The Glory of the Cross

It's my pleasure this morning to provide a short introduction for our guest pastor, Pastor Brian Russell, has been with us before earlier in 2009, and I know that he was very well received then, and we look forward to hearing him again today. As you will notice, he does have a bit of an accent. He is from the Northern Neck, but it's not the usual Northern Neck accent. Listen up, I think you will have God's word preached today and it will have a great effect on your heart. And as Chip and I were sharing with him during the deacon's prayer time before we came out, whenever we can focus on the cross, we know it is going to be a wonderful Lord's Day. And so, Pastor Russell, we hear you gladly and look forward to hearing God's word from the Book of Galatians. It's such a joy to be with you again, and I do want to thank the deacons for giving me the privilege of ministering God's Word to you. When you're in retirement, that privilege doesn't come too often, but when it does come, it's greatly welcomed. And I'm so happy and glad to be in your presence today, but above all, to be God's messenger to his dear people. Please turn with me in Paul's letter to the Galatians, chapter 6, verses 11 to 18. Galatians 6, verses 11 to 18. I am reading from the New King James Version. See with what large letters I have written to you with my own hand. As many as desire to make a good showing in the flesh, these try to compel you to be circumcised, only that they may not suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. For not even those who are circumcised keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh. But God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. From now on, let no one trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. Our meditation this morning is focused on Paul's magnificent resolve in Galatians 6 verse 14. God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Paul gloried in the cross just as the other apostles did. The cross was the central theme of their preaching and their teaching. And accordingly, the truth that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures has been the foundational message of faithful Christian preaching through 2,000 years. The ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper also proclaim the supremacy of our gracious Redeemer's death. So friends, if you and I are true Christians, the cross will be of supreme importance to us. True Christians are people to whom the cross is literally everything. Now, the word glory can be used as a noun or a verb. As a noun, it refers to the splendor and magnificence of something or someone. The glory of God, therefore, is the self-manifestation of the perfection of God's being, the outshining of the moral splendor of His character and person. Paul, however, is using the word glory in our text as a verb to express that the cross is something in which he revels and delights in more than anything else. What then is it about the cross that Paul gloried in? Well, to begin with, he gloried in the message of the cross. He didn't exalt, of course, in the cross as an instrument of execution per se, but in the unique nature of the death that Christ suffered on the cross at Calvary. It was a real death in every sense of the word, but it was no ordinary death. Technically, it is what the theologians call the substitutionary death. of Jesus Christ for sinners. The penal substitutionary death. Penal because it involved the bearing of the penalty that God imposes on all who break his law. And it was substitutionary because the penalty Jesus bore was the punishment that was due to his people for their sins and not for anything that Christ had done, for he had no sins, he was sinless. As both God and man, he offered himself as a sacrifice on the cross of infinite worth, sufficient to cover all the sins of an infinite number of believers, if that was necessary. So John Owen, in his massive work on Hebrews, states that if God had peopled every planet in our universe and every planet in the universe of universes with people, and that they had all believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour, His one single sacrifice at Calvary would be sufficient to atone for the sins of such an infinite multitude. It is a doctrine that Paul has already expounded for us in Galatians 3, verses 10 to 14. In that passage, the Apostle explains the relevance of Christ's death for poor, lost, and guilty sinners. His argument is that no one can save themselves by their own good deeds. Why? Because God's pass mark is perfection. God demands 100% obedience to His holy law. It is a mark no one has ever attained because we are all born with a sinful disposition and we all fall short of the glory of God. So Paul says in Galatians 3 verse 10, all who rely on the works of the law, that is, on their own self-effort, are under a curse. For it is written in Deuteronomy 27, 26, Cursed be everyone who does not abide in the things written in the book of the law, and do them. If salvation is to come to us, to any of us, It must be by some other means. And so Paul goes on in that passage, in chapter 3 and verse 11, to quote from the prophet Habakkuk, chapter 2, verse 4, the just shall live by faith. You see, the law can only condemn our law-breaking. It cannot justify us. The only thing that can justify us, the only means whereby we can be justified in the sight of God, says Paul, is faith. But in whom and in what are we to put our faith to make us righteous before God? And the answer is, of course, in Christ alone. and His penal substitutionary death on the cross for penitent believing sinners. Christ has set us free from the awful condemnation of God's law by taking our place and bearing in His body, in