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Don Filcek; 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 Understanding Our Mission
You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Vilsack preaches from his sermon series titled First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in.
Welcome everybody. That was awesome to just see the next generation, right? Isn't it glorious? Awesome to see what God's doing and going to do and look forward to seeing what He's going to do in the lives of those young people as they continue to grow in the Lord.
I'm Don Vilsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and I am so glad to be together in this gathering this morning with the opportunity that we have to worship together. He wants to bless us together in this gathering.
Now, I'm introducing and going to start off kind of taking us into the message for this morning, but Recast started over 14 years ago with the stated mission to worship Him and find more worshipers for His name.
That's our mission statement, to worship Him and find more worshipers for His name. Now, there are two prongs to that mission, church. We desire to be a people who worship God in all facets of our lives, in our singing, in our gathering, in our studying, in our work, in our families.
I joke about in the way we drive our cars, but in our thoughts and really in our everything. Worship is not merely an hour and a half, cannot be relegated to merely an hour and a half on a Sunday morning, nor ought it to be relegated to the idea that's so common in our culture today, and that's just simply that worship is singing, right?
It's just singing. When I'm worshiping God, I'm singing, and that's not it at all. Singing is a part of it, but that's not the sum total of it. Worship is all of our life for all that He is. We believe that it's only through faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that we can be set free to this kind of living for Him, a life given over to Him in the moment by moment and day by day, not just merely for an hour on a Sunday morning.
We need the break in our relationship with God. All of us have a relationship that's broken before God, and we need that to be fixed because our lives are broken through sin, and Jesus came to be that fix.
Jesus likened the finding of Him to this kind of truth, like a man who stumbled across the treasure in a field. He's out working maybe another man's field, and he finds this treasure, and so the man went out and gave up all that he had so that he could buy the field with the treasure in it.
And the point of the parable that Jesus told is the great joy that that man experienced in finding the treasure, the one treasure that truly satisfies a human soul. Jesus saying, I am that treasure. I am the one, and we all want to experience joy.
Raise your hand if you want to experience joy like you do, and raise your hand if you want others to experience joy as well. Not only do we want that for ourselves, but we want to share that with others, and so we seek to introduce more to the treasure, that more might find peace and rest and joy and delight and forgiveness and hope in Jesus Christ.
That ought to be a part of our calling church, a part of who we are in Christ, and so our text this morning is going to highlight the mission of Paul, but more deeply the mission that God leaves for His entire church.
You see, we serve a God who is seeking to save the lost. He is a God who sent forth His Son to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, and everybody in this room is the recipient of somebody stepping out in faith to share with you.
Now, it might have been a parent. It might have been a pastor. It might have been someone, but somebody. I mean, you can go back to in your history someone that has influenced you for Christ, right? How many of you have that name in your mind?
Somebody who invested in you, who took a step out, and that's all of our stories. Now we're talking about being the one who gives that in turn to others, but God is ascending out God, and we will see that God's message of redemption is not discerned, according to this text, by worldly wisdom.
He is not all about rescuing the wisest, rescuing the most powerful, or those with the most prestige, those with the most fame, and as He has commissioned all of us in this ministry of seeking more worshipers for His name, He is concerned even for the methods that we employ in reaching the lost.
We'll see that in this text. You see, I fear that many of us can get kind of twisted and warped on what it means to share our faith with the lost, or evangelize the lost, and I believe that God would desire to demystify that for us each this morning.
My hope is that our time together provides more simplicity, and hear me carefully, church, this is a strange statement, but that it even lowers, this text even lowers the expectations you have, and I think expectations that you have probably unfortunately caught surrounding what you need to know and what you need to do in order to share your faith with the lost around you.
This is a strange statement, but the bar is low. The bar is super low in what you need to be able to communicate to others, and I think we've elevated it to the point where, let's leave that to the experts, because they know all the answers, as if you have to have every answer to every question ever designed against God before you share your faith with others, and Paul's going to adamantly disagree with you on that.
He is going to lower the bar significantly, to basically say, if you can say a sentence that we're going to see here in the text, if you can say this sentence, you can share your faith with others, and Paul wants to bring us all in on the simplicity of that mission here this morning.
So, open your Bibles, or your devices, or your scripture journals to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. We're going to start in verse 18. So, 1 Corinthians 1 .18, and we're going to read all the way over to verse 5 of chapter 2.
It kind of carries the same thoughts forward, and so let's follow along, church, as you get a chance to navigate there. Again, 1 Corinthians 1 .18 is what we're going to start reading, and recast as I remind you every week, this is a holy moment, because we are going to take in the very word of the Almighty to us this morning.
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.
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 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 a sign, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, and folly to the 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. For consider your callings, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful.
Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world. If you're looking for yourself in the text, it's right there. God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are. So that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
So that as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, I rejoice in this passage that re-centers us on the source of power. Saving power is found in a just eminently simple message, sometimes hard for us to believe, but easy to understand, the power of the cross.
Father, I pray that that would be the uniting theme of this church. I believe it has been down through the years and 14 years of taking communion together every week, of coming back to that central point of our lives where we know that we're busted, we know that we're broken, we know that we need healing, and that is provided the remedy is Jesus Christ and him crucified.
