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

LaRue Baptist Church, OH

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The Old Testament reading this morning is in Ezekiel chapter 37, starting in verse 1.

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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.

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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.

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And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered,

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O Lord God, you know. Then he said to me, Prophesy over these bones, and say to them,

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Then he said to me, Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, Son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the

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Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, and that they may live.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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Lord, I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord. For the

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New Testament reading, please turn to Romans 8, 12 -17, page 944 in your pew

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Bibles, Romans 8, 12 -17.

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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

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Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, for all who are led by the

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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,

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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.

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You may be seated. Well, it's my privilege to introduce to you

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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.

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It's called Teammates in Ministry, which comes out to be

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Tim. And we've gotten to know one another, and Andrew, he and I have had some great discussions together.

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We've spent time together. He was, let's see, Andrew, did you speak at the

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Deacons Conference? No. Okay. Yes. All right.

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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?

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And so, God has answered that prayer, I think, at least at this point in giving us an opportunity to get to know

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

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Good morning. Open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians, please. Yeah, around our

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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.

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And I've had my hunch that it's in his suspenders. And so,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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1 Corinthians 1, 17. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.

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And not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

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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.

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For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.

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Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?

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Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know

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God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

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For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified.

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It's a stumbling block to the Jews, and folly to the Gentiles. But to those who are called, both

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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.

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For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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Spirit and power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

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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

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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

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Lord of glory, but as is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagine what

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God has prepared for those who love him. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the

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Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God, for who knows a person's thought except the Spirit which is in the person?

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So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the

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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

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Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. See, the natural person does not accept the things of the

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Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

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The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one, for who has understood the mind of the

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Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. God in heaven, please,

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Lord, be with my weakness. Lord, your Word is powerful.

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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.

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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.

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Please be with us in our time of need in this hour, in Jesus' name, amen. So it's difficult.

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It's difficult to think of what exactly to preach on. I have all sorts of, obviously, the Scripture before me.

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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.

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And what I, a lot of times, like to do is I like to remind us why we're doing what we're doing.

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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.

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We can do the same thing each Lord say, come here and you're listening to someone proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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It can be easy for us to lose our focus of what we are to do. I really enjoy 1

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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

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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

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God has prepared for those who love him. We should expect nothing less than what

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God has prepared for us in his love for us. He has provided us with the greatest gift he could possibly give us.

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

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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

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God could possibly give to us in which our hearts can't even fathom the heights and breadth and beauty of it.

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How often do we come to church with a little bit of a less thing in mind, right?

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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.

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What is this gift? What is it? Well, if you look at verse 30 of chapter 1, what does

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Paul say? And because of him, you are in, who is our gift, who is our delight,

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Christ Jesus. Because of him, you are in Christ Jesus. And he became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

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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.

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It's as if our hearts can't even imagine how beautiful Christ Jesus, our dear Lord, is to us.

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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

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Jesus, or God, has given us in Jesus Christ. Here's the issue, though.

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I, for a while, was teaching the Baptist Catechism to some middle schoolers.

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In question 39 of the Baptist Catechism, the question is, what benefits come from being justified, or from justification, adoption, and sanctification?

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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 oftentimes, and say, we get great benefits here.

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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

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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

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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,

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I'd rather do something else? If it's such a great gift from God, why is it so boring to the unbeliever?

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Why is it hard for it to be exciting for us? Jesus isn't just a little bit good.

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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?

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What's the issue? Why do people rather yawn and turn to other lesser things?

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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?

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Why is it so easy for us to make idols of our own making? Well, it's a very complicated theological term that 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.

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The reason why it's not enticing to the world, it's not enticing even to us.

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Many times when we come to church, it's this very hard theological term, and that is sin.

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S -I -N. Right? It's such a simple, profound thing. Sin stops the world from seeing

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Jesus Christ. Sin will stop our heart from seeing the glories and beauties of Jesus Christ.

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Sin is what causes people to yawn when we say there's great benefits in the Lord and they instead would rather do other things.

