In this sermon, the preacher expresses his gratitude for the opportunity to speak on the chosen topic of preaching Jesus Christ crucified. He emphasizes the importance of a sanctified will in the life of a true follower of Christ, explaining that God unites our will with His, making it stronger. He cautions against relying solely on feelings, as faith and feeling are not the same. The preacher references biblical figures like Daniel and Jesus, who demonstrated unwavering determination and commitment to God's will.

It is a privilege for me and an honor to address you. I have not earned, and that I don't deserve, but whom I'd argue that you're bored. They invited me, I accepted, and now there's one very happy circumstance surrounding my little talk here this morning, and that is that I present this talk, Forward with Christ, in total commitment. And if I had chosen, I would have chosen. So when you get a sympathetic audience before a man, please, you're speaking on a topic chosen for him, but one that he would himself have chosen. A man should be at least a passable sermon under those circumstances. If he couldn't, I assume he wasn't called a priest anyhow. I believe the ministry can go back to selling real estate or raising room for beggars. Willed or best, and we'll try to keep it in the time. I quit when it's time, whether I'm finished or not. Now, in the book, the first chapter, it says, Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by him were all things given, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers created by him and for him. And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things are preeminent. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell. Then in Ephesians, in the concluding verses of the second, Paul says that God's power wrought in Christ, his Son from the dead, set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above in power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. All things under his feet gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, fulnessable in all. And then, second chapter, we are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the Saints in the household upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. All the buildings fitly framed together grow unto one holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are builded together for inhabitation of God through the Spirit. When we talk about our union with Christ and our conscious and volition in Christ and total commitment, we must look at who Christ is and what his relation is to the redeemed company, which we call the Church. In one of the passages which I have read to you, you will find this truth imperfectly condensed into three words, the words being centrality, body, and preeminence. It says that Jesus Christ the Lord is central. The old writers used to say that Christ is to the Church what the soul is to the body. It is that which gives it life. When the soul flees the body, there is nothing that can keep the body alive. When the soul takes over, and in the Church of Christ, any church, anywhere of any denomination, whatever it may call itself, there is one there imparting life, building the life of that redeemed body. For Christ is central, he holds it together, and in him it adheres. Then there is the next word, basicality. I do not know whether there was such a word. I made it, but if there isn't, there ought to be. I know this sounds like a religious cliché, but I'd like to say it at least in such tone of voice that the cliché element, and you'll hear it as though you were hearing it for the first time, that the whole Church of God rests down upon the shoulders I think we might be able to go around the world and simply cry, Christ is enough. Jesus Christ is enough. What weak evangelical circles, and that's all I shall speak to, I never speak to liberals on the general ground that it's not fair to kill a shoot-at-a-deadline. Remember, it's always the role in our spiritual lives personally, and it's always the additions, or the adding. Let's remember that God has declared that Christ is the truth and the light, he is wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, he is the wisdom of God and the power of God. He gathers up in himself all things, and in him all things consist, so that we do not want Jesus Christ to be something else, or Jesus Christ and something else, and whenever you want to put a comma after Christ, not Christ with a comma on something else, or Christ with a dash leading to something else, but we must preach Christ period, for Christ is basic to the Church of Christ. Oh heaven and give your all for the rising of the sun thereof, and what bearing in him, so the Lord Jesus Christ is enough. That we of the evangelical faith, which is I believe to be in the long, long-term faith, that we should not preach Christ plus science or Christ plus education or Christ plus civilization, but Christ alone and Christ enough. These other things may have their place in the city, just as you can throw sand into a vat where they may go and melt up, so includes all these things, but we're not leaning on any of them, but we're resting down on him who is the faith of our Father. And then there's that word preeminent, that he might have, that he might be preeminent and have a thing. So let's think of Jesus Christ above all things, and underneath all things, and outside of all things, and inside of all things. He's above, pushed up, as the old Bishop said, and he's beneath all things, but not pressed down. He's above all, presiding, and beneath all, upholding, and outside of all things, and in the true Christian faith as an attachment to the person of Christ. An attachment to the person of Christ, and total commitment to Jesus, or is this, there are four or five things I'll