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I remember Spurgeon, the story of Spurgeon, talking to a young pastor. The young pastor said, there's not many people converted at my local assembly.
Do you have any advice? And Spurgeon said, you don't expect a lot of people to be converted at your service, do you?
And he goes, of course not. And Spurgeon said, that's the problem. Today's message from the text is so powerful, so blunt, that I'm expecting
God would do two things. One, I think there are going to be people here that aren't saved, but God will use this passage to give them new life.
And number two, for Christians, and mainly for us today as Christians, you're going to look at this passage and you're going to say,
I've not thought about Christianity this way before. I've not thought about evangelism this way before.
I had to be thankful again as I study this passage from 1 Corinthians, because it is one of those passages that you'll never forget.
I feel like I've been a caged lion all week, walking back and forth behind the cage at the zoo, creating some path, waiting to get up to preach this message, because it has done such a number on my life.
And of course, if it's good for the Lord to do that to me, then I want to return God's graces and preach the word to you.
So if you have your Bible, turn to 1 Corinthians 1, as we continue our sequential exposition, expounding 1
Corinthians, one of the earlier books in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 1.
We finished verse 17 last week, and now we'll work our way to verse 18 and following.
When I say these words, tell me what they all have in common. I'll give you a list of words.
What do all these words have in common? Outlandish, strange, freakish, odd, unnatural, unusual, weird, foreign, abnormal, alien, human, grotesque, and barbarous.
What do all those words have in common? Answer, they all describe the
Corinthian culture's view of the cross of Jesus Christ.
Freakish, bizarre, weird, foolish, the worldly wisdom, the wisdom that was at Corinth, the wisdom out of which
God plucked some people to save them, thought of the cross as foolish.
And here Paul is going to say, human wisdom is foolish, worldly wisdom is foolish, worldly wisdom can't save, only
God can save. I'm not quite sure we think about the cross the way people did back then, because for us, we're looking backwards and we're used to it, and we have rightly and appropriately songs like,
At the cross, the old rugged cross, in the cross of Christ I glory.
And we think about the cross sometimes rightly, sometimes in kind of a romantic, sentimental way, but when it comes to the cross, thinking like a
Corinthian, thinking like Paul was dealing with this issue, it comes across as moronic, stupid, offensive, and it's more of a swear word than it is something to glorify in.
Literally back in those days, it was not polite to talk about the cross in public, if you wanted to be sophisticated.
And we're going to see today that Paul deals with an issue in chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4 with the church of Corinth, and that issue is what?
Divisiveness. You say, well, how did wisdom get in here? And we're going to hone in on this idea of wisdom, and Paul's going to say this, if you think about wisdom properly, it will unify instead of split apart.
If you're after worldly wisdom, and you think the apostles are teaching worldly wisdom, then you'll line up after each apostle,
I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Barnabas, because they all teach their own way of worldly wisdom.
But if you say this wisdom that the apostles have is not from themselves, it's not from the culture, it's not worldly, it's from God, then you'll line up directly behind God, and you won't see the people, and therefore the divisions will vanish.
So Paul takes a little detour here, as it were, to talk about wisdom, but it's in the large context of divisiveness.
Show me a divisive church, and I'll show you people not following along God's wisdom, but man's wisdom per human leaders.
Today we're going to talk about wisdom, and how human worldly wisdom is foolish, how it cannot save.
Only God and His wisdom can save. You might be thinking, what's wrong with a high
IQ? What's wrong with studying? What's wrong with practicing knowledge?
Well, that's not worldly wisdom. The problem with wisdom that's worldly is not that it's wisdom, it's that it is what?
Worldly. Wisdom in and of itself isn't bad. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of what?
Wisdom. Wisdom's not a bad thing, but when it's worldly, it's wrong. And so when you think of worldly wisdom today, here's what
I want you to think about. I want you to think about a wisdom that looks at the world and says,
God has nothing to do with it. It's a worldview is what it is. How to think about life, economics, the social strata, politics, how to get along, and how to make yourself right with God, forgetting what
God says about it and thinking about what man says. D .A.
