When Jesus Comes To Town - [Matthew 21]

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Well, it's a good trip to California. I knew I was in California when I walked in the sandwich shop with my brother and we were ordering some sandwiches.
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And a person walked in, they kind of looked disheveled and they had this old dirty box and they opened it up and said, well, we're selling some things and we're with a religious organization.
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I thought, well, I'm buying things and it's called a sandwich, but I didn't say that. I was thinking that.
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And so we ordered our sandwiches and then this man began to sell these things in this box, little handmade pieces of jewelry and little things that look kind of dirty and ugly.
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And he was selling them for $1 and there were two ladies working at the sandwich shop, one sitting and one standing.
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So he said, well, you know, would you like to buy some? And they almost felt obligated and I thought, I just can't let this go.
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So I said, what religious organization are you with? And he said, we're with the
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Unification Church. And I said, you're a Mooney. And he goes, yeah, I am.
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And I thought, no, I didn't mean that in a good way. I said, ladies, you can do whatever you'd like, but I'm a
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Bible teaching pastor and this man represents Sun Yung Moon, who says he's Jesus Christ on earth.
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And I said, if you're going to give your money to Jesus Christ, I suggest you do it to a Jesus Christ who can actually save you from your sins and not somebody who runs around saying,
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I'm Jesus on earth. If you ever meet anybody on earth and they say they're Jesus, run. If you ever meet anybody on earth that says, send
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Jesus your money and gives their address, run. I mean, it all goes together. And I thought, here's the culture today.
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And I walked around Santa Cruz and the tattoos and I haven't seen anybody with a split tongue lately.
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But instead of having body art and body piercing, now the rage is you want to split your tongue.
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So it's kind of like this forked tongue. How do we preach the gospel to these people?
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How do we go to someone who says, you know what? I don't believe in truth anymore. You can have your truth.
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I can have my truth. But I'm not even really sure there's such thing as truth. What do we do? How do we preach to these folks?
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How do we tell people they can have their sins forgiven when they don't even know what forgiven is? They don't know what sins are. They don't even believe there's a
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God outside of their own pleasures. So today, if you'll open your
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Bibles to 1 Corinthians 1, I want to answer that question. How do you preach to today's culture? How do you preach the gospel to a culture today that's postmodern, post -relative truth, anti -establishment, post -conservative, post -modern,
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Gen X? I don't care what you call it, but how do you preach to these kind of people? I wanted to be in Matthew chapter 6 today, but I've been out of town for two weeks.
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I think it's a preaching faux pas to say, oh, I'm sick this morning, because then that's an excuse for why
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I preached a bad sermon. But I'm not going to tell you that's why the sermon would be bad today if it would be bad.
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But just, I'm not in Matthew 6 because I've been sick, and so I'm coming to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 today because I have not preached this sermon here at this church.
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This is the message that I preached at Harvard Law School, a Christian fellowship, some weeks ago.
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How do we as Christians evangelize? This is a good time of year for us to do it, because even the secular culture is talking about Easter, Resurrection Sunday.
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Even unbelievers come to church this time of year, so I thought it would be important for our church to discuss this question.
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How do we preach in today's culture? How do we talk about sin, the cross, salvation with people today who may or may not even know what we're talking about?
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And these verses here, I think, are attention -getting verses. I don't know if you know much about dog whistles or silent whistles.
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They were invented by a man named Galton. And he realized that if you have the hertz level above 20 ,000 hertz, humans can't hear it, but it really gets the dog's attention.
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And so these verses are attention -getters, almost like that dog whistle for dogs.
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And instead of dogs, we today are focused in on these verses, and they are amazing. I'll get your attention right away.
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I don't need to have some kind of funny little intro. We'll just dive right into the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 18 and following, and ask this question.
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How do we do evangelism God's way? And let me give you this morning six reminders, maybe even seven, encouragements for evangelism, and I will give them in the form of questions.
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You are an evangelist. If you're a Christian, you're an evangelist. You might not get paid to evangelize.
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You might not even like to evangelize, but you are an evangelist. You are a walking testimony, a walking trumpet for the goodness and grace of God.
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You should be a trophy of His grace so people can see, but they also should listen to you talk and preach about the gospel.
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And so today I'm going to give you six or seven reminders about evangelism so you might better evangelize, be more biblical when you preach the gospel to people who in our day try to justify sin.
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I believe we're living in a day where Nietzsche was right. He said, we immoralists are trying with all our strength to take the concept of guilt and the concept of punishment out of the world again.