talk about if I have time to get through them. That's the attachment to the individual person, and the volitional attachment, and the exclusive and inclusive attachment, and the irrevocable attachment. Let's look at the first one, that to follow Christ, for complete, committal, and total commitment, means there's got to be an intellectual attachment to Christ. That is, we rely on our feelings, or our notion about Christ. There's a lot of us among us these days, and I believe that you and I, and then point to the left, you know that it was old John, and Warren Pinkle in his day, the old Puritan, he said, we bury Christ, and I warn you, that if you're satisfied with an imaginary Christ, and the really saved man, and the man who's following, the romantic Christ of the female novelist, and for as the reasonable soul, and soul, God, and this is the Christ we adore, that doesn't begin with Christ. He is the one, intellectual attachment to Christ. You can't simply let your heart run out to Christ, as the Catholics let it run out to Virgin Mary, in a kind of a rousing about Christ, not being sure of who Christ is. This is the essence of heresy. We must believe in the Christ, believe he's what God says he is. Well, then I must go on, there's the volitional attachment to Christ, an image of Christ, for, in complete and total commitment, I must do it by my will. Satan, he's making a bad mistake, who tries to live on impulse and inspiration, who hopes to sail across the undulating sea of feeling. You can't do it, my brother, because the devil gets you down. The old writers used to tell us of the dark night of the soul, that there's a place where God isn't going to take us off to heaven, and has taught us that faith and feeling are not the same, though thank God, faith brings feeling sometimes. You see, I haven't heard my soul believe in you. Daniel determined that he would not eat of the king's meat, and just as Jesus said, his face like a flint, and just as pointing, I do. I believe that the true follower of Christ must be a man whose will has been sanctified, not a man. I never believed in when we teach the deeper life, that we take, say that God destroys our will. This man would be a man, like a man without a backbone. I mean that in our attachment, you see, there is a polarity in the Christian life. The nation begins at the very threshold. These are the days when we're trying to be positive, 100 percent positive. The scripture says of Jesus, that thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and that was said of the very Christ himself, and if he had to hate in order to love, but they tell us negative. People write to me and say you're negative. Why don't you go positive? Well, to be positive 100 percent would be as useless, and thank God, as fatal, for the scriptures. That's a picture of his infinite nature. All that is said and all that is promised by, I include that all, and then in addition to that, I'm joined to him and identified with him, so I accept him, his friends. I love all the people of God. I've never been a good denominationalist. The president of the society in which I belong is President Riggs, but I like to say this to you, brethren, that while I worked faithfully along with all my brethren, I never was much of a denominationalist. But God has his children everywhere, and all God's children got wings, and all through the good brother, and he was making a bit of a notion of himself, a preacher, and on my way out I stopped the striction, and his life is my life, and that's resurrection. What is a good definition for a Christian? Well, I think that Paul was, and he gave us a little text there, is he alive or is he full of himself? So all the members of the body of Christ join, share in some measure in that hypo, so that we're united with him, and when we died on it, which means that we are rich. Years ago was long gone. If you look out, well then there's a, there's, it means that the war doesn't want any experiment. I never read the book. I wouldn't be caught dead reading it. He said one day when he saw one coming out of the sun, when he had gotten in that suicide bombing, and you know, Christians ought to be those who are this week looking, what is, what is, what does it mean to be crucified? And the old man thought a moment. The man who's crucified is only facing one direction. He stopped looking back. He's looking straight ahead, so that the crucified man on a cross is looking, graying hair, and said one thing more, son, about a man on a cross. He's not going out to dine on the cross. He doesn't say to his wife, oh goodbye honey, I'll be in shortly after five. He didn't go out to dine. So the fellow who takes a cross and says one thing about a man on a cross, son, he has no further plans of his own. So when you say you're crucified, know that Christ is making your plans. I tell you gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, 20 minutes on your knees in silence before me, teach you more than you can learn out of books, and teach you more than you can even learn in churches. Put your plans lay them before you. If the boards of the churches would only learn to spend more time with God, then they could save all those midnight board meetings where everybody leans back and in the boardroom, he'll give you, he'll give you his plans. All right, now I think that's about all I want to say, that we are to be joined to Jesus Christ in telling who he is. We're to be volitionally joined and not try to live on our feelings. So thank God there'll be a lot of feeling, everything that's contrary to him and intrusively attached, taking in everything that he surrounds himself in irrevocably attached, so we're expendable and we're not going back. Well, may God bless us all. Now it's time to stop. For here this is a man out of time.