God Chooses the Foolish | Sermon 09/29/2024

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Pastor Wade continues his sermon series on Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians with sermon, "God Chooses the Foolish" going over 1 Corinthians 1:26-31.

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All right, well, it's really good to see you guys. You know, when you miss two Sundays, you're like, do
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I know everyone still? You know, doesn't it feel strange a little bit when you miss a few weeks? I can't imagine what it was like for the apostles when they would be with a church every day for like three years and then they'd go off and there'd probably be this longing and that's what
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I had for you guys. I had this longing and I'm so glad to be back. You can hear I'm a little under the weather.
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I'm getting better though. I was telling someone else that, you know, I try to do the
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Christian thing. I go to the apothecary, right? I get the essential oils. I literally did neti pots with oregano oil and burned my whole system.
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I'm like, that's gotta kill something. Did nothing. Friday, I had to go get a Z -Pak, a zithromycin.
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Thank God for antibiotics. I mean, there'd be so many people dead without antibiotics. A lot of bad drugs out there, but thank
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God for that. So anyways, we're gonna be in verses 26 through 31 today.
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We're gonna finish out chapter one in 1 Corinthians. I hope you guys have been well. Can't wait to catch up with you all.
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The title of the sermon today, church, is God chooses the foolish. God chooses the foolish.
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So starting in verse 26, chapter one of the first letter of Paul to the
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Corinthians, hear now the inerrant and infallible words of the living and true God. For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame things which are strong, and the base things of the world, and the despise
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God has chosen, the things that are not, so that he may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God, but by his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, so that just as it is written, let him who boasts, boasts in the
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Lord. Thus ends the reading of God's magnificent word. Let's pray once more as a church.
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Let's go before God as we exposit his word. God, I pray that you'd be with me.
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God, as I had time away from the pulpit, it was impressed upon me once again how very serious it is to take this pulpit, that these can't merely be the ideas of men, that this is not a time for me to shine, or to make myself look good, or any man to do that,
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Lord. This is a time, Lord, that we are asking you from your throne room to show us what these words mean, and not only what they mean, but how they impact us individually,
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Lord, and as a church. And so, God, I pray that today you would help me, Lord, do what only you can do.
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I need you, God. I need you so much every day. I need you especially on these
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Sundays, these Lord's Day. God, glorify yourself in the sermon. Please help your people.
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Help us to stay focused. Help us to stay awake, Lord. Help the children to be obedient in the service.
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God, help us to be focused on you at all costs. And so,
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Lord, please be with us now. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, it has been a couple weeks, and I'm thankful for Pastor Andrew, and that was a great quick series in Obadiah.
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I loved that he did that. If you remember last year, he did a two -part series in the letter to Philemon.
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And so, I don't know what we're gonna do next year for you. We'll have to find, you might just have to go to Topical, or yeah, maybe
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Jude. I don't know, Jude's heavy. I don't know if you can cover all that. That's gonna, oh, don't even.
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That's gonna bring in the giants in Nephilim conversation. So, Lord, help us if that happens.
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Anyhow, we're back. And the last time that we studied this epistle, we saw what was called the word of the cross.
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The word of the cross, we determined that that was the gospel of Christ, and it is what?
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It is foolishness to those who are perishing. The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
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You have everything about it, everything about God becoming man, a man who was born as common as anyone else, one who wasn't, from any visual perspectives, royalty or military.
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You have the fact that the people that he came to save, hey, I came for you, hey, we reject you.
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They rejected him. They despised him, they mocked him, and even all the way to the point where they killed him.
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He endured the most profane thing the law describes. Cursed is the man who hangs on a tree.
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This is absurd. This is ridiculous to the world, especially to the Jews. All of this,
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Paul said, was what? Moros, moronic, moronic.
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He eventually called it a scandalon, a scandal, something that offends people rather than attracts them to it.
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And so it was unthinkable. It is unthinkable that God would do something like this, but what is even more unthinkable is that God would do all of this on purpose, that this wasn't an accident, this wasn't his reaction.
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This is something that he planned. It was all his will. He was well -pleased, if you remember, to not let the wisdom of man be the key in which you open the door to salvation.
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It would not be the wisdom of man. It would not be man's attempts. It would be
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God. He was pleased for that to be the case, for those to hear the foolish message preached and believe.
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That's radical. How are you gonna get to heaven? Well, there's a message you need to hear. Let me give you the message.
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I believe that you're going to heaven. It's like, what? Okay, what else do I have to do?
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Will you put it out on a spreadsheet? I'm a spreadsheet guy. Can you put it on a spreadsheet? What am I supposed to do to get to heaven? No, what
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I just told you was it. If you believe in Christ, if you believe in what he did and you give your life to him, you will go to heaven.
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You will be saved. What? That's radical. That's unbelievable. The Jews determine truth by a lens of signs.
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Do you remember that? Signs, miracles, signs and wonders. But they determined that the sign of the cross was repulsive.
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The sign of the cross repulsed them. You have Greeks who determine truth by what?
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Wisdom. So you have Jews who have signs and miracles, and you have Greeks, Gentiles who determine truth by wisdom.
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Wisdom. But the wisdom of God appeared to be what?
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Foolishness to the Greeks. It doesn't make sense to anyone. It destroys man's rationality and logic.
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But Christ crucified is what? He ended up saying it is the wisdom and power of God. It doesn't matter what men think.
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Christ crucified is the wisdom and power of God. May not be the wisdom and power of man, but it's the power of God.
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And it's what Paul preaches. It's what makes everyone who possesses the word of the cross to be just as common or even more so than Jesus.
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Those who are saved are not even greater than their master.
