The Wonderous Cross Pt.1

Oh Lord, we thank you so much for this opportunity for us to be back together on Sunday mornings and to kick off our Sunday school time. Thank you that we could be together as the family of God, as the bride of Christ, and those that are called. We ask that you would help us to see Christ lifted up, help us to see the importance of Christ crucified, and we pray that your spirit would open up our eyes and hearts this morning. In Christ's name we pray.

Amen. Well, Vince Lombardi was a Hall of Fame football coach. An NFL executive and the head coach of the Green Bay Packers during the 1960s, they won 3 straight NFL championships, 5 championships in a seven-year stretch. And the Vince Lombardi Trophy is awarded to the winner of the Super Bowl every year.

At the start of the training camp in 1961. Vince Lombardi walked into the locker room of the Green Bay Packers and said to his team, what would become one of the most iconic quotes in sports history, Gentlemen, this is a football. Right? Kids, is this a football?

You can say it out loud. Is this a football? Yes, it is. You, you're exactly right.

It is a football, not the football we're talking about though. he said, gentlemen, this is a football. Kids, is this a football? Are you sure?

OK, that's not a football. He said, gentlemen, this is a football, right? Kids, you can shout it out. Is this a football?

No, that's not a football. How about one of my favorite sports? This is a football. Is that a football?

Come on kids, shout it out. No, that's not a football. What about one of my least favorite sports? Gentlemen, this is a football.

I'm not very good at this one. Is this a football? No, that's not a football. Gentlemen, This is a football.

That's right. That is a football. And what was Vince Lombardi meaning by talking to these professional football players and saying this is a football? The iconic words spoken by him were meant to get his team back to the fundamentals.

And without fundamentals, regardless of what you're doing, what the activity is, we can very easily lose sight of the core essential values, right? And that's what Vince Lombardi was all about. We live today in very complicated times. there's extraordinary wisdom that is needed.

Sometimes it's hard to know what to think as we're trying to navigate through our world today, there's a lot of fog and haze, both literally and metaphorically. What will it, what do we need to look at that will help us navigate these challenging times? Well, the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 2, I resolve, I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We believe here at Cornerstone, that in order to navigate through this world, we need to get back to the fundamentals.

Brothers and sisters, this is a cross. This is a representation, a poor representation, but it's my representation of a cross, the cross of Jesus Christ. And if we understand the cross of Jesus Christ and go back to the fundamentals, we believe that's what's gonna help us see through the fog. In the haze of this life.

In the text that we're gonna be looking at, First Corinthians chapter one, there's several places where Paul mentions cross or crucified. In fact, children, I would like you to to try to count how many times I say Christ or crucified. You can make a little tick on your outline. How many times do I say Christ or crucified in the Sunday school lesson.

This morning, just consider some of the places. 1 Corinthians 1:13. Paul says, has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he?

In verse 17, Paul says, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, that the cross of Christ should be of no effect or made void. Verse 18, for the word of the cross to those who are perishing is foolishness, but to us who are being saved, it's the power of God. We've already read chapter 2 verse 2, but chapter 2 verse 8 says the wisdom, which none of the rulers of this age understand, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

We see cross and crucified, cross and crucified in our text that we're gonna look at over the next few minutes.

1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 22 and 23, that's the theme. Let me read our text for us. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 23 and 24, but we preach Christ crucified to the Jews, a stumbling block into Gentiles foolishness. But to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Paul says, we preach Christ crucified. Rebecca Pippert says this dusty or dust, rusty nails and blood notwithstanding, the ground at the foot of the cross is the only vantage point from which to view life clearly. To see things there is to see them truly. So this morning, we're gonna sit at the foot of the cross.

We're gonna look at the cross, and we're gonna make 3 looks at the cross, all right? That's our basically 3 points, 3 looks at the cross from this text. And our first look, to look at the cross is we preach Christ crucified. That's what Paul says, we preach, you can fill in Christ crucified.

Let me give you a little bit of the the context verse 22, for indeed Jews ask for a sign. They ask for miracles. Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. Jews would look for miracles, which there's nothing wrong with that to verify that you have a true prophet of the Messiah.

But however Christ gave all kinds of miracles, including, including raising Lazarus from the dead, and many wanted to kill him afterwards. Jews look for wisdom and Christ is our wisdom. But when Christ came with true wisdom, he was laughed at and mocked. But Paul says, we preach Christ crucified.

