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Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25–26

Many in our world today live without confidence and faith in Jesus. For them, things like COVID-19 and cancer and all the other ailments of this world are the final word. They live in dread of things that kill the body. But for those who are in Christ, there is a different outlook. We can temper our fears with the knowledge that Christ is risen, and death is not the final word. Jesus gave that assurance to Martha, whose brother Lazarus had died, in the words above.

Oh, by the way, Jesus displayed His power over death and the grave by raising Lazarus right after this. Which had to make His own death even more puzzling for those who had witnessed Him raising Lazarus. How could this happen? We thought He was the real deal! What do we do now? Those were the questions His first followers were asking as they hid in homes trembling with uncertainty and anxiety.

They should have been pondering that question Jesus asked Martha: “Do you believe this?”  And it is a question for us still today. Jesus said He is the Resurrection and the life and all who believe in Him will live even though they die and those with faith in Him will never die. Do you believe this? Jesus has paid for sin. Jesus conquered death. Jesus gives that victory to those who believe. Do you believe this? That is what enables us to face our current circumstances with confidence and certainty. After all, Christ is STILL risen. That makes all the difference.

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:54b–57

On the evening of that first Easter, those disciples whose faith had wavered were behind locked doors in fear.

John 20:19b–20 … Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

They watched Him die, but here he was. They were fearful of death, so He showed them the marks of death He bore in His body on the cross. And yet here He was. Alive. With them. Offering them peace. And their fear was changed into rejoicing.

You may be dealing with some sadness today. Your eyes may be downcast because of whatever you are facing in your life. But no matter who you are or what your circumstances may be on this day, Jesus comes to you and says, “Peace be with you.” The peace that was announced by the angels as His birth is what He has accomplished and now gives to you.  It is with you because Jesus earned it for you with His perfect life, His death for your sins, and his triumph over death and the grave for you.

If Easter were simply about a bunny, we would still be hiding out in fear. But Easter is all about the Lamb. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The Lamb who was slain, who has now begun His reign. He rose. That is still true and that is our confidence. He is risen!  He is risen indeed, Allleluia!

Even though it has been over 30 years, I still remember how I felt the day after my dad died. We knew his death was coming. Cancer had taken its toll on him. And I knew it was better for him to be with Jesus than with us. But it was still a difficult adjustment, trying to wrap my head around the reality of his departure from our presence. Weeks later I found myself picking up the phone to call him, only to realize he would not answer.

I also remember how I felt when my best friend from college died a few years ago. His death was not expected. I was numb. I could not fully process that reality right away. I also know that he is with our Lord, but the shocking news of his sudden death was enormously difficult to accept.

I think about this on this day after Good Friday. How did the friends and family and disciples of Jesus feel on this day? Confused. Scared. Shocked. Disbelief. Uncertainty. After someone dies, grief controls your thought process. Jesus told them this was coming, but they did not hear or understand. And now He was gone. They did not expect to see Him again.

We know something they did not yet know. Yes, Jesus was gone. He truly died. That death paid for the sin of the world. It was finished. But everything they knew about death was about to change. It was not the end. Just wait until tomorrow!

Today, we do not live as those who have no hope. But it is good for us to contemplate the enormity of what happened yesterday. The death of Jesus was real. It was necessary. And it accomplished what we needed. Think about that as you get ready to celebrate tomorrow.

This week I have been pondering “The Foolish Cross” with you, based on 1 Corinthians 1:18-31. I chose to do this to lead up to today, Good Friday, where the cross took on an entirely different meaning for the world. Jesus was not the first or the last person killed on a cross. But His death on that horrible instrument made the cross significant for everyone. Believers know that is where He accomplished the payment for our sins.

There are people who have heard the same Gospel message that you have heard, yet it had the opposite result. There are people today who hear this Good News, yet do not come to faith. There will be those who accept the Good News, but there will also be those that regard it as foolish. It all depends on that person’s perspective. Consider the temperature 32° Fahrenheit. That is the freezing point of water. Yet it is also the melting point! If the temperature is falling, water will freeze at 32°. If the temperature is rising, ice will melt at 32°. The same temperature will freeze or melt. Pass it in either direction, and you will get opposite results. And so it is with people. They are exposed to the same Gospel message of Jesus as the Savior of the world. Their spiritual thermometer will either rise or fall. It is growing either warmer or colder. At the critical point, some hearts yield to the Holy Spirit, or melt, and they are numbered among the faithful. But others freeze, harden and stiffen. With a rising temperature, the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. But with a falling temperature, it is a stumbling block and foolishness.