All the other things are extra, all the other things that we want to make things complicated, and you've given us a simple message. And I pray that through this message you would allow our hearts to be in sync with you, in sync with the drumbeat, to be one-trick ponies when it comes to the messaging that we provide to the world around us.
And it is the cross, the cross, the cross, the place where our sin was dealt with, the place where we received the greatest gift we will ever receive, the place where your love was poured out abundantly, effusively on us, the unworthy, the weak, and the foolish.
Thank you for redeeming us, and I pray that you would now as we sing, as those who once were fools, those who were once on the road called perishing, and have been brought into your son, and our feet placed on the road called being saved.
Give us delight in that this morning, and let that fuel our worship, I ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Go ahead and be seated, make yourself comfortable. If at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee, juice, or donut holes, I think there's more back there, so you're not going to distract me if you need to get up or use the restrooms out the double doors down the hallway on the left-hand side.
Those are back there. And then please reopen your Bibles, your devices, your scripture journals to 1 Corinthians chapter 118, and we're going to take it from there and just move through. Now, when I mention the word evangelism, what comes to your mind?
What comes to your mind? Think about it. Go ahead and be thinking about it. What comes to your mind when I say the word evangelism? My guess is that some of us get a little shifty. We know that we're called to share our faith with others, but we also know that that has the potential to cause some problems for us in our current culture.
Maybe you feel some tension or problems with your employer would not really think highly of that. There's tension with neighbors, or is that going to ruin my relationship with the guy I share a fence with?
Is that going to ruin a relationship with an aunt or an uncle that I have to see at Thanksgiving? Or is that going to become awkward with my friends? That may come from a variety of different places. Sometimes we feel inept or even fearful, and the thought of a message on the subject may seem like a bit of an uh-oh moment.
What did I get myself into this morning? Maybe this would have been a good one to sleep in. Maybe I'm going to walk out of here feeling a little guilty, but hang tight and let's go through this text together.
Our outline this morning is going to take the form of a correction from the Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth. We started a couple of weeks ago marching through the book of First Corinthians. We're going to be doing that for the entire summer and on into a little bit in the fall as well.
Going through First Corinthians and taking this letter on that Paul has written to a church in struggle, a church that is not quite getting it and is acting very sinful in a variety of ways. What primarily we saw from last week is that this church has all kinds of divisions going along the lines of their favorite speakers.
Each one has a favorite speaker and says, I kind of like him, I kind of like him. They enjoy a good debate. They have their favorite rhetorical champions. I'm going to throw the word rhetoric or rhetorical out a few times during this message.
I threw it around a lot last week and realized I didn't define it very well. I'm going to use that word to describe what would have been a very common thing. We get that word rhetoric straight from Greek.
It's a Greek word. That word would have made a lot of sense in Paul's day and time. The average person would have gone, oh rhetoric, I know what that is. What it is is it was their entertainment. That seems strange to our ears, but that was their entertainment.
That's like me talking about rhetoric or talking about sophistry or the sophists. That's like going Netflix, actors, actresses. What I mean by that is they didn't have Netflix. They didn't have YouTube.
They didn't have any of the socials, no movie theaters, no video games. The average person didn't even own a book if they could read. Entertainment was hard to come by in a culture that was a lot of subsistence farming out in the communities, but then in the city it was hard to live.
There was very little entertainment. Of course, there were some amphitheaters where there was some acting, but even those amphitheaters during the week got used by the sophists, by the people who used rhetoric.
The entertainment would take the form of people gathering in the forum or gathering in an amphitheater and listening to the latest sophist. When you hear the word sophist, just think wise guy, spouting new learning.
The idea of the Greek culture was that somebody's going to invent a learning that's going to solve all of our problems. There's going to be a centralizing principle, and someday somebody's going to step up on the stage and go, blah, and here's the thing.
It's going to usher in utopia, and everybody's going to believe it, and everybody's going to live it, and everybody's going to do it. They thought that education was the problem. Sound familiar? They thought that if we could just teach people the right things and get the right truth, then we would get there, and that's what they were thinking.
When you think of rhetoric, it's the tools employed by the TED Talk. When somebody gets up and gives a TED Talk, they are absolutely applying the principles of rhetoric. How many of you like a good TED Talk?
How many of you find them entertaining? Some of you? It's like, I can draw you in, right? It's like, oh, I haven't thought of things that way. You can see the skill and the interweaving of a good speaker, and it's like, oh, I get it.
Yeah, that's sweet. Somebody like me who has input high on my strength finders, I could get sucked into TED Talks and just watch and watch and watch. All of us are put together different, but hopefully, you can understand some of the appeal to that.
The methods that the best speakers employed in this day and age to entertain their crowds are what we call today rhetoric. They were finally crafted arguments filled with things like this. These are rhetorical tools in the tool belt of a speaker.
Emotional appeals, satire, humor, ironic twists, and manipulative tactics all with one main focus, get the crowd to agree with you. Now, it's very important for a sophist to get the crowd to agree with them because that's what they did for a living, and nobody puts money in the bucket unless you win the crowd over.
