on, I said the worthiness of Christ. And he replied, well, what are you going to teach us that we don't know? And I answered, well, why, we could elaborate on the subject of Christ for all eternity and never even scratch the surface. So my goal is to preach Christ and Him crucified, that souls are converted, that your affections are warmed and stirred, that your zeal is fired, that your delight in him is magnified, that lust and sin in you is fading and heaven long far." It was the apostles clear aim to avoid unprofitable and unnecessary teaching, discussion, conversation. And his purpose, wherever he went, he says, was to preach Christ and Him crucified. Not to entertain them with philosophical ramblings and rhetoric that appealed to merely informing their intellect or pleasing their carnal appetites to such things, but merely to preach Christ. And I say merely to preach Christ, How can you even say merely in the same sentence as Christ? As you study all of Paul's writings, it's clear that the loftiness of the subject, Christ and Him crucified, being unfathomable and infinite as it is, such that John said, if all the things Jesus did could be written. I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. There's no other subject, of course, so crucial to the believer. There's none so desired to the believer but the subject of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. There's nothing so hungered for by the believer except Jesus Christ in Him crucified. So when the Apostle starts out in chapter 2 proclaiming to them, he says, the testimony of God, he is telling them what God actually did. God bore witness through miracles and through His attendant presence and the blessing upon the Gospel of Christ. In telling them about God, There was no need for him to appeal merely to their intellect with enticing speech of man's wisdom, he says, for the wisdom that he preached in preaching Christ crucified was far above any wisdom that they could gather from the world. His desire was that the hearers rested not in man's word or man's wisdom, but in the power of God. preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified. There's nothing that's in competition with the subject. He says, I determined to know, I decided to know. Paul says, I made a contemplated and a weighed determination after considering all of the subjects, after weighing all of the evidence, he considered that all the knowledge that was in the world, all the discussions that were possible were not worthy to be named in the same sentence as the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the subject of Him crucified. So first of all, Jesus Christ is worthy of our time and our investment. If anything is worth discussing, if anything is worth teaching for the believer, it's the subject of Jesus Christ. and Him crucified. Every other pursuit, every other endeavor is light and frivolous and trivial and not worthy of being put in the same day of a conversation about the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says, and Him crucified. as the Lord Jesus Christ is the most worthy subject. The worthy subject the Apostle chooses, of course, is the crucifixion of the Son of God. So my first thought would be that there's no doctrine that's so important for us to teach and to be understood as Jesus Christ and Him crucified. In particular, is it important for us to understand the right Jesus Christ and Him crucified, because there are many Jesuses out in the world. There are some who are patterned after our own image. There are some that meet our own selfish needs. There are some that the world describes, and some that religion describes, but there's only one incarnate Son of man, son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who was crucified 2,000 years ago, buried and raised again from the dead. The apostle says in Philippians chapter 3 that everything else he considered trash compared to the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. I count everything but lost because the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do consider them but done in order that I may win Christ. The scriptures teach us that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge So the subject of Jesus Christ, first of all, churches, is worth considering and delighting in. He is certainly the focus of all scriptures. Someone said that the scarlet thread that runs throughout the Old and New Testament is the subject of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the door. He's the key to understanding the knowledge that the scripture gives us. The knowledge, for instance, in the book of Hebrews. He's revealed as being all that the Old Testament shadowed and put forth. The knowledge of Jesus Christ, the right knowledge of Jesus Christ, is worth considering and weighing and contemplating. and preaching on, and teaching on, and most of all, for the believer, delighting in. The knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, is fundamental. to our Christian life. It's fundamental to our comfort. It's fundamental to our joy. It's fundamental to our satisfaction. Unless we know Jesus Christ, we will not be satisfied people. We will not be a joyful people. How can you have the wrong Jesus? How can you have a faulty knowledge? How can you have a mere notion of who Jesus is or a mere thought about a Bible story or some man? But unless you understand and know the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed in the Scripture, you cannot possibly ever delight in Him. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is critical to both the grace and the responsibility of the believer. The Bible teaches us that the new man is renewed in knowledge, that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, that this work of renew was a work of the Holy Spirit, the opening of the eyes by the Spirit of God concerning who Jesus Christ, and all of our growth is wrapped up in knowing Him. That's why Peter said, but grow in the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so these two are equal as you're given grace. You understand and know the Lord Jesus Christ. And the more that you know the Lord Jesus Christ, the more that you grow in grace. And so you don't grow without grace, but neither do you grow without the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the longer that you know Jesus Christ, the more that you should know about Him. We should set our minds to studying the subject of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We should commit ourselves and dedicate ourselves to show ourselves approved as workmen, rightly dividing the word of truth and knowing Him personally. So, the knowledge of Jesus Christ is critical. to the graces of the Christian life and the responsibilities. When we first believe, Isaiah 53 says in verse 11, By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous. In John chapter 6 it says, everyone who looks on the Son and believes on Him should have eternal life. So He is the author and the finisher of our faith. He is the object of our hope. We have Him as a hope which is both sure and steadfast that enters in to the holy place. We are to know the riches of glory of this mystery which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. So church, you cannot believe, you cannot hope, or you cannot pray