Carson said it this way, worldly wisdom was a public philosophy, a well -articulated worldview that made sense of life and ordered the choices, values, and priorities of those who adopted it.
Looking at life, forgetting God, a worldview of how to think of life, death, birth, creation, evolution, how to get along, family, marriage, work, life, sports, without God.
That's what worldly wisdom is. So it's flawed because it's fallen.
It's flawed because it's democratic. It's flawed because it's egocentric.
It's flawed because it's self -righteous. And so Paul wants to correct what's going on at Corinth.
And he doesn't want people to think about wisdom from a man -centered perspective. Sounds like the horses are coming.
Let me give you a series of questions today to ask you and then we'll answer so that you can think properly about worldly wisdom, divine wisdom, so that you address the cross properly and so that our church stays unified.
A series of questions that will help determine if you're thinking properly and biblically about wisdom and about Christianity.
These will all help us deal with the text, but hopefully from a way that will keep your mind engaged, will also make you think about the text.
A series of questions. Question number one. What symbol would worldly wisdom pick for their religion?
If worldly wisdom had to pick a symbol for their religion, what would they pick? Well, I did some study this week.
Sometimes they like to pick grain or a stalk of grain. There's a lot of fertility.
There's a lot of produce. So they would pick some kind of basket of fruit for their symbol of religion.
The Baha 'i faith picks the nine -pointed star. Buddhism has the wheel of Dharma.
Wiccans pick the pentagram. Gnostics pick the sun cross. Hindus pick, among other things, the swastika.
Islam picks the star and crescent. Judaism picks the star of David. Taoism picks yin and yang.
By the way, my worst religious symbol of all time is that I see on back of bumper stickers now all the time.
And this is what I call spiritual ipecac, right? It just, or if you will, when
I grew up, we were poor and so we couldn't afford ipecac. So my mother always said, if you need to make yourself regurgitate, hot milk with a bunch of yellow mustard in there.
Stir it up and guzzle it down. Ipecac. The thing that gives me the most spiritual ipecac response today is co -exist.
That's worldly wisdom. That's wisdom that doesn't say, I'll think about things with God the
Creator, God the Judge, God the Savior in mind. I won't think about that. We've got to think about practical, pragmatic, utilitarian ways.
And we just all have to be like Rodney King to just get along. What does divine wisdom pick for the symbol of religious worship?
What does the text say? 1 Corinthians 118. For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
If you could summarize Christianity, Paul, what would you say summarizes
Christianity? And he would say without a doubt, the cross. The cross.
That's why I was shocked when Bill Hybel said to Peter Jennings, wouldn't you think it's important to even have one cross in your church,
Jennings asked. Hybel said, we're very serious about what Christ did on the cross, but to capture the essence of Christianity in a single symbol is a little dangerous, we feel.
I don't say the dove is bad. I don't say the fish symbol is bad.
But this message that the church of Corinth needed was the cross. That was the symbol, the word of the cross, the doctrine of the cross, this theologically loaded word.
This is not just a word that means wood, either a straight stick or a stick up with a cross bar.
This has got the theological meaning behind it. And when you think of the cross back in those days, if you can think like a person living in Corinth, living in Jerusalem, living in Persia, you would say things about the cross like that's grotesque.
To have some man who's up there naked, who's slowly suffocating, who keeps pushing himself up against the cross with his legs to try to get some breath.
We don't want to talk about that. Children, don't look over there. Turn your heads.
Let's go around this way. There was this stigma of shame and offensiveness and repugnant feeling when you think of the cross.
And again, for us, partly it's time, partly because we know how God has transformed us through the cross, partly because we live in kind of a romantic kind of feeling culture and so we don't think about it properly.
My question to you is, when you see the word cross, do you think of cruel, shameful death?