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How do you preach a gospel to such a German philosopher? Years ago, prophetically, the pop music groups,
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Jane's Addiction said, here's what we sing about, ain't no wrong now, ain't no right, only pleasure and pain.
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How do we preach the gospel to these kind of people? Let me give you these six or seven reminders in the form of question right from the text, 1
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Corinthians 1, verses 18 through 31. Question number one, did you know that God's ways have always been counterintuitive?
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When it comes to God's ways, it shouldn't strike us as odd that something God has is counterintuitive and the cross is not any different.
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For instance, counterintuitiveness in the Bible, love your enemies, God exalts the humble and humbles the exalted.
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The first or last and the last verse, the scriptures are replete with counterintuitive things and so too is evangelism.
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The cross is counterintuitive and let's look at verse 18 and we'll see this. Paul has been talking about unity in the church and divisions and he mentions in verse 17 that the cross of Christ would not be made void and once he thinks about the cross, he launches into a discussion on the cross.
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Verse 18, for the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God.
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When the gospel is rightly proclaimed, there's two responses to this gospel. There's a bifurcation, there's two kind of ravines or valley.
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It's as if the gospel is preached on the top of the mountain and the responses will run down one side or run down the other and you can see the two responses.
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One is foolish, the other one is power. When you preach to unbelievers, those who are perishing, in the state of perishing, those whose spiritual lives are like an apple that you just sit on your counter and watch it day by day begin to perish, it's in the state of perishing.
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As those whose souls are perishing see the gospel and listen to it, you know what they think about it?
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The word that you're not supposed to say if you're a kid around the house? Unbelievers think the gospel is stupid.
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You say, well, why would you ever say that? Well, because I like to throw out provocative things.
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You should know me by now. I'll give you even a more provocative word that Paul uses.
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Here's the Greek word. The gospel to the perishing person is moria.
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I didn't say moria, I said moria and we get the word what out of moria.
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You know what? The gospel is moronic to unbelievers. Be warm, be filled.
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Let's pray. God wants you to know ahead of time before you go out to begin preaching this to this culture, any culture, the church at Corinth or the culture today that unbelievers are going to think it is moronic.
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And furthermore, if you're giving them the silly, obtuse message, they think silly and obtuse, they're not going to just think what you say is stupid.
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They're going to think you're stupid. And too often we want to come across as we're cool.
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We can be in, we can be hip, we can be in the culture even though we're
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Christians. I don't mean you should walk around trying to be dopey and dorky and geeky.
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It's hard for some of us not to do. I've been sick this week.
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But your message, if it's biblical, will be intrinsically stupid and foolish to those who are perishing.
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That's exactly what Paul says. It doesn't say the cross. Do you see the text?
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It doesn't say the cross is foolishness. It says for the word of the cross, for the preaching of the cross, for the logos of the cross, for the doctrine of the cross.
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The doctrine of the cross is moronic. Think about it. That some guy dies on a cross at some dusty old place in the middle of who knows where, forsaken of his friends, forsaken of his family, forsaken of everyone, and gets killed by the
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Romans. He says he's a political messiah. He's a messiah. We were hoping for a political messiah, and that he dies on the cross, and now he's supposed to die for sins, and what you think about that man will determine your destiny forever and ever.
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That's stupid. Who would want to believe that? If he was just a martyr, people wouldn't think it was stupid.
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They think, you know what, boy, this man loved people, and he was a martyr for his cause.
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And what do people even today do with martyrs for religious things? They hold them up.
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Look at the martyr. He died as a martyr. Well, Jesus was a martyr, yes, but he was more than a martyr. He dies bearing sins, people's sins.
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Remember, 30 ,000 Jews died around Jerusalem in the days of Jesus. What makes him so different?
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You mean he's the only one that has eternal life? You mean if I believe in Buddha, or Allah, or anybody else,
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I'm damned? That is stupid. You can just hear the culture today say that is unbearable.
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Christianity is moronic to unbelievers. How do we slick this up?
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How do we do the four Ps of marketing? Product place price and what?
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Promotion. How do you spin idiocy? Nietzsche went on to describe
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Christianity as the metaphysics of the hangman. How do you make it kind of cool?
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Let's make this really cool. Paul says the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
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It is foolish to think that Jesus dies in atoning sacrifice, assuaging and appeasing the wrath of God.
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They think that is contemptible. They think it is unworthy of belief. Frankly, the
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Harvard elite and the Ivy League elite think that is below them. Who could stoop to such a level?
