The Power Of God In The Gospel; 1 Corinthians 1,2

Ezekiel’s Vision of Dry Bones and God’s Promise to Raise Israel

The Old Testament reading this morning is in Ezekiel chapter 37, starting in verse 1. The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley.

It was full of bones, and he led me around among them. And behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very.

Dry.

And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, you know. Then he said to me, Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.

And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, you shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.

And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh came upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, Son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, and that they may live.

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. Then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel, behold, they say, our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, we are indeed cut off, therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land, then you shall know that I am the Lord, I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.

For the New Testament reading, please turn to Romans 8, 12 -17, page 944 in your pew Bibles, Romans 8, 12 -17. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, for all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit, and that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him, in order that we may also be glorified with him.

You may be seated.

Introduction of Andrew Beebe

Well, it's my privilege to introduce to you Andrew, Andrew Beebe. Andrew's pastored at Radnor Baptist Church for the last few years, and I know him through our pastors group that we have recently formed.

It's called Teammates in Ministry, which comes out to be Tim. And we've gotten to know one another, and Andrew, he and I have had some great discussions together. We've spent time together. He was, let's see, Andrew, did you speak at the Deacons Conference?

No. Okay. All right.

So, of course, we have been praying and asking God to provide someone that could take over and lead us after a few years, okay? And so, God has answered that prayer, I think, at least at this point, in giving us an opportunity to get to know Andrew.

So, Andrew, come and minister the word of God. We are anticipating God's blessing as you minister his word, brother.

Good morning.

The Power of God in the Gospel and the Cross of Christ

Open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians, please. Yeah, around our Tim meeting, we consider Pastor Tim to be a superhero. And you know, when you're a superhero, you typically have something that makes you have superpowers.

And I've had my hunch that it's in his suspenders. And so, I asked Pastor Tim if I could borrow his suspenders. I'm assuming he has, like, you know, superheroes do, a walk-in closet full of suspenders, you know, just everywhere, you know.

And so, I assumed I could borrow one, but he told me, no, he only has one pair of suspenders. So, I'm stuck with this tie, this lame tie. So, I hope you're okay with that. Now that the icebreaker's out of the way, we can go on to God's word.

If you open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians, we're going to, I'll read the text. We'll start at verse 17, and we'll make our way through. 1 Corinthians 1, 17. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.

And not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. 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 signs, and Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified.

It's 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 calling, 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 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, yes, 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 is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord and I. When I came to you, brothers, I didn't 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 in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not of the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

And none of the rulers of the age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.

These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thought except the Spirit which is in the person? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

See, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand that because they are spiritually discerned, the spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. God in heaven, please, Lord, be with my weakness. Lord, your Word is powerful. Your Spirit makes your Word powerful, effectual for salvation.

It goes from being something that is offensive to our ears to something that's our delight and our treasure and the greatest gift you could possibly give to us. Lord, I pray, God, that you would help me to proclaim your gospel in a way in which the Spirit will happily use, and it will bring about salvation and the furthering of salvation in not only my own heart, but these people before me.

Please be with us in our time of need in this hour, in Jesus' name, amen. So it's difficult. It's difficult to think of what exactly to preach on. I have all sorts of, obviously, the Scripture before me.

I have all sorts of topics I could preach on. It's a difficult task to narrow it down. And a lot of thought has went into it. And what I, a lot of times, like to do is I like to remind us why we're doing what we're doing.

I do it quite often. I think very often we can do what we do consistently and forget why we're doing what we do. We can do the same thing. Each Lord say, come here and you're listening to someone proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And if you were to tell someone why you're doing it, sadly, sometimes we can fall into a state of mind in which we say, well, we always do it. It's very easy when we repeatedly do something that's very important, it's very easy for us to do it in a way that, well, we forget why we're doing it.

It's just something we do. And it's really important for us as I come and potentially will be before you as a leader as proclaiming the gospel, that we would be unified in our philosophy and our understanding of what exactly are we doing here?