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Sin is the issue. So then we have the, what is the gift of God?

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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.

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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?

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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

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God has revealed. So that means it's hidden. If it needs to be revealed, that means it's hidden.

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Why is it hidden? Because of sin. So these things God has revealed to us through the

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Spirit. If you look at verse 12, Paul says in chapter 2, now we have received, not the

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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.

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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.

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And this is important to what I'm highlighting as to why, how we should be unified here.

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Verse 13, and we impart this in words. How do we give the

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Spirit? How does the Spirit come among us? How do we give the Spirit to our sinful neighbor who does not want to worship

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God? We impart these things with words, with the gospel, with words, not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the

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Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. But see, the natural person, the one without the

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Spirit, does not accept the things, the gospel, the words of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to them.

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So we need to be unified around what we receive from God.

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The gift we receive from God is Jesus Christ, and how we receive it is through the gospel, the

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Word, working with the Spirit. This is what we're here for. This is why we gather consistently, because we want more

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Christ, and we receive that through His Spirit with the gospel, the Word being proclaimed.

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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.

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No, rather, we are attentive to the Word of God, and we beg for the Spirit of God to make it its home, the

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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If you look, I think this is why, if we go back to chapter 1, chapter 1, verse 17, this makes sense to what

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Paul says in chapter 1, verse 17. He says, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.

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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.

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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.

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You see, baptism without the gospel is meaningless. You see, the Lord's Supper without the gospel is meaningless.

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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

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Holy Spirit as we declare the gospel is of the essence. It's of extreme importance.

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But see, what should scare us, that's what he goes on to say in the rest of the verse.

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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?

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Not with words, he says in verse 17, not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

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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

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Spirit. It can be done in a way that is without the Spirit bringing it to bear within our hearts.

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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

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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

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Spirit. So as we gather to church, what should be our unifying goal?

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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

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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.

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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

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Spirit, but rather gives grace to the heart of the hearer.

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And the terrifying reality is that it can be preached in a way that is void of the Spirit. Now how is this done?

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What happens? How does this happen that it would be void of the power of the Spirit? Look what he says.

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I didn't come to preach the gospel. What does he say in the end of verse 17? Not with words of eloquent wisdom.

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That is lagu sophia, that's words wisdom. I didn't come to preach the gospel with words wisdom.

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And the context there is the wisdom of the world. You see, Paul was in Greece here,

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And so whenever we preach according to worldly wisdom, it's whenever we cater to that offensiveness of the gospel message.

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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.

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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 it accordingly.

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And if it's offensive to them, well then, that's a wrong gospel message. You see,

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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.

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I remember, you know, it can be done in such a sly way. I went to Liberty University for my

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MDiv, which was, if I may be so bold to say, was a mistake. Liberty has a lot of issues, just to say,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Holy Spirit working in his gospel presentation, but with whether or not I have enough stories to tell you to entertain you.

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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.

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And it's like, well, sadly, I was expecting that my audience wanted to hear the gospel, not my stories.

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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.

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This is exactly what these seminaries, or at least this one, is training their people to do, to give in to worldly wisdom.

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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 it can be filled with worldly wisdom as we do it.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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 and makes it a delight, a treasure that you're willing to sell everything for.

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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.

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And this is the gospel that pleases man, it's a worldly wisdom gospel, and it offends

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God, and so therefore the spirit does not work in that message, you get that? The true gospel preaching is it pleases

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God and offends man. False gospel preaching is it sounds just like the gospel, but it's done in a way that offends

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God and pleases man and 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.

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See, in generations past, you had this great working of the spirit.

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If you look at the first Great Awakening especially, that was the gospel being preached. Read Jonathan Edwards' sermons, it will scare you, right?

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And the spirit worked in that, 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.

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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're used to.

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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?

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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.

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Pastors spending time on their knees begging that the spirit would work in their congregation in their own hearts, spending time in genuine

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Christianity, what did pastors sadly have done in the past generations as they have made the gospel message a little bit more palatable.

