Insane Asylum Preaching - [1 Corinthians 2:1-5]

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Have you ever been in a psych ward? Have you ever been in an insane asylum?
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I have, as a visitor. I've been in a jail too, as a visitor.
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I've been in regular insane asylums and geriatric insane asylums, and it's interesting as a pastor to go and visit patients and visit congregants.
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It's quite a fascinating place. I'm a little bit nervous because I think to myself, if I lose my wallet or ID, you know,
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I might be locked in for good. Notice a lot of people will come up and it's almost like the jail.
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They'll come up to me and they'll begin telling me why they don't belong there and why they shouldn't be in such a place.
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I remember taking the kids once to a geriatric psych ward and having some of the patients coming up and I'd already coached the kids, this is what you do, this is what you say, and we're just ambassadors of the gospel,
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Christ Jesus. And then I thought to myself, you know, there is a homiletical insane asylum.
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Homiletical means preaching. There's an insane asylum that preachers should be relegated to.
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All preachers that do this thing should have to go to the homiletical loony institution forever, and that is pastors and preachers who preach themselves and not
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Christ Jesus ought to go to the insane asylum because it is utter insanity.
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It is sheer craziness to somehow stand and preach the gospel of the one who saves and want the attention to go on to you.
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If you teach Sunday school, if you evangelize, if you teach VBS, if you teach your children the
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Bible, we have been taught that the star, the Savior, the
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King is not us. It doesn't take very long for us to look at ourselves and realize we are sinful, we're human, we're frail, we're created, and so we aren't the stars.
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And so today we're gonna look at a passage that makes sure we all remember that the star, the Savior, the
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King, Redeemer, propitiator, Christ Jesus is the one that every one of you, whether you're a preacher or not, has to talk about when you're evangelizing,
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Awana, VBS, pulpit, Sunday school, you need to follow Paul's example as well.
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It's not just for preachers. And if you preach less than Christ Jesus as the star, then you need to be in a homiletical psych ward.
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Let's turn our Bibles to 1 Corinthians 2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. 1
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Corinthians 1 took us a while to get through. It's longer than most of the opening chapters in 1 Corinthians, but more than that, it establishes our foundation.
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You'll see houses being built, and all of a sudden you'll say, it's taken them a long time to get the foundation up, and then almost overnight, seemingly, everything else is up, the framing, the two by fours, the roof, and once the foundation is done, it goes up quickly.
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And so while that doesn't perfectly translate to our series in 1 Corinthians, you'll see me spend less time in the following chapters, not because they're less important, but because we don't know the foundational issues that the church of Corinth was dealing with in chapter one.
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Paul has basically said in chapter one, the cross to unbelievers is a weak object.
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How can anything good come out of death? That seems not to be some kind of energizing force.
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Death? And he says, doubly strange, the ones that God saves, contrary to the church of Corinth's liking, contrary to all society's hankering for,
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He saves weak people. He saves shameful people. He saves foolish people.
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And now Paul says, but there's even more to this so -called foolishness. The cross seems foolish to those who are perishing.
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The people that God saves seem foolish to those who are perishing. And the manner of speaking, the delivery, the preaching is also foolishness to those who are perishing.
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The big picture of 1 Corinthians here early on is church division. And Paul says, there's a couple of things that'll split a church.
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If he was here today, he'd probably say musical styles and choice of schools, homeschool, public school, private school.
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Those, by the way, are the two things that tend to split the church more than anything else in modern evangelicalism, music and school.
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But for Corinth, it was a little bit different. For Corinth, it was, let's follow wisdom, the worldly wisdom.
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There's a good wisdom that says, I fear the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But the wisdom that is anti -God, that's shamefully against what
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God teaches, that wouldn't be a good wisdom to follow. And so Paul says, don't follow that because you'll end up following men and then you'll go your ways.
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Paul says, the cross is opposed to wisdom. The people God chooses are opposed to wisdom.