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This poor man on a cross can't even save himself, and yet he can save anyone who will believe that is moronic.
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You can save others, but you can't save yourself. Second class death, but to those who are being saved, it's what?
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It's anything but stupid. It's the power of God. When you preach the gospel the right way, there'll be two responses.
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One response will be, that's really stupid, if the people are honest, but the other response to those who are being worked upon by God, the spirit of God affecting and infecting their mind, they'll think, you know what?
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This is life -changing. This is so powerful, I can say no to sin. I can say yes to Christ Jesus.
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It is a power of God to those who are being saved. What I don't want us to do as a church is to somehow change the message to make it less offensive, less stupid, less moronic.
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Does that do anybody any good? It doesn't do anyone any good. It doesn't please God, and it doesn't help the person.
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We don't want to resort to pressure tactics and gimmicks and making everything look really good.
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I love one man who was enthusiastic, but I think he went overboard. He was a barber in the 1900s in England, and he loved to preach the gospel to his customers.
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And so he would give them a good lather, pick up the razor, you know, those straight razors. And then he would say, sir, are you prepared to meet your
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God? But he didn't mean that. The story goes that one man just jumped up with lather on and ran.
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If it is the power of God, then we don't somehow need to give God a crutch or some kind of some props and try to help him.
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We just need to preach the real gospel, because it is the power. The power is not found in us.
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The power is not found in ways we can alter it or snip off the rough edges. You say, well, is this biblical?
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Some people think it's foolish. Some people think it's the power of God. How biblical is that? And I think Paul, following the steps of Jesus, sometimes quoted the
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Old Testament, it's like us quoting the Bible. And that's what happens in verse 19. Is this a biblical concept to trust in the power of God's work and not our own devices and our own slick communication?
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Of course, it's biblical. Verse 19, for it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever.
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I will set aside. Paul supports his argument with Isaiah chapter 29.
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As Jesus would turn to scripture for support often, so too does Paul. And Paul is basically saying, when it comes to man's help of God's wisdom, man is not help.
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Man is a hurt. Man needs to say, you know what, God doesn't need my help when it comes to preaching. God doesn't need my expertise or my marketing savvy or anything else.
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God is wise and I'm not wise and I should do what God says and not try to make it better.
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In other words, Paul is saying, when it comes to man's wisdom, helping the power of the cross, it's irrelevant.
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It's useless. It doesn't work. And what Paul does is quote Isaiah 29, 14, a passage where Israel was honoring
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God with their lips, but not with their whole bodies. And they said, you know,
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Assyria is going to come take us over. And so instead of saying, God protect us, why don't we have a nice little arrangement with Egypt and together
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Israel and Egypt can stand against Assyria? That's the context of the quote here found in Isaiah chapter 29.
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That wouldn't work. Only a miraculous intervention of God would be able to rescue them. So Paul quotes this verse and says, there's no value, no benefit, nothing practical to help
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God when it comes to salvation. And so for us,
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I ask the question again, did you know God's ways have always been counterintuitive? I think
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God's ways are counterintuitive because our intuitive is broken. Frankly, we're fallen.
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So we go, that just doesn't seem right. Well, duh, doesn't seem right because we're fallen.
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We're the TV antenna that's broken. God's sending out these signals, you know, on AM and we've got the broken
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FM receiver. That's why the scriptures are given to us. So we don't say, I'm going to trust my heart,
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I'm going to trust my gut, I'm going to trust my feelings. I better trust what God says. And God says, when you preach the gospel, the real gospel, people are going to hate it or they're going to love it.
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And we don't need to try to figure out ways to make the flat places smoother because they're not flat to begin with.
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Question number two, did you know that God is not on trial when you evangelize? First of all, make sure when you evangelize and preach the gospel, realize that some people will think this is crazy.
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Second of all, when you preach, don't defend God. He's not on trial. And here,
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Paul summarizes in verse 20 that basically God is the one who saves.
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I'm going to say something twice so you get it, but let me just say the statement once first and then
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I'll pause. Apologetics is good. Being apologetic is not. Apologetics, the defense of the faith, preaching the gospel, why people should believe, this is who
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God is, this is who man is, here's what Jesus did, therefore how you must respond. That is important. But being apologetic about it, you won't see
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Paul do that. You won't see Jesus do it. You won't see John the Baptist do it. And here we get these questions that are the exact opposite of having
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God in the corner, somehow Paul trying to defend him. Paul is aggressively saying, you know what,
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I don't need to defend God. God's not on trial, you're on trial. This is God's universe and you've sinned against God and you're the one before the bar of judgment of God.