What am I to be doing proclaiming the gospel? What are you to be doing as you receive the gospel? It's important for us to be unified here. It can be easy for us to lose our focus of what we are to do.

I really enjoy 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 because I think it puts things in such great, clear perspective that it enables us, it helps us to understand what do we expect when we come on the Lord's day and hear the word of God proclaimed.

And I like what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 9, and this is what we should expect,.

Beloved.

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. We should expect nothing less than what God has prepared for us in his love for us. He has provided us with the greatest gift he could possibly give us.

In fact, Paul describes it in a way in which we can't even fathom how wonderful this gift.

Is.

And so when we come here, my notes are falling to the ground, when we come here on the Lord's day, we should expect nothing less but to receive the greatest gift God could possibly give to us in which our hearts can't even fathom the heights and breadth and beauty.

Of it.

How often do we come to church with a little bit of a less thing in mind, right? And so often we do it so often, so consistently, that we can forget that when we come here we are to expect the greatest thing that God could possibly give us.

What is this gift? What is it? Well, if you look at verse 30 of chapter 1, what does Paul say? And because of him you are in, who is our gift? Who is our delight? Christ Jesus. Because of him you are in Christ Jesus.

And he became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. God's greatest gift to you is to open your heart to receive Jesus Christ. He is our treasure, he is our delight, and he is the most wonderful thing that we could receive from God.

It's as if our hearts can't even imagine how beautiful Christ Jesus, our dear Lord, is to us. This is what we should expect as we come. This is what I should desire to proclaim to you this morning and consistently as I'm potentially a leadership here, is to proclaim the greatest gift Jesus or God has given us in Jesus Christ.

Here's the issue though, I for a while was teaching the Baptist Catechism to some middle schoolers and question 39 of the Baptist Catechism, the question is what benefits come from being justified or from justification, adoption, and sanctification?

What benefits do we get from that? And I pose it like this, why can't we go to the world, go to each other often times and say, we get great benefits here. We get great benefits. Come, come and see these benefits, right?

Why can't we go to the world right now who aren't worshiping God and say, we get beautiful benefits. What are they? Well let's look at the answer and give it to them, right? We get assurance of God's love.

Peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Spirit, increase of grace, perseverance to the end. How come when we tell our neighbor that who is lost, why do they yawn at us and say, I'd rather do something else?

If it's such a great gift from God, why is it so boring to the unbeliever? Why is it hard for it to be exciting for us? Jesus isn't just a little bit good, he is the greatest thing that God could have ever given to us.

Why do we struggle for it to be so in our hearts? What's the issue? Why do people rather yawn and turn to other lesser things? Why do we do that within our own hearts? Why is it so easy for me to come up here for any preaching and for it to settle on things that entice the sinful heart rather than amount to the beauties of Jesus Christ?

Why is it so easy for us to make idols of our own making? Well, there's a very complicated theological term that, you know, I thought about not even sharing because it's so deep and the word itself is large, so if you have a pen, get ready to write it down.

The reason why it is not enticing to the world, it's not enticing even to us. Many times when we come to church, it's this very hard theological term, and that is sin. S-I-N, right? It's such a simple, profound thing, right?

Sin stops the world from seeing Jesus Christ. Sin will stop our heart from seeing the glories and beauties of Jesus Christ. Sin is what causes people to yawn when we say there's great benefit in the Lord and they instead would rather do other things.

Sin is the issue. So then we have the what is the gift of God, and that is who? It's Jesus Christ. But it's very important for us to be unified around how do we get this great gift? Because it doesn't just come naturally to us because of sin, and so we must be unified if we're going to come here, gather here, how do we get this great gift that God has given us?

And I think we get that answer in chapter 2, verse 10. These things, you remember, this great thing that God has given us that our hearts can't even imagine, he says, these things God has revealed. So that means it's hidden.