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And Paul's fruitful ministry, when he was at Corinth for 18 months, Acts chapter 18, showed
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Paul to have his theology and his methodology match up. His theology says, weak cross to people, weak people that God saves, but the weak person that God saves is also the weak preacher that only preaches
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Christ Jesus. And Paul says, I'm not going to appeal to you with wisdom. Remember when I was with you,
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I didn't appeal to wisdom. And let's read chapter two, verses one through five.
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We won't get through it all today. As we look at this passage that promotes a preaching that glorifies
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God, not people. If I was a little bit under the weather and not guarded,
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I might say something like, I am so sick of celebrity preaching, following celebrities.
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The people aren't the stars, Jesus is the star. I don't think I'm a celebrity.
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I don't think people here probably think I'm a celebrity, but for somehow if you're here and you do think
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I'm a celebrity, then you just need to spend a little more time with me and you'll quickly realize that I am not the savior.
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Hey, no laughing, why are you laughing? That was a laugh of assent. The gospel goes through us.
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He uses cracked vessels, clay pots for the gospel to go out.
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Paul was no savior, Paul was not perfect, Paul sinned. And so God's ways are just different.
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He picks this foolish cross, he picks foolish people and he uses a foolish method.
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You think he'd probably use some kind of DVD theater or something. Well, I'm a more of a visual learner.
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I learn visually. That may be true, but the way God wants you to learn is through a book and through a preacher.
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People say, well, when do you have drama at your church? Friends, if the preaching of the word of God is not drama,
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I have nothing else to give you. What, am I gonna put on a tutu and dance up here with spiritual dance or something?
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I go to churches, I see ladies dancing through the aisles with streamers and I think, what is that? Am I in like the
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Moose Lodge or what is this? And that's spiritual dance. Friends, if the Bible's not enough, nothing's enough.
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This is the drama of redemption. This is the drama of God who didn't have to tell us what he thinks, revealing his mind in his word and now you get to know exactly how
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God thinks. You couldn't come up with this out of your own mind. It has to be given to us by God.
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And we'll see that in 1 Corinthians 2, 6 and following. People say, why don't you need drama? Here's the main reason why.
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Well, okay, two reasons. One, it's not in the Bible. The Bible said drama, the word, we do it.
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Number two, we don't need it. We don't need drama. The Bible says when you get together as a corporate body, you sing, you preach, you pray, you baptize, you have the
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Lord's supper, you give, and you sit back and say that the God of the universe would use a fragile vessel, a human being, to proclaim the fairest
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Lord Jesus is the wonder of all wonders. That's drama. And so when you come to 1
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Corinthians, it's just packed with drama. And if you're sitting there today and you say, yeah, but I really like drama.
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Well, then I have a suggestion for you. Go to the Wang Theater where you have really good drama, according to skits and all that stuff.
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We just get kind of the leftovers in local churches where they do basically bad drama.
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And so if you want drama, fine, but you don't need it in a church. You might want it in a church, but God says you don't need it.
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You need the drama of redemption. It's a great cross that humbles. 1
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Corinthians 2, verse one, and when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
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And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
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For I determined to know nothing among you to accept Jesus Christ, even
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Him crucified. 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 demonstration of the
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Spirit and of power. So that, so that there's a reason, there's a purpose.
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This is the result that Paul's looking for. So that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.
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You could call this purpose -driven preaching, if you'd like. Paul doesn't want people to believe the gospel because somebody is a good talker.
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Because then you just need a better talker to come along and they'll talk you out of that. If it's just all rational thinking and art and display and philosophical kind of banter, then you're gonna believe what
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I teach you until a better speaker comes along. Paul says, I want your faith, actually in verse five, so that your faith, the faith, definite article faith,
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Christ Jesus should not rest on the wisdom of men. Corinth, that's what you did.
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You believe people not because of what they said, but how they said it. Paul says, the object, the message, the people who are saved, the recipients, and the way
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I preach is all lined up theologically. Paul doesn't want superficial decisions because somebody's a good speaker.
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Paul was smart enough, wise enough, philosophical enough. He could have done it, but he forced himself not to.
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So our outline this morning is, let me show you four words that describe what Paul is saying in 1
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Corinthians chapter two, one to five, that will help you understand preaching must always rest on the power of God.
