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I have a newspaper article this morning. I'd like to read a portion of it. The title is called,
Please Laugh in Church. First Church Plans Holy Humor Service Sunday, Marlborough, Massachusetts.
I think it's about ten days old. This weekend, the First Church in Marlborough Congregational will spice up its services by sending in the clowns.
The church will have a holy humor service this Sunday featuring stand -up comedy, a laughing
Jesus on the cover of the church bulletin, and a sermon begins with, Have you heard about the one that happened on the road to Emmaus?
This is a brainchild of interim pastor Betsy Waters, who says humorous church services have their roots in medieval times and have become more popular as the years have gone by.
She said we laugh, cry, and tell stories. Waters began the tradition three years ago, always on the week after Easter, to show that God has the last laugh over death.
She said the resurrection is one of the greatest punchlines of all times. It's God's creative humor at work in the world.
I'm not done reading the article yet, but if you can't see my blood pressure starting to go up, you're not sitting in the front row.
The service will open with the clowns' prayer, probably led by the pastor, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Humor is also working its way into the lineup of hymns. Past services have featured choir members wearing animal masks as they sung the whimsical hymn,
All God's Critters Got a Place in the Choir, Some Sing Low and Some Sing Higher. This year's featured hymns include one called
Sing My Song Backward and an alternative version of Give Me That Old Time Religion. I think
Paul was a little different when he said, And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him what crucified.
Turn your Bibles, please, to 1 Corinthians 2. And I use that story as a backdrop.
While not every church is into such shenanigans, many are.
And if Jesus Christ has purchased this church, the universal church and every local church with His blood, it is
His church, and He is the one who says, This is what you do for worship.
If you haven't noticed, Jesus is precise about worship. A whole book even in the Old Testament, Leviticus, talking about the precision of worship.
It's never left up to how people feel, how people are led, what's most popular, what will draw in a crowd.
It's always based on how the God of the universe has told us He wishes to be thought of and worshiped.
And this is such a good section of Scripture for us even as a church, so we can hear the heartbeat of Paul, to be reminded again,
Who is the object of worship? And it's not me. It's not you. It's never right to say,
Well, I didn't really like the worship service today, assuming there's biblical preaching and biblical songs.
The right question is, Did I worship Jesus Christ corporately together with the saints?
Paul has been talking in 1 Corinthians, this church that is carnal. I don't think they were as carnal as blasphemous congregational or wherever it is.
But they were carnal. And they needed to get their minds right, their minds straightened out to think properly.
Paul says in chapter 1, It's a weak object of salvation. That is weak to the world, Jesus on a cross.
It doesn't seem very strong there. He saved others, but He can't save Himself. Actually, they were technically right.
He couldn't save Himself, because it was the Father's goodwill for Him to come and die for those that the
Father had given Him. Paul says at the end of chapter 1, Do you know what else is weak?
We are weak, the ones that have been graced by God. The cross seems weak. We seem weak.
We are weak. And now Paul moves to chapter 2 and he says, Even the preacher comes not with some kind of thunderous oratory, but he is weak as well.
16 chapters in the book of 1 Corinthians. 13 in 2 Corinthians. 29 chapters trying to get this church to think with the right priorities, to think biblically.
And so it's good for us as a church as well. I've said this many times. I'm not preaching through 1 Corinthians because I think we're carnal.
I'm preaching through 1 Corinthians because I think this will prevent us from turning into Holy Humor Saturday or whatever those kind of things are.
Chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4 is about one topic. What's that one topic? Church division.
Church division. Chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4. Chapter 1, 2, and 3, they had the wrong view of wisdom.
Chapter 1, wisdom according to the world, a way to see the world through unbiblical lenses.
And in chapter 4, what was splitting the church was the wrong view of ministry. So here right now in chapter 1, 2, and 3, specifically for us today chapter 2, we're still dealing with this issue of wisdom.
How do we assess life? Through the lens of Christ and Scripture or through ourselves in some kind of egocentric way?
Paul says in chapter 1, verses 18 -25, the gospel of the cross is opposed to worldly wisdom.
He says in chapter 1, verses 26 -31, God's choices show that he's purposely not making wisdom a factor.
And then now Paul in chapter 2, verses 1 -5, he's going to say, I purposely decided not to use man's ways and man's wisdom when
I came preaching to you. Why? Look down at verse 5. This whole section, my
Bible has a nice little paragraph blocked off. This whole section from chapter 2, verses 1 -5, is all leading to verse 5, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
Paul wants this message to affect you with the power of God so that when another smooth talker comes along and a better speaker and a smarter person, you're not going to be affected.
