This morning, I preach Jesus Christ as the answer to your sin problem. Turn from your sins and have faith in Jesus according to the Scriptures. Turn from every other competing worldview and receive Christ as the living Lord of history, and as your personal God and Savior. There is no other way. And believer, follow Him. Make your calling an election sure, as Peter admonishes us. Christianity isn't just a proposition, not just a syllogistic logical formula, though it is the most reasonable answer to the mystery of life: Christianity is a story of grace, a personal story of new life, a personal story of our encounter with a living God.

We cling to the Foolishness of the Gospel as the Power of God. Festus thought Paul was crazy because of such a view of history, such a faith that holds to the hope of the resurrection, such a hope that peoples of all races and tribes will come to believe in Him is crazy. But this foolishness of the cross, this scandalous and outrageous act of God in history is our Gospel. Paul wrote: "We preach Christ crucified to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. "(1 Cor. 1:22-25).

Yet we also say that while we preach a supernatural Gospel, we are confident that faith in Christ is the most truthful and reasonable thing to do. Paul's response teaches us that we must preach the Cross and the Resurrection and call men everywhere to repent and believe in Jesus, and that upon faith in Him they will be saved. Yet, we say that this is the logical, the wise, the reasonable thing to do. Pascal's argument was based on Paul's defense. Paschal said that if Jesus was wrong and those who follow Him are wrong, then we lose nothing. Unbelievers don't gain anything by not believing, unless you count the joy of the Christian life, the superiority of the Christian life as producing happy families and productive lives.

Yet if Christ and those who follow Him are right, then unbelievers lose everything -- they die in their sins and go to Hell! It is, thus, syllogistically, logically, the only reasonable choice to believe in Jesus and fall before His Gospel message in repentance and faith. Our faith is supernatural, but reasonable.

Finally, this teaches us that the grace we have received when God opened up our blind eyes to the reality of Jesus Christ, this joy which we have been given, compels us to continue to pray for the salvation of even the most unlikely people to be saved.

I had a young seminarian tell me today that I presented the Gospel too much. He was concerned that I was advocating a type of preaching that called for immediate response to Christ. He said that he preferred that people think about it and talk to him later. I asked him to show me where Jesus or Paul or any of the Apostles ever let someone off the hook. I told him that when I read the greatest preachers of the English language, I have read of men who week-to-week presented Christ and Him crucified and called for people to turn to Him whether expositing Leviticus or John. I told him that I follow Richard Baxter who said, "I preach as if never to preach again and as a dying man to dying men.