His sinless body, the just punishment due to your sins and mine. And so in verse 13 Paul says, Christ redeemed, that is he set us free from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. The curse of our law breaking was transferred by the grace of God from us to his own dear son. the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus took it lovingly and voluntarily in order to deliver us from it. And in this, what Paul calls becoming a curse for us, in this we have the explanation of that awful cry of dereliction of our Saviour upon the cross when he was forsaken by God. And he cried out, not because he didn't know why he was forsaken, but because he wanted us to know why he was forsaken. He was quoting Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And as some of the great divines in the Puritan era tell us, what Christ suffered on the cross, therefore, was damnation, God-forsakenness. But our Lord's work on the cross, says Paul, did not end there. On the third day He rose again from the dead, and forty days later He ascended into heaven. And there in heaven, at the right hand of God, he received the promise of the Father, which is the Holy Spirit. And he sent the Holy Spirit ten days later on the church, on the day of Pentecost. All the disciples were baptized by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit into the mystical body of Christ, His church. The message of the cross then proclaims not only forgiveness for our sins by His death, but also the gift of the Holy Spirit by His session, by His intercession at the right hand of God, whereby we are regenerated and born again into God's family. So listen to what Paul says in verse 14. He says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus. What is the blessing of Abraham? That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. So that is the wonderful message of the cross in which the Apostle Paul gloried. The good news that Christ died upon the cross to remove our condemnation and to procure for us the gift of the Holy Spirit to change our evil hearts. A wonderful message to glory in. And then secondly, He gloried in the supremacy of the cross. Not only its message, but its supremacy. That it is supreme. above everything else in our Christian faith. And that surely is the emphasis of that word, accept. God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul exalted in the cross and in the cross alone, not in his Jewish pedigree, not in his apostolic authority, or in the wonderful supernatural gifts God had given him to heal the sick and even raise the dead. And so he tells the Corinthians that when he came to them, I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The Apostle Paul would not allow anything to detract from our Lord's penal substitutionary death on the cross. He was adamant that nothing should take centre stage in his life and his ministry except the cross. And here in Galatians it is of note to realize that he uses the strongest possible language to condemn those in the church who sought to put Jewish religious rituals on a part with the saving power of the cross. And so in chapter 1 of Galatians, verses 6 to 9, he denounces these people as heretics who, he says, are preaching a different gospel. And twice he expresses his desire that they should be accursed, or as the NIV has it, eternally condemned. These Judaizers that Paul so vehemently condemns in chapter 1 were saying that the cross was not enough to save a sinner from hell. If a person is to go to heaven, they said, He or she must not only believe in Christ's atoning death on the cross, but also live by observing the ceremonial laws of Moses. That is to say, they must all become Jews, even if they are Gentiles, and they must observe Jewish washings, dietary laws, festivals, and above all, submit to circumcision. These preachers, says Paul, are not just liars. They are damned liars. Their denial of the supremacy and soul sufficiency of the cross is a heresy that is going to damn their souls to hell. No wonder the apostle, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was righteously indignant. To him, the supremacy of the cross is a non-negotiable biblical doctrine, and that for many reasons. We can't look at them all, but let's look at some. To begin with, Paul gloried in the supremacy of the cross to humble sinners and destroy all hopes of self-salvation. Now, pride in our respectability and our moral decency is what keeps most of us from coming to God and trusting only in what Christ has done on the cross to save us from the penalty and the power of sin. Sinful pride is nothing more and nothing less than false conceit. about our own ability to, by our good works, to make ourselves acceptable to God. But in a most unmistakable way, the cross shows us that we can do nothing to save ourselves from hell. We can do nothing to appease God's wrath against us, or change the evil nature within us that provokes His wrath and His anger against us. Now, we all like to call our sins shortcomings or weaknesses that we can make amends for by saying sorry to God and trying to appease Him with a few good works. But only foolish pride can think that we, the enemies of God, can do anything to put ourselves in the right with God. Now, no one knew this better than the Apostle Paul. No one. When he was still a Pharisee, that is, a member of the strictest sect of the Jewish religion, he prided himself on his law-keeping and on his efforts to please God. But when Saul of Tarsus saw the risen Christ on the Damascus road, bearing the very wounds of his sacrifice, To atone for Paul's sin, he tells us in Philippians 3, he gave up his confidence in the flesh, that is, in his own self-efforts. Suddenly, he says, he counted all his religious