If you have watched "The passion of Christ" you probably have a good sense of how sad the scene of the crucifixion is to say the least. Christ crucified is not a rosy picture. It is sad, horrible, not attractive at all to the human eye. In fact the movie was R rated and kids were not allowed to watch it. On a side note, that proved how useless the rating system is.
Back to my point. Paul in his message to the Corinthians said the following: "Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles" 1 Cor 1:23
The Jews really needed to see some fancy miracle in order to believe in God: probably healing, prophecy etc...more like a lot of people today. The Greeks needed to be impressed by some smart orator/motivational speaker. Both are good but those should never be the point of any sermon.
The point of all sermons should be Christ crucified. Period. Everything else should be secondary. Christ crucified is seemingly R-rated, not so fancy, hard to swallow, backward looking etc...Christians who choose to preach Christ crucified will be intimidated by their listeners who may want only wisdom, miracle, and the like. But there is no other way of doing gospel than to preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles.
Blessings,
THe Cyber Evangelist |