Get it? People voted with their coin. That was the culture in which Paul is speaking these things about wise words and lofty rhetoric and that kind of stuff. So, in the church in Corinth, the church was starting to respond this way to their spiritual leaders within the church.
Well, I'm kind of team Apollos. I'm kind of team Paul. I'm team Peter. They were starting to divide according to their favorite speakers. Apollos, it actually says in the book of Acts, was a gifted speaker.
That means that he was gifted at rhetoric. And so, now in our text, Paul sets out to tackle the content of the message, the people the message is seeking to reach, and the methods employed in reaching people.
And that's going to tie into our mission here, church, as well. All of this, by the way, you need to understand was radically countercultural in a culture that loved rhetoric. Our outline this morning falls into three points.
How God saves, or how he saves, verses 18 through 25. Who God saves, verses 26 through 31. And the message that God employs in saving, or the message God proclaims, verses 1 through 5 of chapter 2. So, we start in verse 18.
Why don't we, everybody agree, we should just start at the beginning? Is that okay? We just start at the beginning? Okay. That wasn't that funny. A little self-reflection, note to self. Verse 18 starts off with a bang.
The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. That's a pretty significant, in-your-face statement. Paul draws out one of those two types of people analogies right off the bat. How many of you know that there's two types of people, right?
There's always two types of people. Those who like, two types of people analogies, and those who don't, right? Amen. Somebody, I don't know which side you're on, but there you go. Paul uses one. He says there's two types of people.
There are those whose feet are trotting a certain path. They're on a pathway, and the pathway has a sign at every corner called perishing. The name of the street is perishing. They are on a pathway that if they do not get off this pathway, by the way, the default setting of the human heart is to be on this road.
It is a road that's end is eternal punishment. It is perishing. Then there are those who are on a pathway called being saved. They're being rescued. They're on a pathway that ends in rescue, that ends in redemption, that ends in salvation.
Now, anybody want to just raise your hand and say, I want to be on one of those roads, and it's not the first one, right? It's not the first one. The way that God saves is perceived in radically different ways according to these two groups.
Where you find yourself matters on how you view the method of God's saving. The message of the cross, he says directly, is foolishness. It is folly. It is empty. It is silly. It is laughable. It is roll your eyes kind of content to those who are currently on the pathway of destruction.
But for those who are being saved, we find the cross to be the very power of God. Amen? The cross is the power. We sang a lot about it already. I think we may often misunderstand the radical ways in which the saved differ from the lost.
We might tend to think we're just kind of like acting a little better or something like that. But there are fundamental difference in the very fabric of our worldviews, the way we perceive reality, the way we think the world works could not be further from each other.
For one group to think in their minds thoughts like this, this whole cross thing is foolish. And another group to say this cross thing is the power of God. How many of you know you can't get further from that?
Like that's substantial, very, very, very, very fundamental differences. But according to verses 19 through 21, Paul explains that the way that God saves is on purpose. It's with intention. He is seeking to destroy human wisdom that comes from hubris and pride.
This idea like the Greeks that we're just going to find the operating principle and we're going to fix it. Now how many of you hear that in the world today? All different kinds of what I would say are proud ways of looking at the world around us and saying mankind can fix this.
We can solve this problem. We can solve that problem. We've got the answers. We'll just do it ourselves. You know what I'm talking about? There's a lot of utopianism in our culture. The idea that there's going to be one glorious heaven with no God, right?
Imagine. Just imagine. Some of you got it. Just imagine. That wasn't in my notes. But there you go. He is intentionally trying to strike at our human pride that would try to solve all of our problems and fix it.
He cast down those who pride themselves as intellectuals. Now I want to point out that God is not anti. This is very fundamental church because the evangelical church has gone a wrong direction with this passage that we're looking at today.
They think that God is anti-intellectual. Like the best thing to do is check your brain out. Like get it out of the picture and then you can have real faith if you can just get your brain out of the way.
Not at all. But what God is against, very clearly, fundamentally in scripture, is he is against any form of pride or arrogance. Any form of pride or arrogance. And how many of you know that your intellect can lead down that road?
Often intellect is the way that we get there. So can the work of our hands, right? That can lead us to pride as well, can it not? It's not just our brains that cause us to sin, but sometimes our skills and other things get in the way as well.
It's not just intellect. God is not against intellect. He's against the wrong uses of intellect or the wrong trust in intellect. When it puffs us up and says, I've got everything I need. I really don't need God.
I've got a brain. And many people fall into that category. They're on the road of perishing. And anyone who would critique God's method of salvation, calling his method and his plans foolish, I can't think of anything more proud than that.
That is the epitome of pride to say, God, your way could use a little tweak and I'm here to help. You know, as if, and I think there's people who might not word it this way, but actually in practice in their minds and in their hearts, these are the kinds of conversations they may have in their minds.
Hey, God, I know you created all of this, but can I give you some pointers on how best to rescue people? What people need is a leg up. What they need is just some opportunity. What they need is a job.
What they need is resources. What they need is education. And then we could really save them. The whole cross thing is a bit rough and kind of bloody. And by the way, God, while I've got your ear, can we talk about the whole hell thing?