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And so Paul asks these questions. These questions are from the creator to creatures, creatures who will say, you know,
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God, why'd you make me like this? So Paul asked these four rhetorical questions to make his point of verse 18 and 19 crystal clear.
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One man said there's a note of triumph in these questions. Number one question, where is the wise?
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When it comes to those who think they're super smart, trying to doctor up the gospel or somehow make it not as offensive or make it somehow less moronic and all these other things.
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Where are these people? These men were called wise men, sophoi. And later they became lovers of wise men, phila, sophoi, lovers of wisdom, philosophers.
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Paul says, God is the one in salvation who does all the work and it doesn't matter how much smart you bring into it, smarts can't save.
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And if you take a philosopher sitting down to ask God questions, why did you make me like this?
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Why is Jesus the only way? Why do you have to be born again? That philosopher would lose the debate.
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Where's the philosopher? How can he set God down and question him? The attempts to frustrate
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God and to checkmate him will not work. Whether they're Platonist, Epicurean, Stoic, sophist, it doesn't matter.
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Paul asks another question rhetorical, where's the scribe? Why does he ask, where are they? Because in an argument before God, they're gone, they have to flee.
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Where's the scribe? Where's the learned man? Where's the teacher of the law? Show me a lawyer. The lawyers are good at asking questions.
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They're not asking questions now because it is God alone who saves. Lawyers who were experts in Jewish law, they can't even ask questions because how do you question
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God? Where's the debater or the disputer of the world?
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This is kind of a science word, an investigative word. It's kind of a word that implies a magnifying glass, trying to look down at the very details.
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I was going through a security. Where was I? Logan, probably.
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And they got my driver's license and the guy gets a little magnifying glass out and was looking like that.
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I was glad he wasn't looking at my picture that close. He was looking for some kind of embedded thing into the card to make sure
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I was legal. When people say, you know what, God, you've got this gospel and I'm going to just,
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I don't like this gospel. I don't like it that it's the only one. And he gets the magnifying glass out to look really closely. By the way, those people who try to do that, they're not around because they can't do it.
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God is not on trial. They can't use their intellect to try to figure out salvation.
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And then he says something interesting. Look at the last question there found in verse 20. Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
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King James in Isaiah 44 says, God turned wise men backward. The world can take all its wisdom and all its military barrage of sophisticated intellectualism and its foolishness to God.
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I think what we can learn from Paul is this. When it comes to defending God, please friends, don't. Spurgeon was right.
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How do you defend a lion? Don't stand there next to the cage with a spear. Let the lion out. He'll do a great job of defending himself.
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God is not on trial for cosmic treason. People are. I think you should answer people's questions, but I think those questions should then be turned back into proclamations of the gospel.
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Well, we must keep going. Question number three. First of all, that is a counterintuitive message.
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Fine. Don't forget God's not on trial. Well, number three, did you know that God is pleased to save people through a foolish gospel?
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Did you know that God is pleased to save people through a foolish gospel? This verse, verse 21 answers the question, how did
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God make foolish the wisdom of the world? Verse 21, for since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know
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God. God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
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Human reasoning can't get sin off your back. Human intellectual IQ cannot figure out, even with a million years of knowledge, how to get sin out of your nature.
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Paul says you can just take all the wisdom of the world when it comes to how to get sin off of you, put it in a big heap and just light a match and throw it in there and it's the wisdom of the world.
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It cannot explain how to get sin forgiven. So Paul says, you know what, worldly wisdom,
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I just reject it. I have one kind of wisdom. It's not Foucault's wisdom, it's not
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Nietzsche's wisdom, it's not any other philosopher's wisdom, it's
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God's wisdom because all these other philosophers can't answer the question. It's foolish.
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Paul says, you know what, the centuries and the eons can go and go and go and nobody can figure out how to get sins forgiven.
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Then God says, I'm going to send Christ Jesus. And you notice the text, it doesn't say by foolish preaching.
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It says by the foolishness of preaching. Standing up and one guy talking, it's even more foolish today.
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I just read a thing yesterday, don't you dare stand up, one guy, and preach because people don't like preaching, they like dialogues.
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They like to have their say. Lou wants to pipe up a little bit and say, hey pastor, here's what
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I think about this. And Mark's in the back going, you know, but I have my opinion over there. We want a dialogue. I've got to know what you're thinking.