So the outline for today is simple. It's kind of an unusual outline, but we pick up where I left off just before Resurrection Sunday.
Four words that describe what Paul is saying in these five verses that will help you understand that preaching must always rest in the power of God and not on men.
Four words to describe this. Easy to remember these four words. The first word is disregard.
If you remember these four words, you're going to be helped in Awana, evangelism, home Bible study, preaching, ministry of the gospel.
These four words aren't just for apostles. They're not just for pastors. They're for everyone. Number one, disregard.
You must have a total and complete disregard for any and all human methods that detract from the gospel.
Schemes and strategies and concoctions and game plans, they're all gone.
Let's see what Paul did. Paul in chapter 2 verse 1 says, And I, when
I came to your brothers, when did He come to them? Chapter 18 of Acts, He was there for 18 months.
Before I got there, before I traveled to where you were, I had a game plan. And before I got there,
I thought of these things. I'm not going to be led. I meet people all the time. I'll say, well, what are you going to speak on? They'll say, well,
I'm just waiting to be led. Translation is you haven't done your homework yet and you don't have a study ready, so you're waiting to be led.
I'm just going to kind of go on my feelings. I'm going to kind of assess the crowd. Paul didn't do any of that.
He said, I'm going to get there. And before I get there, it's going to be stuck into my mind. My father used to say, son, don't be bullheaded.
In a good sense, Paul is going to be bullheaded in a direct determination. So he says,
I'm going to go do what I'm supposed to do instead of what I could do, maybe what I want to do. And he says, when
I came to you brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
Paul says, I don't care about the how. I don't care about the method. It's the what. It's the whom. Christ Jesus, the
Messiah on the cross. Paul says, when I got there, I tried to make it so that I wasn't the star of every one of my stories, that I wasn't the star of every personal illustration
I gave. I've got one person to preach about and that is Christ. It's kind of interesting.
He starts with first person singular again here. He stopped with first person singular in verse 17 of chapter 1.
And so really, 18 through 31 of chapter 1 was kind of a parenthetical statement.
So if I read 1 .17 and 2 .1, it just flows perfectly with this first person singular.
Let me read verse 17 and then chapter 2 verse 1 and it all just flows together. He picks up where he left off.
Chapter 1 verse 17, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. And not with words of elegant wisdom, eloquent wisdom, or elegant for that matter, but the text is eloquent, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
And I, verse 1 of chapter 2, when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
See how that's just tied in perfectly? He picks up where he left off. He says,
I purposely didn't come with erudition, lofty speech. I've listened to some people talk and I don't even care what they're talking about, but they're just good speakers.
I remember once I went to the Massachusetts, USS Massachusetts, that's a destroyer here, locally,
Fall River or someplace. And this guy was telling stories and he was telling stories about, we did the sleepover.
You don't really sleep on those things, but you just lay there and listen to everybody else, you know, try to control their unruly kids while you try to sleep.
And it's this overnight sleeping kind of Cub Scout, Iwana, whatever we did here.
And he said, I have no idea why I'm going to tell this story, but it's an interesting story, nonetheless.
I'm camping out and all of a sudden they say, you hear the bell, beep, beep, beep, beep, and it's ringing.
And they say, down in the mess hall, there's the storyteller and he's going to be telling ghost stories about ghosts on ships.
And I thought, well, as the pastor of the church, I definitely am into the exorcism ghost story, so let's go church.
No, I took my son, there was a few other church people there, but I said, let's listen to this man tell stories.
And I kid you not, I've never heard anybody tell a story so wonderfully. There's an issue today we have in society, people can't tell stories.
This guy could really tell them. I didn't even care, it was about ghosts. Because if he could tell great stories about subjects
I don't care about, then I just say, well, he's just a great storyteller. The focus is not on the wrong person, it's not on Christ Jesus.
Paul could talk highbrow language. He was trained, but he didn't want to display himself.
There's an old Puritan saying that talks about a peacock that prides himself in his gay feathers, but ruffling them up, he spies his black feet, so then he soon lets his plumes fall.
I'm so great, I'm so wonderful, says the peacock. Oops, my feet are black. Spurgeon said,
God has allowed His people to have black feet, black from their own sinfulness, so that they may not glory in any of the graces which
God the Holy Spirit has given them, but that while they have those graces so bright and beautiful, they may still look down on their own natural depravity and humble themselves before God.