without the right and sufficient knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only way that we can commune with God. There is one mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus. He is the only way that we can enjoy God through the right knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the knowledge of Christ, the right knowledge of Christ, which is from Scripture, Christ as revealed in Scripture, is something that we ought to grow in as believers. We might know Him as Jesus Christ and Him crucified, but we don't just stay there, we continue. to dig, we don't see it as unreachable, although the subject is unfathomable, and you could not scratch it if you were to study it for eternity. Still, we continue to dig, we continue to labor. We are, as the Apostle says, the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God in glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh. So it is our delight and our joy and our comfort and our responsibility to study of the Lord Jesus Christ, to pray concerning our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that the Holy Spirit might take the light of the knowledge of the glory of Christ and sustain us. The knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ is what moves us. The knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ is what gives us zeal. The knowledge of Christ is what gives us hope. The knowledge of Christ is what causes us believers to be sustained in the fire. The knowledge of Christ is what causes us to persevere in the valley of the shadow of death. What is it about the believer that causes him to be radically different? He has an intimate and a vital and a personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the measure of the knowledge of Christ. What is the measure of the knowledge of Christ? Well, again, the subject, as we're going to consider, is boundless. It's indescribable. It's unfathomable. We cannot grasp the height or the depth or the width or the breadth, according to Paul, the apostle of the Ephesians, of the love of Christ itself. In Christ, Paul says, is the manifold wisdom of God. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Jesus Christ. The manifold wisdom of God. I always like to understand, it really means many-colored. But it's easier for me to understand manifold means manyfold, or there's many variations, or there's many things to reveal. Yet it's simple and pure. Christ and Him crucified. Eternity is not enough. to uncover the riches of the glory of Jesus Christ. And yet, as believers, we delight in every facet that we uncover, and that we contemplate, and that we meditate. There are new delights every day, as there are new mercies every day. We look in the Word of God, and there's fresh manna, and we come to know Him. in a new and a more delightful way, and afresh as we look to Him, our affections are stirred, and our zeal is fired, and we're responsible in our obedience. What causes one to desire to obey, and to go out, and to preach, It's this growing in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. This subject that the Bible says even the angels desire to look into. The secrets of eternity are revealed in this person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's read this in Ephesians chapter 3. The Apostle says that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. And of course, now unto him that is able to do, exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that works in us, be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. John says no one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known. So this God, this sovereign God of the entire universe has been revealed, has been opened up to mankind through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. So what's more comfortable, what's more pleasurable, what's more delightful, what's more joyful than the person and subject of the Lord Jesus Christ? Recall the time where Philip said, we have found Jesus. How delightful to a sinner to be able to say, we have found this Jesus of whom is written in the scriptures. We can sit from morning to night. and talk about the delights of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the preacher said in the Song of Solomon, His mouth is most sweet, and He is altogether desirable. This is my beloved, and this is my friend. What a What a comforting occupation for a believer to sit and meditate on the glories of the Lord Jesus Christ, the person of Jesus Christ, and then the subject of this man crucified. Now compare it just for a moment to all other knowledge. There's a lot of knowledge, there's a lot of philosophy out in the world, but this knowledge is a supernatural knowledge. Matthew 11, 27 says, No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. It's not a natural wisdom and knowledge. This is not something that you just come upon and you just happen to read something and decide in your mind the sinner is born dead to God, without hope, alienated from God, and has no hope of having a relationship with God. But those whom the Son chooses to reveal them, the Spirit of God does enlighten their minds. They are regenerated by His work and begin to see this glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they begin to delight in Him. They immediately want to tell others things about the Lord Jesus Christ. And they could spend the rest of eternity describing Him and never come to the end of all that could be said about Him. So it's a supernatural knowledge. And it's attainable by no other way except God reveals who Jesus Christ is, His scripture says, to the simple and prudent. He says, Father, I thank Thee because You have hid these things from the wise and the prudent and revealed them to babes and to the simple. So it is a supernatural knowledge that God gives by the work of the Spirit of God through the revealed Word of God. And so it's the only saving knowledge. The Bible teaches that the heathen in Romans chapter 1 grow vain in their imagination. They hold the truth down in unrighteousness. They do not like to hear about this God-man, but the knowledge of Jesus Christ changes souls. It's very practical. All right, let me explain how practical the knowledge of Jesus Christ is. And again, it's a Why would we even begin to say that it is a delightful subject when every believer is overwhelmed with delight every time that he hears the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. His ears are tuned, his attention's drawn, they mention my master's name and he wants to know more. And he wants to feed more. He wants to contemplate more. He wants to delight more. This is his manna. This is his soul too. This is his life. Christ is his life. And so there is a sufficiency in the subject of the Lord Jesus Christ, first of all, to make men wise unto salvation. You don't have to know all that there is, but its effect It is supernatural. It is effectual. It has the power to produce the desired effect, which is the saving of lost souls. And so it is the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ alone that saves. There are many men that know many things. There are many wise men out in the world. There are many great teachers and orators and philosophers who know many things and are now in hell. There are many who are headed there. It ought to humble us when