What does he mean? Well, first of all, he says we. The we here is him and Sosanes. You can look at that in the early part of the chapter.

Probably also including Peter and Apollos. He's talking about those that go out as apostles and preachers. We go out and we preach Christ. the, the Greeks had Plato and had their philosophers, Jews had their special teachers.

Jesus picked some fishermen, some mariners, and elects them to go out and begin to do something as foolish as preach. Teaching. And so you have these uneducated fishermen that go out, and then Paul comes in that lineage, even though he is a Jew of high standing, he places himself with the we. He associates himself with uneducated poor fishermen and says, we, what is it that we do?

We preach. This literally means to herald, to cry aloud. This is not a whisper. This is not.

A pantomime. All the children, can you guys whisper? Everybody whisper. Say, Christ.

Christ. I want you guys to herald everybody say Christ. There you go. That's preaching, heralding.

This is not where's Waldo witnessing. Do you guys know what Where's Waldo witnessing is? Where's Waldo witnessing? It's, let's see if the unbeliever can pick you out from the crowd, because you're kinder and gentler and better than everyone else.

That's not preaching Christ. an unbeliever who already has darkened eyes, isn't gonna look out into a crowd and suddenly identify you as the Where's Waldo Christian, just because you're a nice person. We need to preach. We need to herald.

By the way, nothing against personal witnessing. You see believers all over the place, including Philip the evangelist talking to the Ethiopian eunuch. he's heralding Christ in his chariot. But when the apostles go out throughout the Mesopotamian area, Israel and beyond, they're preaching.

Why are they preaching? It's because the gospel spreads much more quickly when you can speak to large crowds and allow the power of the gospel to pin. Penetrate hearts. There's the preaching to large crowds, and then those crowds that get converted go out and share Christ with individuals.

You need both, but if you don't have preaching, and if we only try to reach through individual one on witnessing, it tends to move slowly. But when God raises up preachers to go out and proclaim and herald, then many smaller, not smaller, but other evangelists get saved and they go out like the Ethiopian eunuch, and they lead those to Christ as well. So you need both, and no doubt the gospel spread largely because of the foolishness of the message preached. We preach Christ.

Notice that they don't preach, they're not preaching, Buddha. They're not preaching the mixed salad of Buddha, Brahma, philosophy, Muhammad. This is the Messiah, which means the anointed one. The anointed one implies an anointed one has been sent by the Father, and is, by the way, anointed with the Spirit.

Every time you see Christ, you should see Holy Spirit inside of that. Because an anointing implies an anointing with the spirit. So to talk about Christ, you're talking about one who's been anointed with the Holy Spirit from the Father. That's why when Christ was baptized, the Father appears and says, this is my beloved Son, and who I am, what?

Well pleased, and the Holy Spirit descends and as as a dove. So the very word Christ implies the Trinity. And so we preach Christ sent by the Father, anointed by the Spirit, not just to make good men better. and not just a mixed salad, and, and not a faulty image of Christ.

We're not talking about, the Christ of the new ger. We're not talking about, the Christ that just tries to help people be moral. Jesus says, or Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11, there's another Jesus that people can preach, but we're talking about the true Christ. And what true Christ is that?

It's the Christ crucified. That's our the the next word. We preach Christ crucified, literally having been crucified. He died, but the results of his death still are with us to this day.

So Paul says the results of Christ's crucifixion still affect us at the time of writing and all the way down to today. Christ who died and atoned for real sins. He died because sins needed to be atoned for. the Jews, they were looking for a Messiah, but they weren't looking for a crucified Messiah.

They were looking for a political redeemer. Greeks wanted to hear good rhetoric, nicely constructed arguments and philosophy, but where did it get the Greco-Roman Empire? Complete moral corruption. Just go visit the Getty Villa sometimes if you, if you wanna see that corruption.

I couldn't even speak about the type of things that were going on in the Greco-Roman Empire. It would be completely offensive and X-rated and inappropriate. but go and check out some of these places where they tell you exactly what was going on during that time period. We preach Christ crucified, something that philosophy of the Greeks could never attain to, and the Jews could not possibly fathom because they were looking for a political redeemer.