Back in the day, it was very popular to crucify people. King Darius crucified 3 ,000
Babylonians. Alexander the Great, 2 ,000 Tyrrhenians.
Alexander Janus crucified 800 Pharisees while the soldiers slaughtered their wives as they watched.
To the Jew, the cross became even worse because they lived in God's land and now the
Romans come in. The Jews would stone people, but now the Romans come in and so the cross is bad enough, but now the oppressors who have taken over the land are in town and they're using crucifixion to kill the
Jews. Sometime after Jesus died, about 40 years after Jesus died, Titus Vespasian, he crucified so many
Jews that they ran out of wood. It's distasteful to talk about this.
It's repugnant. I like flowers better. I like lilacs better.
I like stalks of wheat better for a religious symbol. Forget this kind of obscene, stark naked person up there gasping for breath, waiting for the vultures and the birds and the carrion to come and eat the flesh after the person dies.
Really, it was a swear word back in those days, the cross. And so what does Paul do?
When it comes to Christianity, the symbol that symbolizes best Christianity is the cross.
Paul didn't say, by the way, I'm kind of embarrassed about that. I really don't want to talk about it that much, but I am an apostle after all and I guess
I have to do what God tells me to do. Paul didn't act that way at all, did he? He didn't ignore it.
He didn't sweep over it. He didn't seem to kind of blush with shame or embarrassment because of the cross, but he understood it was the cross.
Now, I have to ask you a question. Isn't the resurrection a little bit better to talk about?
After all, Jesus is alive. He's coming back. We were singing that song today, that third song, and I thought, yes,
He's coming back. The dead in Christ will rise. I can't wait for that. The resurrection would make it a little bit easier.
It wouldn't be this stick in the eye to the worldly wisdom. You want wisdom?
Here's the God -man on a cross. Wouldn't it be better to worldly wisdom? Couldn't we sell it a little bit easier?
Kind of lather it in a little bit? I know sometimes if you're wakeboarding, you can't get your foot into the little boot.
If you can't afford the $15 wakeboard boot gel, then you just take some shaving lotion and you just spray it in there and your foot just slips right in.
Give me some kind of lubricant to kind of slip in the cross to the culture so it's not as offensive because who's going to follow that?
You'd think he'd want to talk about the resurrection, but it's the cross. He believes in the resurrection. He's seen the resurrected
Jesus. But the one thing that symbolizes Christianity more than anything else is the cross of Christ.
The place where the unthinkable happened, where God damned His Son. See, that's not polite.
It's not appropriate. We like to talk about happy things. And worldly wisdom does that exact thing.
Now, if you haven't been shocked yet, let me maybe shock you now.
While I disagree vehemently with the Roman Catholic crucifix because of the symbolism that goes along with it, slaying
Jesus weekly or daily at the Mass, the atonement not sufficient enough, ongoing sacrifices, ongoing mediators, ongoing denial of Romans chapter 9 and 10,
I understand that. But if I tell you what the definition of a crucifix is, here's the definition in Latin.
One fixed to a cross. I'd like to actually redeem the crucifix.
The next time you go to the hospital, St. Vincent's, Worcester Medical Center, and in your room there's a crucifix, instead of going, take that out of my room,
I'm a Protestant, Jesus is alive. I know He's alive. But I want you to think that is the symbol of Christianity.
The cross with Jesus on it because the God -man was on the cross. Of course, we know in time, then
He was raised from the dead, up from the grave He arose. But think back to that time from Friday night till Sunday morning where Jesus was on the cross.
God pouring out His wrath upon Jesus. Jesus taking the wrath.
The Father and the Son both agreeing in eternity past, I love the world, we love the world,
Father loves the world, send the Son. The Son loves the world, send the Son. And to die on the behalf of believers.
