If you look in the Book of Ezra in chapter three, at verse three, you have this: “Ezr 3:3 And they set the altar upon his bases; for fear was upon them because of the people of those countries:
The Cross is a great defensive – the Cross defends us from the world.
The world is the great enemy of the Church.
The spirit of the world has always been the Church’s great enemy.
Satan has always tried to get the world into the Church and so wreck the Church and its ministry, to destroy the influence of the Church in the world.
It is a very clever and subtle move of the enemy to destroy the influence of the Church in the world by bringing the world into the Church.
For Paul said, "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Galatians 6:14"
A truly crucified people are never in danger of the world.
It is only when the Cross has not done its work that the world has a place.
The world has no place with a crucified man or woman, or a crucified company of believers.
The Cross is a great defensive against the world.
If you want to keep the world out, put the cross in its place.
If the Cross is truly in its place in fullness, then everything else will come into order.
THE CROSS is the great defensive against the world.
THE CROSS is the great defensive against evil powers.
THE CROSS makes everything safe; it makes everything safe for the Lord.
You see, the Lord wants to commit Himself.
He wants to trust Himself to His people, but if the Cross is not there at work, the Lord cannot trust Himself to them.
The Lord says, “It is not safe for Me to give Myself there, or I should be involved in their un-crucified condition.”
The Cross makes everything safe for the Lord, and the Cross makes everything safe for the Church.
If the Cross is really at work in all of us, we can trust one another.
It is quite safe to trust yourself to a crucified man or woman.
~T. Austin Sparks~