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Just for one guy to stand up and say, thus sayeth the Lord, I think that's pretty stupid. Unless you're me.
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No, I'm just kidding. It's not anyone preaching. It's the gospel and the gospel alone that saves.
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Our job is stewardship, faithfulness. Did you know it is never your job to get done preaching the gospel, going to Mozambique?
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I'll tell you what. When we go to Mozambique and come back, here's what you won't hear us say. Eighteen people prayed the prayer while we were there and there's a revival in Mozambique.
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Why won't we say that? Because we're not there to get people to pray the prayer. They don't know there's one
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God yet. That's why we're starting in Genesis chapter one. We're going to preach to them that there's one God, one creator.
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Sin entered the universe and God is sending a savior. We don't say, you know what, I preach in such a way that I'm going to get results.
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We need to preach in such a way that God is pleased. The results are up to Him.
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If I want results, then I'm going to have to change this foolish message, this kind of crazy moronic message because I want people to respond.
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Question number four gets better. Did you know that you are not to give unbelievers what they want? Did you know that you're not to give unbelievers what they want?
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I'm talking about spiritually. If they want some water or something, fine, I don't mean that. Did you know that you're not to give unbelievers what they want?
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Why? It's the wrong question. The right question is, I am to give
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God what He wants, what would please Him, and what the people want is irrelevant. And if God isn't in this, by the way, nobody's going to get saved because this is so anti -consumerism.
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I don't know how to describe it. Here's what people want.
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And you'll see Paul didn't give them what they wanted. How about that? We know what people want and we won't give it to them because we know there's something more important.
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Look at 1 Corinthians 1 .22. This is fascinating. For indeed, the Jews asked for signs and the
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Greeks searched for wisdom. There were two groups of people back in those days. Paul knew them both very well.
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And what did Jews want? Jews want miracles, Jews want evidence, Jews want the big show.
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Have the Jews seen in their past history God intervening with all kinds of miraculous supernatural events?
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Show us again. You say that you're the Messiah. We want a miracle. We want some kind of mind reader.
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We want to have some child prodigy who knows 18 languages on the first day he was born.
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Show us that. We want facts. We don't want speculation. And if you think you're the
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Messiah, then show yourself by some great demonstration. By the way, did
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Jesus even do that for them? Did they believe? Remember John 6, feeding the 5 ,000 men?
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And what was the response? They have no food. Jesus fills them to the brim with material sustenance and what's the first thing they say back?
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We believe. What'd they say? You think you're a big shot?
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You fed us for one single day and Moses fed us for 14 ,600 days in the wilderness, 40 years, morning and night, and you feed us for one day and you expect us to bow?
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Because unbelief is never satisfied with signs. Jews want signs.
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And what do the Greeks want? They want wisdom. They want philosophy.
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These Greeks love philosophy. One person said there was 50 different philosophical parties back in those days.
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You know why there's so many different parties? Because nobody can agree, number one.
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And you know what? You can never find the answer in philosophy because when you find the answer in philosophy, guess what happens in philosophy class?
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Class is over. Because once you find the meaning of life, class is over. They just want to talk about it.
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And what they didn't want to talk about is some kind of slave, Jesus Christ, some kind of wicked murderer, some kind of who knows who he is,
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Barabbas gets let off the hook and Jesus takes his place and he's the savior of the world and we're to bow to him?
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No, we'd rather talk about things and speculate things. It's like these Greeks and philosophers would put the glasses down their nose a ways and just use some big speculative words.
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We like to talk. So what'd
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Paul do? You want signs? You want to talk about philosophy? Here's mud in your eyes, what
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Paul said. Here's a stick in your eye. That's exactly what happens, verse 23.
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He gives them what they don't want. By the way, I want a Messiah who's victorious, who gets rid of Rome, who gives me fulfillment in life, happiness, a little more money and a better car.
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Don't you want that? By the way, why would we ever sell that Christianity to our friends? Come to Jesus, your life will be perfect, your marriage will be perfect, your family will be perfect, you get a better job.
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Starbucks will deliver to your house every other day, whatever you want. This is for you, church for you.
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Paul said, I know what you want as an unbeliever and I won't give it to you, verse 23.
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But we preach Christ crucified. We've been
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Christians for so long. We've been in the Christianized West for 19, 20 centuries.
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This doesn't have the literal point on the end of it that these guys would have felt.