So that's our first look as we preach Christ, what? crucified. But our second look is a look down. Many people look down upon the cross.

They don't see the cross as something, something to, to glory in. They don't think of that old rugged cross in a sense of nostalgia. They look down upon the cross and despise it. So our second look is preaching Christ crucified is a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others.

It's a stumbling block to some. And foolishness to others. Our text says to Jews a stumbling block, and Gentiles, foolishness. think about this.

When when Paul says, when he uses Jews and Gentiles, he's really talking about representations of all mankind. And you should see yourself in there somewhere. I every one of us are represented either by this representative Jew or this representative Gentile. Let's talk about the Jew for a second.

A Jew was a formalist. They wanted to keep the law with perfection. They would fast, they would wear these boxes called phylacteries between their eyes, they would have broad robes. They kept the traditions of their fathers.

They believed in the right orthodox teaching of the Old Testament. It can actually remind us of some people today who attend church. They like church done in a certain way. It must be you must have the right type of form.

You must be in a building. You must have a stained glass windows. There are people like talkative in Pilgrim's Progress that they can say. All the right words.

They kinda grew up in the church. They memorized all the Ina verses, and if you ask them questions about Christianity, they can tell you what justification by faith means. They can tell you the verbiage, and yet it hasn't had an effect on their hearts. to them, the cross is a stumbling block.

the Greek here is a scandalon, which from which we get our words scandalous. Over in Galatians chapter 5, Paul says, but brethren, if I still preach circumcision, if I'm preaching Jewish religion, why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling block of the cross has been abolished. This is a stumbling block that is sovereignly put there.

It must be there. The cross is meant to be a stumbling block to get people to forsake their empty religion. There must be a stumbling block. in fact, we can think of the cross is almost like the hinges of the door.

Jesus is the door. The cross is like the hinges. If you remove the hinges, the door falls off. You must have the cross in order to understand Christ, and it's meant to be there in our way.

Think of, I don't know about your parents, but there's times where I've gotten up in the middle of the night to come down the hallway to get a drink of water. And I come out in my bare feet. I don't tend to put my slippers on. And suddenly I step on a Lego in the middle of the night.

That doesn't feel good. That's a stumbling block. Just a few minutes I was in my office. I was trying to get to my desk and I stumbled over my own backpack.

That's a stumbling block. The cross is a stumbling block because the Jews were looking for a political leader. They weren't looking for a man that was going to die on a cross, and then send the Holy Spirit to fill the church for 2000 years until he came back, 2000 or more. Hopefully he's coming soon.

But then we also have the, the next representative, and that is Gentiles, non-Jewish nations. This is really everyone else. Spurgeon says in a sermon on this passage, he says, he is thoroughly wise, speaking of the representative Gentile. Ask him anything and he knows it.

Ask him for a quotation from any of the old poets and anyone else, and he can give it to you. If you're a a a Muslim and plead the claims of your religion, he will hear you very patiently. But if you are a Christian and talk to him of Jesus Christ, he'll say stop, I don't wanna hear that. The Grecian gentleman believes all philosophy, except the true one, studies all wisdom except wisdom of God, seeks all learning except spiritual learning, loves everything except that which God approves, and likes everything which man makes and nothing which comes from God.

It's foolishness to him. people like this? Yeah, I, I, I speak to people like this all the time. In fact, I used to be one of them.

You speak to people that they're wide open to virtually every other philosophy other than Christ. I was speaking to a gentleman just yesterday, a believer who graduated from Stanford and said that when he was in college, it seemed like every viewpoint was acceptable except for Christ. I had the same experience both at Cypress College, RCC, and Cal State San Bernardino. Seemed like every class I took, Jesus Christ and Christianity, that was the whipping boy.

If you believed anything else, that was OK, but if you believed in Christ, that was not acceptable. And so it's, it's foolishness or literally the idea is it's moronic. The, the, the prototypical Gentile says that's just moronic thinking. That's foolishness.

Again, Spurgeon says another time the Gentiles, is, spoke well of all religions and believed that they were very good. In their place and all true. And he had no doubt that if a man were sincere in any religion, he would be all right at last. I told him I did not think so, and that I believe that there was but one religion revealed of God.

The religion is a gift of Jesus Christ. He then said, I was a bigot and wished me a good day. And that's, that's the natural man. They say that there's many different ways.