That's true. Where sin was so heinous, sin was so ungodly that the
Father had to punish the Son. That's what I want you to think about when you think of the crucifix. Don't go, well, these
Catholics don't know Hebrews chapter 9 and 10. That may be true. But Christians forget what it means to have
Jesus on the cross. Here is your Messiah. I'm not a rhymer, but I automatically thought of, to most people that would be
Jesus the pariah. I don't say the crucifix is some kind of amulet or some kind of mystical thing.
But from the Protestant perspective, you see Jesus affixed to a cross, you'll see why that is not worldly wisdom at all.
The Messiah dead. If you could summarize Christianity with one symbol, it ought to be the cross.
Number two, we're coming to this passage, I'm asking a lot of questions. So you can think about this from a biblical perspective, because culturally we're removed, historically we're removed.
We can't just dive in here and somehow think, oh, we're Westerners, we understand the
Eastern culture. And so that's why the series of questions. Question number two, does worldly wisdom see all ways to heaven as equal?
Not always one word, but A -L -L space W -A -Y -S. Does worldly wisdom see all ways or paths to heaven as equal?
And what's the answer? Of course they do. Of course they do. But take a look at verse 18 as we look at this verse from a different perspective to make sure we see the fullness of its meaning.
For the word of the cross, the preaching of the cross, this Jesus the sin bearer, is to those who are perishing foolishness.
But look at the other side. But to those who are being saved, it is the power of God.
The word of the cross yields two different perceptions, two different results. The same message, two people hear it and they respond differently.
Two different classes and only two. Worldly wisdom from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, Unitarian Universalists for unity,
I don't care who they are, Hindus, Buddhists. And your friends probably, well
I'm glad you're spiritual, we kind of all get there at the end, right? That's the way they talk.
And they don't understand the justice of God. By the way, if I agree that God is love, but if He's not just and if He doesn't hate sin, what kind of God is
He who could allow sin and horror and rape to go on and go, that's okay, you're good.
No, there is a God who's more than a savior, He's a just savior. And this cross message that Jesus died on the cross for sinners, splits people right down the line.
It's nothing new, by the way. Many Jews think that universalism is true, but let me just read you
Daniel 12 too. Listen carefully. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.
God's wisdom says you're either lost or saved. You're either a saint or you're an ain't. You're either going to heaven or you're going to hell.
The world says, the worldly wisdom says, you know what, that just can't be. I just don't want to think about it that way.
I'd rather think about me and I'm really not that bad in my sin and so therefore,
I like to create God kind of the way I like to create God. As Michael Horton says, that's just called Sheila -ism.
When you're named Sheila and you think, I don't want the God of the Bible, I'll just create my own God. So just don't call it
Christianity, call it Sheila -ism and we'll coexist in this world together. But it's not right.
Jesus the Lord says, why don't you turn with me to Matthew 25 just for a moment. Matthew 25 .40,
Jesus our Lord, Jesus God -man himself, the eternal God -man, the one who called himself like the father called himself,
I am the Alpha and the Omega, first and the last. What does Jesus say?
I don't want to have worldly wisdom, I want to think from a biblical perspective. And the world sells its wares day in and day out.
And so, one of the wonderful things about hearing Bible preaching is we begin to think again like God wants us to think.
The bifurcation of destinies, you see it right here with Jesus. Let's just jump in in verse 40, you'll get the idea.
Matthew 25 .40, the king will answer and say to them, truly
I say to you to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even to the least of them, you did it to me and you do something good.
Verse 41, then he will also say to those on his left, depart from me accursed ones into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty, you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.
Then they themselves will also answer, Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, or did not take care of you?
Then he will answer them, truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.
And now you'll see this splitting of destinies that worldly wisdom will never tell you, but the
Lord Jesus did. These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
Your nature will determine your view of the cross. And you notice a text back, let's go back to 1
Corinthians 1, verse 18, it's a current standing. Lots of times, and rightly so, we say, people, if you die in your sins, you'll perish.
But the way Paul is talking about it here, that's true, but he's talking about the current standing, the current nature, present tense.