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Four words that summarize this passage, that clarify what preachers must do from the pulpit, what
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Awana leaders must do, what Sunday school teachers must do, what evangelists must do, four words, from pulpit ministry to Sunday school teachers, that demonstrate
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Paul's point here. Say, well,
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I don't do any of those. Well, we have opportunities to serve, and even lay people who like preaching can learn from this.
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Number one, the first word that describes what Paul is saying is disregard, disregard.
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You must have a total and complete disregard for human methods that detract from the gospel.
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You must have a total healthy disregard for things that distract from the gospel.
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Detract from them, distract away from them. You are to ignore them. You are to neglect them.
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You will give no heed, Paul says, to these kind of human techniques and manipulations.
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After all, God's word needs no crutch. Verse one, you're not gonna see this super smart person here.
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By the way, as I come to this passage, you say, well, I'm not a great debater. I don't know a lot about prophecy. I don't understand the latest in intelligent design.
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I don't know any of these things. I just know I was a sinner, and Jesus was a greater savior. You're gonna like this passage.
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You don't have to be the smartest and the best. You have to put away actually your smarts so the gospel comes forth, and look what he says.
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Total disregard for this. I came to you, brethren, when I was there for those 18 months, kindly, he says, brethren, affectionately, tenderly.
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I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom proclaiming to you the whole testimony or the testimony of God.
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Paul says, remember when I was with you for 18 months in Acts 18? That's what I did.
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You're following human people now at splitting the church, but when I was with you, I didn't do any of that, and I'm preaching now what
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I practice. You ever heard practice what you preach? This is the opposite. I preach now what I practiced then.
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Had a total disregard for that. What didn't I do? I didn't have some kind of excellent speech, all studied, kind of this wonderful discourse, everything's arranged so wonderfully that you just have to go, oh, okay,
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I give. Spurgeon said, preaching is often too much like a fiddler's plane.
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People come to see how it's done, and then they pass around the question, what do you think of him?
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Spurgeon said, and I'm sure he echoes Paul's sentiments, I do not care two straws what you think of me, but I do care a whole world of what you think of Christ and of yourselves and of your future state.
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Paul was smart, he was well -schooled, but he said, I'm not gonna use that in my delivery. He said, my hub, my center of gravity was the cross of Jesus Christ.
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He didn't walk around with some kind of peacock -like verbal plumage to trick people into believing.
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He says, I'm gonna go away from that. I'm not gonna get close to it. I'm gonna get far away from it.
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It's like I remember my father when we drove up to Pikes Peak in Colorado. My father did not say, well, you know,
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I just think I'll see how far I can get to the edge without going off. That'll really make mom happy. And that's how some people take dating.
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How far can I go without falling over the cliff of immorality? Well, what do you do? You get away from it.
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You're hugging the side of the road, almost hitting the side of the mountain because you're getting away from what's wrong and would put you in peril.
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And Paul said, I know I could probably talk people into it, but I'm getting far away from this kind of promotion, basically, of myself.
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I don't want you to submit to clever words. I'm not here to win followers. I don't want a fan club.
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I want everything to be focused on Jesus Christ, not the preacher. And if you're a great talker, then you stifle the message of Christ.
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You garble it. And so Paul says, I didn't do this and I did do that. What did he do? What I did do is
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I proclaimed to you the testimony of God. Now that could be translated, if you see your little notes in the Bible, testimony of God, like a witness to God or mystery of God.
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And I think that's probably the right translation, the mystery of God, the mystery of God.
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Humans can't find this truth. Philosophers can't come up with this truth.
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God says, it's no longer a mystery. It was a mystery. I told you what the Bible says. I told you in the
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Bible, it's no longer a mystery. It's not mysterious, like, ooh, mysterious. It's, I can't find it out of my own.
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Once hidden, now revealed. But either way, Paul says that my focus is on the word because it changes people.
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You could hear Paul, even next book that he writes, we have renounced the thing, 2 Corinthians, hidden because of shame.
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Not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God. I didn't do that.
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I distanced myself from any kind of fishing for admiration, being the star.
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I'm happy because I don't have to be the Princeton debate club winner to preach the gospel. I don't have to be some awesome public speaker.