If it needs to be revealed, that means it's hidden. Why is it hidden? Because of sin. So these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. If you look at verse 12, Paul says in chapter 2, Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, right, the prince of the power of the air, the one who deceives and gives sin out to blind our eyes, we haven't received that spirit.

No, the spirit who is from God we have received, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God. And this is important to what I'm highlighting as to why, how we should be unified here.

Verse 13, and we impart this in words. How do we give the Spirit? How does the Spirit come among us? How do we give the Spirit to our sinful neighbor who does not want to worship God? We impart these things with words, with the gospel, with words, not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

But see, the natural person, the one without the Spirit, does not accept the things, the gospel, the words of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to them. So we need to be unified around what we receive from God.

The gift we receive from God is Jesus Christ, and how we receive it is through the gospel, the Word, working with the Spirit. This is what we're here for. This is why we gather consistently, because we want more Christ, and we receive that through His Spirit, with the gospel, the Word, being proclaimed.

That's why we don't fall prey to other vain philosophies of the world, because they do not provide us the things that we need. No, rather, we are attentive to the Word of God, and we beg for the Spirit of God to make it its home, the Word its home within our hearts.

The greatest gift of God is why we are here, and it is to enjoy, it's brought in by His Spirit, working with His Word, the gospel. You ever notice that much of what we do as Christians is surrounded by the Word of God?

And if we are so naive to think that we will just naturally take in the Word of God and take out the world philosophies that are constantly bombarding us, if we believe that we're so naive to naturally do that, we are silly people.

We know that we are in need of the Spirit of Christ to make that a reality within our hearts, so we're here for the gospel to be proclaimed, to receive the gospel, and to beg God to be kind to us in the Holy Spirit, that He would send Him in great array.

This gospel preaching is essential to Paul. If you look, I think this is why, if we go back to chapter 1, chapter 1, verse 17, this makes sense to what Paul says in chapter 1, verse 17. He says, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.

Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. See, I don't think Paul is saying, well, baptism isn't all that important. I think what Paul is saying is, it's not so much that baptism isn't important, but the gospel of Jesus Christ and the proclamation of it that gives salvation is important, is the essential thing.

You see, baptism without the gospel is meaningless. You see, the Lord's Supper without the gospel is meaningless. So it's not so much that Paul is saying baptism isn't important, as much as he's saying the gospel being declared and relying upon the Holy Spirit as we declare the gospel is of the essence.

It's of extreme importance. But see, what should scare us, that's what he goes on to say in the rest of the verse. But he says, I came to preach the gospel, and this is what should unify us, right? What do you want from me in this moment is for me to preach the gospel, but what should scare us is it can be done in a way, what?

Not with words, he says in verse 17, not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. See what's very scary for us in this culture, in this climate that we're in, is that the gospel can be preached in a way that is void of the power of the Spirit.

It can be done in a way that is without the Spirit bringing it to bear within our hearts. It can sound like the gospel, it can sound very close to it, but it's void of the power of the Spirit. And if the Spirit is not working in it, it is not effectual in our sinful hearts.

See what's very scary is that we can hear the gospel in a way that is void of the power of the Spirit. So as we gather to church, what should be our unifying goal? You should want to hear the gospel, and to hear anything else consistently from the elders, from the pastors, should offend you.

Because you have been people awakened by the Spirit, and you should come and you should beg the Spirit to take away the sin within your heart that would blind you to the gospel being proclaimed so you can receive it.

You should be praying for your pastors that they would faithfully proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in a way that is not void of the Spirit, but rather gives grace to the heart of the hearer.

And terrifying reality is that it can be preached in a way that is void of the Spirit. Now how is this done? What happens? How does this happen that it would be void of the power of the Spirit? Look what he says.

I didn't come to preach the gospel, what does he say in the end of verse 17, not with words of eloquent wisdom. That is lagu Sophia, that's words wisdom. I didn't come to preach the gospel with words wisdom.

And the context there is the wisdom of the world. You see, Paul was in Greece here, Corinth is in Greece, and the world liked to hear, the world philosophy in Greece, they like to hear words done in a way that's nice, that's eloquent.