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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.

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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.

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What happens is the people stay and are excited, not because the spirit has worked in that message of great miraculous work of salvation, no, but because of worldly wisdom.

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So whose glory gets robbed? The Holy Spirit's glory of changing a sinner's heart and making it palatable to them.

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See what we've done in just preaching the gospel, the gospel is still there, it's just more palatable.

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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.

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What are we doing here then? It's not to give a message that's palatable to our sinful hearts.

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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.

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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.

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See what sadly what has happened, instead of having a reliance upon the sovereign grace of God and salvation, we have

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Arminianized it in a way that we take the offensive nature of it away just enough so people stay.

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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.

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We live in an age of great apostasy. The last 35 years that you've had one pastor, what a great treasure that is to have one pastor 35 years, 36 years

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I believe, being faithful, right? That is a great treasure. And how much the world has changed in that past 36, 40 years.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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You see, I think a lot of times we love to steal the sovereignty of God.

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We like to try to take it away. We like to try to put man's sovereignty in with it and flirt with it.

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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, you understand that dichotomy is created like that on purpose.

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You understand that God is not in heaven saying, I just wish natural man would love my gospel message.

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I just wish so bad that I didn't need to send in my spirit to make it palatable to them. Oh man,

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I just wish. No, God has done it this way on purpose. He is sovereign. He's not up there being like,

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I just wish it would be some way else. God has made his gospel message offensive to man on purpose.

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Let me show you that first in scripture. Look what he goes on to say in chapter one, verse 18.

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Verse 18, chapter one, for the word of the cross, it's foolishness, it's folly to those who are perishing, to those who are without the spirit, who are going to hell.

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But to us who are being saved, right, the one who had the spirit, it is the power of God. And here it is, for it is written, and this is

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God purposely making it this way so he can make them look foolish. He says, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning.

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I will thwart. See, Satan sets up his kingdom in sin that all the world falls prey to.

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And God says, watch what I'm about to do to that kingdom. I am going to destroy it, but not in like a cool kind of way.

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The most spectacular way we could ever imagine God is going to say, I'm going to make it be my glory.

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He says in verse 20, where is the one who is wise? According to worldly standards.

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Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

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For since, look what he says here, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know

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God through wisdom. You see what he's saying there? For since in the wisdom of God and true wisdom and truth, the world did not know

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God through its own wisdom. You see, God purposely made it that way that in order for us to experience his gift that he has given us, in order for us to experience it, we cannot approach it by our own worldly wisdom.

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We cannot approach it with our own natural understanding. We must be reliant upon the spirit of grace.

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Through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

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You see, God, in order to unleash the power of his gospel, to make it beautiful to us, he made that gospel message a folly to the world.

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It's not like he was hoping it would be good to the world. He was hoping they would like it in their natural state.

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He made it folly to them on purpose so that when he saved his chosen bride, it would be marvelous as he defeats the worldly wisdom.

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He says in verse 22, for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach

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Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.

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But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

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For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

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It's very fascinating. Typically, when you start a business, if you're starting a business, you want perfect circumstances.

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It's very hard to have, start a business and get it going and for it to survive. So you want all the circumstances to be absolutely perfect.

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You see, Christ, God, has done things differently. You have the darkness of the world and you have

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God establishing the kingdom of light and he actually wants it to be very terrible circumstances so that when he succeeds, everyone will marvel and say, how in the world is that possible?

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It pleases God to work contrary to what we are used to. It pleases

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God that the circumstances would be awful and yet he would work in that a great work of salvation.

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I oftentimes think about the poor disciples who were hiding in Jerusalem, hiding in that building after Jesus went back to be with the

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Father and they knew they had to proclaim a gospel message that just got their master killed. He came back to life and he went back to be with the

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Father. You got to imagine that they were tasked with preaching a gospel message that was terribly unpopular, terribly unpopular to the world.

