The Flesh Killing Cross

I was witnessing to a man on a park bench this week, and we were discussing the topic of heaven. This man said he was absolutely certain he would go to heaven because he was a good person who did good things. He made it a point to help the homeless in his community, and that is why he knew he would go to heaven.

I looked him in the eye and said it was mighty nice of him to help the homeless, but as far as heaven was concerned, I informed him that good people don't go to heaven. He looked at me strangely, and I continued. I said, Yes, sir, good people don't go to heaven.

Only forgiven people get to go there. You must get under the blood. Well, he didn't like that too much, and the conversation ended after that.

You see, he was all right in his own eyes because he did good things for people. He was good enough to get into heaven based on his good opinion of God and himself. And I don't blame that man much for his convictions, because if he is like most others in this country, he's never heard the true gospel message as it is found in my Bible.

We live in a day, friends, where there is a famine in the land. For hearing the word of God, we live in a day where very few know what the real gospel is. It's even harder to hear the true gospel preached.

That's how bad things have gotten in your day and mine. We hear much about the love of God and how Jesus can become your personal savior, and you can go to heaven if you just accept him, but you don't have to let him rule in your daily living. You can live as you want to and still go to heaven.

Very few people are hungry for truth in this self-satisfied, in-for-hell generation that's crawling over each other's backs on a mad rush to pleasure and hell. Evangelists hand out Jesus like free sticks of chewing gum, and some folks agree to take their little Jesus and chew on him for a while, at least until the flavor goes out of their religion. The modern gospel can't save a flea, much less a sin-loving people who hate God and all things holy.

But for the gospel to run with power, it must be preached in two ways. First, it must be preached in its proper order. Then it must be preached in its purity, without any dilution of its rights and claims upon a person.

Like I said, the gospel must be preached in its proper order, and that proper order is to first proclaim the law of God in all its strictness and severity, and that the cross is a flesh-killing instrument, and if you want Christ as your Savior, then you must submit to his rule in your life. You cannot accept Jesus as your personal Savior and still hug your sins and hate all things holy. The gospel has rights and claims on a person's life, therefore there is a cross to be taken up and self to be denied.

At least that's what my Master said. Jesus said, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

That there is a flesh-killing aspect of the cross is a fact indeed. Both George Whitefield and John Wesley preached up the law before grace. Whitefield used to say that a sinner must first be brought to Mount Sinai before he could be brought to Mount Zion, and that's true, folks.

Listen to me, dear friends. When Jesus was here in his earthly ministry, as he passed from village to village, those who encountered him experienced change. The blind could see, the deaf could hear, the dead were raised to life, and that's exactly what salvation is.

I was blind, but now I see. I was deaf to God and spiritual things, but now I hear his voice. I was dead in my sins, but now I live for God and his glory, and am now dead to sin.

There is a flesh-killing aspect of the cross, and that's the title of my message today, friends. The flesh-killing aspect of the cross, or the flesh-killing cross. The holy law of God is strict in its demands on a person.

You cannot stand before God in your own merits and live. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The law is severe in that it demands perfection, and no one is perfect.

Rather, my Bible declares this about man. Man drinks iniquity like it's water. George Whitefield used to say that man was half devil and half beast, and if you don't believe him, just turn on the evening news.

The law of God is holy, and no one can escape the strictness and severity of its demands. When you die, friend, and stand before God at the judgment, if you stand there on your long track record of good works and a good opinion of yourself, you will surely be sent to hell because God must punish sin, and God views your self-righteousness only as a filthy rag in His holy sight. George Whitefield would preach hard on that man is half devil and half beast, and under the condemnation of a holy God, and that man cannot stand before God in his own good works.

His hearers would soon feel conviction of sin under such searching preaching. Then Whitefield would throw his head back, and tears would begin to stream down his face as he proclaimed the love of a Savior who came down here so we can go up there. And today, in our churches, there is an absence, and that absence is the conviction of sin.

We just decide to become Christians like we decide to join the local hell spa, a man who is well, needs no physician, but showed that man he has a cancer, eaten away at his vitals, and there is a cure that can save him. He'll sell all he have to gain that cure. Listen to me, friends, Christ is the cure, but we must see our need of a sin remedy before he can be applied.

Listen to me, I know I'm a sinner, and I need a sin substitute in the person of Jesus Christ, and so do you, so do you. The gospel is not for the careless or the self-satisfied. You can talk all day about a loving God to folks, and how heaven can be theirs if they only accept your little Jesus, but it won't get the job done.