To those who are perishing, but to us it's being saved, is the power of God. They're the perishing ones and the ones who are being saved now, this is the power of God.
The cross splits, the cross divides. And if you were a worldly wisdom person and you think about division, here's how you'd think about it.
This kind of wisdom splits socio -economically. Because back in those days, any kind of wisdom, two people would listen to it and go,
I'm a Democrat, oh no, I don't agree with that, I'm a Republican. I'm a slave,
I'm free, I'm rich, I'm poor, I'm educated and I'm not educated.
But this cross splits in a different fashion. It doesn't split horizontally, it splits vertically and it says, before the cross, under the cross, everybody is equal because they're all equally bad in Adam.
And here, the way you look at the messages, you say, it either proves my perishing nature or it proves my believing, saving nature.
The traditional categories of race and gender, status, here's an issue and it splits the men and the women, here's an issue and it splits old and young.
No, this is the issue and it splits those who go to heaven and those who go to hell. Now, you're not going to hear that from the latest theological seminaries from the
Ivy League. C .S.
Lewis, though not the best theologian, had a way with words when he rightly addressed theology. He said, one's response to this message reveals a lack of faith.
It reveals whether a person is headed towards immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
I could stop now and ask you the question, what is your response to the cross? Belief? Acceptance?
Reception? I understand this is the divine transaction, or is it, how could
God be so exclusive? You mean to tell me that's the only way? And if you say, it may be gross, but it is precious, then you should say to yourself, that's one sign of me being a saved one.
If you say, well, I don't agree with that, I disagree with that, I can't think that way because if I look back in my life, my husband, my wife, my mother, my grandmother, my friends, everybody who's gone and died before me, that means they didn't believe it, not that I know of, because they were entrenched in a work system.
I just can't think that way and I won't think that way. And Jesus would say, then you should stand thinking that you're the perishing one now.
Question number three. Do you know that worldly wisdom thinks the cross is moronic?
Did you know that the worldly wisdom and its adherents think the cross is moronic?
Take a look back in verse 18 as we look at this from another angle. For the word of the cross, substitutionary atonement, is foolishness to those who are perishing.
I mean, if you're going to give some wisdom, don't you think you'd give some real wisdom? Something that is going to not make me think you're a moron, but something that's going to make me think, good,
I'd like to follow that. I'd like to get some extra followers. But here exactly that word foolishness is the word where we get moron.
Moriah. It's foolish. By the way, back in those days,
I don't think we think this way. If you were to actually believe that Jesus died on a cross, naked, abandoned by God, and you followed that Savior, it wasn't just a theological ostracism that you might receive.
It was a social issue. It had social implications. The moronic cross had moronic followers who were shunned by the worldly wise.
And for the Corinthians especially. Wisdom, social status, were married together.
If you believed the right kind of wisdom, you had the right kind of social status. If you believed the best kind of wisdom, you were up higher.
Now what if you believe in moronic stuff? What does that do to your social status? God's wisdom.
Here it is. Jesus is on a tree, naked. Doesn't seem too wise to me, if I think from the world's perspective.
Here's Jesus on the cross. How wise is this? He can't even save himself.
He's going to save everybody else? That's not wise. That is stupid. Now the world would say, we like martyrs.
At least if he died a martyr's death, I'd say, admirable.
I'll follow that. Way to go. But he wasn't dying a martyr's death.
He was dying for sinners and receiving the wrath of God. And when he cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
It was because the Father, who had eternal communion with the Son, turned his back on the
Son and poured out the vials of the damned on the Son. It's embarrassing.
It's reprehensible. Children would snicker at that.
How revolting is that? MacArthur said that one man could die on a piece of wood, on a nondescript hill, in a nondescript part of the world, and thereby determine the destiny of every person who has ever lived, seems stupid.
That one man could die on a piece of wood, on a nondescript hill, in a nondescript part of the world, and thereby determine the destiny of every person who has ever lived, seems stupid.