Isn't that good? That is good. Paul says, I have the cross,
Jesus on a cross, and I'm not going to use my words to somehow decorate the cross with Armani fashions, with some kind of Giorgio cologne.
I don't even know what cologne is popular now. I have no idea. Some kind of floral arrangements, some kind of mascara for Jesus on the cross.
He said, I preach simply, plainly, and regularly about Jesus. You say, that's what chapter 1 is.
That is chapter 1. What's their problem? Not looking upon Christ. That's often our problem, where we look to ourselves, we look to others.
You've got to meet my needs. The church has got to meet my needs. Other people have to meet my needs. And they're forgetting that Jesus Christ is the
One. He is the object of our faith. He is the One who shows up in the death of Lazarus and shows up with Mary and Martha.
And what does He do? Well, there's some consolation, but He basically says, I'm here now to talk to you about Me.
You've lost a loved one. Have you ever walked into a room when somebody has died and then say, I'm here now and I'd like to talk about myself?
For us, it would always be wrong. For Jesus, it's always right. Because it's about Jesus and His glory.
So He shows up at somebody's death, at their funeral. He talks about Himself. I'm the resurrection and the life.
Paul said, I just kept proclaiming. I just kept proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
Do you see it in verse 1? Now that word can either be testimony or mystery depending on the ancient manuscripts.
If it's testimony, that's a good translation. Paul's witness according to what Jesus has done.
You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Acts 1. But the UBS text in Nestle -Alan 27, two trustworthy sources say that it's mystery.
And I think that's right. Paul says, I'm preaching to you the mystery of God. Not this mysteriousness, but the mystery of God that once was not revealed, but now
God has revealed. We couldn't concoct it. We couldn't come up with it. It was a mystery to us until God told us.
And when God told Paul, this is what's going on. When the truth found Paul out, he proclaimed it.
Thomas Goodwin was a preacher who liked to show himself off before he was saved.
Cambridge University, 1613. He wanted to be witty. He wanted to be the great preacher.
Then he got saved. And then he adopted this principle. And he said,
I came to this resolved principle that I would preach wholly and altogether sound and wholesome words without affectation of wit and vanity of eloquence.
I have continued in that purpose and practice these three score years. I have preached what
I thought was truly edifying either for conversion or bringing them up to eternal life. That's the idea here.
Disregard. I'm going to disregard methods. Do you know, maybe I could say it this way.
If you give me your little kids, I can lead them to the Lord. I personally can lead them to the
Lord. And you're like, get rid of this guy. What do I mean by that? I can get them to think this way, to scare them with hell, to talk to them about grandmas in heaven and all kinds of other things.
And I can manipulate their hearts and minds and try to seal the deal. Now, there's no conversion in their heart, but I can convince them of that.
There's other ways I could do it. I could put this service here together at the very end saying, the Lord is impressed upon my heart.
There's four or five people that really need to come to the Lord. And by the way, Bernard and Andrew get the mood music going.
Bernard, lock the doors. I've been in those kind of churches. We're just going to stay here until those five people come to Christ.
And everything is focused on the speaker, the doors, the lights, the music, the organ, the everything else.
And they're not just saying, this is who Jesus is. This is Christ Jesus. I'm going to disregard these other things and give to you the only
Savior, the only Captain of the church, Christ Jesus. For those of you that are visiting,
I can't lead anybody to the Lord. And I praise the Lord that in the front of my Bible, whether new or old, I have no tick marks.
If you're kind of a poor speaker, you have stage fright, you're not eloquent, you're kind of mousy personality, you're introverted, you're something like that, this should help you.
Because the message is not about you. You go, well, you know, I'm not really like the Marlboro men with all my buddies and they don't really kind of listen to me and I'm just weak and frail and can't really hang with the guys.
Right on. Because then your testimony about Christ Jesus, proclaiming the mystery of Christ revealed to you through the
Scriptures, is going to have power. This is not going to be you. Show me the people like Paul, who as far as we knew, had some kind of funky thing going on with his eyes.
How many times does it take you to be stoned unto almost death without you having some kind of crooked back full of all kinds of scoliosis and everything else?
When you would look at Paul, you would not just say, yeah, that guy's personality is so dominant, so domineering, we better believe what that guy does.