It wasn't so much what you said, it's how you said it. And Paul knew that going in. And see, Paul also knew that if he came to Corinth, came to Greece, and proclaimed the gospel with the number one thing on his mind, it's not that the Spirit would work in this offensive message that he would give, but if he came concerned that he would give it in an eloquent way which the world would like, it would be palatable to them, he knew that the power would be lost.

He knew the power would be lost. And so he says, I didn't come to preach the gospel in that way, I did not come to preach with eloquent, to preach it in a way with eloquent wisdom, because then the cross of Christ would be emptied of its power.

Now, in a very general way, what does it mean? Preaching of the gospel, it must be understood that because of sin, it is offensive to our natural capacity. And so when we go to church, and if there are unbelievers within the room, if even as Christians we have been battling sin and sin has been creeping in and overtaking us, the gospel will be utterly offensive to us.

And so whenever we preach according to worldly wisdom, it's whenever we cater to that offensiveness of the gospel message. And so instead of just proclaiming the gospel as it is and letting it be offensive if it's offensive, rather we make it more palatable to man.

This is what preaching according to worldly wisdom is. The world has its understanding in their sin of what the gospel should be, and they want to hear accordingly. And if it's offensive to them, well, then that's a wrong gospel message.

You see, Paul says this kind of preaching, whenever you're more concerned about the worldly wisdom, this sort of preaching, this is worldly wisdom kind of preaching. It's not true gospel preaching. I remember, you know, it can be done in such a sly way.

I went to Liberty University for my MDiv, which was, if I may be so bold to say, was a mistake. Liberty has a lot of issues, just to say. I don't know if anyone's going to Liberty here. Forgive me if I offended you by saying that.

But Liberty has a lot of problems. And this is one of the ways in which world philosophy or worldly wisdom can be the way that we are training ourselves to preach the gospel. And I remember one of my things I had to do was to create a sermon, write a sermon, preach it, and turn in the sermon notes to the professor.

And one of the guidelines, the things that you had to do as you prepared the notes and gave it to him, is you had to each point that you made, you had to have a story that people could resonate with, that it would be entertaining to them.

You had to have a story for each point. And so really, lo and behold, your sermon would be more stories than actually gospel driven because you're sitting there constantly, not to mention, to think up that many stories of every point that you have is exhausting.

And so you have a sermon, a preacher trying to write a sermon, and he's more concerned not with the gospel, not with the Holy Spirit working in his gospel presentation, but with whether or not I have enough stories to tell you to entertain you.

And so naturally, I didn't do the story stuff. And he wrote down, you're going to, he gave me a bad grade because of that, you're going to lose your audience right away. And it's like, well, sadly, I was expecting that my audience wanted to hear the gospel, not my stories.

But you see, it is so easy. Now, if we live in an age of where people are growing more and more bored with the gospel, they want to hear more and more fluff. And a pastor can very easily fall prey to that and give them worldly wisdom, more of what the world wants to hear and less what the offensive nature of the gospel is.

And this is exactly what these seminaries, or at least this one, is training their people to do, to give into worldly wisdom. Liberty doesn't preach a false gospel, but the way we present it can be false, can be very erroneous, can be bad for us.

And this can be filled with worldly wisdom as we do it. You see, there's really two ways to preach the gospel and uncover this. Well, there's two ways to preach the gospel. And one of them is an actual way of uncovering the gift that God has for his people.

And this is when we can preach the gospel, the way we do that is when it pleases God and offends man, offends women, right? This is true gospel preaching, is when it pleases God, and by the nature of what it is, it will offend people in their sin.

That is what the gospel is. There is no middle road in which we can preach the gospel, the true gospel, and not offend.

People.

If we want to uncover the greatest gift God has, we must preach the gospel and be willing and know that in man's sin, they will be offended. Unless the spirit supernaturally works in the sinful heart, it makes it a delight, a treasure that you're willing to sell everything for.