Could we kind of spin that and get a little PR on that? Because maybe we could run with a little bit lighter punishment, God, and that would be easier for our culture. How many of you know what I'm talking about?
Kind of like, God, what are you, why did you do it this way and this way and this way when I would have done it this way and this way? That is the epitome of pride. God casts down the proud but gives grace to the humble.
And the mechanism of that is quite straightforward. The prideful will not come to God on his terms. But the lowly, the lowly are more easily moved to accept his grace and mercy. And I mean the lowly like those who are down and out.
Those who are coming to the end of themselves. Those who have hit rock bottom and know it. Those who are stuck in a cycle of life that they go, this can't be all there is. They're ready, they're primed to receive grace and mercy.
In verse 20, Paul uses intellectuals. I would like to even just kind of, you know, put a prefix on that, pseudo-intellectuals from both Greek and Jewish culture. He talks about the wise guy, the sophist, the scribe, the debater.
Where are they, taunts Paul. Come debate with a cross. Come and try that out, he's saying. Come argue against God and come argue against his method of salvation, if you will. Where are they? God has made foolish the arrogant wisdom of this world.
He often simply makes it foolish by showing over time the ineffective nature of our proposed remedies. How many of you know that education doesn't get us there? Education doesn't solve our problems. Education hasn't fixed hunger.
Education hasn't fixed, hasn't fixed, hasn't fixed. And I'm not saying don't go for it. We just had a bunch of people sitting up here who are going to be going off to university, going off to various levels of education.
Man, go for it. And I'm not trying to say, you know, that it doesn't matter what you do in this world, because it does in honor to God, right? To honor Him with the work of our hands, to honor Him with the work of our minds.
There's value in that. But if that is a utopian dream, that God is raising me up to go fix the world, there's only one who's fixed the world, and His name is Jesus Christ. And only in as close as your life comes to Him are you going to have an impact.
Everything else will burn up in the end. Everything else will be gone, and it will rust, and it will come to nothing. I mean, I used to love walking in the cemetery. When we were in the storefront, we were right up against the cemetery, up off of Red Arrow.
And in the mornings, I would get to church early, and I'd walk through that cemetery, and I got to know some of the earliest date in that cemetery. It was like, I mean, 1780-something, a birth date. Like, somebody buried a Matawan that was born in the 1700s.
Like, crazy. There is nobody alive who can testify anything about the character of that man. Do you get what I'm saying? Like, gone. Whatever accomplishments, whatever work that he did, whatever he set out to do, nobody knows.
Nobody's alive that met him. And how many of you know that's where we're going? But what we have done in Christ has imminent value. And I'm not talking about just having a quiet time. I'm talking about, I mean, let me be clear.
I'm talking about plumbing for Jesus. I'm talking about being a chemical engineer for Jesus. I'm talking about being a cosmetologist for Jesus. I'm talking about delivering packages for Jesus. Are you getting what I'm saying in this?
Being a school teacher for Jesus. Hopefully being a pastor for Jesus. You getting what I'm saying? All of it done for the glory of our Lord. All of it done in worship to Him. I am so far off my notes here, it might take me a second to get back to where I'm supposed to be.
Somebody might have needed that. He has done this all. He has brought about salvation, and He is doing it through simple earthen vessels. He doesn't bring the treasure of reconciliation and redemption in golden boxes carved and ornate.
Now look at verse 21 with me. He has brought the treasure through the folly of a cross preached. He saves those who believe not through worldly wisdom, not through our inventions, not through our creations, not through our social reform, not through our programs.
He has done so. Wisdom that says, here's the kind of wisdom of the world. Put some flesh on it. Wisdom that says kings are born to queens, not to poor lowly virgins. Wisdom that says God's come riding on the storm clouds with lightning bolts in their hands.
They don't come in lowly mangers. Wisdom that knows that Messiahs don't heal on the Sabbath. The wisdom of the scribes in that day and age. Wisdom that knows that kings certainly don't die on crosses outside of the gates of Jerusalem.
That kind of wisdom that the world has. The kind that goes counter 180 degrees to the message of the Word. Wisdom doesn't get us to salvation. That kind of wisdom will get us nowhere. But the preaching, heralding, proclaiming the cross, what appears to be a foolish cross, that's where salvation comes.
And it's interesting that Paul denigrates himself in the eyes of the TED talking sophists here. The word that he uses here in the text for preach, the word is in Greek charigma. You don't need to know that.
It's just there. The word for preach is charigma, and it's a specific brand of word that would have been imminently insulting to a sophist. They get up, they give their TED talk, they step down, and you go, great charigma.
They would have been like, bro, why are you dissing me? Don't come at me. Those kind of stinking words like preaching, are you kidding me? That's what you think I just did? Time to go back to the drawing board and get this right.
That would be an insult, and the reason is that preaching, that word charigma, just simply means proclaiming the news. It is straight like a newsboy, like a herald on the town corner shouting out the headlines.
Hear all about it. It requires absolutely how much skill to do that? All you got to do is be able to read. Zero skill, no artistry, no nuance, and not really any persuasiveness at all is required to proclaim the news.
