MID WEEK MOTIVATION - December 24, 2025 (Grant Stegall)

Listening to the Midweek Motivation Podcast from DeSoto Hills Baptist Church in South Haven, Mississippi.

Here's your host, Mark Lewis, David Burgess, Laura Ulrich, and Pastor Grant Steve Ball.

Merry Christmas Eve to our church family.

We are going to have a podcast today.

It is going to be a brief podcast because Grant's got several parts to this series that he's been going through through the Christmas holidays, and we wanted to wrap it up this week and next week.

So why don't you get right into it?

So we've been looking at what is the gospel, a book that Greg Gilbert wrote, and just looking at defining what is the gospel.

Here's what we've seen so far.

We've seen that God is righteous because he is one, because he is the creator, and because he is righteous, that gives him the right to be the final judge.

We've seen mankind that we are unrighteous, that we have all sinned, that we have all fallen short of the glory of God, that we all need redemption.

We are unrighteous.

But God, in his love for us, wanted a relationship with us.

So what he did is he sent Christ to die for us.

Christ was the propitiation, that great word.

He paid the price.

Now God can declare us to be righteous.

So we've seen man God, we've seen man, we've seen Christ.

Now today I want us to focus on the cross and why it was so important.

I know that seems weird to focus on the cross on Christmas Eve, but but understand that is why we have Christmas Eve.

Right.

We have Christmas Eve so the cross can could happen.

Right.

And so as we come to 1 Corinthians, um today we're going to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 1, uh, verses 18 through 31.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

It's kind of long, uh, and we'll just we'll just kind of walk through it.

Paul writes this, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.

There is one who is wise.

Where is one where is the one who is wise?

Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since the wis for since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

So so here's some things that that he says about the cross in this.

First, he says the cross is a folly for those who are perishing.

It is foolishness for the world.

It is it is foolishness for the wisdom of the world.

And so so why is the cross foolishness for the world?

Well, well, one is this the world does not understand how bad our sin is.

And and and it it it it is it our sin, it must be worse than what we could imagine.

Because think about it, why would God send his son?

Why would the son come willingly if we could earn our sin, if we could overcome sin any other way?

Any other way.

There's but the the thing is there's no other way.

But not recognizing the the depth of our sin, the demand of our sin, we we as the world we deem the cross to be foolishness.

But what Paul says is here is that it is the power of God.

So if we don't if we don't recognize the how bad our sin is, what we also fail to recognize is how great God's love is.

If we don't recognize that that there is no other way to overcome our sin, we don't recognize how how great the power of God's love is.

We don't comprehend it.

So what he's telling us here is that we must believe in the work of Jesus on the cross and in God.

Again, here's why that is true.

Because it is God who declares us to be righteous.

It is only God who can do that.

It is only God who can set us apart to be holy, and it is only Christ who can redeem us.

We talked about that last week when we looked at Christ.

Christ is the only one who can redeem us.

He was the only one that could be that atoning sacrifice, taking the wrath of God because he was perfect.

He was holy.

Because Christ is God, he is righteous.

That is his attribute, that is his activity.

He not only is he righteous, he acts righteous.

He does righteous.

So Christ is the only one who could pay that debt for us to redeem us, to be our sacrifice.

So in that redemption, he removes not only the debt of sin that we owe, but he removes the blot of sin that we owe.

Because what Christ does upon the resurrection, he places on us his righteousness.

So now when God sees us, he doesn't see the blot of our sin.

He sees Christ's righteousness on us.

That is only happens by the power of God.

There is no other explanation for that.

Only God can do that.

We also see that it's the foolishness of man, it is the power of God, but it is also the wisdom of God.

He says that in the verse 25, for the foolishness of God is wiser than man, and the weakness of God is stronger than man.

The cross and salvation for us, it is a gift from God that can only be happened and only happened when we surrender to Him.

So, in summary, here's the thing: our sin must be worse than we can imagine if Jesus had to come.

That's why we think it's foolishness when we don't understand how bad our sin is.

It's worse than we can imagine.

God's love is greater than we can comprehend.

The love that He would send and the power that He would use to send His Son to be the propitiation to take the wrath of God for us.

His love is greater than we can comprehend, and salvation is a gift.

It is a gift.

It is a gift of God.

Thanks so much for listening.

If you don't have a church home, we'd love to see you here on Sunday morning.

You can catch our services online at desotahills.com or our YouTube channel at DeSota Hills Baptist.

For all of our church family, we love you.

We will be back next Wednesday, bright and early, for a brief uh podcast episode and Merry Christmas.

This has been your midweek motivation.

We'd love to have you join us in person on Sunday mornings.

Our services are at 9 and 10 30 a.m.