See, that's the true way of preaching the gospel. But there's another way to preach the gospel that has been going on the past couple centuries, our generation especially. And this is the gospel that pleases man.

It's a worldly wisdom gospel. And it offends God, and so therefore the spirit does not work in that message. You get that? The true gospel preaching is it pleases God and offends man. False gospel preaching is it sounds just like the gospel, but it's done in a way that offends God and pleases man in their sin.

And the spirit will not work in such a thing because how you then get people to come and listen and stay is not by the spirit working in the sinner's heart, but rather you get them to come because they enjoy the stories.

They enjoy a little bit of gospel with a lot of pleasantries. They enjoy the worldly wisdom. See, in generations past, you had this great working of the spirit. If you look at the first great awakening especially, that was the gospel being preached.

Read Jonathan Edwards' sermons. It will scare you, right? And the spirit worked in that, a great, they call it a mysterious work, a surprising work of grace. But in generations past, you see, the spirit in his sovereignty decided not to blow that direction, not to work as much as he used to.

And so pastors had a decision to make. The spirit isn't bringing conversions like we're used to. It's not bringing the energy like we're used to, the excitement that we used to. What do we do now? What a great time for fasting, prayer, supplication, tears, repentance.

Spirit, why aren't you working as you once did? Have we offended thee?

No.

Instead, what many times what has happened in our land, the church has grown so weak because instead of repenting, fasting, spirit work in this, please, begging him. Pastors spending time on their knees begging that the spirit would work in their congregation, in their own hearts, spending time in genuine Christianity.

What did pastors sadly have done in the past generations? As they have made the gospel message a little bit more palatable. It's just a little bit. It's just a tiny bit, just a little bit to make it more interesting to the people who come so that perhaps they'll stay.

But see what ends up happening is you get more and more of worldly wisdom. You put more and more worldly wisdom into it. You make it more and more palatable. And then sooner rather than later, the gospel is lost.

What happens is the people stay and are excited. Not because the spirit has worked in that message, a great miraculous work of salvation. No, but because of worldly wisdom. So whose glory gets robbed?

The Holy Spirit's glory of changing a sinner's heart and making it palatable to him. See what we've done and just preaching the gospel. Gospel's still there. It's just more palatable. What we do is we rob the glory of the Holy Spirit to change a sinner's heart and make them come back because of that great miraculous work.

So what are we doing here then? It's not to give a message that's palatable to our sinful hearts. It's to give a message that is on purpose to be offensive to our sinful hearts so that the spirit will miraculously work in that and make it our greatest joy, our greatest treasure so seriously that it becomes the greatest gift that's inexpressible.

Our hearts can't even conceive of it because our hearts are corrupted with sin, but we give it in a way anyways in which we rely upon the spirit, work in this if you will. See what sadly has happened.

Instead of having a reliance upon the sovereign grace of God and salvation, we have Arminianized it in a way that we take the offensive nature of it away just enough so people stay. Not because the spirit's working, but because there's enough worldly wisdom in it for them.

To stay.

This is a break from focusing on the glory of God. We live in an age of great apostasy. The last, what, 35 years that you've had one pastor, great, what a great treasure that is to have one pastor 35 years, 36 years I believe, being faithful, right?

That is a great treasure. And how much the world has changed in that past 36, 40 years. The world's going to change more in the next 50 years. I don't know what it's going to look like. I don't like to be pessimistic.

God could work a great work of salvation. But nevertheless, we need to be faithful. We need to be true. We need to be united. Why are we here? And that is so we can hear the offensive gospel because it is our delight.

No matter what persecutions, oppressions may come, that is what we're unified with. You see, I think a lot of times we love to steal the sovereignty of God. We like to try to take it away. We like to try to put man's sovereignty in with it and flirt with it.

It really helps for us to know that this sort of dichotomy that we're talking about here, true gospel message that is completely offensive to natural man, but the Spirit must work in it to make it a delight to natural man.