That's why you'll see things in history. Little artwork on caves and graffiti, like the one in Rome, that shows a worshiper bowing before a crucified figure, and that figure has the body of a man and a head of an ass.
And the description underneath it is, Aleximinus worships his God. And to those who are sinful, self -righteous, self -absorbed, prideful, self -sufficient, this cross seems stupid.
Come and die. Pick up your cross and die. Hate yourself. Hate your mother, father.
Deny self. The noun moriah appears only in 1 Corinthians.
Verse 18, verse 21, verse 23, chapter 2, and chapter 3. But interestingly, the adjective moros, foolish, is used a couple of other places in the
New Testament, but it's used a lot in the Old Testament for self -destructive behavior.
A moron is someone who destroys himself. I think it's quite interesting that it was
God being destroyed himself. I would say this, true or false, the word of the cross is a good message for the upwardly mobile.
I don't think so. True or false, the word of the cross is good for those who are politically ambitious.
We admire martyrs. We disdain those who are hung on a tree like a prisoner or a criminal.
I have a question, another question, it's not in the outline, but just a question. When you think of this cross this way, what does it make you feel like when you've got jewelry that's a cross around your neck?
Or earrings or something. By the way, I'm no legalist, so if you want to have earrings or a necklace or anything like that, you can.
But I would say this, I think maybe you're forgetting what the cross really symbolized back in those days.
One man said, what would you think if a woman came to work wearing earrings stamped with an image of the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb that dropped over Hiroshima?
The same man asked, what would you think of a church building adorned with a fresco of the massed graves at Auschwitz?
And this man says, the same sort of shocking horror was associated with the cross and crucifixion in the first century.
You want to wear jewelry? That's fine. I'm not after that. Here's what I'm after. For when you think of the word cross, you say to yourself, it stands against all worldly wisdom, all man's wisdom.
And if you get an idea of what the cross is, it should make you think, this is amazing that the
God -man, that the Messiah would die on a cross like that. The apostate
Nietzsche, he was an apostate. He was the son of a Lutheran pastor.
But he was not wrong when he said, Christianity is the metaphysics of the hangman. Or may
I just say, of course I may say, I'm the preacher. That's just a general way to say this.
When you preach the Gospel, the real Gospel, the Gospel of Christ Jesus, I don't think you ought to say to yourself, this is going to bolster our friendship.
This is going to win me people, because they will associate you with the message.
I wish it wasn't true, but I'll go so far to say this, if you're preaching the real
Gospel, and people aren't offensive, offended, it's because God's working in their heart.
And if they're not having God work in their heart, and they're not offended, you're not preaching the real
Gospel. Well, God will just take care of... I was listening to Sinclair Ferguson, a tape even this week.
For those of you that don't know what a tape is, it's older. I come from an era where we had tape ministries.
There's a sign on the road. Come to Jesus and He'll fix all your problems.
Sinclair Ferguson said, if I can summarize what he said, come to Jesus and He'll give you more problems than you ever thought you had.
But the biggest problem, status with God, standing with God, is taken care of.
That problem's gone. Forgiven, free, justified by the work of another, never paying for your sins and trespasses, but all the other things that God will use to sanctify and trials and suffering.
The suffering servant, Jesus, has servants who suffer. And so if you say, I don't want problems, I'll come to Jesus, you don't understand the message of the cross, nor you understand
Jesus. And when we preach the gospel, it should be for one and one reason only, from their perspective.
We will glorify God as we preach, but from their perspective, we want them to deal with forgiveness of sin.
You will die one day and stand before God, and then what will you do with your sin? And only the metaphysics of a hangman can have your sins punished on someone else, instead of on you for eternity.
When you go evangelize people, and you preach the gospel, and they're kind of nice on the outside, and they smile, and, oh, that's really good for you.
I'm glad you found yourself, and I'm spiritual too. You should give them enough truth where they say, that person is moronic for believing those things, because that's what worldly wisdom does.