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I don't have to go to Dale Carnegie. Now, Paul's not saying don't be persuasive. He says, in 2
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Corinthians, knowing the fear of the Lord, we what? Persuade men, beg, appeal.
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Everyone here will live forever. You'll die and then what? There's a good persuasion, but it's not the art of the deal.
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It's not verbal kind of craftsmanship because we don't want people to be drawn to us.
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The main attraction is Christ Jesus. This does not mean you should be lazy.
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I met a guy one time when I was working out in California and he just got saved. And I said, well, what are you going to do?
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And he knew I was studying to be a pastor. And he said, I'm going to go speak to 5 ,000 men. I said, really?
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5 ,000 men? You're just like a struggling actor. How'd you get this kind of gig, you know? He said, well, you know,
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I got saved and I get the opportunity because I'm an actor. And I said, well, what are you going to talk about? Well, I'm going to let the
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Spirit of God lead me when I get up there. The Spirit of God's leading you right now through me.
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Study to show yourselves approved. A workman who needs not be ashamed. Paul's not saying just get up and whatever comes out, fine.
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I have to go teach the rest home ministry and I don't really have time to study. I'll just go there and show up.
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Does he mean that? No, but this way that you concoct an argument that just lends itself to a greater arguer to come along, he says,
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I'm not going to do that because I want your faith to rest not in my words, my personality, my persuasiveness, but in the gospel.
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Lofty speech. It's weak speech. You can even tell our culture today they hate preaching.
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Don't you preach to me. You mean to tell me you're going to have somebody stand up and preach for 50 minutes and they don't even ask for questions?
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And Paul says, you're acting like teenagers. And those teenagers used to think their parents were nice and cool and neat and fun to be around.
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But now they found some other friends and those other friends are more appealing. And those other friends don't like these kind of nerdy parents.
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And so I was your parent and I preached to you the straightforward gospel. Some other false friends come around.
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You don't really like Paul. He doesn't really teach the right way. He doesn't art and craft the deal like he should.
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Let's not listen to him. Paul says, I preached a simple message to you pagans and you got saved.
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You got saved, pagans. He doesn't have to manipulate. I have a book in my office and it's an evangelistic book.
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And it says that when you meet someone and you want to try to influence them, you try to get them to say yes a lot.
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Because if they say yes five times in a row, you kind of say yes the sixth time. You know, it's a nice day out, yes.
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You know, you're going to live forever, yes. And before you know it, you put the Bible in their hand and it says put your other hand on the nape of his neck, back of his neck, and then say, let us pray.
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And then you kind of push him down a little bit to pray. Well, when another guy comes along who's a better neck nape pusher, he's in big trouble because he's going to push him back up this way to believe something else.
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I remember the time my mother went to a healing service and wanted my dad to be healed from cancer.
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And she said, she stood up there, anybody who needs healing for their loved ones come up. She came up and they started pushing on her forehead and she started pushing back.
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It was kind of this back and forth kind of thing. And you know, when you're the slain and the spirit guy and you keep pushing, they don't fall over.
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You just go over to the next one. This is not some kind of manipulation where I'm going to get you to say what
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I want you to say, some bait and switch evangelism, high pressure. Here's how we do it.
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We're a little more sophisticated. We somehow, we just kind of cut off the rough corners of the gospel when we evangelize.
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Some of us do that. Who wants to talk about the exclusivity of Christ in this secular relative world?
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Who wants to talk about it's all or nothing? Who wants to talk about there's no other way? Who wants to talk about pick up your cross, deny yourself and follow me?
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Who wants to talk about hate mother, brother, sister? Who wants to say when you're sick of your life, then you come and follow me?
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We'll just cut those off. We can't do that. One man said the power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher.
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Otherwise men would be the converter of souls. I'm so thankful that I don't have to study philosophy, psychology, history, archeology or anything else.
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I need to study the cross and I can preach to anyone. And so can you. Who's the smartest person you can think of that's not a
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Christian? Are you able to preach the gospel of them if they came to you and said, I'm dying of cancer and I'm worried to go and I'm going to go to hell.
