 And let's turn in our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter one. My message this morning is the message of the cross. And I want to read verses 18 down through verse 25 of 1 Corinthians chapter one. Beginning in verse 18, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But to those 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. Father, thank you for your word. So glad, Lord, that you've given us the scriptures. You haven't left us in the dark. You've given a light for our feet and a light for our path. Lord, we pray that this morning as we take a look at the crux of it all, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the message of the cross. Lord, I pray that you would speak to our hearts, draw us closer, endearest to you, Lord, cause us, Lord, to be locked forever in allegiance and in devotion to you. We love you and we thank you for your word to us and we ask your blessing on us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. You can be seated. Certain products sell themselves. They require no marketing, no advertising. Some items appeal to a ready-made clientele. In fact, here are a few examples. Snow chains in a blizzard. How about plywood before a hurricane? Firewood in a power outage. Toilet paper on a camping trip. Earplugs at a men's retreat. Oh yeah. Evergreen trees at Christmastime. Tied-eye t-shirts at a Grateful Dead reunion. Met a muesl at a chili cook-off. How about this one? Championship pennants at a Dodgers game. Yeah. And then rotten tomatoes at a Giants game. I know my audience. Certain products are sure sells. The demand is so great, Walmart doesn't even have to run a special. On my first trip down to the island of Haiti, I ate the local food. And after several days of mystery mate, I was so hungry I would have given my right arm for a Big Mac. If the Domino's Pizza Delivery Man had showed up on my doorstep, he could have named his price. I mean, there are situations where a product becomes an easy sale. You'd think when God strategized salvation, he would have offered a plan so appealing it would have sold itself. No reason to preach and plead. The need would be so attractive, the solution so apparent. As soon as you set it on the shelf, folks would scoop it up. Salvation would be hard to keep in stock. You'd think God would dream up a salvation that made for an easy sale. Yet God did just the opposite. The means by which God devised to forgive us of our sin and make us his child and clean up our lives and guarantee us a home in heaven, rather than sell itself, actually provokes an initial repulsion, even a resistance. You'd think when God prescribed salvation, he would have done so as a tasty, cherry flavored elixir, something that would slide down smoothly. But to the contrary, salvation comes and appealed the size of a golf ball. God deliberately made salvation tough to swallow. You got a gulp hard to get it down. The message of the cross is not palatable to human tastes. Like an accessory to your wardrobe, the cross doesn't go with the thing you're wearing. For most people, it clashes with where they're at and with what they're into. In a society that idolizes style and values vogue, the cross is like an ugly shirt stain. You hope it's far enough down that you can kind of tuck it in your pants so nobody notices. The message of the cross is an offense to human sensibilities. And that is exactly as God planned it. God never intended for salvation to sell itself. God designed the cross to be in a front to all that we hold dear. It defies our pride and it shakes our status quo and it flies in the face of our values. You'd think God would have concocted it differently, but you'd think wrong. You see the trend in churches today is to be trendy. We tend to value relevance above all other traits. It's all about being cool and hip and polished and non-offensive. Today's churches are most often measured by how well they relate to the secular culture around them and the size of the crowd that attracts. And understand, I'm not against being relevant. Oh no, I believe our job is to bring the changeless gospel to a changing world. God's truth is timeless but always timely. In fact, when God became man, he connected with his audience. He was relating firsthand to the human plight. He was empathizing with us, feeling for us, relating to us. And us doing this to the culture around us was a big part of Christian ministry. But realize, the incarnation was not an end in itself. Jesus was born to die. His coming to earth led to his crucifixion. You see, God knew that relevance doesn't produce righteousness. That salvation demanded a sacrifice. Though the ministry of Jesus began with his relating to mankind, it ended with him doing what no one else could do. Relevance gave way to holiness. It was a means to an end, but it was never an end in itself. Yet when a church values relevance above all else, it inevitably shies away from the message of the cross. For the cross is not relevant to today's culture, to any culture for that matter. The cross is an offense to all that we humans hold dear. A church that's all about slick presentations and entertaining the crowd and how-to suggestions and self-massaging sermons to the neglect of the cross has