Or, hopefully, Lord willing, God's working in their heart, and they'd go, my conscience is guilty.
I stand condemned before God. I try to entertain myself. I try to booze myself.
I try to drug myself. But I know I'm a sinner at the core. God, help me. And we know the answer.
This whole idea, well, we're just going to kind of be real kind, and we'll just kind of slip in the gospel, and the people don't even know the
Jesus to reject. One man said, some people, they don't know enough of this
God to reject Him. Don't be taken off guard when you preach the real gospel.
Question number four, and I didn't think I'd have enough material today. Question number four, did you know the wisdom of the world is blind to the real power of God?
Did you know the wisdom of the world is blind to the real power of God? Again, I'm not saying wisdom is
IQ or applied knowledge. I'm saying IQ or applied knowledge or a collective worldview that will not acknowledge the
Creator God is worldly. It's a mindset. It's a worldview. We hear about worldviews all the time.
Unless you have a Christian theocratic, let's not say theocratic, a
Christian worldview, then you're thinking worldly. Did you know the wisdom of the world is blind to the real power of God?
Look at verse 18 again. But to us who are being saved, this moronic, foolish cross that's repugnant to the eye is what?
It is the power of God. That sounds just like Romans 1.
The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. We see it not because we're better, not because we're smarter, but because God, like Lydia, to Lydia, God has opened our eyes and opened our hearts.
The Gospel isn't good advice. The Gospel is not potential power. It's not kinetic power.
It's not I'm going to make things possible power. It is the actual power of God. It's effective to accomplish salvation.
It changes people. Flip over to 1 Corinthians 6 -9 if you would.
It changed the Corinthians. How powerful is the Word of God? How powerful is this moronic cross?
How powerful is the dead Messiah on the tree assuaging the wrath of God?
Powerful enough to make you new creatures in Christ, transform your mind, will, heart, emotions, values, ambitions, and eternal destiny.
1 Corinthians 6 -9 Or do you not know, you should know, that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of heaven?
Don't be deceived. Why? Because you could be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor feminine, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
But now you want to know the power? Fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals at Corinth, and they were, many have been transformed.
Look at verse 11. Such were some of you, but you were washed and you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God by the power of the cross. The cross is so powerful it can take
Paul, the Christian killer, and turn him into an apostle. Practically, do you trust your rhetoric?
Do you trust your argumentation skills in evangelism? Do you trust, well, I know evidence that demands a verdict.
I've got prophecies down. I've got carbon dating. I've got all these kind of other things. I've got issues of morality.
I've got changed lives. I've got all my different things going on. I understand Van Til. I understand apologetic methodology.
I understand Greg Bonson, and I kind of know how to talk to people. If I say it the right way and if I mean it the right way,
I ask questions enough, I close, I do this, I do that, then maybe they'll be saved. Last time
I checked, the power of God is not in eloquence, rhetoric, rationale, prophecies, carbon dating, intelligent design.
The power is the message. Now, doesn't that make you happy? You're like,
I'm not as good an evangelist as so -and -so. Great, because then you're going to rely on the
Word of God instead of your smarts. I don't say this because I want you to say after the service, Mike, I do really think you're smarter than you say.
I'm glad that my IQ is not 250, because I'd rely on my IQ to evangelize people instead of me just being,
I'm pretty much a farmer. And there's the plow, put the hand to the plow, and go. I don't know what else to tell you.
Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. I have no idea except you're a sinner, there's only one
God, you'll face God one day, and unless you realize you're lost, and you're powerless to save yourself, and you throw yourself in the mercy of God, who is no longer on the cross, but He's resurrected, you must believe and repent, there's no hope for you.
You say, well, I don't know if I could do that. If you're a
Christian, you can do it, because you've been commanded to do it, and the Spirit of God attends to your obedience, motivates your obedience, stimulates your obedience.