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How do the Jews feel about a Christ crucified? It was a stumbling block and to the Gentiles, it was foolish.
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Paul said, we preach, we proclaim, we're not dialoguing, we're not talking, we're not kind of text messaging and debating, we're preaching.
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This is no negotiation. I've got something to tell you and here's what I'm going to tell you. Jesus Christ, the
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Messiah of the world, was crucified like a traitor. Paul knew they were going to stumble, he still told them anyway.
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To the Jews, it was a stumbling block, it was a snare, it was a trap. I don't know if you've ever been running as a kid outside or even as an adult without shoes on and you hit a rock real hard.
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I've split my toe right in the middle and it's just one of those things that you know what's happened because when you look down, you go, hmm, my toe's numb.
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My toe's a little red and my toe is going to be a throbbing, blood -plastered hamburger.
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You look down and you go, it's like a 10 -second delay, thinking everything's good, it wasn't too bad.
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Ah, you scream and you find out if you're really sanctified by what you say. Here comes
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Jesus, sweet, loving Jesus, the sweet, loving Jesus who said,
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Jews, I'm your Messiah, behold your King. And then he's crucified by some Romans out in the middle of nowhere like some petty thief.
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It was like stubbing their toe and they didn't hold their tongue about it either. To the
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Gentiles, it wasn't a better response. They thought it was what, Moriah, foolishness.
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Just like in Acts 17, when they heard the resurrection from the dead, some mocked. How can
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God, according to a philosopher, have a human body?
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Gods are spirits floating around and now a spirit being had some kind of incarnate body and was crucified on Calvary?
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How can that be? That's idiotic. How can this God, Jesus, say he's never sinned before because all their other gods,
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Zeus and everybody else, Hera, Athens, they are all sinful to the core and you're telling me now some kind of Greek God -like person says he never sins and he's to save us from our sins?
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That is foolishness. Paul said, you know what? I don't know what to tell you because God has given me this message.
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This is the Messiah. You must believe on him. And whether you like it or not, I don't know what else to tell you.
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And it's the same for all of us. What other message will you give? Because if you give the wrong message,
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God's not pleased and if you give the wrong message, it's not the power of the gospel that saves. Jews used to call
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Jesus the man that was hanged and the
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Jews used to call Christians servants of the man that was hanged. And this is a stumbling block when a man is despised and forsaken of men, acquainted with grief.
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Can't take it. It's an offense. It's a scandal. Forget some sinful governor in New York being the top scandal.
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This is the scandal. Paul says, here's the stick. I'm going to poke it in your eye because that's what
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God has told me to do and that's the only way you're going to really spiritually see and you can't do anything to save yourself.
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It's all grace. You can't work for it. Can't get circumcised for it. Can't be good.
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Number five, don't forget the wonderful response of those who believe. The gospel is counterintuitive.
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Don't try to make it less. God's not on trial when you preach, so preach the good news to people.
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God's pleased to save through a gospel that seems foolish. Number four, recognize your audience.
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Never change the message. And number five, don't forget the wonderful response of those who believe. Oh, there's hope here.
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This is good. When God works, something happens. A light goes on. There are religious affections that are new.
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People love God and hate sin and love Christ and they don't think it's foolishness. They think it's wonderful.
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They don't think it's stupid anymore. They sing songs of praise, hosanna. Paul says in verse 24, but to those who are the called, called by God, what do they do?
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They accept it without reservation. They don't say it's stupid. They say it's good news.
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Both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. They say we welcome it.
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You preach the gospel to somebody your whole life and they always say, that's nice for you. They kind of pat you on the proverbial forehead.
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I'm glad you're spiritual. I have my own way. You keep praying for them. You keep preaching for them.
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One day they go, you know what? I am a sinner and if it wasn't for the grace of God and Christ Jesus, I would be undone.
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I used to think it was kind of stupid and think I could have a wafer and some baptisms and I'd be fine. But now I realize, do you know what?
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I have to believe in Christ Jesus and he is dear to me. What do you think has just gone on? God has called them in eternity past and now the spirit of God has worked in them and it's a miracle.
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It's supernatural. You notice the text there? Christ, the power of God. It's not the power of God in creation any longer.
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This is Christ, the power of God in recreation and redemption and regeneration. Who could figure out how to get rid of sin?
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Only God could. That's why Christ is called the wisdom of God. You think,
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Gentiles, that this message is foolish. God thinks it's wise where Jesus could be the sin bearer and God could say,
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I'm so pleased with your work and I raise you from the dead. And what I love, you can go all across the world and I've had my opportunities to travel lately and people who are born in any country, whether it's
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India, Burma, South Africa, Germany, they all have a similar response.