missed the whole point of why it even exists. Without the message of the cross, pastors are just babysitters and churches are nothing but country clubs. Years ago, Richard Niebuhr warned of a Christianity that preaches a God without wrath, trying to bring men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministry of a Christ without a cross. Tragically, this is happening in many churches today. Reminds me of the British Chapel. Its stone walls were covered with ivy. And over the arch were engraved these words, we preach Christ crucified. The men who founded the church did just that. They preached the cross. But over time, the ivy began to grow along the arch until it covered up the word crucified so that the arch read simply, we preach Christ. This reflected what had happened to the church's message. They spoke of Christ, but as an example, a servant, a humanitarian, no longer as a sacrifice for our sins. Over the years, the ivy continued to grow along the arch until it finally covered up the word Christ so that it read, we preach. And that's what this church does today. It's abandoned the message of the cross and preaches current events and pop psychology and social issues. We need to never forget that the message God uses to forgive sin and save souls and renew minds and transform lives and heal hurts is the cross of Jesus Christ. In this morning's text, the apostle Paul tells us why God offers salvation through the message of the cross. Paul gives to the Corinthians four reasons. If you're taking notes, you should write these down. First, the cross shocks our senses. Second, the cross blocks our pride. Third, the cross mocks our values. And then fourth, the cross locks our hearts. I want us to work through these four points this morning. First, notice the cross is a shock to our senses. You know, today in many ways, the cross has been sanitized and popularized, even secularized. But in the beginning of Christianity, the cross of Jesus was a shock to our sense of decorum. It was ugly, grotesque, disgusting, revolting, repulsive, disturbing. Remember in the famous hymn, the old rugged cross, author John Bernard, he describes the cross of Jesus as, and I quote, the emblem of suffering and shame. Verse 18 here tells us, 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. Paul says that to those who are perishing, the message of the cross is utter foolishness. And to those who are being saved, the message is power. But no one who sees the cross for what it is just ignores it or can toss it aside as a mere relic. Now the cross is in your face. It has to be reckoned with. God intends for the cross to shock our senses and to grab our attention. Today, celebrities wear crosses tattooed on their chest. Baseball players cross themselves before they step into the batter's box. Jewelers beat down their gold into earrings and necklaces in the shape of crosses. Even candy makers market chocolate candy crosses for Christians to eat on Good Friday. But God chose the message of the cross to shock us, to stir us. Perhaps that's why Satan has seen to it that the cross has been stripped of much of its shock effect. Many years ago now, a cross was erected in a city park in Eugene, Oregon. It became a town landmark. In recent years, this upset some opponents of religion who filed a lawsuit to have the cross removed. The court let the cross stay. But this was their reason and I quote, the cross is simply assembled, universally accepted. It no longer carries religious significance. Thus it's allowable on public property. The cross no longer has spiritual connotations. Welcome to our modern world. Reminds me of the woman who walked into a Denver jewelry store. She asked the man at the counter if she could see a gold cross. The man answered, a plain one or one with a little man on it. We have been desensitized to the shot of the cross. There was though one cross that did provoke the proper reaction. One Easter on a church lawn in Dallas, a 10 foot tall cross between became the talk of Texas. It stirred controversy, bit of reaction. It upset church members and atheists alike. Editorials were written. It's photo appeared in the newspapers and on TV. Outrage people called the local talk shows to prevent their anger. What made this cross so controversial was that it consisted of weapons that had been confiscated by the Dallas police department. Guns and pistols and knives and bayonets and bullets and bomb fragments, even broken bottles. The base of this cross consisted of a totaled out car ripped apart in a DUI accident. The display was surrounded by barbed wire entanglements the kind you'd see outside of a prison. And the good people of Dallas, they started a petition to have this ugly cross removed. People called it a desecration, someone even said. How can you turn the cross of Christ into a symbol of violence and pain and suffering? Excuse me? Hey, if you were around in the first century AD, that is exactly how you would have seen the cross. The cross was the most hideous, tortuous form of execution ever devised. Josephus, the Jewish historian, who saw firsthand his share of crosses, he called the cross the most wretched of deaths. Cicero wanted Roman citizens sheltered from even the sight of a cross. He wrote, the