You just got to say it. All the things that a TED talk drives for are not found in the word charigma, and a sophist would have been insulted if you used that word for his speech. This is core for us, church.
This is fundamental for us to grasp. Paul is saying that people are saved by a declaration of what Christ did for us on the cross. They are not saved through finely crafted arguments, rhetorical flourishes, sales pitch Christianity, and wisdom that creates the I gotcha moment.
I don't think anyone was ever saved after hearing the comment, checkmate noob. The Jews wanted miracles, and the Greeks wanted sophisticated wisdom and oratory entertainment, but look at verse 23. Paul gave the only thing he knew to have the power to change people for real.
The power to change a culture is in the power to change people internally, and so he preached Christ crucified, the only thing that changes a human heart. Now, the Jews wanted signs, and what they got was actually quite an anti-sign in their minds.
Even at the foot of the cross, what were the Jewish leaders saying to Jesus there in that moment? Prove it. Give us a sign now, Jesus. Now would be the opportune time. Come down from the cross, and we will follow you.
Come down from the cross. Give us a sign. No, you can't. I'm begging for the miracle. Instead, they got a greater miracle right in their face, and they didn't see it. They got a greater miracle in the statement of Jesus.
Father, forgive them, for they don't even know what they're doing. They couldn't see it because they couldn't see grace. The Greeks wanted wisdom and instead are given the folly of a crucified God. I think our familiarity with the message dulls us and inoculates us to the shock of the gospel.
Have you considered what a shocking message we have to offer to the world? Hey, I've got good news. Jesus died. What? Let's go back to the word good in there. How many of you can imagine the world looking at us when we declare that message?
Hey, good news. Cross. He died. How many of you would not fault the world for kind of going like, is that good? Is that good news? Yet, this is our message. Fortunately, you might already be spinning in your mind, backpedaling.
Fortunately, we have that whole resurrection thing. How many of you were thinking about that already? Fortunately, we have that whole resurrection thing. Note what is imminently absent from Paul's argumentation here.
Now, did Paul believe in the resurrection? Chapter 15 of this book is going to be like a magnum opus about the resurrection. He absolutely is going to get there. He's going to get there for this church, but he wants to make sure that it is only after the cross is received as the power of God to deal with our sins that then the secondary enemy that comes as a result of sin is dealt with.
How many of you know we have two enemies, one big enemy and one smaller enemy? The one came on the coattails of the other. What's our biggest enemy? Does anybody want to take a chance? Sin. Sin that separates us from God is our biggest enemy.
What's our second enemy? Little death. Why does death come into the world? Sin. Our big enemy. He's like, our big enemy? Let's get to the cross. That's where the boss fight happened. The final boss fight was there at the cross, and Jesus was victorious over your greatest enemy.
I hope you never get over the cross, church. That's where he did it for us, tackling death from within the grave and gutting it of its power. Tim Keller passed away this week. How many of you know Tim Keller, read any of his books, author, pastor?
I read a quote from him today that just rocks me. Obviously not a quote today, he's in heaven with Jesus, but he said, Christ has taken death from being an executioner and turned death into a gardener because the worst that death can do to the child of God is this, plant us and watch us grow.
That's what death is for us. And Tim Keller is receiving that right now. We're going to go over today because I am so often off my notes. Nothing, this doesn't say anything about Tim Keller in here. He's not even in my notes, so we're going to just keep trying to plow through here.
We'll see. We'll see. Thanks, appreciate it. We have the resurrection thing, that's where I got off track. But it seems like Paul, here's where I want to go with this. It seems like Paul has painted us into a corner.
There are people who are perishing and he says that despite their reasons, there's a variety of reasons why a person might hate the message of the cross, but the cross is foolishness to all who are on the road to perishing.
And what's the message we share with people? The cross. Well, didn't Paul just say that it's foolishness to them? Didn't he just say that they despise it? Doesn't he say that they hate it? Doesn't he say that they roll their eyes and find it foolish and silly?
So, how many of you think that sounds kind of hopeless? We have a message of the cross to give to the world and those who are perishing see it as foolish. Do you see how we're painted in a corner now?
Where do we go? What do we do next until verse 24? What can overcome this attitude toward the cross? And there's one thing right at the start of verse 24, the calling of God. The calling of God overcomes.
There are some who will hear the message of Christ. Their feet are on the road of perishing. If there is no intervention, they will indeed die on their sins and be judged justly by a holy and righteous God.
And they will hear the message of Christ and His cross, and they will find in Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God to save them. How can a person be moved from antagonism to the message of the cross, rolling their eyes and like laughing and guffawing at it?
How can they be moved from that place to embracing it? The answer is simply the call of God. Because according to verse 25, God can overcome all wisdom and strength. He can overcome any barrier to belief.
Within those, He calls to Himself. And hear me carefully, church. Sometimes the call of God is meant to sound like your voice. Do you get it? Sometimes the call of God sounds just like you because it's coming out of your mouth.
And if you say it to those who are called, your voice will be sweet. Your voice will be the source of their hearing the message of the cross, and they will believe, and their destiny will be changed. Change is the call of God, but His call comes through the people of God.