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What must I do to be saved? Well, let's see. I better go back to school and study intelligent design and irreducible minimums and memorize
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Darwin's black box. Can you tell them the truth? If you stutter and stammer and make grammatical mistakes, but you point them to the cross.
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I love that. So freeing. Study all you want. But you don't need to study to art and craft the deal.
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You need to study about the gospel so you focus on the gospel. No gimmicks. Word number two.
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First word was disregard. The second word, determination. First Corinthians chapter two, one to five, four words that describe your philosophy, your methodology, your theology when it comes to preaching.
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Preaching that you listen to when I preach to you or preaching that you do in evangelism. It could be applied in many different ways.
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Determination. This is now Paul's reason for his method. Verse two. This is like saying sick him to a mad dog.
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Pastors love this. If you wake me up from a nap, I might just say this verse out.
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For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, even him crucified.
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Paul says, I'm on my way from Acts 17 to Acts 18. And I'm on my way in this missionary journey.
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And I know ahead of time that I better not rely on my own speaking abilities. I'm gonna rely on the gospel.
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Whatever comes out of my mouth, it's going to be cross centered. This word here to be determined,
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ESV translates it decided. It means to consider, to have a deliberate act of the will.
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The opposite words would be haphazard, accidental, slapdash, random.
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Paul says, you might want law and traditions, Jews. Sorry, you get the gospel.
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Greeks, you might want philosophy and speculations and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
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I give you the gospel. And he knows ahead of time before I go there, that's what I'm going to do. By the way, this is great for us when it comes to evangelism.
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This is the way we approach evangelism. You say, well, I'm kind of doing friendship evangelism and we'll be friends and all that.
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Fine, I'm not saying go up to your neighbors and just create enemies. But there's no evangelism without the cross, the crucified
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Messiah. Paul says, I'm gonna limit my knowledge to preach the
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Christ. That means his deity.
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Here's how I used to translate this. And this is how the NAS does it, NASV. I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
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Jesus Christ is person and him crucified his work, which would include the resurrection.
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But is that what Paul is really saying? I've got two strings on my guitar. The first one is person of Christ.
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The second one is the work of Christ. Those are two good things to preach by the way. But is that what Paul is after here?
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What you don't know is the Greek word chi or the word and in verse two can be translated and also are even.
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And so it's fair to translate this. I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ.
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And by the way, you want this Messiah. Remember chapter one, the crucified Messiah.
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Even the crucified Messiah. You go back to verse 18 of the last chapter for the word of the cross is foolishness.
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But that's what I preach. I've determined when I went to you pagans in Corinth, I've got one string on my guitar, crucified
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Messiah, the shameful thing. You don't even want your kids to look at that naked person up on a cross.
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You don't even talk about that kind of thing in public. Justin Martyr in the second century said, the offense of the cross was caused to the sophisticated citizens of Alexandria and elsewhere by the madness of the
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Christian proclamation of a crucified Christ. This cross is shameful to people, embarrassing, frankly.
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And how can there be efficacy or effectualness in death? Cicero said the very word cross should be far removed, not only from the person of a
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Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes, his ears. But if that's what saves,
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Paul says, I'm coming to you with disregard for what Cicero says, Socrates, Plato, or anyone else.
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I've been sent on a mission. And that mission is here's the cross because that's the effective part of salvation.
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Substitution and atonement. All right, now let's drive this home. How about this? I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus in your hearts.
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I made it up in my mind deliberately that when I go preach to people, I've got one message, except Jesus in your heart.
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Kind of a big difference, isn't it? How about this? As I'm thinking about slogans or watchwords or mottos, the cross is so shameful, we just wanna put in a little different kind of jingle.
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I determined to know nothing among you except God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
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I determined to know nothing among you except God loves you just the way you are. To which
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I would say if I was a pagan sinner, great, I'm happy, I get to sin, God likes to forgive, we're set.
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I determined to know nothing among you except you can have your best life now.
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I determined to know nothing among you except let's leave the Christ in Christmas. I determined to know nothing among you except no
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God, no peace, no God, no peace. K -N -O -W, K -N -O -W -N -O -N -O.