I was speaking to someone at a funeral just the other day who was proclaiming the many different ways she read of Brahma, she read of Buddha, she read even of Christ, she read philosophies that visit things all over the world. But as we talk about Christ and Him crucified, and that being the one true way, that's not what people wanna hear. By the way, one of the earliest pieces of archaeological evidence outside of the scripture is actually graffiti, making fun of a Christian for his belief in Christ crucified.

If you turn over your outline, you'll see this.

it's called Alexinos graffito from 200 AD, and children, if you'd like to color that little piece of graffiti that's meant to make fun of Christians, you can do so. What that is demonstrating is Aleximinos is there worshiping a donkey on a cross, and the inscription says Aloximenos worships his god. And we have many donkeys in this area. Many of you have them going through and eating things in your yard.

at this time in this area there were many donkeys, and so this was graffiti to make fun of this Christian saying that if you're worshiping somebody, who died on the cross, that's pretty much like worshiping a donkey. And and so making fun of Christ and Him crucified is not something new. So many people look down upon the cross. And children, if you believe in Christ and Him crucified, and if people begin to make fun of you and and poke fun of you.

don't worry, that's, that's something that's been happening for a long, long time. And Christ will be with you, even in those times. So continue to look to Christ. he will deliver you in the end.

Let's look at a final look, a look up to the cross from below. A look up, preaching Christ, crucified is the power of God, and the wisdom of God to the call. It's power of God and the wisdom of God to the call. Our text says, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God.

And the wisdom of God. Notice that Paul is speaking to both Jews and Greeks here, the same designations, with more of a specific emphasis on Greeks now, but the idea is just Greeks who represent Gentiles. There's no distinction. Christ is not anti-Semitic.

He's not anti-Jewish. In fact, he was incarnated as a Jew. He was probably of darker Mediterranean skin. nor is he ethnocentric.

He created all nations and died for all peoples. By the way, sometimes when I'm witnessing, I have to point out things that might seem basic to you, but I'll say this for all of us, but particularly the children. Jesus didn't speak English when he was a man on the earth. English didn't exist until 1000 years after Jesus was on the earth.

He wasn't white. He didn't wear a suit. He most likely did not have long hair like we see in many of our paintings. He was a Jew.

He spoke Aramaic, and he knows you by name today because he reigns from on high, and he is with all of us through his Holy Spirit, and he speaks your language today. In fact, he is speaking to you right now through the preached word. So he, he is, we preach Christ to both Jews and Greeks, and we speak to Jews and Greeks who are called the called. Paul uses this term, the called.

What does that mean? In the Bible, you have two different types of calls. Right now I am preaching and I am calling out to all of you, and there's a sense in which I'm giving what we would call a general call to Christ. but only the Holy Spirit can give a specific call.

I can preach. But the Holy Spirit will take my words if they're in line with scripture, and, and use those words to call you to Himself. That's a specific call. John Bunyan says it this way, the hen has two calls the common cluck, which she gives daily and hourly, and the special one, which she means for her little chicks.

That's a nice analogy. A chicken gives just a general call all throughout the day. That's like us just preaching to everybody generally, but when she's calling her little chicks, that's a special call. So there is a general call that is made to every man and every man hears it, every man, woman and child.

many are called by it. you could think of, for instance, like if you, when you're at school, if you go to a public or Christian school, when the bell rings and it's time to go to recess, we like that, right? And the bell rings, that's a general call to go to recess. But when mom yells out the back door and says, Johnny, Sally, it's time for dinner, that's a special call.

That's a call to the children. Jesus says, My sheep hear my voice, that's a special call to the sheep, and so there's a special, and then there's the children's call. in this text, to those who are the called, both Jews and Greek, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. So to the call, there's this power.

This is meant to contrast with the stumbling block. To some, Christ is a stumbling block. His cross is a stumbling block. But to the called, Christ crucified is power.

When the Holy Spirit moves up upon your heart, there is power that comes over a person when you hear your name called. Mary heard Jesus in the garden say, Mary, and she responded, Rabona. Jesus came through and said, Zacchaeus, come down. I must have supper with you.