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As God calls them in eternity past and they respond, they embrace the gospel. They follow Christ. They love him.
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There's hope. How can this be? Look at verse 25, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
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It doesn't really mean that God's weak, it just appears to be so.
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He's just using this for argument's sake. You can just imagine the weakness of God.
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If you look at the cross, from a human perspective, it would be God is undone, the promises of God are unfulfilled,
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Satan has triumphed, Rome has triumphed, who would save? And yet, in that weakness of God, it was actually the strength of God.
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And then lastly for today, and I'm glad for this one, maybe this is the most important part of the sermon.
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Number six, remember that God uses people like us to proclaim forgiveness to others. He would use people like us for this message.
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I don't know about you, but I wouldn't pick people like us. I wouldn't pick people like me.
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I used to play basketball a lot, and when you went to the University of Nebraska, you would have to call a game and pick your players, and if you lost, you would wait two hours sometimes to play.
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So you could pick your own teams. Guess what kind of people I picked? I picked the best ones because I'm here to win, and then after we won, what did we do?
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Oh, I didn't do that. But I'd scream out, next, pridefully. But if you win with losers, the losers aren't the ones who praise themselves.
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Why did God pick weak people? Answer so He alone gets the glory. As I look around,
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I don't see too many doctors, too many lawyers, too many brain surgeons, too many Harvard professors.
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There may be a few, but Paul says it's all about the message because it's all about Christ.
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It's not about us. Verse 26 and following, For consider your calling, brethren. There were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.
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Why? Verse 27, But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world,
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That's why He's talking about people, to shame the things that are strong, and the base things of the world, and the despise
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God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that what?
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No man may boast before God. God chooses sinners to preach the gospel and He saves other sinners through that.
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I'm so glad for that. By the way, when it comes to my Bible, I don't know if you can actually see my
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Bible, but there's the first page right there. How many tick marks in that Bible do you see?
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People that I saved, led to the Lord, prayed the sinner's prayer. How many? Forty -eight.
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No! I don't do anything. I'm the not many mighty, not many noble, not many wise, and God says, you know what?
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Abendroth, here's the message. Jesus Christ is alive, He pays for sinners, He bore sin on His body, people should believe in Him and follow
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Him, and forsake their lives and run to Christ for forgiveness, reporting for duty.
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And what God says here in verse 26 through Paul, He says, consider that. Interesting, it's present tense,
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I think it's in a command form. Think about it for a while. We run around and don't think about things, just one thing after the next, after the next, after the next.
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Paul says, I want you to stop for a second, I want you to settle down and just think about who you really are. Because if you look at yourself long enough, you're going to realize that whatever
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God has done, He's done through you and in spite of you, not because of you. So God gets the boasting.
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He said, consider just who you are. What kind of class and stock do you come from?
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What kind of social strata? The gospel is not dependent on human wisdom and it's not dependent on how good you are, how smart you are, how intelligent you are.
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I think it's the bane of Christianity, friends, when somebody gets saved. If Tom Brady ever got saved and came to our church, what would
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I do? Help him? I'd probably help him, yeah.
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Well, there'd be many things I would tell him to do, but one would be this. Let's go over your testimony again and if somebody ever asks you to speak, this is your testimony.
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Don't say anything else. There's a little verse in the Bible called James 3 .1 and it says, not let many of you be teachers.
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I don't want you on the preaching circuit. God's kingdom is not going to be furthered by some Madonna who gets saved.
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I don't mean Madonna is Tom Brady, but I mean Madonna the rock star. Some kind of Madonna or Tom Brady gets saved, it doesn't matter.
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I'm glad some of those kind of people do get saved. But God's message goes through those who aren't wealthy, who aren't sports stars, who aren't
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Hollywood celebrities, who aren't gifted, who aren't articulate, who aren't well -bred, so God gets the glory.
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I don't know if I've ever told you this story. I probably have. After you're here 11 years, probably every story you've heard.
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I thought, you know what, it's 1989, God saves me.
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I think to myself, I'm going to get to know this book. My father had died and the pastor said, you know,
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Mike, you're the oldest son. Here's the Bible, would you tell me a few things from the Bible about your dad so I can save those things?