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I determined to know nothing among you except what would Jesus do? W -W -J -D. I determined to know nothing among you except free trip to heaven, details inside.
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I can't, by the way, just, if we could just talk for a minute. These kind of corny church signs that are designed to bring in some kind of seeker because they're gonna think you're cool because you got a neat sign.
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If we draw people in with neat signs and then they come and then they hear about the cross, what are we doing?
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Everything we believe should flesh itself out in everything we do. Beliefs determine behavior.
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You show me someone today here how you live your life and I'll show you what you believe. Show me your checkbook and I'll show you what you think about eternal investments.
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Show me your life, I know what you think. Show me a corny, stupid sign and I'll show you, frankly, an ashamed pastor and an elder board or deacons.
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If you're gonna win people with catchy, you've gotta keep people with catchy. And every week you want more catchy or else you're gone.
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But if you're won by God because God opened your eyes to say what I thought was repulsive, a
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Savior dying for my sins, being raised from the dead and He's the only
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Savior, the great atoning work of Christ Jesus, His blood, His resurrection, that now used to be dumb to me.
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It used to be old hat. It used to be old business, but now it's the center of my life.
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Then you'll stay when you hear preaching about that very topic. Paul says that when I came to you,
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I didn't set up some kind of motto or jingle to try to win you in. I did the opposite.
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You wanna follow Christ Jesus? It'll cost you everything. I determined to know nothing among you except, try our
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Sundays, they're better than Baskin's and Robbins. How could
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I make it up? I couldn't make it up. I determined to know nothing among you except, got
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Jesus? I determined to know nothing among you except, believe me, we want anything put in there except a naked
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Savior being tortured on a cross for hours by men and then for three hours, the wrath of God descending on Christ Jesus because God hates sin so much
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He even punishes His Son for it. It doesn't pack out a church if you're looking for seekers.
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I determined to know nothing among you except, searching for a new look, have your faith lifted here.
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I determined to know nothing among you except, real men love Jesus. I'll tell you this, if you're a real godly man, you won't love those kinds of slogans.
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If you don't believe me, come next Saturday when Uncle Pat is here. Preaching Christ, even
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Him crucified means preaching sin, judgment, wrath, holiness, grace alone, faith alone, the love of God alone, certainly.
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Paul didn't come up with a message, he was given the message to preach. Say, well, I evangelize a lot.
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Friends, you have the message, the crucified Messiah. Well, yeah, but I know my friends, they go to Harvard though, and they go to Princeton, and they go to Yale, and they go to WPI.
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Friends, I got one message for you. You have to preach the cross. And they're not going to like it, unless God does a great work in their hearts.
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And the text there, 1 Corinthians 2, verse 2, it's a perfect passive, meaning
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He's crucified, and He stays as crucified as it were.
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That means I only, He's off the cross, of course, but theologically, Paul says, that's the issue, that He's the crucified one, and I'm always preaching the crucified one.
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He's raised from the dead, but my message is the crucified Christ. One of the taunts of early
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Christianity, at least understood the Christian message. I won't read it to you in Latin, but here it is in English.
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A criminal man and his cross. That's the message of Christianity.
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May I say this? If you don't preach the cross, something else will come in and fill that gap.
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Vacuums are filled. And so if you take the cross away, and say, all right, something's got to fill that.
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I'll tell you what will fill that. All kinds of things will fill that. Psychology will fill it.
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Felt needs will fill it. Signs and wonders will fill it. Focus on speaking in tongues, and other things will fill it.
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I want to know why my, especially non -conservative charismatic friends are, why is it always tongues, tongues, tongues, tongues, tongues, when their message should be what?
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Every time I talk to them, it's about signs and wonders. We've got one message. You're preaching through 1
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Corinthians. I'll preach several weeks on what the Bible says about speaking in tongues. We can talk about other subjects.
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But when you meet a Christian and you kind of give him a little figurative rib shot, he should start talking about the
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Savior Christ Jesus. Then he would die for me. Show me a church that's focused on the
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God of the cross, Christ Jesus, and I'll show you a spirit -filled church.