idea of a cross should never come near the bodies of Romans, never pass through their thoughts, eyes or ears. Even members of the early church were repulsed by the cross. Did you know the cross was banned from depiction in the arts for the first four centuries of church history? Not until the Emperor Constantine abolished crucifixion as a form of execution was the cross turned into an emblem of the church. C.S. Lewis once pointed out, the crucifixion did not become common in art until all who had seen a real one had died off. If you were standing before a live crucifixion, you would shiver in horror. You would turn your head. It would turn your stomach. You would have nightmares for weeks afterwards. Imagine me walking into church one Sunday wearing a little gold electric chair around my neck. Or maybe a silver hypodermic needle right there on my lapel. Would you be offended? Jewelry in the form of an instrument of death? People today would be appalled. Well, when Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the message of the cross, it was the equivalent of me writing to you about the message of the electric chair. You would not easily forget it. It would be a shock. Have you ever happened on a traffic accident right after the fact? You drive past the tangled metal, broken glasses everywhere, tire marks or tattooed to the pavement. And you sort of sum up the situation in your head and you sort of shudder, you say, wow. Something serious just happened here. Lives were forever altered. Eternity might have been further populated. Well, this is the conclusion that God intends for us to draw when we hear the message of the cross. When we see that Roman cross standing against the dark Jerusalem sky on that lonely hill called Calvary, God wants us to think this was not just business as usual. Something heavy happened here. Reminds me of the mom and little girl on their way to the zoo. It was Easter week. And as they drove past church after church, the little girl started counting up the number of crosses. She said, mommy, how many times did Jesus die? Where her mom said, only once, dear. The daughter replied, well, why then are there so many crosses? The mother answered, well, to help us to remember how much Jesus loves us. That He died on the cross in our place. The little girl was up in arms. She shouted, how could we ever forget something like that? And indeed, how could we? That's what God thought when He packaged salvation in the message of the cross. The cross was intended to shock our senses, to grab our attention. That's not all. In verse 19, Paul quotes Isaiah 29. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. The cross shocks our senses, but then second, it blocks our pride. Here Paul is quite bold. He claims that through the cross, God intended to destroy the wisdom of the wise, to bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. The cross of Jesus was designed by God to wipe out all vestiges of human ego and arrogance at the foot of the cross. Paul taunts the smartest humans. Verse 20, he says, where is the wise? He calls out for the experts to try and refute God's work on the cross. He says, where is the scribe? He challenges the university professors, the academics of the land. Oh, put the cross under your microscope and see if you can dissect its power. He says, where is the disputer of this age? Paul says, bring on the debaters, the quick-witted talkers. Let them try to dismiss the cross with their sarcasm. Paul pits the wisdom of the boastful up against the power of the cross. And then he concludes, has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Not even humanity's brightest can get their minds around the wisdom of God. The brilliance of the cross was intended to humble us. Paul continues here in verse 21, for since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God. Notice God is not against wisdom in education and learning. He just doesn't choose these things as vehicles for communicating divine knowledge. The Greek master Socrates said, Oh, that someone would arise to show us God. Paul lived 500 years after Socrates and the Greeks were still in the dark. Paul is saying this, if God can be known through man's wisdom, then the world's wisest people wouldn't just be standing around talking about God, they'd be talking to God. But it's the cross, not wisdom that allows us to know God. Understand, the cross is an anomaly in the history of God. It's really an aberration. It's not what we would have anticipated from God. It's sort of a twist in the plot that we didn't expect. God is all powerful, he's all wise. God destroys the wicked and he vindicates the righteous. So why does he let his son die at the hands of evil men? The cross was like a smoke detector going off in your house. Or the engine light coming on on your dashboard. It was God screaming out to us that something has gone wrong. The cross is God saying, man has a problem and it won't get better on its own. In essence, the cross is an affront to our ability to fix things. Man can't fix himself. Several years ago, we had some problems with the sliding door on my wife's minivan. Now I'm not a very mechanically oriented guy, so my wife took it to two mechanically oriented friends of mine. And