And what did Zacchaeus do? He came down. And there are many of us here in this parking lot that we've heard our names Mike, Samuel, Jacob, Tricia, Jake, Joe, Ken, I'm not gonna name everybody. But you've heard that call.

The Lord calls out to you, and when you hear your name called to Christ crucified, you respond. I'm gonna quote one of my favorite theologians again, CH Spurgeon, as you guys know, this is just a wonderful quote on this idea of the power of God as as Spurgeon gives a little bit of his own testimony. He says this. The gospel is to the true believer, a thing of power.

It is Christ, the power of God. Ay, there is power in God's gospel beyond all description. Once I, like Mazipa, that's a a a tale of a man who rode on a horse, he was being punished. Like Mazepa, was bound on the wild horse of my lust, bound hand and foot, incapable of resistance, was galloping on with hell's wolves behind me, howling for my body and my soul as they're just and lawful prey.

They came a mighty hand. Then came a mighty hand, which stopped that wild horse, cut my bands, set me down, and brought me into liberty. Is there power, sir? Aye, there is power, and he who has felt it must acknowledge it.

There was a time when I lived in the strong old castle of my sins and rested in my works. There came a trumpeter to the door and bade me open it, and I with anger chided him from the porch and said, he never will enter. Then came a goodly person. With loving countenance, his hands were marked with scars where nails were driven, and his feet had nail prints too.

He lifted up his cross, using it as a hammer. At the first blow, the gate of my prejudice shook. At the 2nd, it trembled more, and at the 3rd it fell, and he came. And said, arise, stand upon your foot, on your feet, for I have loved you with an everlasting love.

A thing of power, it is a thing of power. I have felt it here in this heart. I have the witness of the spirit within, and know it is a thing of might because it has conquered me, and it has bowed me down. His free grace alone, from the first to the last, has won my affection and held my soul fast.

Many of you have that same testimony that Spurgeon had. Spurgeon said he used to go to hear the word of God preached, and would say to himself, he would resist. He did not want to listen to the preacher, and yet he found himself listening and opening up his heart. I remember the day when I was kicking a can down the street on my way back from high school.

And as I was kicking this can, I was saying to myself over and over again, there is no God. There is There is no God. I can remember in my junior high history classes we were studying Hinduism and Buddhism, this warm feeling coming over my body, and I wanted to know, I wanted that to be true. I knew enough of Christ and Him crucified from my live-in babysitter who'd been teaching me about Jesus Christ since I was 8.

Years old, but I did not want that to be true because I wanted to stay in my lusts. I wanted to stay in my sin. If I could just believe that Hinduism was right or Buddhism was right, or if I could kick the can down the street and convince myself there is no God, then I believe that I could go and be happy. But I knew there was something not right.

I could remember listening to baseball as a young man, listening to Vin Scully, talk and, and Manny Moda hitting a, a, a walk-off base hit, a pinch hit, and then the game's over and I'm sitting in my room feeling hollow. I've just heard a wonderful game by one of the best announcers in all of baseball, one of my favorite baseball players, Manny Mota, and I'm feeling empty. Something is not right. And then the Lord got a hold of my heart as I was listening to Chuck Smith on channel 13 KCLP saying the same types of things he had said over and over again.

And I went into my heart into my room and I got down on my knees and I said, Lord Jesus, would you come into my life? And would you be my savior? And it wasn't like I had this huge emotional experience, but suddenly things began to change, and I knew that I needed to put away my lusts. And the Lord began to to to free me from that wild horse on which I was tied.

Many of us have felt that power, and you can feel that power as well. The general call goes out, but if the spirit calls your name, you can hear the special call and call upon him. It's the power of God. And then lastly, it's the wisdom of God.

To those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Turn aside and see this great light. We have Christ incarnate upon the cross, cross substituting. He's a substitute.

He's atoning for our guilt. A sacrifice for the vengeance of heaven for us rebellious sinners. Spurgeon again, here is essential wisdom enthroned, crowned and glorified. Admire you men of the earth, if you be not blind, and you who glory in your learning, bend your head in reverence and own that all your skill could not have devised a gospel at once, so just to God and so safe to man.

Who would have such wisdom to devise a gospel that could be so just to God and satisfy his justice, and yet so safe to the sinner who simply believes? How can you have justice and safety carried out in the exact same act of Christ crucified? Christ puts all things into order. Christ is the sun and all other disciplines, all other disciplines are now planets that revolve around Christ and Him crucified.