This message of the cross, as necessary as it may be, was not welcomed in Paul’s world. It is not welcome in our world today, either. I read an article about a man on a long plane trip. The conversation with the couple behind him turned to spiritual matters. They were into New Age. The wife had been raised Protestant, the husband as a Jew. They said they had read parts of the New Testament and that they loved Jesus. They also loved Buddha and Mohammed. They would no doubt be considered enlightened and wise by the worlds standards. How would you have responded to these people? “My, isn’t that interesting” or “Oh, that’s nice” would be the socially acceptable response. But this man chose to speak his faith instead. He said that he was glad they had read parts of the New Testament, but that they needed to read more. “If you had,” he said, “you would know that the Jesus you say you love says to you ‘If you love Me, keep my commandments.’ (John 14:15). And He claimed to be the only way to salvation: ‘No one comes to the Father but by Me.’” (John 14:6).

This is the message that is needed throughout the world, whether it is welcomed or not. Some say that proclaiming Christ as the exclusive means to salvation is being intolerant, disagreeable, narrow, even foolish. But as followers of Jesus, we must proclaim this message to the world. We have a command to tell the truth. The cross may sound foolish or moronic, but it is the only way to be saved. Our calling as Christians is to declare it: personally as well as through pastors and missionaries and all forms of ministry.

Only the message of the cross has the power and the wisdom of God. Only the message of the cross offers forgiveness of sins and eternal life. On Calvary, the Lord Jesus innocently suffered and died as a common criminal to pay the penalty for your sins, the righteous for the unrighteous. By God’s grace you have had this foolish cross proclaimed to you.

1 Corinthians 1:18-31 18 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. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” 20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. 26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things– and the things that are not– to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God– that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” (NIV)

In Florida , an atheist became incensed over the preparation of Easter and Passover holidays.  He decided to contact his lawyer about the discrimination inflicted on atheists by the constant celebrations afforded to Christians and Jews with all their holidays while atheists had no holiday to celebrate. The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the long passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel and declared, ‘Case Dismissed!’ The lawyer stood and objected: ‘Your honor, how can you dismiss this case? Christians have Easter, Christmas and many other observances. Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah…yet  my client and other atheists have no holiday!’ The judge leaned forward in his chair and simply said, ‘Obviously your client Is too confused to even know about, much less celebrate, his own  holiday!’  The lawyer said, ‘your Honor, we are unaware of any holiday for atheists. Just when might that holiday be?’  The judge replied, ‘Well it comes every year on the same date—April 1st! Our calendar sets April 1st as ‘April Fools Day,’ and Psalm 14:1 states, ‘The fool says in his heart, there is no God.’ Thus, in my opinion, if your client says there is no God, then by scripture, he is a fool, and April 1st is his holiday!  Now, have a good day and get out of my courtroom!!

There is a lot of foolishness in the world. And as we have discussed this week, many people think the message of the cross is foolishness. When you look at a cross, what do you see? Do you see a cross for what it really is? When you look at this is it an instrument of death? Do you see it as a punishment for criminals? I would guess that most of you identify the cross as the symbol of your salvation, but that is not what everyone sees. To some it is nothing more than a decoration or a nice piece of jewelry. They don’t associate it with a death that made payment for sin. Even if they did, it would not make any sense to them. Death on a cross was not something to boast about. It was a shameful thing, execution in its crudest form. A humiliating death in the eyes of the world seems to be foolish and ridiculous. Why would anyone rejoice in that? Yet it is that foolish death that gives us life.

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. So many in this world think it is moronic for us to believe that something good came out of someone dying on a cross. But consider the wisdom of the world:

• Those who think themselves wise tell us to be tolerant of those who live in unnatural sexual relationships. We should be loving toward them, yes, but that doesn’t mean we should condone sinful behavior.
• We live in a world where a man who shoots a pregnant woman is charged with two murders, the mother and the unborn child, but a woman who decides to kill her unborn child in the womb maintains it is her own body, that it is not really a life and can be disposed of with no consequences. It is her right to choose.
• The wisdom of this world tells us that the earth is billions of years old, that men just happened to evolve from lower species by a series of fortunate accidents and occurrences.
• The wisdom of this world tells first tells us that Global warming is melting the polar ice caps and then says we are heading for another Ice Age.

Those are just a few examples. Granted, not all wisdom of the world is that convoluted, but much of it is. And this is part of the thinking of those who claim to be intelligent and wise and who tell Christians they are morons for believing anything good could come from a death on a cross. They think us foolish, uninformed creatures because we believe the Scriptures and what happened on the cross at Calvary. But that was all part of God’s plan. He did not come to save man according to man’s ideas or plans. He did it His way. Those outside of faith just don’t get it. Those who have not been led by the Spirit of Christ to see and believe that what took place on the cross was the payment for their sins will think it is foolish. That is because it must be spiritually discerned. Paul writes of this later in this same epistle: The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14) If you have faith in Jesus, it is only because the Spirit of God has led you away from the wisdom of the world and to the foolish message of the cross: Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:3). The message of the cross is foolishness to the world, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1:18)

1 Corinthians 1:18 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.

A visitor to Palestine was in a small town museum when he saw a skull labeled as that of St. Paul. The next day he was in another town at another museum when he saw a different skull identified as the skull of St. Paul. Confused, he went to the museum keeper and asked “Which one is it?” The keeper replied, “Both–this one was his skull when he was a young man!”