He doesn't take out billboards. He doesn't make phone calls. He doesn't send emails, unless we take out billboards and make phone calls and send emails. According to verse 25, God can overcome all those barriers.
And how does He save? He takes people who are on the road to perishing, calls them to the foolishness of the cross through His people, and in strength demonstrates His power and glory in overcoming all resistance.
Look at verse 25 and know that God has no legitimate foolishness or weakness. But speaking in human terms, God at His weakest and most foolish condescension cannot come down to our highest strength and wisdom as humanity.
When we consider the strength of God, it's like a Venn diagram that never touches. There is no overlap between our strength and His because His is that much higher, and the same goes for His wisdom. So how does God save?
He saves by calling out from among those who are on the road to perishing, and He calls out through the simple proclamation of the cross. The called ones, whether Jew or Gentile, hear the message of Christ crucified, and they find in this message the unleashed power of God and the wisdom of God.
That's evangelism. That's the sharing of the gospel. The second thing that we see in this text starts in verse 26. Paul seeks to use their own conversion, the Corinthians, the church that he's speaking to, to use their own conversion as an example.
And that's going to run through the end of the chapter. Here we see who he saves. And once again, this is meant to humble the Corinthians, who in their pride are seeking to make the Christian faith an elite, respectable religion of deep wisdom and oratory skill.
They would love to see all of the TED Talks turn Christian. They would love to see everything just become all centered on Him, and for the elites and the upper crust of society to just all believe, and it would be amazing.
And he wants them and us to consider our own calling. And he says this to the Corinthians and to us, not many of us in this room rose above the level of pseudo-intellectual when God called us to Christ.
Maybe that's the best that could be said of us is that we thought we were pretty intelligent. Did you catch that? We thought we were pretty intelligent, but very few of us were. By worldly standards, all of us, to a T, are fairly mid.
We're not super wise. We're not super powerful. And very few of us were born into nobility, he says in verse 26. He says it to the Corinthians. I believe that's probably true of us. I don't know if any of you are part of a royal line anywhere.
You'd probably like to let me know after the sermon if you are. But I believe that that's primarily true of us. None of us born to nobility. None of us born to high standing. Maybe a few of us born into some money.
So it's fair for us to say that God has chosen we who are foolish in the world's eyes to shame the wise with a simple message about a crucified Messiah. God has chosen the weak in the world, he says, to shame the strong.
Christianity primarily began among the lower class and castoffs of the Roman Empire, the weak. And here we are in 2023 following that very crucified Lord who he entrusted the message to the weakest of society.
And it worked. Because of the power of God. I have to confess that if I was starting a movement, I might just choose powerful, wealthy, intelligent people. How many of you would agree with me on that?
That's probably where you're going. Right? God said, I'm going to do this kingdom thing and watch my power. I'm going to do it through castoffs. Just to really stymie the powerful and the wise and the strong and the proud and the arrogant, I'm going to do it through the castoffs of society, those who are really on the margins.
I want to suggest to you that God has a big issue with pride. And we ought to pay attention to the length he goes to be sure that the proud and the arrogant are routinely brought low. Verse 28 ends with a statement that amounts to God chose the nothings to bring to nothing the somethings.
Did it on purpose. Like this was his plan. It's with intention that he chose the nothings of the world like us. And he chooses to save through humble faith. Look at verse 29, so that no human might boast in his presence.
Nobody stand before God, thump his chest and say, I got it. Look at what I did. Throughout the book of Job, I like to use this as an illustration because it's something that has just been imprinted in my mind over the years.
The book of Job is a man who would be set by severe trials at the hands of God. And all throughout the book, he is desperate for an audience with God. If you get one thing out of the book of Job, he's constantly saying, if God would just hear my case, if I could come before God, then I could vindicate myself and then I'd be okay.
How many of you know what I'm talking about? If you read the book of Job, you're kind of getting it. So he's constantly, constantly saying, man, just one, just a few minutes with God and everything will be set straight.
And God obliges him in chapter 40. He shows up, says, you want an audience with me? Let's go. And I've always found Job 40 verse 4 to be personally helpful in understanding my place and God's place. And here's the interchange.
I'll read the first five verses of Job chapter 40. Well, actually one through five. And the Lord said to Job, God speaking, shows up, says, hey, you want to meet with me? Here I am. Shall a fault finder contend with the Almighty?
Is it your place to find fault with me? Is it your place to tell me I'm doing things wrong? Go on with the quote. He who argues with God, Job let him answer. And Job answered the Lord and said, behold, I am of, he meets God, he said, I am a small account.
What shall I answer you? I lay my hand over my mouth. I have spoken once and I will not answer twice, but I will proceed no further. Where is Job left at the end of the book? With his hand over his mouth.
What can I say? No human will boast in his presence of their own righteousness. Oh, we might boast when we think he's not watching, but I tell you what, in his presence, none will boast. Church, God has done it.
God will save. God will rescue. God will call. God will overcome our doubts and our sins and our worries and our pride in order to save, or we will remain perishing. It will be a work of God or it will not be accomplished.