I love it that I don't need rhetoric. The philosophers back in those days, they didn't just talk, the
Greco -Roman culture said, here's what I'm after, I'm after the audience's yielding. It's kind of like Finney, I want them to yield.
The good news is for us who believe in the power of the cross, I'm not after your yielding.
You might kill me before the message is over, I don't know. Maybe that's why I'm going to quick slip out after the service and fly to Orlando, 70 degrees and windy.
I'm so happy I don't need eloquence. I'm so happy God uses Moses, the stutterer.
My job is not to make people yield, that is the Spirit of God's privilege, prerogative, and right alone.
We're going to see in chapter 2, Paul's going to say, it's not by persuasive words of wisdom. Yes, I want to persuade, yes,
I want to encourage, yes, I want to beseech. But that's not what's going to make you repent, it's going to be the power of the word of the cross.
I'm happy about that. I'm happy that New England revivals have not been because all of Edward's people were so smart.
If you do think you can talk people into Christianity, then how can you be so persuasive that you can change their hearts, and you can talk to them so they can make their own hearts change.
It's impossible. The power is in the gospel. I thank
Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor.
Paul said in 1 Timothy 1, yet I was shown mercy. The grace of our Lord was more than abundant with faith and love, which are found in Christ Jesus.
It's a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom
I am foremost of all. Friends, if you've got a loved one, a relative, someone that you know, and you think they're the worst sinner, and you think they're the unsavable, and they've been entrenched in some kind of works religion for 50 or 80 years, or they're some kind of horrible murderer, or they're some pedophile, or they're some incarcerated person,
I want you to know that the power of God can save those people. Say, well,
I don't pray enough for them, and I don't evangelize them enough, and I fall so short.
Give them the Word of God, and let God the Spirit make their hearts yield. If you think this way, the church stands together.
We stand together in how we think about God. He's a lone Savior. Jesus, He alone is the
Messiah. The love and the wrath of God, both shown at Calvary.
What kind of wisdom to follow, and we just kind of line up. It's like horses. Sorry to use horse races for those of you, but I remember
I went to the Kentucky Derby one time because I wanted to just see the races, and the horses up close. They all go in those little chutes, don't they?
And we just line up behind these chutes of not human wisdom, not worldly wisdom, but divine wisdom.
Here's how I think about God. Here's how I think about evangelism. Here's how I think about wisdom. Here's how I think about wisdom that's devoid of having
God front, center, beginning, and ending. Here's how I think about the local church. Here's how I think about apostles.
And you just line up, and everybody's right there together, up close. That's what this kind of message does.
And I mean not my message. I mean 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18. We're going to learn more next week from this text.
I'm expecting great things from God. And I hope if you're not a Christian today, that God will make your heart bow to this moronic gospel.
You used to think it was moronic. Now you think it's powerful. There's only one gospel to save, and you can be forgiven.
Come and drink of the waters for free. Jesus has paid it all. Repent and believe.
Believe that Jesus died for sinners. Believe that you're a sinner. Believe that you need forgiveness and cry out for his mercy.
And if you're a Christian here today and you hear this message, then you ought to go out with this thought.
The fellowship of the saints is more important than ever. So we all ought to get along, be of one mind, one wisdom, one unity, because no one else besides Christians thinks this way.
And it's good, isn't it, on Sundays to get together and say, I may be a moron, but I'm in the company of morons.
I didn't want this sermon to end with a laugh, but let's pray. Oh God, our help in ages past.
Help our church. Father, we're weak, we're frail, but we have received your revelation, and that revelation has informed us and taught us that you hated sin so much you punished your son.
You loved us so much you didn't punish us. I pray that you'd give us hearts of thankfulness today, hearts of joy, and hearts for the lost.
Lord, keep us faithful to give people the only thing that's powerful enough to save people from their sins and unto the resurrected
Savior, and that is the word of God, the gospel of free, sovereign grace. And we pray this for Jesus, the