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You don't need to know about Cain's wife. Where'd he get her? You don't need to know about Adam's belly button.
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Somebody asked you, where'd Adam get his belly button? This is all duck and jive and cut and paste. I want to get you off the cross.
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If someone says, how can you be a Christian and believe that Noah's Ark existed? I will say because it's easy to fit all the animals in there.
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The dinosaurs were smaller, but there's another issue. There's another flood coming, but it's not of water.
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It's a fire and it's going to consume you. And if you think you can hide behind the, I don't believe in Noah's Ark story on judgment day, you've got another thing coming.
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I've got a question for you. How are you going to get rid of your sins? And I have been saved.
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I'm a worse sinner than you are, but I have been saved by the gospel of Christ Jesus, where sins were so bad that the father poured out his wrath on the son, and Jesus said, it is finished.
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And then God raised him from the dead. And that is the one you must trust in. You don't need to know all this other stuff if you want to study it fine, but you're not going to be a better evangelist if you try to be an evidentialist.
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And I've got to go memorize Josh McDowell's book, or I can't evangelize. No, you memorize the gospel and you can evangelize to anyone because if it's the power of God that works through the gospel, the power of God can crush any man's intellect, any woman's will and save them, can't they?
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When I cease, Spurgeon said, to preach salvation by faith in Jesus, put me into a lunatic asylum, for you may be sure that my mind is gone.
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If you don't preach this, something else has got to go in there. Paul says, don't make it philosophy.
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And for you brethren, don't make it anything else. Please don't make it a celebrity pastor.
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There are churches all across the country now. One pastor can't get into one building so they have six different locales.
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And the good news is you get your real pastor live once out of every six weeks. You're not allowed to go to the other campuses.
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So you just make sure you go to your campus every week, and then once every six weeks, you'll get your pastor.
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I don't like that. You say, well, you don't like it because you don't have six campuses. I don't know, maybe that's true.
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But even if it was true, you need the preacher, preaching the foolish gospel, the foolish pastor, the foolish message, saving foolish people.
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So all the power is not because of me, because of you, but the message. Celebrities?
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David Jackman said, that is absurd. Following a Jesus who was reviled and rejected, spat upon and beaten, and eventually nailed up to that most agonizing and humiliating death on the cross.
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And people that preach that are now celebrities? It's foolish.
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I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Friends, if you are weak like I'm weak, then wouldn't it be a good thing to say,
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Lord, I wanna do that, I'm convinced, I know it's true. I tend to run around and rationalize in my evangelism, or maybe
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I don't even evangelize at all. Would the Spirit of God now please forgive me and then give me the words so that I'd never do that again.
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And I have a one -themed message, and that is the cross of Christ Jesus. Wouldn't it be good, and if God's called the
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Father, do you think He just goes, you've never done it right, and you're never gonna do it right? Or do you think the
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Father would say that you're convicted by the word, through the Spirit of God, and you wanna have that same determination that Paul did?
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I would love to give you the power to preach the gospel like that. If you're a
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Sunday school teacher, I wanna say to you, don't preach moralism in our
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Sunday schools. You say, well, I like good manners. I do too.
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Elbow's on the table. You know, it's just like, okay, sit up, push your chair in. I like morals, but I don't like them at the expense of the gospel.
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Will, at this church, from the Pope in the Sunday school, teach the gospel? How about you parents teach your kids morals at home?
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But tell them, you can have good manners and still go to hell. It's helpful for me to have good manners out of you because it just makes my life nicer.
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But we don't wanna tell our kids the typical, be nice, do good, be like Daniel. No, we need to say,
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Daniel was so heinous in his sin, that Jesus had to die for Daniel. And if Daniel needs a savior, son, you do too.
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Every time you're in Sunday school, every time at Awana, if you do Awana council time, and you know what I do is
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I try to make all this stuff and pour the water in and the red food dye and all this stuff. And you teach a little lesson, you go, that's cool.
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Oil, water doesn't mix everything else. It's a good spiritual truth. Would you please preach the gospel at the end and tie it to Christ?
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Jesus in John chapter five said, the Old Testament testifies of good manners.