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On his funeral, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Acts, the letter of Romans, I mean,
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I have no idea, some closed book. I felt so shamed. I know right where I was sitting, in the exact chair at my mom's house and I just said, well, there's ways you can get around this and I'm like, well, you know, you're the pastor and I trust you to do what you need to do.
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I thought I felt that big. I wasn't even saved, but I thought, this is shame. You know,
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I tell people, you know, if your wife writes you a love letter, do you ever read it? Nah, put it away. Here's God's love letter.
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Here's talks about sin and Jesus and life and death and I don't even know what's in this book. I said, I'm going to know this book.
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Shortly after that, get married, come home one day. By the way, my life is a living example of what not to do when
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God is in spite of who I am does good things. You should rejoice for me and you should rejoice because the same
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God does that to you too. I came home one day, I said, Kim, I'm going to go to seminary.
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Kim's like, seminary? Yeah, I'm going to go to seminary and learn the Bible. I thought she was going to put a tutu on and dance for me or something.
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I don't know. She was mad.
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I didn't talk to her about it. I didn't pray with her about it. I didn't do anything. I just had some great idea that I'm not going to be shamed ever again.
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I'm going to go to seminary and by the way, I've got it all planned out. When it comes to preaching class, I'm quitting because I'm not going to get up and speak in front of people because I know my diction sometimes isn't the best and syntax and other things and I like to look good and sometimes
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I don't look good when I speak and forget it. So I'm going to take 96 hours and then quit. Begged Kim a little bit.
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She finally agreed after I danced in the tutu. God began to work in seminary.
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I went over six years, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm just telling you, if God can use me, he can use anybody.
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Whatever gifts we have, they're given by God and God picks the people who aren't the best. There's a smarter person in your job that God could have chosen to preach the gospel and he didn't.
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He chose you. There's a better neighbor that God could have chosen who would have been more effective humanly, but he didn't choose him.
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He chose us. Pick the worst, turn them into the best for the grace of God and send them out because that's just the way
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God does it. So he gets all the glory. He nullifies things that are and I love it that it says in verse 29, that no man should boast before God.
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God takes the people in the lowest caste system in Hinduism and says, you're the ones who are my kings.
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I learned this week that in the old days in India, they called the horrible people of the low caste, those who are not, ala
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Thavarkal. That's who God chose. So when God does something good, he gets all the credit.
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No one can ever claim credit for himself. One man said, John Bengal went on to say, we may glory not before God, but in God.
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So I think this is important for us because we might not be the best people to evangelize and turn New England upside down.
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You might not be the best person at work with all the skills, but you have the powerful gospel. Tell people, verse 30, but by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus.
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People you evangelize by the will, by the way, will be Christians by God's doing as well.
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And who is Jesus to Christians, who became to us wisdom from God, who used to think he was stupid. And righteousness, we used to love unrighteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, all these great things of God personified in Christ Jesus.
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Therefore, verse 31, as it is written, let him who boasts, boast of the
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Lord. It's all of God's grace. We were made to boast. We're all boasters.
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We'll either boast in football, we'll boast in children, we'll boast in something, but God has wanted us to boast in him.
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Well, as I look at this, I say to myself, how do I evangelize this culture? What do I do? If you look at one chapter later,
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I think Paul never stops giving the testimony.
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Verse 1, chapter 2, and I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God, for I determined to know nothing among you.
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Paul had two strings on that guitar. These are our two strings. Jesus Christ, his life, his person, virgin birth, perfect life, sinless life, fulfilling prophecies, and him crucified.
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What he did, death, burial, and resurrection. And I love it that I can be this kind of preacher, and God can still use me, and I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.
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And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit, and in power, and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.
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Friends, you have the gospel, and they might not like it, but if God works in their heart, they're going to love it.
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Let's pray. Lord, thank you for these great words of 1
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Corinthians chapter 1, and Lord, I know you can use weak vessels, and so we will admit as a corporate body, we are weak, and we are frail, and sometimes we don't preach when we ought to, sometimes we're unloving when we preach, sometimes we have wrong motives, yet you have given us a desire to exalt
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Christ Jesus, the risen Savior. So Lord, use us for that.
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Father, forgive us as a church for falling short of your standard of loving
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God, and loving our neighbor, preaching the gospel when we ought to. Father, we all struggle with,
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I struggle with being men -pleasers. I want to be liked. Lord, help us to be like Paul, like Peter, like John the
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Baptist, like Jesus, dear men who preach no matter what the response.
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And then, Lord, we'll sing not to us, but to thy name, receive the glory, in Jesus' name, amen.