Welcome to the Mark Dr. School Ministries podcast. To find more Bible teaching from

Pastor Mark visit mark, visit Mark Dr.org. Thank you for listening and being a part of

Mark Dr School Ministries. And remember, it's all about Jesus. As you drove in tonight, you likely saw the symbol of the Christian faith atop our historic church building, the cross.

As you walked in through the front doors,

you passed another cross.

That was the original cross that was placed

atop the building when it opened in the 1960s.

As you walk through the foyer,

there is another cross that is stood in this building

since the day that it opened.

Universally, for a few thousand years, the symbol of the Christian faith has been the

cross of Jesus Christ and it's a particularly unique, unusual, paradoxical, and somewhat horrifying and shocking symbol.

As one of the old hymns rightly declares, it is an emblem of suffering and shame.

In the days of Jesus, you didn't speak of the cross,

you didn't sing of the cross.

You certainly weren't going to wear a cross as a piece of jewelry or use one to adorn your home. It was in fact

the most shameful and painful of ways to die. The early Christians had to decide what the symbol of our faith might be.

And out of all of the options, starting with what is believed to be the early Church

Father Turtullian, it was in fact the cross. It was the cross that was chosen to represent the

sum total of who Christ is and what Christ does.

And tragically, oftentimes, in the Christian faith,

we perhaps even with good intentions say something about the cross,

...