Because if God can give that guy success, I want that kind of success. Now if you're attractive and you're a
Marlboro Man guy, fine, but that could be your worst asset because you're going to rely on your personality.
Paul said, I disregarded all those things because the Spirit of God saves. John Stott said,
We must never resort to the use of human pressure techniques or attempt to contrive a decision.
Our responsibility is to be faithful in preaching the Word. Isn't that good? When you go down and do evangelism in Worcester, you can be the weakest, frailest,
I don't know why I keep saying mousiest, I don't know, are people mousy? Kind of just like this or something?
You can be all that and you have the words of life. You know Christ crucified, the
Messiah who dies, a substitutionary atonement on the cross who was raised from the dead. He's your only hope.
So Paul says, Before I got there, I had that determination. Congregation, the next time you say to yourself,
I'm going to Worcester to evangelize. Get it stuck in your mind that I'm not going to do some kind of duck and jive, some kind of, you know,
I've seen this in books before. Get the person to look at the Bible, say you should pray and ask Jesus in your heart now and then with your hand on the back of their shoulder, push down real hard to get them to kind of bow to the
Word of God and bow to Jesus. Just get it in your noggin. I have a message and His name is Jesus who died on the cross for sinners like you and you must turn from sin.
You must place your faith in Christ Jesus and believe in this God or there's no hope for you. Talk about Jesus.
That's why you don't hear a lot of personal testimonies of this church, even in a public worship service.
Why? Because too often, the public testimonies become, I was such a bad guy and I was so much of this and that and it turns into focusing on the person.
That's why we tell people in baptismal, I want to hear from you about what you were like before God saved you.
Use generic terms. How God saved you and now what
God has made you live for as a Christian. It's all about God. Because if you get up and talk about yourself, that doesn't do me any good.
That's why when you preach the Gospel, never say, well you know what, you ought to believe in Jesus because I believe in Jesus and my life has changed.
Mormons have changed lives too. People who study Peter Drucker and business books, they have changed lives too.
You can watch Tony Robbins and have a changed life too and walk over coals all you want. You can have a changed life. I quit drugs when
I wasn't even a Christian. My life has changed. It's not about my life, it's about Christ Jesus. He can forgive sins and no one else.
Paul told Corinth, you're forgetting about Jesus. Isn't that an odd concept? Churches that forget about Jesus.
I mean, come on, all this blood, nothing but the blood, washed in the blood, the cross.
This is kind of this monotonous refrain. I need something to get me through the week.
I'm going to work tomorrow. Help me. I've got help for you. He's a captain of your salvation.
He's the author of your salvation. He's a sin bearer who runs the universe. And he runs the universe never with consecutive thinking, but with one eternal decree.
No flowcharts, no plans, no backups. God has one thought, and now the universe is existing from one thought.
We need more of that kind of thinking than, well, you know, I've got a really bad life, and I've got a really bad marriage, and I've got a really bad work, and I've got a really bad this.
Maybe you have all those things, and they're really bad. And maybe, like I think five people here at church, they have cancer.
Some dying from cancer. What's the answer? The answer is, I have one message for you.
There's a God who has been raised from the dead who is a Savior over sin, death, hell, and cancer, and you can trust
Him. What am I going to say? Trust me. The elder board will never let you down. Deacons are good people.
People in the nursery are really good. Second word, determination.
The second word that describes what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, 1 to 5, is determination. First of all, a healthy disregard of any kind of method.
Second of all, a determination to keep Christ central. You must be determined to stay focused on the message of the
Messiah crucified. This is Paul's reason for his method.
Verse 2 reason. Verse 1 method. Why do you do what you do? Why did you talk that way?
For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, the
Messiah, and Him even crucified. Frankly, clearly, regularly, simply,
I preach Christ Jesus. He said,
I made a resolution. I was unshakable. God give me the resolution to keep preaching who
Jesus is. I want to be, in a spiritual way, stubborn. This is holy obstinacy right here from Paul.
I'm not going to waver. I'm not going to say, well, these kind of people want this, and these kind of people want this, and you know what,
I'll tell them these things first, get them to like me, and then on another day of the week, I'll give them the real demands of the gospel.
He didn't do that at all. Unyielding. Paul was such a man of purpose. Remind me of John Bunyan.
He said, I'm not going to stop preaching Jesus Christ. Alright, Bunyan, in you go to jail. Mr. Bunyan, you can come out of prison whenever you will promise to cease preaching the gospel of Christ.