neither could those guys get it fixed. Kinda made me feel good. My dad, who is the world's ultimate handyman, fixed it guy, he worked two days trying to get that door fixed but to no avail. That's when I stepped up. I told Kath that I was gonna take care of the van today. I didn't tell her that my plan was to take it around the corner to the local body shop and have the guys there work on it. They got it fixed in five minutes. When I returned home with the van, Kathie was gone. So I went in the garage and I got some tools and I stuck them in my back pocket. And I just kinda stood there, waiting next to the van when she drove up. Oh, she was happy to see the door fixed and she didn't buy my story. I tried to convince her that I had repaired the van by myself and hey, if I could have gotten away with it, I might have taken credit for fixing that door. What's the crime in being a hero in your wife and children's eyes every once in a while? All men want their family to think there's nothing in the world they can't fix. But that is exactly why God devised the cross. For one look at Jesus on the cross, behold the bleeding wounds in his hands and feet, his eyes rolled back in his head, blood oozing out of the puncture wounds in his brow. Watch Jesus in excruciating pain as he hikes himself up on the spikes to grab another breath. At the cross, you realize I can't fix this. If I could fix my sin rex soul, if I could repair my broken heart, if I could clean up my record and whitewash my dirty mind, then Jesus would have never had to go there. The cross would have been unnecessary. You see, the cross was intended to humble us. If salvation came by power, we'd all start lifting weights. If it came by smarts and knowledge, we'd all go back to school. But since salvation comes through the cross, there's nothing we can do. But sit there, behold his blood, soap, body, and believe in the crucified Christ. See, the cross puts us in our place. Paul finishes verse 21. It please God through the foolishness of the message preach to save those who believe. The cross destroys all our pride. It sees to it once and for all that God is not known through our achievement or through our knowledge, but through simple faith in what Christ has done. In Rembrandt's painting of the crucifixion, he has the dying savior lifted up on the cross. And you can see the expressions of various bystanders in the painting. But in the center of his portrait in blue, you'll see Rembrandt himself, the painter realized that we all belong in the crucifixion scene. For it was my sin, it was your sin that nailed Jesus to that tree. The cross happened because you and I needed for it to happen. We couldn't fix ourselves. So Jesus fixed us. But not only did the cross shock our senses and block our pride, but the cross was also intended to mock our values. For on the cross, it was as if God was destroying all the things that we treasured, all of our family heirlooms. It was like he took all of our worldly values and he just trashed them. Verse 22 tells us, for Jews request a sign and Greeks seek after wisdom. The Jews and Greeks represented the two poles of human values. And it was fitting that they expected from God what they valued most. Thus the Jews, they wanted a sign for they were into power. The Greeks, they sought wisdom for they were into knowledge that the cross appealed to neither power or knowledge. In fact, to the Jews, the cross was an indication of weakness. And to the Greeks, it was an act of foolishness. God gave them both the exact opposite of what they wanted. On the cross, it was as if God was scoffing at what both Jews and Greeks valued most. Again, the Jews were into power. Their greatest heroes were known for their powerful exploits. You remember Moses parted the sea and Joshua won military victories. Samson was a one-man Philistine wrecking crew. David, a giant killer. Elijah called fire down from heaven. The Jews wanted a Messiah who was just as powerful as the heroes of their past. That's why it's no surprise that the masses of Jews, they followed Jesus as long as he multiplied the loaves and the fish and worked miracles. But once they realized that political power was not his concern, they started jumping off the bandwagon. Jews wanted a savior with a punch, not some suffering servant. And again, the Greeks were in the knowledge. Remember, these were the descendants of Socrates and Plato. The Greeks were antiquities great philosophers in Athens, the favorite pastime was carefully crafting philosophies and then debating them with the resident scholars, Errol Morris Hill. Yet where is the brilliance, the sophistication, the intellectual triumph of the cross? Rather than a stroke of genius, the cross seemed like a gigantic mistake. To the Greeks, if God had offered the cross, then God is prone to accidents. In the minds of the Greeks, the cross was at best a bungalow of efficiency, a waste of human resources, maybe a noble idea spoiled in midstream. At worst, it was a joke. And you know, sometimes I wonder myself, God, why the cross? Why didn't Jesus just toss Pilate out on his ear right then and there? Why didn't he slay the Roman legions with a single swipe and take the throne for himself? Jesus, why not impress us with