If you think I'm overstating it, look at verse 30. How does verse 30 start? Because of him, the him is God. Because of him, it is because of him that the Corinthians are in Christ, and it's equally because of him that anyone here is in Christ.
It wasn't our wisdom. It wasn't our strength. It was our nobility, our righteousness by which we are saved. We have wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption in and through Christ and his cross.
Wisdom of God. Jesus is the true Sophia, the true wisdom. While all that the Greek sophists were playing with was just merely attempts at human pride, Jesus is our righteousness, our right standing before a holy God.
Jesus is our sanctification. In him, we are set apart to lives now lived in joy before our Father. Jesus is our redemption. He is the payment that bought us back from sin and death for the Father. And so we have nothing to boast in except to boast up Jesus.
If you have to talk smack to anybody, just talk up Jesus. Jesus is better than you. There you go. Jesus could dunk on you. I don't know what kind of smack we're talking here, but I don't know. But he could.
That's a weird image. Talk up Jesus. Talk him up about what he has done to rescue. Make much of him, church. Make much of what Jesus has done. Lastly, we land on the model of Paul in the message he proclaimed in verses one through five of chapter two.
He reminds us that he's speaking to believers here by addressing them as brothers and sisters in Christ, but he reminds them that he did not come to them proclaiming the gospel, which is here called the testimony and NIV.
I think it says mystery of God, but that which is revealed about to the cross in Christ, he didn't preach it with lofty speech or sophist rhetorical methods he's getting at. He didn't manipulate. He stated the truth is revealed by God and was satisfied with God providing the results.
He was a newsboy rather than a finely tuned orator manipulating people to get an end. And we see that he did this intentionally in verse two. He decided to limit his message among them, according to verse two.
And I would say the same thing here, recast. How many of you would just admit that you got some opinions about some stuff? Raise your hand. I want you to raise your hand and hold it up for a second. Do you have some opinions?
How many of you think you're right? Keep your hand up if you're right, you know. You don't hold opinions that you think are wrong, and really everybody would be better if they just followed your opinions.
Everybody would be better if they did things our way, would they not? Maybe that was rhetorical. I think we have a tendency to think that way, don't we? I have my opinions. I hope you don't know a lot of them.
I hope you know very little about my opinions. I don't get up and I don't share my political leanings. I don't tell you where I stand on various topics and issues. I could care less whether you know where I stand on cultural issues.
As a matter of fact, you might actually be a little uncomfortable with what a lack of that we have here. I would imagine that some of you have some things you want me to say. As a matter of fact, some of you told me some things you want me to say.
Just lest I get a deluge of suggestions, I don't do that. I'm not a voice for hire. I serve the Lord and His written Word. This is what we need. Church, that's what we need. Keep pointing to the cross.
I get the question all the time, especially at lunch with the pastors, why do we do communion every week? I need it. I need to take this message wherever we're at, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, Genesis, Joshua, the book of 1 Corinthians, and land at the cross.
I want to make sure that that's what you're hearing. I want to make sure that you're recognizing that that is your hope and that is your help, not five ways to be a better father, five ways to be a better mother.
I could, by the way, I don't know if you know this, I could write a sermon on five things every father should do and 10 things they shouldn't and never get past personal examples. I could share that from my heart.
I could share with you things that God has pressed on me. I'm going to let you know that Paul had some experiences in his life he could have shared with the Corinthians. His traveling ministry, he could have used it as a platform for an anti-Roman message.
I'm sure he had a whole host of things he would have loved to impart from his storehouses of worldly wisdom, and maybe even thinking, well, it could have an impact. It could help people. All of us have a little bit of life experience we could give to help some people along.
But he decided, it says in the text. Do you see it? I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He decided. He had to make a decision to limit his messaging because he knew that it was going to get watered down by all the other artifacts of our culture.
Oh, church, I think we have gone this way in the church in America. We have a watered down, watered down, watered down, milquetoast, thin gospel. Because what comes with it is who to vote for. What comes with it is political programs.
What comes with it is all kinds of designs, the way to run church, the way to do this, the way to do that. Are you getting what I'm saying? Instead of giving the potency, the power of God as the gospel, I have the feeling that if we could for a second, I'm not going to do this to you, don't worry.
But if we were to just go through the socials, let's just take that sliver of society, that gross sliver of society, the social medias. What would I know of you if the only thing I knew of you was from what you've posted?
Would I know anything about the cross? Would I know that you love Jesus? Would I know what He has done for you? Would it be there? Because what you're doing in the social media is absolutely what you want people to know.
What you're doing on social media is a PR campaign for your brand. Is Jesus in your brand? Is Jesus your whole thing? Are you getting what I'm saying? I don't know if this is a stare of conviction or a stare of, are we almost done?
I think it might be conviction a little bit. Listen, I'm not going to try to lighten up what God might be doing in you. I think there's all different kinds of ways to use social media, but I'm telling you what, if you feel any conviction from that, let it be from God, not from me.
I have no interest in judging your use of social media, but I think God does. I think He has an interest in how you communicate Him. Paul decided. We have all kinds of decisions, don't we? In our culture, we are constantly deciding what to put out.