If you let me out of prison today, I'll preach Christ again tomorrow. By the grace of God.
Well, then you must go back to prison. Bunyan, I will go back and stay there, if need be, till the moss grows on my eyelids, but I will never deny my
Master. If you know yourself, you should be determined not to preach yourself.
I know myself. I'm not a very good Savior. Settle it in your mind that you're going to preach
Jesus Christ. Settle it in your mind. The only church you should ever go to in your life is not the one that makes you feel good or has good potlucks.
Do they preach the crucified Savior? J .I.
Packer said, the evangelical preacher will relate the specific content of all his messages to Christ, his mediation, his cross, his resurrection, and his gift of new life to those who trust in him.
And we do this whether society likes it or they don't. You say, yeah, but where's the resurrection here?
What about preaching the resurrection? We'll get to the resurrection in about four years. It's chapter 15, a whole chapter on the resurrection.
The resurrection is important. If you don't preach
Christ, that vacuum, as I said a few weeks ago, has to be filled. And it'll be filled with all kinds of things.
I've got a prophecy from the Lord, some ecstatic utterance, some kind of drama and worship and all kinds of other things.
There's nothing wrong with worship. But in my mind, by the resoluteness, by the grace of God, you'll never find the ebendross when we're out of town looking for a church to go to.
And if I see on the sign, church like you've never seen it before, I'm not going.
Be casual as you want. I'm not going. Because this intimacy called, well, just come casually.
By the way, if you want to come in shorts, come in shorts. I'm just glad you're here. There's no dress code here.
But if you're sitting in shorts and a t -shirt, I'm going to tell you that Jesus Christ is your only Savior. And you have to love
Him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And that you're a sinner and you need desperate forgiveness from Him and from Him alone.
Church like you've never seen it, I think maybe this is church like I've never seen it and don't want to see it.
You say, yeah, but if you keep preaching this bloody Jesus who was tortured on the cross for three hours, sensible people won't come.
We're growing out of this building. We better not go too far towards Cambridge and Harvard because those kind of people don't like this kind of talk, all this blood stuff.
I don't know what else to do. One man wrote a book on how to build morale in your church and it never talked about Jesus.
One man said, if you ever want to find a new pastor, look for these seven things. Never talked about preaching
Jesus. What's the theme in these sermons that have been preached in America?
How can I have a happier marriage? How can I handle my money? How can I like my job? This one
I couldn't make up if I tried, so I better not even read it. How can I be a better parent? How can I get more time for myself?
How can I feel better about myself? These are real titles, and here's a real title as well. What would
Jesus say to Madonna? The theme is, where's
Jesus? It's kind of like this, the church that has, where's Waldo? Well, I know he's around here somewhere, but we don't know where he is.
Whoever finds him gets a prize. If you're going to put your kids in Iwana, I want our people to teach who
Jesus is. And I want them to assume every single week, if you're an Iwana leader, this is what you do, or this is, it's time to give your resignation.
I'm going to teach them about, Jesus is the only Savior. He died a vicious substitutionary death in Calvary.
He was raised from the dead. There's no other way to heaven. And you can have good manners, and still go straight to hell.
You can obey your parents, and be a good person, and still go to hell, because no one's good, and you need Jesus.
And you teach them week in and week out. I praise God for our Iwana workers. And one has even recently said, you know,
I've got to stop telling my people the little children there, you know, it's not good to be a David. It's not good to be a
Daniel. Don't dare to be a Daniel, because we're all going to fall short. Jesus is the one.
People say, well, limit your preaching to 20 minutes. It'll be better. I'm quite confident that Jesus likes to hear him being talked about for more than 20 minutes.
As one pastor said, when told by a congregant, you know, I just don't feel fed at the church.
If they're preaching Jesus, I'd suggest bringing a bigger plate, because if you bring a thimble, this particular pastor,
I would never say this, but this particular pastor said, I can fill a thimble up pretty quickly. We're here to worship
Jesus. By the way, what would you be doing in heaven? Worthy is the lamb who is slain.
He will be the object. You will not care, literally, even though this is hard to take, you will not care, literally, about your mother, your brother, your sister, your husband, your wife, or your kids for probably a billion years.
I think you probably just know that they're there. But if you had to think sequentially, you would not go, I wonder if my mother's here.
My mother died five years ago. I miss my mother. And I would love to be able to, I mean, as long as I live,
I remember sitting, it was right over there when the sanctuary was flipped around. We're singing victory in Jesus, just both crying as their bodies racked full of cancer.