attainments, all his keeping of the Ten Commandments which he supposed. as loss and as rubbish in order that he might have the perfect righteousness of God in Jesus Christ through faith. I say that's his testimony in Philippians 3 and it's what happens to us when any of us truly are brought to the foot of the cross and feel our sinful pride so keenly that we despair rightly of ever saving ourselves. For every time we look at the cross, Christ says to us, I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering. It's your debt I am paying. It's your death I am dying. Nothing in the world cuts us down to size. like the cross. All of us, I say, have inflated views of our respectability until we stand at the foot of the cross and we see what our sins cost our Saviour. So, we have to choose. The truth is, we cannot boast in ourselves and in the cross at the same time. If we boast in our ability to save ourselves, we shall never boast in the ability of Jesus Christ crucified to save us. We have to choose. And it is only when we are humbled as hell-deserving sinners that we shall give up boasting in ourselves and spend the rest of our lives glorying in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then secondly, Paul gloried in the supremacy of the cross to transform the lives of all believers. The gospel, you see, is the good news of the cross. And in Romans 1, verse 16, the apostle says, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. The glory of the cross is that it is the message by which God's power changes people's lives and makes them new creatures. And so Paul goes on to say in that same chapter, the very next verse, verse 15, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but a new creature. So in the last analysis, God will not ask us whether we have been circumcised or not, or whether we have been baptised or not, but whether our lives have been changed, whether we are new creatures in Christ. Have we been born again of the Holy Spirit? Who is Christ's gift to every believer? And have we turned our back on our old way of life? and begun to live for the glory of God. Paul, I say, had seen the power of God through the cross to transform his own life, and that is why he speaks in the plural of glorying in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. He includes himself, you see, with his readers as one who has experienced the power of God to transform his life through the cross. In chapter 2, verse 20, he speaks in the singular of his relationship to Christ and the cross of Christ when he says, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me, that is, gave himself to die for me. By giving himself to die on the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ had changed the life of Saul of Tarsus from a persecutor of the church into a sincere follower who suffered greatly from preaching the cross. That's why in the passage we read he criticizes those who want other people in the church, including Gentiles, to be circumcised because They don't want to be persecuted by their fellow Jews. They wanted to avoid the persecution of the cross, but not Paul. And he enjoyed the power of God to change him from a proud Pharisee into a humble Christian who, because he had persecuted the church so furiously, now saw himself humbly as the chief of sinners. The cross, however, not only dramatically changed the Apostle Paul's life, but also the lives of others to whom he brought the gospel. on his various missionary journeys. People like these Galatian readers. And in Acts 14, when he and Barnabas came to Lystra on their first missionary journey, they found the people of Galatia to be rank idolaters. So much so that when Paul healed a man who had been crippled from his mother's womb, the crowd raised their voices saying, the gods have come down. in the likeness of men. And Luke says, and Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. But now, as Paul writes this letter, many years later, he is writing to people who are worshippers of the one true living God, whose lives have been changed. How did it happen? Was it through dynamic sermons, colourful rituals, stirring music, religious drama? Paul had none of these. They were converted through the plain preaching of the cross by Paul. And so in chapter 3 of Galatians, verse 1, he speaks to them as those, and I quote, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. Friends, the gospel is not good advice on how we can win God's favor by our supposed good works, but rather the good news about Jesus Christ's work on the cross to put away the offense of our sins. So Paul, I say, gloried in the supremacy of the cross as the sole means by which a helpless sinner can be cleansed of their idols, their worship of things rather than of God, and become useful servants of the gospel. Then again, in the third place, the Apostle gloried in the supremacy of the cross to comfort Christians in their trials. When tragedy strikes our lives, it is normal to ask, why has God allowed this to happen? And we receive from the cross not a final answer, but a more than sufficient answer. For if God has done the big thing in Himself, in the person of His Son, bearing the punishment, the damnation of your sins and mine, He will surely do the smaller things, the little things, like helping us through our trials. Surely, The cross, you see, is God's guarantee that he will give us grace to overcome every pressure we have to face in life and bring us safe at last to his home in glory. Now, that's the argument Paul draws from the cross in Romans chapter 8 and verses 31 to 37. He reasons that if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? And that being so, he goes on to say, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword Now