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It would be awfully scary. They're huddled up in that room. But then all of a sudden, the Spirit of Christ comes in and makes that message the most powerful thing that the world has ever seen.

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And see, 2 ,000 years later, it's no different. Christianity, no matter how much it might go on the ebb or the flow, we know that it's no different, that we have a message that the world hates, but we are faithful to proclaim it because we wait upon the

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Spirit to work a great miracle in it. It is no different for us, beloved, in which

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God has sovereignly made it like this so that he could get glory in it.

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We should not be pessimistic Christians. We should not think that God is up there thinking, I did not know things were going to be this way.

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You got to understand that God is working what he's working right now in our own culture, in our own society, in our own time, so that he could then do a marvelous work of gospel activity.

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He's not up there confused. God sovereignly made the gospel message offensive to the world so that he could destroy the world with the gospel message, either through grace within our hearts or judgment in the last day.

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And this is what Paul just labeled out there. And so, what kind of people should we be?

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What kind of people should we be as we approach the gospel? As we understand that it's a miraculous work from God, what kind of people should we be?

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And he answers that going forward. There's one word that I want to highlight, and that is we should be weak people.

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In verse 26 of chapter 1, for consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.

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Not many of you were powerful. Not many of you were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

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God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

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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

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Lord. See, we, as people who have been changed by God, we come weak and needy, don't we? Because we know that the work of salvation in our hearts was not a work of our own, but it's something that he has done supernaturally in us, right?

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Christ has become all these things beautifully to us because the Spirit has supernaturally worked that work in us.

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And so we are weak people. And we've got to understand that the strength, the righteousness of Christ is not infused upon us.

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It's not as if God made us good and righteous and strong and everything, and that's who we are now of ourselves.

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See, of ourselves, we're still just as weak. We're still just as ineffectual. We're still all those things.

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But the righteousness that we have, the strength that we have, has been put upon our hearts through the

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Spirit that is Christ's righteousness. And so what kind of people should we be? Weak.

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We should understand within ourselves we are still weak. Without the Spirit working in us even right now, we are still weak.

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There's nothing infused upon us to make us strong. We are weak people. And so as we prepare ourselves for the

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Lord's Day, for a time like this, do we act like we're weak people? Do we beg

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God, Lord, show me my sins that I have right now that would stop me from hearing your message completely, that would stop the message from coming into my ears?

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Do we understand that the sin is still there, waiting, crouching like a lion, ready to devour?

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Do we go to the Lord in tears and begging God would show us more and more of our sins so we can get more and more of his wondrous presence within our hearts?

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Do we act like weak people? It's very easy, I think, for us to say, yes, of course, we're only strong in Christ. But do we act like that's the case?

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Do we spend time in prayer, in our secret closet prayer, begging God to expose the sins of our lives so that Christ can defeat it, so that we can hear more of his gospel and understand it better and respond in greater ways?

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Do we have this kind of rich spiritual discipline going on in our lives? Or how often can we come to church and it can be almost like we're passive listeners?

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You know, it's almost like a show before us, right? How much is church made to be a show? It's more like an entertainment that's going on that we can be passive as we listen to it, right?

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We are meant to be active listeners, right? We are actively listening to the gospel and we're actively applying it to our hearts so that sin can be vanquished.

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Do you listen to the gospel with that sort of weakness, that God, the only way this is possible is if the spirit enables it for me?

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Or are we rather passive listeners and we come here because we just always come here? It's so important for us to remind yourself each

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Lord's Day, each day as you meditate upon the word of God, I am doing this. The spirit must work in this and I am so overwhelmed with desire for this gift that God has given me through Christ, through the spirit.

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Expose where I am weak. Show me Christ more today.

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What type of people should we be? We should be weak people, knowing that we are forever dependent upon the spirit of grace to apply the work of Jesus Christ.

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Jesus Christ has taken sins upon himself. He's taken upon your weakness, if you are truly in him, upon himself so that you can gain his strength and his righteousness.