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Be good, be nice. It's nice to be nice and it's good to be good. No, I determined there are nothing among you except it's nice to be nice and it's good to be good.
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No, Christ crucified. He said in Luke chapter 24, the Emmaus road, you look back at the
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Old Testament and what does it do? It preaches me, Christ Jesus, the Messiah who would come.
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Luther said, scripture is the manger in which Christ is laid. Good, so you preach the word.
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No wonder Paul said to Timothy before he was going to die, the last chapter he ever wrote, preach the what?
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Preach yourself. Timothy, you're a good old boy, Gentile, Jew parents and kind of know what to do.
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You even got circumcised. You're good with people, really good people person. If I die with the elders at some kind of elders retreat, would you please pick a pastor for my sake, for my wife's sake that preaches the word of God?
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Ask him, say, how many strings are on your guitar? Because if it's more than one Christ crucified, there's probably a different church down the street that has a nice banner maybe and you can do your banner
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Christianity, but we want the gospel. Why am I yelling? You're looking at me like we're convinced already.
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When I look at preachers in the Bible, they were determined to preach
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Christ Jesus. The greatest man that ever lived, John the Baptist. What was his message? Honey and grasshoppers are healthy, follow me.
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That's what the Seventh -day Adventists down the street teach. Come to our religion because we're really healthy. Determined, John Bunyan.
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Mr. Bunyan, you can come out of prison whenever you will promise to cease preaching the gospel. They wouldn't say that if he just was going to die.
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He was going to say, it's good to be good and it's nice to be nice. Let him out. He said, if you let me out of prison today,
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I will preach again tomorrow by the grace of God. Well, then go back to prison. He's got his wife, that blind daughter.
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Bunyan said, I will go back and stay there if need be till the moss grows on my eyelids, but I will never deny my master.
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That's right from Paul. I determined to know nothing among you except the gospel. Acts 20, therefore
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I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.
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If you want to critique me, I hope you critique me by saying, does he preach Jesus Christ? Does he preach the exclusivity of Christ?
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How do you know if Satan takes over a town? I love what Barnhouse said. This would happen if Satan took over West Boylston.
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The bars would close, no alcohol would be sold, there would be happy marriages, well -behaved children, no crime, and everyone would be in churches on Sunday, comma, where Christ does not preach.
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It's insane to preach another gospel because there's only one.
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It's insane because there's only one gospel that saves. Maybe we can all agree on this.
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600 years ago, there was an insane asylum called St. Bethlehem's outside of London.
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Through the bars and the gates, people would look through and they would see crazy things going on, insane things going on, lunatic things going on.
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And so the people outside gave a name to St. Bethlehem's because that name described the behavior of what was going on outside.
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And like good Englanders, like good New Englanders, we contract words, don't we? And so they contracted the word
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St. Bethlehem to come up with the word what we call Bedlam.
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Bedlam goes on inside St. Bethlehem's. On my down days,
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I say I have the privilege of preaching at Bedlam Bible Church. And on my good days,
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I think God has instilled in us a desire where we say, crazy or not, according to the world,
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I'm going to preach the one gospel that saves that I've been told to preach. Nobody comes, nobody comes, because we want to be faithful, not popular, right?
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Let's pray. Our heavenly Father, it is a joy, unspeakable to be able to preach your word.
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And Lord, I just pray that Christ Jesus would be the one who is worshiped here. That Christ Jesus would be the one glorified in our
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Sunday schools, in our Awana programs, in evangelism, in our marriages. Lord, I pray for our church.
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Lord, would you strengthen them, would you strengthen me so that we would have the resolve and the determination to know nothing among other people.
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And even here as Christians, except Jesus Christ, even the crucified one. Lord, we're very, very happy that he was raised from the dead and we believe in the resurrection.
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But Lord, help us to be preachers of the gospel, which includes both crucifixion and resurrection.
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Thank you for loving us so much that you would send your son to die on our behalf. Thank you that you didn't compromise your holiness or your justice or your mercy or your love.
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All of those were put together at Calvary. And Lord, help us not to be intimidated by smart people or those who seem to know more.