in the belly of the sea monster, so the Son of man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. I take it that this refers to His death and to His resurrection. So the great crowning evi dence that the Lord pointed to as the sign was His death and resurrection. You will recall Matthew 16:1-4: “And the Phar isees and Sadducees came, and trying him asked him to show them a sign from heaven.” And the Lord Jesus answered, “An evil and adulterous gen eration seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of Jonah.” But it was a sign. That that sign was not enough to convince all, doesn’t argue against the fact tha t it was a sign; and for those who accepted it, they found what God offers to one who believes in the crucified and risen Saviour. In John 4 a nobleman came to the Lord Jesus. The margin speaks of him as a king’s officer. The Lord said to him, “ Except ye see signs and won ders, ye will in no wise believe” (v. 48). And so the Jews seek for a sign; for somehow or other Christ crucified, the Messiah dying on a Roman cross, is unthinkable, it is utterly objectionable, it is a stumbling block. The New Testament gives its sad commentary, and I say it with great sor row of heart, blindness in part has happened to Israel. Oh, that God’s ancient people would see. Now having said that, putting myself in their place, sitting in their room, I think I can under stand their confusion. They thought of the seed of Abraham in whom they would be blessed for ever, but they forgot the seed of the woman who would be bruised in overcoming evil. They thought of the servant of Jehovah who would be exalted and lifted up and made very high, but not of the servant of Jehovah who was to be cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of His people. They thought of the shepherd of Israel who would lead Joseph like a flock, but not of the shepherd of Jehovah of hosts, Jehovah’s fellow who would be smitten. Seeing the glories, they missed the sorrows, and have failed to comprehend that the sorrows lead to the glory. There is no harsh ness in my heart, there is not a trace of anti- Semitism in my soul. I love God’s ancient people. They gave us the Saviour. Under God, they gave us the Book of God. It is my conviction that anti- Semitism is unscriptural and in its essence is against the God of the Scriptures. But this is the tru th : Christ crucified is unto the Jews a stum bling block. Unto the Greeks it is foolishness. Here is an amazing thing. Those who propounded the ideas that had shaped civilization for centuries, proud of their wisdom, failed to see in the cross the wis dom of God. You recall that little parenthetical
word in Acts 17:21: “Now all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.” Always searching, always on the quest of truth, seeking knowledge, gathering information, showing a certain degree of wisdom. A great peo ple were the Greeks. But the Greeks stumbled too. They stumbled because they saw in the cross noth ing but utter foolishness to meet the needs of man. “Christ crucified . . . unto Gentiles foolishness,” says I Corinthians 1 :23. Let’s think about this for a moment. One of the hardest lessons I had to learn in my early ministry was why good, logical, moral citi zens would brand the cross of Christ as foolishness, why they would speak of it as a medieval concep tion, as a slaughterhouse religion; for it seemed to me the most logical thing, the most wonderful thing in all the world. It seemed to me that this was the answer to the sin question that only God could have propounded, that only God could have thought of. You see, I’m a sinner, and I know that sin separates me from God. I know tha t eternal death awaits the unrepentant sinner, and I need deliverance. However I may advance my education, however I may develop my culture, however I may be accepted among men, deep down underneath there is the sense of guilt, and of shame, and of condemnation; for God says, “The soul that sin- neth it shall die,” and “the wages of sin is death.” I find myself unable to extricate myself from the pit of my lostness and my condemnation. But the good news is this, what I cannot do and what other men cannot do for me nor for themselves, God has done. God sent His Son, virgin-born, who with out sin of His own bore my sin in His own body on the tree, and God says, “I f you’ll trust my Son, I ’ll forgive you.” “Oh,” says the Greek, says the Gentile, “fool ishness.” Why is it foolishness to him? F irst of all, it is foolishness because of what we may call the mystery of it. Do you recall that when the inner veil of the tabernacle was woven in Old Testament times, cherubim were worked into the veil, and it is called cunning work in Exodus 26 :31 and 36 :35 (KJV) ? May I suggest that the cross is the cunning work of God. It is the answer to what I have just in simplicity tried to say, which in more theologi cal language is termed the problem of redemption: how can a holy God meet and forgive and restore to fellowship sinful man? How can that chasm be bridged? God’s answer is the cross. And if you refuse that cross, God has no other answer. I recall sitting under a very wonderful teacher of theology who taught me much of appreciation for the great truths of the Word of God. Very frequently I heard him quote a verse tha t at first
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