1.     The apostle Paul emphasized the fact that his main business was to preach the Gospel.

2.     Paul said in I Corinthians 9:16, “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!”

3.     Here in I Corinthians 1:17, Paul wrote, “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.”

4.     In 1:18 Paul says the preaching of the cross is “the power of God.”  He did not say the Gospel was a message about God’s power.  He said it is God’s power (cf. 1:24).

5.     The apostle Paul refers several times to the power of the Gospel in his first epistle to the Corinthians (1:18, 24; 2:4, 5).

6.     The Greek word translated “power” in these verses is dunamis, which Strong’s Concordance defines as “miraculous power.”  This is where we get our English words “dynamite” and “dynamo.”

1. ITS POWER TO DRAW MEN
2. ITS POWER TO CHANGE MEN
3. ITS POWER TO SAVE MEN

I. ITS POWER TO DRAW MEN.

1.     Isn’t it wonderful that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ draws men and women, boys and girls everywhere from all stations in life, whether it be a well-educated big city college professor, or an uneducated child from a jungle halfway around the world?

2.     Our Lord said in John 12:32, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”

3.     Commenting on this Scripture, the great evangelist R A Torrey said, “There is nothing else that draws like the uplifted Christ. Movies may get a crowd of empty-headed and empty-hearted young men and maidens, and even middle-aged folks without brains or moral earnestness, for a time, but nothing really draws and holds the men and women who are worthwhile like Jesus Christ lifted up. Nineteen centuries of Christian history prove the drawing power of Jesus when He is properly presented to men. I have seen some wonderful verifications of the assertion of our text as to the marvelous drawing power of the uplifted Christ.”

4.     Our Lord said, “I will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32). The Gospel is for “all men.”  It isn’t just for the Jews.  It is for the Gentiles (“Greeks”) too (I Cor. 1:22-24).

5.     The Gospel draws men from all over the world.  Islam is basically an Arab religion.  When non-Arabs convert to Islam they adopt new Arab names.  For example, Lew Alcindor became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, etc. This is because Islam is basically an Arab religion.

6.     Hinduism is an Indian religion.  Shintoism is a Japanese Religion.  Judaism is a Jewish religion.

7.     But the Bible says, “For God so loved the world…”

8.     Jesus is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

II. ITS POWER TO CHANGE MEN.

1.     Religion without regeneration has no power to truly change men.

2.     Roman Catholicism has no power to change men.   This is why so many RC’s (even their priests) struggle with sin.  When a church has to spend $2 billion to cover up homosexual sex scandals, they should admit they have no power to transform men from sinners to saints.  Only the true Gospel can do that.

3.     The other day the pope said the Creationism debate was “an absurdity” because he claims, “there is much scientific proof in favour of evolution.”

4.     But there is no scientific proof for evolution.  And then the pope went on to say that evolution does not answer all the questions. “Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question: where does everything come from?”

5.     Too bad the pope does not believe the Bible.  The Lord Jesus Christ said in Matthew 19:4, “Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female?” 

6.     Our Lord was affirming what the Bible says in the book of Genesis – in “the beginning” God “made them (Adam & Eve) male and female.”

7.     But instead of preaching the Bible, the pope defends evolution.  And then he goes on to admit that evolution cannot answer what he refers to as “the great philosophical question: where does everything come from?”

8.     The Bible answers that question.   “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

9.     The Bible has the power to change men.  Evolution only makes confused men more confused.  It makes hopeless men more hopeless. 

10. Michael Behe, a biology professor and author, said accepting evolution would be like believing the Hoover Dam was built by the random accumulation of twigs, leaves and mud.

11. Astronomer Sir Frederick Hoyle said it is more probable that a Boeing 747 should be assembled by a hurricane passing through a junkyard, than believing that life developed on earth by purely natural means, without special divine (“super intellect”) aid.

12. Others have said that believing this complex universe was created by chance without God is like believing that an unabridged dictionary was the result of an explosion in a print shop.

13. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”   John 1:1-3 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.”

14. The word is Jesus.  John 1:14 says, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

15. This same Jesus who created this universe, left the splendor of heaven to come down into this sin-cursed world in order to die on the cross for our sins.