Spurgeon says the science of Christ crucified is the most excellent of sciences. She is to me the wisdom of God. Let the Bible be your standard classic, your last appeal in matters of contention. Let its light be your illumination, and you shall become more wise than Plato, and more truly learned than the seven sages of antiquity.

That's our 3 looks. We look to Christ crucified. We preach, we don't whisper. We're not playing Where's Waldo witnessing.

We herald Christ crucified. To the Jew and the Gentile, it's a stumbling block, or it's foolishness, it's moronic. That's always been the case, it will always be the case. People don't love Christ today by nature more than they did back in Paul's day.

Just watch the news. But to the cold, to the, to the little chickens, to the sheep, Christ is power. He can free you from the wild horse of your sins. And he is wisdom.

He is the sun at the center of the universe, that will put all other sciences in order. He has power and wisdom. Pastor Milton says this in the Gospel primer, what I could not do, God did, and in doing it, he did it all, sending his own son into the world to die on the cross for my sins, and thereby showing me unfathomable love. We must connect the love of God to the cross.

We're gonna talk more about that in this class. We can talk about that God loves us and that Jesus loves us, but if you divorce that from the cross, you lose what love is all about. A love without the cross is not love at all. In fact, it's a fantasy.

God loves us through the cross. Christ and Him crucified. Let me just review for you what the rest of this class is gonna look like. I've given you an overview of the cross this morning.

Next week, we're gonna talk about the God of the cross. We're gonna spend talking about what role the Father had in sending the Son in Romans 5. Then Carlos Price is gonna talk about Christ on the cross and John 3 as we consider Christ lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness. And then Pastor Carlos will talk about the Spirit of the cross, of the Spirit comes and actually inspires the word of God so that we can be led to the cross.

And then we're gonna talk about the bride of the cross, that is the church and what the church is to be all about. And then we're gonna be talking about the end of the cross. What's the whole purpose of this? What's the church to be about?

That's the basic outline of this class. Lombardi said, gentlemen, this is a football because we have to get back to the fundamentals. As Christians, we have to say this is a cross. This is Christ crucified, get back to the fundamentals.

This is where the power lies. We could do all kinds of things. We could talk about philosophy up here, we could talk about various religious systems, but if we will point you to the cross and Christ crucified, you're gonna have power in your life. after this class, we, after we cover this in 6 weeks, we're gonna go to the same book that our high school and junior high is using.

We'll start this in November as we take a look at Ecclesiastes, basically, how to live life now by viewing our life from the viewpoint of our death. If we understand that we are going to die, it helps us learn how to live and then Lord willing, in February to the end of the year, we're gonna do a survey of Pilgrim's Progress. And so that's the the the landscape for the rest of this year again please sign up for put your email over here so that you can get our. Our emails and whatnot.

And then just as a reminder, we are gonna try to peel off our other Sunday school classes about every two weeks, maybe quicker if the if the Lord allows. so October 14th, high school, junior high, after that we're hoping to go down another grade, and then another grade. So just be praying for that staggered opening, so to speak. Let's go ahead and pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for this wonderful time for us to gather together on a Sunday, and to gather together for Sunday school as families. We pray, Lord, for all of our children here today. Lord, they have all heard a general call. but we pray, Father, that your spirit would give them a special call.

Lord, that your sheep would hear your voice, and that you would call them and loose them from their sins. And Lord, that you would show them your power and that you would give them wisdom. we pray, Father, for all of our adults, and we pray for anyone here who may not know you, Lord, that You would also open their eyes. But also we just pray for every believer here, that we know that we are on a journey and there are times that we get off of the path, and we lose sight of the cross.

But we thank you Lord, it's not about our hold on you, but your hold on us. We thank you, Lord, that you have us in your grip, your double grip of the Father and the Son. And that those that you have hold of, you will not lose, that we are unpluckable and the devil cannot reach us. We pray, Father, as we have this survey of the cross, that you would just strengthen us and encourage us, especially in these times that are so confusing and worrisome.

We thank you that you are in control of all things. We thank you for your Son Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and all God's people said, Amen. Well, God bless you.

I'll be up here for questions if you'd like to come on up. God bless you, we'll be starting in a few minutes.