considering the subject of the Lord Jesus Christ that we don't know more than we know. Paul said to the Corinthians, some have not the knowledge of God, and I speak this to your shame. What he's saying, I believe, is, first of all, how little do we know in comparison with what we could know? How many of us have been saved for years and years? And yet the entire weight of what we know in comparison to what we could know as the Spirit of God has worked in us and given us the means of grace and given us the living Word of God. We've worked so little. We've studied so little. It's delighted us so little. It ought to humble us. As in Hebrews chapter 5, what a shame that we should need to be taught the very first truths. How much time is wasted in vain conversation and trivial pursuits and worldly entertainment, and how much real heart-searching goes into the person of the Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture. How many books do we have written about the Lord Jesus Christ? And of course the Bible itself is a book about Him, but how little do we pursue Him as a person? We say that we love Him, we say that we believe in Him, we say that we delight in Him, yet we devote very little time, very little effort. We seldom dig and labor and sweat and study to show ourselves approved that we might be good workmen. Now how sad it is for those that have a knowledge of Christ, but ask of themselves, it had been better had they not never known the subject. So many are contented with the unaffected, ineffectual, and near-head knowledge of Jesus Christ. Yet they don't know this person. He says that there will be many who do many wonderful things and talk of good talk that he'll say, I never knew you! Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Peter talks about these who who knew something of Christ, but in 2 Peter 2 it says, for if after they had escaped the defilements of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first, For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness, than after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them. The dog returns to its vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire. So often someone has just enough knowledge of Christ to condemn them. They stop there and they're continued to go their way and forget these things that they've heard and thus there's no Supernatural working of the Spirit of God. There's no diligent left effort in their lives. There's there's no study There's many who claim to know Christ, but rarely open his word There's so many that claim to know Christ But rarely pray and and if you do pray with them you find that they don't possibly know this dance They can hardly hold a 15-second conversation Conversation with this person whom they know for years and years and child of God You ought to be able to delight in him and to commune with him for hours upon in and never become bored It ought to never be dull with you if you can find your lifelong Occupation in communing with him in his word. It ought to be the greatest delight of your heart to do that So it's the need first of all the of the preach of the gospel to make him plain to preach Christ and Him crucified as the Apostle did. He said, we determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. In 2 Corinthians 3, verse 6, the Apostle said that God has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant. Not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. So here's the obligation of the Gospel preacher is to teach and preach in such a way that you understand more and more of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then of course, Church, it's the obligation of every soul that calls upon the name of Christ to apply themselves diligently to the study of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I'm exhorting you to spend yourself upon the one who is the fairest of the children of men, the chief among ten thousand. The Bible talks about Him as supplying every need. We study the book of Revelation. He's a tree of life with all manner of fruit, all form of healing, all of our sustenance, all of our strength is found in Christ. And so I'm encouraging you to get the experiential knowledge and tasting of the Lord Jesus Christ. The practical enjoyment, if you would, of whom is more a delight than anything that the world has to offer. I'm encouraging you to devote yourself because it's not an unpractical knowledge. A holy calling never saved any man. but delighting in a God who has purified us and caused us to see with eyes and hear with our ears, it causes us to despise the knowledge of man. Well, in your heart this morning, do you despise the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you despise knowing more about Him? You despise it if it's not important to you. If you don't have time to set aside to studying the Lord Jesus Christ, then you're lightly esteeming it. You despise the knowledge of Christ when you refuse to be guided by Him, when you refuse to obey Him, when you refuse to be constrained by His love. Church, it's a sad state of affairs when our light that we've been given and our lust struggle within us and our lust constantly went out because of the little light. When you sin against your enlightened conscience, it does more damage than you can possibly imagine. And if continued on, it'll reveal your clear path to hell. Don't be satisfied with what you have, but go on to perfection. Don't think that a bit of systematic theology has even more than scratched the surface of the knowledge of Christ. But if it has, then how has it changed you? How has it caused you to pursue him? Were it not as to work for the night is calling, were it to count everything but trash in comparison with the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. So I'm encouraging you, in this sermon series, to contemplate, and to weigh, and to dig, and to study, and to spend yourself on Him, Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And as always, whoever encounters Him, in any way, is always and forever changed. That's about it. And our Father, we are thankful for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Oh, how we want to know Him. How we want to know Him more intimately. Lord, He is a delight. This person who is everything to us, who has changed us, who has made us who we are, who has redeemed us, who has bought us, is more than just knowledge to us. As we grow in grace and knowledge, our lives become changed. We become more like them. We are changed from glory to glory. The closer that we get to you, the more that we know you, The more we're changed, the more we delight in you. And the more that we know, the more that we want. The more that we see, the hungrier, the thirstier we are. We are delighted that we are the people who have found Jesus. And he's changed us. Lord, we worship you. We thank you for giving yourself for us. It is a subject that boggles our minds. We do ask for a supernatural work of thy Holy Spirit that our minds might truly be illuminated. As we study you, as we continue to see your scriptures unfolded before us, we see more and more that we could delight in, meditate upon, contemplate, and weigh And surely, surely, we will be radically different. And so we do ask you to work in our lives and that you would glorify yourself for Jesus' sake. Amen.