And I want to be in heaven. Victory in Jesus is a pretty good song. Maybe it has a torque here or there, kind of Gaither -like or something.
But I still love the song, and I want to sing it in heaven with my mother. But when I see Jesus Christ in heaven,
I'm not going to be going, this just isn't in heaven until I can find my mother. Because we're going to think properly.
We're going to think biblically. I think I'll know my mother's there. And I think after a million years, I might go find
Paul and say, Paul, what did you mean by baptism of the dead? In 1 Corinthians 15, there's 42 different ways to interpret it.
Help me! We'll know all that. Lloyd -Jones says, in many ways, it is the departure of the church from preaching that is responsible in a large measure for the state of modern society.
The church has been trying to preach morality and ethics without the gospel as a basis. It has been preaching morality without godliness.
And it simply does not work. It never has and it never will. And the result is that the church, having abandoned her real task, has left humanity more or less to its own devices.
If you teach junior church, preach Christ Jesus. Why? A.
It's biblical. B. It follows Paul's example. C. It's the only way people get saved. Faith comes by hearing a message about Christ.
D. It discusses sin. There's a reason why Jesus is on the cross and it wasn't His own sin.
It's our sin. Sin needs to be addressed. Preach the gospel because the gospel of Jesus on the cross addresses not just the love of God, God does love us so much
He sent His Son, but addresses the wrath of God as well. I thought it very fascinating when
I was reading D .A. Carson a while ago and he basically said, people are more frightened of volcanoes and war and famine than they are of eternal hell.
And the cross is a wonderful display, a just and holy display of Nahum 1. The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.
Jesus was guiltless, but He suffered for the guilty. There is something going on more in Britain than here, but it's here now too, that the death of Christ on a cross is cosmic divine child abuse.
So we want Jesus now, He's just a good example. Show me people who say, we want Jesus as a good example,
He's a good teacher. Liberals like that, don't they? Muslims, you could say to a
Muslim, was Jesus a good teacher? Who can read the Beatitudes and not say He was an excellent teacher? Everybody believes that.
But when our sin was so bad that the Father had to pour out His wrath on the Son, now that makes people a little uncomfortable.
Well, what's the third word? Let's go to the third word that we find here. I'm going to talk a little bit about 2
Timothy 4 later. The third word in our outline, disregard, number one, determination to preach
Christ, number two, now number three, deference, deference, D -E -F -E -R -E -N -C -E, deference.
You must with humble deference obey God and preach
Christ Jesus. This is marching orders kind of language. Let's take a look at verse 3.
Let's take a look at verse 3. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.
It kind of doesn't really look like deference to me and humility. It looks like the guy was scared.
Well, first of all, he says, I'm in weakness. I know my own powers can't save people. I know the power is the gospel.
I don't want to be the dominant one. But then he says, fear and trembling. I was with you in weakness. He seems to describe that in chapter 1 and chapter 2 so far.
No problem. And in fear and in much trembling. If you were asked the question, what does fear and trembling mean, what would you say?
Well, I found all kinds of different answers according to commentators. One was
Paul had a fear of failure. He flopped in Athens and so he thought he was going to fail here.
That's not right. He didn't flop in Athens. Some people think this is stage fright. Paul doesn't like to get up and he's kind of got jitters.
Ever get up in front of people and have some kind of stage fright, nervous, shaky? Philip's translation says, I was feeling far from strong.
I was nervous and rather shaky. I don't think it has anything to do with that. How about panic from a task that's over your head?
Well, that's true. We're insufficient as preachers. What about anxiety over personal safety?
Well, that could be true. This chapter goes on in chapter 18 of Acts. It goes on to say,
Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent for I am with you and no man will attack you in order to harm you for I have many people in this city.
But if you take a look at this fear and trembling and put it together and look in the Old Testament Greek and look in the
New Testament, you see that it's clumped together and it talks about being under the authority of one who's superior.
It's not fear, I'm afraid and trembling. It's put together.
It means, I know there's a commander over me and I do what he says. That is to say, it is humbly deferring to those who are above you.
There are officers in the Roman Guard who would have fear and trembling.
They're not afraid of their captain but they say, I defer to his authority and obey him. So Paul is basically saying, there's another purchaser of the church,
Christ, I do what he says. I'm a sent one. There's a higher rank than me.
Let me just read you these two and see if you can pick up those words and the context. Just listen, Ephesians 6
Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ.