No, sir, if we fail to warn folks that God will and must punish sin, and there is a future judgment for all mankind where there awaits a great white throne, and him who sat upon it, and even the earth and sky flee from his presence, where every man, both the small and the great, will stand before that holy white throne, and the sovereign Lord who sits upon it, Jesus sits on the throne at this very hour, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross. Oh, friends, the flesh-killing aspects of the cross must be addressed to this generation of inferheld church members who believe themselves to be all right, who know absolutely nothing of the Lordship of Christ in their lives, and that in order to be truly saved, a self must be dethroned, and another enthroned there, the Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul never soft-soaked the gospel to make it more palatable to sinful man.

Rather, Paul proclaimed all the flesh-killing aspects of the cross. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live.

Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. And Paul exhorted the Colossians, As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. And the only way, friends, to walk and live the Christian life is to apply the flesh-killing aspects of the cross to our lives, so the Spirit of God can mortify our sins and make us more like our blessed Savior.

I fear many of us preachers ought to be more concerned about our sanctification than our golf handicap. And I believe the bane of the church in our day has been the printing of church-growth books by so-called Christian publishers, books that teach pastors how to grow their congregations through cleverness and programs that also apply to the business world, that it's all in how you market yourself and your church and show folks what you can offer them and their families to such a degree that the churches come to resemble more the local country club than a house of desperate prayer. Young preacher boys want to have a successful church so they can look good within the denomination as they claw their way up the ladder of success and recognition.

And those who have suffered the most from all this man-centered methodology where the church is built around the happiness of man is man himself. Man's the one getting cheated. He's not hearing the true gospel of the Son of God in all its purity and proper order.

He's ignorant of the claims of Christ on a man's life when he becomes a follower of Christ and a disciple of his. How can a poor churchgoer live the supernatural life of a believer without the flesh-killing aspects of the cross applied in his life in the power of the Holy Ghost? We preachers need to change our message for the sake of souls. Never forget the story that Rolf Barnard shared about a conversation he had with R.G. Lee on how the day came when R.G. Lee changed his preaching from a popular gospel to a bloody one.

He was at a convention in Milldale in Louisiana that R.G. Lee shared this story with Evangelist Barnard. The story goes there was a member in Dr. Lee's congregation, an attorney who had to be out of town on business frequently. But no matter where this lawyer went, he made sure to catch a train back to Memphis on Saturday night so he could listen to R.G. Lee preach on Sunday.

He loved to hear that man preach. Well, this lawyer got cancer and he was in the hospital dying and he called for his pastor to come to his bedside. Dr. Lee entered the hospital room whose windows overlooked the Mississippi River.

The lawyer told R.G. Lee, I want you to know how much I've enjoyed your preaching through the years. I've never missed a Sunday if I could help it. I lie here dying with only a few weeks left to live and I want to reprimand you, sir, for never telling me how to be saved.

You never preached the cross to where I could see it. You never put the blood out there where I could reach it. I'm a dying and I die in my sins and I chastise you, sir, for your lack of preaching the true gospel.

Well, Dr. Lee left that man's hospital room with his head down, feeling berated and guilty as charged. It was now dark outside as he walked down to the banks of the Mississippi River. There he got down on his knees in the mud, getting his white suit pants dirty in the process while he dipped his hands in the cold muddy river.

He knelt there a while, reflecting on what this dying man had told him and right there and then he promised God from that point forward he would preach the cross and the blood and he changed his message that night. And in three weeks time there was a move of grace at that church and three blocks of downtown Memphis were shaken with revival. I believe, friends, with all my heart, that this sin-soaked nation needs preachers who are willing to change their messages like that.

This nation cannot go on much longer with her fist doubled up at God while she spits in his face through unholy lies and a rejection of the lordship of Jesus Christ. What this nation needs is a band of men who are willing to change their message back to the proper order of the gospel where the law is thundered about the ears of sinful man until the spirit of God awakens somebody up to the alarming fact that the gospel is centered in a flesh-killing cross and that there's a living Lord in heaven who demands obedience from his followers. My Bible declares in Hebrews, Though he were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.

And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all that disobey him. Isn't that what it says? That's what we think it says? No, friends, the text reads, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all that obey him. That's what it says.

All the flesh-killing aspects of God's holy law must reveal that no man is good enough to get into God's holy heaven but except by way of a bloody savior who died for sin. Then and only then, when a sinner is convicted of sin and awakened to his lost condition and sees his need of a remedy for sin in the person of Jesus Christ then the good news of John 3.16 can be proclaimed with tears, with real tears running down her face telling those who are now weary of their sins and hungry for God and thirsty for Christ that there is a way to avoid hell and enter heaven and be with Christ forever. That's the preaching of the gospel in its proper order, friend.

A man must get lost before he can be saved. Only the flesh-killing aspects of the cross can do that. Let us pray.