your power? Like giddy little schoolgirls, wanna squeeze your muscle and marvel at your streak? Or Jesus, why not show off your wisdom? Why didn't you journey to Athens and match wits with the smartest Greeks and put your brilliance on display? You could have explained the mysteries of the universe, thrilled them, boggled their brains with your omniscience. But all the cross, according to human taste, the cross is an embarrassment. In verse 22, Paul writes, 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. To the Jews, the cross was a stumbling block. The phrase is a translation of the Greek word scandalon from which we get our English word scandal. The Jewish scriptures declared cursing is everyone who hangs on a tree. There was no room in Jewish theology or in its value system for a martyred Messiah. For Paul to preach Christ crucified, this was sheer scandalous to the Jews. The cross was blasphemous to the Jews and it was foolishness, mere silliness to the Greeks. And you need to know the last 2000 years has done very little to alter human values. For here today, we're still drawn to those with clout in power. It's the famous and the sexy and the strong and the privilege and the political that are still taking center stage. Sadly, we're still impressed with education and reputation and sophistication. In fact, the two anathemas of our technological age are to appear either foolish or weak. It's amazing how even Christians today have tried to remake Paul's message. They've tried to spruce up Christ crucified to appeal to modern values. Years ago, Norm Evans, a former Miami Dolphins lineman, he wrote a book entitled On God Squad. In his book, he writes this. I guarantee you Christ would be the toughest guy who ever played the game of football. If he were alive today, he'd be a six foot, six inch, 260 pound defensive tackle who would always make the big plays. It would be hard to keep, he would be hard to keep out of the backfield for offensive linemen like myself. How's that for an object of power? Let's just make Jesus a six foot, six, 260 pound, defensive linemen. Fritz Peterson, a former New York Yankee, he imagines Jesus in a baseball uniform. He writes this. I firmly believe that if Jesus Christ was sliding into second base, he would knock the second baseman in the left field to break up the double play. Christ might not throw a spitball, but he would play hard within the rules. Wait a minute, let's take Jesus off the cross and let's put him on the defensive line. Make him a sack specialist. Let's wipe the blood off his beaten body. Let's put a uniform, a dorm with a Nike swoosh on him and send him into second base with his spikes high. Let's clean up his image. People today are into power, not weakness. Broadway composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, he goes even further. As he planned a revival of his musical Jesus Christ Superstar, he commented on how he would cast the lead role. He said, Jesus has got to have sex appeal and real star quality. Trust me, there is nothing sexy or glamorous about Christ crucified. And that is exactly as God intended. Exactly. The cross of Christ is a front to our values of physical power and human wisdom and pleasing appearance. The cross is a satire on what we treasure most. On the cross, God is mocking beauty and brawn and brains. The cross makes fun of our puny muscles and our shallow logic and our preoccupation with appearance. The message of the cross taps us on the shoulder and asks us the question, why are we wasting so much time down at that health club when the most powerful act in history was accomplished through weakness? The cross challenges us, why put so much stock and degrees and intellectual achievement when the wisdom of man calls God's wisdom foolishness? The cross confronts the image conscious. Why are you so worried about that hair that won't lay down when the Son of God hung naked and bleeding from an ugly cross? This is why Paul says of those who have heard and received the message, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. The message of the cross is more than just the mere facts of Jesus's crucifixion. It's God's way of rearranging our priorities, of challenging our values. The message of the cross should impact us deeply. Instead of physical power and human wisdom and outward beauty, it focuses on the obedience that Jesus modeled. His cross schools us on commitment and courage. Behold Jesus on that tree and it begins to teach you what love is really all about. The cross is God's way of saying that we've gotten much important, all twisted up. Paul closes his thought here in verse 25. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. You see, the message of the cross, it shocks our senses, it blocks our pride, it mocks our values. And then finally, it locks our hearts forever. For once you have seen the cross for what it truly is, its wisdom and its power, it will secure your allegiance and devotion forever. See, God knew that the cross would be initially repulsive, that we'd have to get over our cultural refinement to accept it. God knew that to embrace the cross, we'd have to humble our hearts and step over our sinful pride. God knew that it would challenge our values, that the cross would force us to reassess and rearrange our priorities. God knows that handy men and handy women have a hard time admitting that they can't always fix stuff. But once you trust in the cross, its wonder and its power captures your imagination and your loyalties forever. It reminds me of a World War II soldier who had grown weary of battle. He had decided to go AWOL. It was a dark, rainy night when he slipped away from camp. And after wandering for hours out in the woods of southern France, he came to a pole by the roadside. He decided to climb up the pole, sort of get above the treetops and see if he could spot a landmark, sort of get his bearings. When he reached the top of what he thought was a telephone pole, a lightning bolt illuminated the night sky. The soldier turned toward the pole and turned right into the face of the crucified Christ. What he thought was a telephone pole had actually been a giant roadside crucifix. The soldier said later that one look at Jesus on the cross restored his bravery and his courage. The thought of what Jesus did for him re-energized him for the battle. If Jesus endured the cross for him, he could hold his post a little longer. And you see, this is what the cross does for us. It locks our hearts. It holds us in tight allegiance to our master. How can we refuse a love that bore the cross? See, the message of the cross is not a product that sells itself. There are some formidable barriers to overcome for us to grasp its power and its beauty and its wisdom. The cross sees to it that when we come to God we do so on his terms rather than our own. Yes, the cross is a hard pill to swallow but it is the medicine that we desperately need. And God knows that if a man or a woman, if a boy or a girl is really willing to come and embrace the cross to bypass their sensibilities and to step over their pride and to rethink their priorities, they will never leave. They will stay locked to that cross forever. Again, as John Bernard puts it, on a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame. And I love that old cross where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain and in the chorus. So I'll cherish the old rugged cross till my trophies at last I lay down. I will cling to the old rugged cross and exchange it someday for a crown. God chooses for us to enter his kingdom through the door of paradox. Accept the weakness of the cross and it unleashes into your life God's awesome power. Embrace its foolishness and you become privy to his boundless wisdom. The cross is more powerful than nuclear fission. It's more intellectually challenging than quantum physics but you would never know it until you shed your sensibilities and renounce your pride and rethink your values and put all your faith in the crucified Christ. See the message of the cross is not an easy sale. It requires some serious rearranging but it is still the greatest bargain in history. Imagine God keeps all his treasures behind an ugly uncouth uncultured cross. Embrace the cross and you will find the power and the wisdom of Almighty God. It's true X marks the spot at a cursed cross is where we find all God's blessings. Dave Hutto, he runs a youth camp in Alabama. His property includes a mountain and on that mountain there's a huge cross that gets illuminated every night. One day a man appeared on Hutto's doorstep. He asked Dave if he could go and see the cross. As they headed up the mountain he explained the reason for his visit. He had been the pilot of a small plane that had taken off in terrible weather from Atlanta to Birmingham. In fact, the man had left Atlanta in a deep depression. He was contemplating suicide. That's why he didn't mind leaving in such dangerous conditions. Well, when the man flew over the state line he got into trouble. The fog was so thick, his visibility was zero. He got lost, he was scared. And for the first time in years, the man began to pray. Well, suddenly through the fog he saw a lighted cross. He radioed the tower. The controllers knew of the cross and they used it to guide him in and bring him in safely. And the experience had changed this pilot's life. As Dave Hutto and his new friend stood there in front of the cross, the man dropped to his knees and he prayed, Lord, I have found my way back and I will never be the same. Hey, the cross has led many a person back to God. Perhaps you need to come back to God this morning. See, here's where God gets our attention. And abolishes our pride and reorders our priorities. At the cross, our love for Jesus forms a cord so strong it'll never break. The cross captures our heart and never lets us go. Did you know the word crux is from the word crucifixion? It speaks of the cross. The gospel Paul preached made the cross of Jesus the crux of all that we do. The Jews stumbled over the cross. The Greeks laughed it off as foolishness and both sadly, tragically perished in their sin. But for those who trust in the cross, they discover the power of God and the wisdom of God. Let's not only embrace the message of the cross, let's relish it and rejoice in it and marvel at it and let's go one step further. Let's proclaim it boldly. Let's share it with everyone we can. As the little girl said, how could we ever forget something like that?