these are great trials, many of them leading to death, and yet Paul can say without fear of contradiction at the end of Romans 8, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Yes, and gave himself to die for us. And then fourthly, Paul gloried in the supremacy of the cross to deliver God's saints from the world. Going back to our text, Paul says, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. You see, the secular world offers us many attractive lures. The world can appear as a charming prince with great gifts to bestow upon the unsuspecting. Do we want wealth? Do we want pleasure? Do we want fame? Do we want happiness? Well, the world has much to give us. But when we look at the cross, we see what a sinful world did to our precious Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we see how the world treated Him, we want nothing more to do with the world. The world is not our friend anymore. It's our enemy. It's a vile creature. But not only that, the cross helps us to see that the world is a criminal condemned and awaiting execution. So why set any store on a world that is passing away, that is doomed to destruction? Listen to Spurgeon. To be under the dominion of this present world is horrible. How does the cross help us to escape? Why, brethren, he who has once seen the cross looks on the world's pomp and glory as a vain show. There is more glory about one nail of the cross than all the scepters of all the kings. Their glories wither before the inevitable hour of doom, while the glory of the cross is eternal. Everything of earth grows dull and dim when seen by the light of the cross. That is what Paul means when he writes, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. And then fifthly and lastly, Paul gloried in the supremacy of the cross to inspire the church in its worship. Now as I said at the very beginning, the word glory can be used as a noun or as a verb. And used as a noun, it does refer to the self-manifestation of God's perfection. And in the cross, the glory of God is displayed. God's glory shines from God's Son bearing our sin on the cross. And so what Paul is saying here in our text is that the glory of God displayed in the cross begets a glory for God that nothing else can, not even His incarnation or His resurrection. For in the cross we see the glory of God's holiness demanding the full punishment of sin. Not only that, we see the glory of God's love meeting the demands of His holiness so that we might be saved. But still more, we see the glory of God's wisdom in bringing His justice and His love together in such a way that when we stand at the foot of that cross, we have to swallow our pride. and praise God for a salvation that is all of grace and not of ourselves. My brother and sister in Christ, does the glory of God displayed in the cross inspire us to give Him glory for His praiseworthiness? To give Him glory in response to the glory He has shown on the cross? as the cross grabbed our hearts in the same way that it grabbed the Apostle Paul's heart when he said, God forbid that I should glory in these things that these Jewish heretics are glorying in the church in circumcision. God forbid that I should glory in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And friends, it should thrill us to the core of our being. I mean, this is the wonder of all wonders. There is more to it than you and I will ever be able to take in throughout the eons of eternity. It involves a death that's beyond our understanding, as I say, because unlike in Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ, it's not just physical. Supremely, it is spiritual suffering. The wages of sin is everlasting hell. It is a death that separates us forever from God and His wonderful blessings. And that is the death that our Lord experienced on the cross. He was forsaken by God so that you and I might never be forsaken by God. Is it any wonder then that in heaven the focus of all the redeemed's praise is on the glory of God displayed in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ? In Revelation 5, John hears them singing, You are worthy for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And again, says John, they sang with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing. That's the only song that is heard in eternity. And it is the song that every Christian should be practising now for the time when we will be singing it in eternity. Friends, we are made to thrill over something. We are humans to whom God has given the ability to evaluate and admire things. We are not to be as dull as sheep. It is human to boast. Only let's make sure that it is something worthy of the boasting of an eternal soul redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. For when eternal mourning breaks, one throne alone will remain, and on it we shall see a lamb as it had been slain, surrounded by his adoring people. And so I would appeal, I would beg you and myself this morning, by the grace of God, let's make this magnificent resolve of Paul our own. God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For his name's sake we ask it. Our Father, we do pray that You will bless the ministry of Your Word. Though it has come from lips of clay, we pray that it will have been accompanied by the power of Your Holy Spirit. First, to exalt and magnify the Lord Jesus Christ for the magnificent thing, the unthinkable thing that He did, in dying for wretches like us upon the cross. And Father we pray too that your word will humble us even further so that more than ever before we know we are deserving of nothing. But Christ loved us and gave himself for us And so we will love him and serve him for the rest of our lives in the power of the Holy Spirit. For his sake we ask it. Amen.