THURSDAY May 9th
1 Corinthians 1:22–25.
‘For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.’
Before I move away from these verses and especially the statement ‘but we peach Christ crucified’, we need to understand that there is an ongoing battle taking place in society today that is seeking to undermine, and to eventually attempt to deny completely and overthrow the truth of the gospel. Culture is seeking to replace absolute truth with subjective truth. One of the biggest threats today is that of cancel culture.
The result will be that all that we hold onto as the truth of the word of God, the truth of who Jesus really is, the truth concerning the gospel, the truth concerning biblical morality, the truth concerning eternal consequences will be rejected, as being the views of those who will have been labelled as bigots. It is even more serious than this, in that the more society moves this way, those of us who hold to the truthfulness of God’s word etc we will be cancelled by society. In other words, everyone else can hold to their view or ideology, however ridiculous or crazy that it may be, but how dare the Christian hold onto the views that they do.
Remember Jesus said to his disciples in the last days before he went to calvary, ‘If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you’, (John 15:18-19).
There is no doubt that the hatred of the world towards those who love the true gospel, and the message of the cross is increasing and will continue to increase. Those of us who love the true and the living God, who love the word of God which is the ultimate and eternal truth, who love the Lord Jesus Christ who is not only the way to God, but who is also the truth and life, who love the only message that can save, the message of the cross, need to come to the place of loving the place of fellowship, where we can join with others who like us love truth, so that as a body we can be a means of encouragement to each other which will strengthen us in our faith in these days when we will need more than ever to be willing to stand up for the truth and to stand firm.
In the confusion that cancel culture is creating, we need more than ever to be those who hold onto and continue to preach Christ crucified.