There's one over me with fear and trembling. How about this one? Mark 5 But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before Jesus and told
Him the whole truth. She was afraid, biting her fingernails. No, she realized that there was one over her and she would submit to that one over her.
Does this verse make more sense now? Philippians 2, 12 and 13 So then, my beloved brethren, just as you have always obeyed, not in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation, say it out loud, with fear and trembling.
You walk around kind of crouching. I'm scared. I've got to work out my salvation kind of crouchingly.
No, I'm going to work out my salvation, my sanctification, knowing that God is over me and it is my duty, it is my privilege to do that.
This is perfect because the Corinthians, if you described them negatively with one word, you could probably say prideful.
Here they are so prideful. We're in charge. We do this. We tell everybody else what to do. We're, you know, a number one chief kind of jefe.
Paul says, you know what you Corinthians, you're under the Gospel, you're under Jesus, and so you need to obey
Him. Turn with me if you would to 2
Timothy chapter 4 and I want to show you the same kind of language given to elders. The Gospel is not for us to make up or to say, well, we'll kind of cut and paste a little bit.
We'll give people, you know, only love and no wrath and we'll just talk about His resurrection. We better not talk about His crucifixion.
This kind of higher ranking is used with different language here in 2 Timothy 4 verse 1, a great chapter that talks about preaching.
Humbly deferring to the King. When we evangelize, that's what we do.
We don't make things up and do the things we want our way. 2
Timothy 4 verse 1, listen to the same kind of fear and trembling language of deference. I charge you,
Paul says, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by His appearing and His kingdom, then what?
Preach the Word. I charge you, that's take an oath. Put your hand up and say, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me
God, oath. I'm under God. He's the judge of the living and the dead.
Look at verse 3, you better settle this in your mind that you're under God's authority because society will try to tell you to do the opposite.
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.
And will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. So set it in your mind now where you say,
I've got one message, Jesus, I'm weak and I know that and I need to preach Jesus in such a way that it will honor
Him who's above me. What does the text say in verse 4?
They will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. When I see
Jehovah's Witnesses at the door and they knock on the door and say, you know, would you like to go to hell and your family too and want to talk to me?
I used to feel super sorry for them. And in a sense I really do because I'm not any better than they are.
I've been graced and they're hardened. But one of the reasons why they're in that religion is they want to be.
And they heap up teachers after their own desires. And they want a works righteousness system. And so they find people to teach works righteousness.
And in a day when people do that, Paul says, when I came to you Corinth, there's somebody over me.
Don't shoot the messenger. And the last word found in 1
Corinthians 2, verses 4 and 5. Let's wrap it up here. 1 Corinthians 2, verses 4 and 5, the final word that describes what
Paul is saying. It seems hot in here. Is it hot? I think it's hot. I see more sleepers out there today than I've seen for months.
The final word is demonstration. Disregard, determination, deference, and now demonstration.
You want your preaching. You want my preaching. You want your evangelism to show God's power, not your own.
And so he says, in my speech and my message, verse 4, we're not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the
Spirit and of power. There were results to his preaching, but they weren't prefab.
They weren't made up by him. The Word of God was blessed by the Spirit of God. But it wasn't
Paul's made -up thing. He didn't manipulate people. He says, basically, I'm going to try to take off the clothes of self -reliance and preach the
Gospel prayerfully. By the way, that word demonstration there in your text, it comes from a word where we would get a legal proof, the court of law kind of authenticity.
It's a proof. Now maybe the proof was signs and wonders that Paul the Apostle could do.
Maybe the proof was conversions. But either way, there was proof that the Spirit of God was working.
If it was conversion, there were changed lives. Corinth, you had a changed life. And what such were some of you, 1
Corinthians 6. John Hutton used to tell a story, a man who had been a reprobate and a drunkard was captured by Christ.
His workmates used to try to shake him and say, surely a sensible man like you cannot believe in the miracles that the
Bible tells you about. You cannot, for instance, believe that this Jesus of yours turned water into wine.
And then in one of the all -time classic responses that I've ever heard in my life, you can't, for instance, believe that this
Jesus of yours turns water into wine. The man said, whether He turned water into wine or not,
I do not know. But in my house, I have seen Him turn beer into furniture. You guys are a little slow on the uptake there.