We hear of things everyday that we would call foolish. We are constantly warned with the old adage, “Don’t be a fool!” And even though all of us do things every day that are foolish, none of us want to be identified as a fool. Our text says “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” The word used in original Greek New Testament for “foolishness” is the same word from which we get the English word MORON. In other words, people in the world, those outside of faith, think it is “moronic” for us to believe that something good came out of someone dying on a cross.

The wisdom of God, far superior to any and all of man’s wisdom, confounds and confuses the world. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things– He chose the cross. There was no more despicable means of death at that time than crucifixion. The Romans recognized this, and passed a law saying that no Roman citizen could be subjected to such cruelty. Only those who were not Romans could be crucified. It was this heinous form of execution that God used to accomplish the payment for sin, all sin, sacrificing the spotless Lamb of God in our place. The cross of Christ, no matter how foolish and moronic it appears to those outside of faith, is the wisdom that saves. The preaching of the cross is what we need and what the world needs, because by this message comes forgiveness and salvation.

“we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:23-24)

Some think it foolish to take comfort in an instrument of execution, yet that is exactly what Christians do. We proudly display crosses, which represent one of the cruelest forms of execution of all time. They range from crude to ornate. There are innumerable designs of crosses that we wear as jewelry. And our text today speaks of the cross as “foolishness.” Is it?  If it is merely an object of art, something made to look aesthetically pleasing, then it is foolish. A lot of people wear crosses as jewelry, but nothing in their lives indicates they know who Jesus is or what He did for them. For them, the cross is just plain foolishness. It has no meaning whatsoever.

But God’s Word tells us the cross has meaning. Paul speaks of the message of the cross, which, for those who are being saved, is far from foolishness. Instead, it is the wisdom and power of God. You know what took place on that cross. You know that Christ paid for the sins of all men when he died on that piece of wood. You have faith in the work of redemption that took place there. So for you, the cross is anything but foolish.

In the cross of Christ I glory, Tow’ring over the wrecks of time.
All the light of sacred story  Gathers round its head sublime

When the woes of life o’ertake me, Hopes deceive and fears annoy,
Never shall the cross forsake me;  Lo, it gleams with peace and joy.

We will be thinking about this in our devotions the rest of this week.

Matthew 28:19-20  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

I know I just used this passage in a devotion recently, but what I didn’t tell you then was that this was my confirmation verse. I was thinking about it because I was confirmed on Palm Sunday, which is tomorrow. I asked my dad, my pastor, if that could be the verse spoken over me as I was confirmed in my faith. He said he would think about it, saying it was not a “normal” confirmation verse. I’ve always liked that passage.

From early on, I wanted to be a pastor. When my siblings and I played “church,” I always insisted that I had to be the pastor. I felt called early in life to follow in the footsteps of my father. Hence the request for my confirmation verse.

In High School, I got sidetracked. I was a good student, especially in math. A petroleum engineer in my home congregation hired me to plot oil well production from computer printouts onto logarithmic paper. He used that to extrapolate and predict future production. He was paying me as a high school student a lot of money to sit at a desk. I became interested and decided to pursue petroleum engineering as a career. Being a good student at the top of my class, I got scholarships that enabled me to attend Texas A&M on a free ride.

Everything was great. I enjoyed being an Aggie, and I was making good grades. But God wouldn’t stop pestering me. One day in October as I was studying Calculus in my room, I looked up and saw my Bible on the shelf. I pulled it down and started reading it. I honestly don’t remember what I read that day. But after spending about an hour reading God’s Word, I called my dad and told him I thought I needed to transfer to Concordia in Austin and start studying for the ministry. I transferred in the middle of my freshman year.

We don’t always answer God’s call, or maybe we don’t answer it right away, but it is still there. Go. Make Disciples. Baptize and Teach. Share the message of Jesus, not just with those who already know it, but with those who don’t. That is why the church exists.

Lord, help us find the proper balance between caring for those who are members of the household of faith and reaching out to those dying without you. As we hear that good news again this week, including everything from Jesus washing the feet of His disciples, being betrayed, beaten, horrifically crucified, and then rising in victory over death, may it fill us and renew us. Make us eager to share this Good News.  Amen.