16. This is “foolishness” top those that perish (1:18).  It is a “stumbling block” to the Jews (1:23).

17. But to those of us that are saved it is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1:24).

18. Religion cannot change the heart of man.  And neither can science or philosophy.  Only the Gospel can change a lost sinner. 

19. Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the south of South America, separated from the mainland by the Magellan Strait. The archipelago was divided between Argentina and Chile in 1881. The eastern part belongs to Argentina and the western part belongs to Chile.  Cape Horn is at the southernmost part of the archipelago, and is part of Chile.

20. “Tierra del Fuego” (Spanish: “Land of Fire”) got its name from the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan who, on passing the archipelago in 1520, spotted a number of fires burning along the coastline. These fires may have been started by the archipelago’s aboriginal inhabitants.

21. Four aborigines were taken from Tierra del Fuego in 1830 by Robert Fitzroy, and were sailed to Britain to meet the King. The three survivors later returned to Tierra del Fuego on the ship the Beagle, with Charles Darwin, who actually believed the native Fuegans to be “the missing link.”

22.  When Darwin arrived in Tierra del Fuego, he publicly declared that these were people to whom it was vain to send missionaries.  He declared that the Gospel could not do anything for them.

23. But godly missionaries did go there, and took the Gospel to them in the power of the Holy Spirit. They preached that the Gospel was “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16).

24. The power of the Gospel met the need of the Tierre del Fuegans, with such great results that Charles Darwin publicly admitted his mistake and became a regular supporter of the missionary work in Tierra del Fuego.

25. Once a person hears the Gospel, and believes the Gospel, he is born again and he is never quite the same again.

26.  What changed the ruthless Saul of Tarsus to the great apostle Paul?

27. What changed the drunken slave trader John Newton to a great Gospel preacher?  Mr. Newton wrote about his conversion this way: “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me…I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now, I see.”

28. The Gospel is the power that makes drunken men sober, immoral men pure, and crooked men straight.

III. ITS POWER TO SAVE MEN.

1.     The Gospel not only changes people, it saves them and gives them eternal life and a home in heaven.

2.     There is power in the Gospel of Christ to save the worst of sinners. Hebrews 7:25 says God is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. I Cor. 1:18).

3.     There is power to save us from hell.  There is power to save us from the power of sin as well as save us from the penalty for sin.

4.     Romans 10:13 says, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

5.     Are you saved?  Notice Paul says in I Cor. 1:18, “us which are saved” – not “will be saved” or “might be saved” or “hope to be saved,” etc.

6.     You can know without a doubt whether or not you are saved and on your way to heaven.  It is by believing the Gospel (1:21b).

7.     A number of years ago at the conclusion of a Sunday morning service in a Baptist church in Washington DC, the pastor and the congregation received two men into membership.

8.     The first one was Charles Evans Hughes, who had recently become the secretary of state of the United States.  The other was a poor working man.  After the church voted to receive them into membership, the pastor said, “You will note that the ground is level at the cross.”

CONCLUSION:

1.     Paul wrote his two epistles to the Corinthians to a church located in Corinth.  The Corinthians were Greeks (cf. 1:22-24).

2.     The Greeks prided themselves on their great culture – their poetry, their art and science, their philosophy.

3.     The Greeks looked up to Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other great poets and philosophers. 

4.     To them the preaching of the cross was “foolishness” (1:18, 23).

5.     The Greek gods like Zeus hurled thunderbolts from heaven.  The Greeks invented gods very much like themselves.  They lusted, they warred, and they indulged themselves.

6.     To teach that God would be born in a humble manger, and live in obscurity, and then die on a cruel cross like a common criminal was “foolishness” to the worldly Greeks of Paul’s day.

7.     And the preaching of the cross is considered “foolishness” by worldly sinners today.  They have their religion, their humanism, their psychology, their philosophy, their evolution, their education, their technology, their government programs, their business, their entertainment, their sports, etc.

8.     Who needs the Lord Jesus Christ?

9.     “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; “but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (I Cor. 1:18).