How about the cross? This is a timely message for us because I think the church in America has not decided to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified, but we have decided to spout all kinds of things, and maybe Christ and Him crucified makes some lists.
What would it look like, church, for us, maybe even just for a week, to take a play out of Paul's playbook? Maybe this week is a week of trying it, making Jesus and His cross your favorite. Not smiling.
Smiling isn't your favorite. The cross is your favorite. Let the gospel be your favorite. It's not even Christmas, and I got Buddy the Elf up there. What would that look like in your life if the cross was your favorite and everybody knew it?
What if you took a week to just make sure that everybody knows the cross means something to you? That what Jesus Christ, and by the way, when I say the cross, I mean, maybe put Jesus in there. Look what He did for you there.
I was saved by Jesus and what He did for me on the cross. Verse 3 lacks enough context for us to be clear. You can see verse 3 there. We just don't know what the Corinthians read there. They knew. Paul knew.
A little bit of an insider. I came to you. You knew I was weak. Some people posit that He might have been sick or ill among them, like literally physically like he was in weakness. That's possible. Maybe he was just like terrified at the awe of being a church planter.
I can relate to that. There's just a trembling that comes with that, but the main thing that we can draw from verse 3 is that Paul did not cut an impressive vision when he was among them. He came off as weak, and his method matched his message.
He proclaimed a crucified Savior without manipulative persuasion. Paul refused to utilize the bread and butter methodology of the sophists of his day, and the result was a demonstration of spiritual power.
After studying verses 4 and 5 in depth this week, I'm confident that Paul is saying that he is able to give all credit to the Spirit and His power for their conversion, because it just wasn't his presentation that won the day.
It was the power of God. He says that nobody was going to be saved if it was up to me in the way that I presented it. Nobody was going to be rescued by my skill, and they were brought into the kingdom of God by the power of God alone.
No credit to him, no credit to his wisdom, no credit to his rhetoric or his crafting finely tuned arguments, and this comes down to two things as we wrap this up this morning. Have you found in the cross of Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God?
Is that true of you? Is the cross your everything? A crucified Messiah was an oxymoron to the Jews, and a crucified God was an oxymoron to the Greeks, all the others. But to those who have been called by God, we embrace.
We embrace it, and we are overwhelmed by it with great joy and great gladness, the cross of Christ. And if you've not yet been transferred from the perishing road to the being saved road, maybe God is calling you today, and I'd encourage you to come and talk with me or the elder on duty.
Mark is the elder on duty today. Rob up here, he's a recognizable face because he was up here on stage. Any one of us would love to talk to you about how you can begin a life of joy and be transferred from the perishing road to the road of being saved.
But if in humility, the second thing is if Jesus is your Lord and Savior, you've accepted him, and he is indeed your King, and you want him calling the shots, and he has saved you in forgiveness from your sins, then here's the challenge, church.
Lower your standards for yourself when it comes to proclaiming the gospel. Lower them. Go tell people about the cross. Some people tell me that the hurdle to proclaiming Christ is either fear or lack of confidence.
But church, seriously, think this through. If you can tell someone this simple message, Jesus died on the cross for your sins, you can share the gospel. Can you say that? Jesus died on the cross for my sins and yours too.
Paul wasn't some oratory wizard shutting the mouth of skeptics and pwning the religious elites. Paul saw his ministry as a newsboy, a town crier, out on the street shouting, Jesus died on the cross for you.
Hear ye, hear ye. He died for you. Good news. You can be set free. You can have newness of life. An eternal life forever. Jesus died for you. Can you say that? If you can say that, you can share the gospel with your neighbor, your aunt, your brother, your coworker.
The cross, Jesus died for us. If you can say that message, someone might hear the calling in the form of your voice this week. Let me encourage you to be a one-trick pony, church, like Paul decided to beat the drum of Christ and him crucified.
Let that be your favorite. And God just may use your voice to be the one that somebody hears calling. Some might have a change in destiny this week because you took this, God's word, seriously. If you're all in with Jesus and at peace with his church, then I encourage you to come to the tables during this next song to remember his body that was broken there on the cross for us, and take the juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.
We preach the gospel to ourselves and each other every week as we come to these tables in communion. His cross, his simple cross, his profound cross is the place where his power to save is found. Center your life on his cross this week.
Center your message on the cross this week. Let's pray. Father, I would confess to you that I have at times in my life just seen the gospel as so complicated, and maybe that's just a smokescreen for my unwillingness to step out to share it with others.
Maybe I just say, oh yeah, that's a hard message to get across. And I thank you for a passage like this that brings it back to the simple, simple, simple declaration. Not trying to manipulate, not trying to persuade, not even trying to answer every single question, but conveying the core central truth that you loved us enough to send your son to die on that rough wooden cross outside of Jerusalem for us.
Father, I pray that you would meet us now in this time as we reflect and remember together the great cost that you paid on Calvary. As we take the cracker to remember his body broken for us, as we take that cup of juice to remember his blood shed, I pray that you would empower us this week to go out to declare this message that we remember at the end of every single service, but let it impact Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all the way to next Sunday.
Let us be changed and transformed by hearing your word. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.