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And there's never a time when we say, well, I've received his righteousness, now it's enough. But it's a daily activity of our delight to bring our weakness to Christ that we would be overwhelmed with this gospel message each and every day, especially on the

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Lord's Day as we gather together. And finally, I only have a minute or two. This is what I get for trying to do two chapters in one day.

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Chapter two, verse one, what kind of person should the preacher be? When I came to you, brothers,

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I 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.

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And I was with you in weakness, I was with you in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the

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Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

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You see, I think Paul was weak, trembling with fear, because he knew that of himself, he is no good.

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Who's worthy of these things? Who's capable of actually proclaiming the gospel message in a way that can actually save sinners?

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No, surely we are not of ourselves, we are only man, but when the Spirit works in us, it has a work of applying truly the work of salvation to the listeners.

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So there is a certain sense in which even the speaker is completely weak and is completely in need of the

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Spirit, so that the Spirit overlays everything that's going on here. From within my own heart, as I proclaim the gospel, from in your own heart, as you receive the gospel, the

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Spirit needs to be at work. As Christ has accomplished the work 2 ,000 years ago, he went to be back at the right hand of the

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Father, and he sent the Spirit of grace down to apply his work through all the ages.

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The type of people that we need to be are weak people. The greatest worship that you can have to God is when it's weak worship.

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When you realize that, I don't have the power within me to do this in a way that honors God, and so your first cry out is,

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God, be kind to me, a wicked sinner. Speak to me, life that's found in Christ.

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We are to be weak people. I think of how many different ways it is so easy for the church to lose sight of the sovereign work of God in the gospel, in salvation.

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It is so easy to take God's sovereignty out of it and want to make it a work of man. And it's so important for us to know that we are to rely upon the

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Spirit to actually show us, reveal to us the things that God has for us in Jesus Christ. So going forward, our convictions need to be that we are proclaiming

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Christ and him crucified. And we'll continue to proclaim Christ and him crucified no matter how much the world finds that offensive.

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And we'll continue proclaiming it to ourselves as we identify with the Lord Jesus Christ because we want him to continue to conquer his work in our own hearts.

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It's an offensive message, but it's a message that the Spirit will work faithfully in.

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And so doing his kingdom expands forevermore in our own hearts, in our own communities, and all around. This needs to be the unifying agent between us, between me and you, between pastors and congregation is that we preach

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Christ who is offensive, but the Holy Spirit makes him delightful to us. What a great

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God we serve. What a great God that we serve. We need to be amazed that God isn't just doing something to win.

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He's doing something to win in the most glorious way possible. And that is that he would set up his gospel message in a way that the world would hate, but then be transformed by the

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Spirit and adore. Only the work of Jesus Christ, the truly God, the truly man could do such a thing because sin has been dealt with by Christ on the cross.

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So why are you here? I hope it's to hear the offensive message of the gospel. I hope that when you're offended by it, it is your delight to throw that offense to Christ and say, forgive me,

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Lord, and he can grow you through it. I hope that's all our reasons for being here so that we can then give that offensive message to our neighbor and watch the

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Spirit work masterfully in it. God in heaven, please be with my weak words.

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Lord, it never ceases to amaze me just how glorious your gospel is, how it has a way to transform hearts, to change a wicked sinner, and to make

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Christ no longer offensive to them but glorious to them. I'm amazed,

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God, that you use weak vessels like us to do this. Lord, I pray that it would be all of our desires here, that we would take this gospel message and we would see where are the areas of my own life where this is most offensive to me so that we can take that offense to the cross and see forgiveness of sins playing out each day in our lives.

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Lord, we know that this work is done by the Spirit alone. We are too weak for this work to be done by our own power, so let us rely upon the

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Spirit in all things. And I pray, God, that your glory would be revealed in the nations, that as the world hates your gospel message, we would be faithful to proclaim it anyways to our neighbors, to society, and we would be waiting, ready for the

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Spirit to work in it. Lord, be with us in our weakness, that we love you, we praise you for all your work in this world.