Changed his life. Paul says, I've come to you preaching. Remember when
I was there for 18 months and now I have to send you a letter? You were changed by the power of God, by the Spirit of God, through the
Word of God, preaching a Christ who has been raised from the dead. Paul says,
I don't want your faith to rest in me. So for us at Bethlehem Bible Church, I think the same principles can apply.
You say, I have a disregard of human manipulation. I will be determined to preach
Christ Jesus, whether it's the nursery or the rest home ministry. I am under marching orders from God.
And if He's happy and nobody else is, I'll sleep well. And I want my ministry to be a demonstration of God's power.
Because who would want to try to steal God's glory? And it's all revolving the cross.
You ought to go buy a book by Stott called The Cross of Christ. So you say to yourself, I'm going to study it from every angle so that is my message.
You need to study the cross more than you ever needed to study all the ins and outs of what kind of eschatology you might have.
The eschatology that you need is Jesus, the one who was raised from a cross, is coming back soon.
Live a holy life. People can know all about all these kind of ologies and they've forgotten
Christology. Paul says, I brought to you theology of Christology. Don't forget it.
But we recoil because it's bloody. It's gross. It's obscene to the world.
And we, after all, I do at least. Maybe you don't. But I want to be liked. I want to be respected.
And I want to be called Sir in the community of intellectuals at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, and Yale.
I want that. That's what a sinful heart wants. I know it's not right.
So how do I defend myself against that first repentance, acknowledging that and then saying, so I am determined to give the people what my
Master says and that's the Gospel. So if you like the Gospel, you'll love this church. If you don't like the
Gospel, I don't know what to tell you. Because guess what we're going to talk about next week? The Gospel. Guess what we're going to sing about next week?
The Gospel. Guess what one example typifies the wrath of God, the love of God, the holiness of God, and the grace of God?
Good. You're like, we'll say anything. Just wrap this up. We get it.
We understand. The thing is, we're so prone to forget, aren't we?
We forget what we're supposed to remember and we remember what we're supposed to forget. It's one of my all -time joys to watch a liberal seminary go conservative.
From moralistic social agenda to Jesus is the Savior, the one and only.
I love that. And one of my tragedies that I watch in life is when seminaries go from conservative to liberal.
Union Seminary, New York. Used to be a Reformed seminary.
Presbyterian USA now. One of 11 seminaries in that denomination. Used to be a great seminary.
They just had a lecturer, Margaret Miles, talk about her article called, God's Love, Mother's Milk.
And she said basically, not basically, I quote, Although theologians may have claimed that crucifixion scenes exhibited the extremity of God's love for humans, it was scenes of the child at the breast that spoke to people on the basis of their earliest experience.
And she goes on to say that the cross is inappropriate as a symbol for Christianity because, quote, it presents a violent act as salvific.
Sometimes the only way for peace is through war. Violence for peace. And that's exactly what happened at Calvary.
She said, This equation of love with heroic violence and suffering is typically a male -centered perspective.
She said, In societies in which violence is rampant on the street and in the media, the nursing virgin can perhaps communicate
God's love to people in a way that a violent image, the image of one more sacrificial victim, cannot.
We live in our own little bubble. That's what the world says. And if you dare to call yourself a
Christian, your mantra ought to be, I determine to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, even him crucified.
So help me God. Father in heaven, we are thankful today that your
Son could not save himself because he was so obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Thank you that he fulfilled his mission to go rescue every person that you gave him.
And Father, we're thankful in time. Some of us just in the last year, some of us 40 years ago.
Your Spirit applied that salvation and made us born again, caused us to believe. And then
Lord, we accepted you, we believed in you, we received you as who you are and what you've done.
I pray for Bethlehem Bible Church. Father, I pray for the weak ones who are here, that you would strengthen them with the gospel.
I pray that they would find their all in Christ Jesus, the Lord. Father, for the mature ones here, the maturing ones,
I pray that they would not just study the cross and get over it, move on to the next point of theology.
But Father, you would have the Spirit of God continually remind them of propitiation, reconciliation, redemption, forgiveness, justification.
All the different words that show the beauty of the gospel. Christ Jesus, the
Messiah on a cross. And Father, we know you have the power to do whatever you'd like and you've even given us a resurrection power based on Christ's resurrection.
So Father, help us to affect and infect this community around Worcester, not with our conversion stories, not with archaeological data, not with science, not with anti -evolution things, but with the gospel of Christ Jesus.
Give us that determination. Lord, we're weak, we're prideful, we're sinful. We want to see you on display by your power and your authority through your