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You see, if Jesus was really low, if he brought himself low for you, do you think
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Jesus came so that we can all rise and be these wonderful royalty and kings and maybe in a heavenly perspective?
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But he wanted us to be humble, not prideful, right? No one's greater than their master.
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In this, the apostle attempted to shut down their factions if any man among the Corinthians was elevating himself.
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And if you remember, that was the problem, division because of factions, elevating certain men, then you must know,
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Corinthians, apology to church, you must know that elevating yourself as a man over any other man or especially above God is opposite of what
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Christ did. It is opposite of what Jesus did. And so Paul is speaking this way in an attempt to take down those factions.
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Those who think they are somebody must understand they are nobody. In Paul's second letter, he will tell them this.
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He'll say, we have this treasure in jars of clay.
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So that's what you are. You're an earthen vessel. What's that? That's a basic brownish red pot.
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That's what you are, but you've got treasure in you. What's the treasure? That's the gospel. That's Christ.
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We have this treasure in earthen vessels. That's all that you are. The treasure isn't actually you.
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It's like, oh, God finally gets you. God gets you. You're the prize for God.
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No, God is the prize for you, amen? God is the prize. God is the treasure. The gospel is the treasure.
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And these things, Christ crucified the gospel. It wasn't born in you.
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You weren't a jar that was born with treasure. The treasure was given to you. It was deposited in you.
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It's not inherent in you. It was given. It was given to the called. And so in an effort to continue to stamp out the fire of division and exalting men above others,
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St. Paul will remind them where they came from. And it's not pretty.
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It's not pretty, opposite of what they may think. So go to verse 26.
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Verse 26, for consider your calling, brethren. Consider your calling, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.
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So the apostle had just said in verse 25 prior to this, because of the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
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And he uses this conjunction right here to point to them as an example of this.
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God uses foolishness and weakness. And then he points at them.
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He goes, God uses foolishness and weakness. And he goes, look at your calling.
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Look at you. Uses them as an example. Look at the state in which you were summoned by God.
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And he says the word brethren again, therefore, including the entire church, men, women, children, officers, congregants, brethren, consider what your calling to Christ looked like.
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This is the observable evidence that God has used foolishness and weakness.
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What a blow to their egos. What a blow to our egos, huh? Because you and I are evidence that God uses weak and foolish things.
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Because if the word of the cross is foolishness, if Christ came in a way that seemed moronic by human standards, why would
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God have his people who are called to be included in his kingdom be any greater?
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Who will exercise their agency or their will and float to the heavens and come up to God's throne and go, hmm, and check out
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God, check out God's throne and go, you know what, I like what I see. I'm gonna put
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God to the test. Yeah, do some things for me, God. Okay, yeah, I think I'll follow you after what
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I've seen here. That's by no means what will happen. No one, no one will ascend to heaven.
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No one will ascend to God in that way. He must descend to us.
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Corinthians, when you came to faith, you were nothing. You had nothing.
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Whether you had eloquent speech or if you were a philosopher or maybe as a
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Jew, if you experienced many signs, oh, I'm the guy here who's experienced the most signs than anyone else.
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Doesn't matter. If you were a Pharisee or if you had a famous family lineage or if you were a successful politician or a businessman or maybe you were a woman who was born into a family that was richer than anyone else, it doesn't matter.
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None of that, none of that aided the Corinthians into coming to faith, none of it.
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Not a bit of it. In fact, those are the very things that often inhibit faith.
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Success, a great name, right? Works of the law, oh,
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I'm really righteous. Those things can inhibit true faith and especially anything pertaining to our view as righteousness had to be shown as utterly void of what
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God requires to enter into heaven. Your thoughts of righteousness were too low. Too low. They weren't high enough.
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They're not good enough. As much as the cross of Christ is folly to the world, it is grace for us.
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It's another acting on our behalf to enter heaven when he didn't have to, by the way.
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In choosing the Corinthians and in choosing you, God overlooked anything about you that the world would have considered of some worth.
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And not only that, but if there's anything that they think now elevates them in this moment, they have to remember who they are and what they were.
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For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to human standards.
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He says the so -foy, the learned, the clever, the intelligent, there were not many at all.
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There were certainly none who were learned of spiritual matters, but even the unspiritual things.
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He says you didn't know it very well. There were not many wise among you. You were both dumb in spiritual and material things.
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Not very wise. You did not know well at all, Corinthians. Before you were saved, did you think like, man,
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I know so much. Did you ever feel that way? I'm like, if I'm honest, I thought like,
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I knew I didn't know everything. You know, I didn't know rocket science, but I felt like as far as figuring out the world,
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I had arrived. Yep, I know. This is what things are. This is who I am. You know, we think we're clever.
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We think we're smart. We think we know science. We watch a 30 -minute Facebook short and go, yeah,
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I'll do it that way now. That internet scientist is correct. And then we pass it on.
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We're like, yeah, we know so much. That's how I started shooting oregano up my nose. You know, like, that's what happens.
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We think we know so much. We know so much about morality, religion.
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I see a lot of atheists, of course, who think they're very clever, but it would be wrong for me to leave it there, right?
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We all thought we knew things. Our way of thinking was right. And so what
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Paul is trying to do is to humble the believers, humble them. Even if you are saved now and have the true wisdom of God now, you were nothing beforehand.
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But also apart from God's doing, you'd be nothing now. You'd have nothing now apart from God.
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And so if the truth puffs you up, if the knowledge of the truth puffs you up, you're in sin.
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Because really, every time you and I come to the truth, it should be like a mirror.
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It should humble us. But sometimes when you and I read the Bible, it's a window looking at other people.
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Well, yeah, this could be really good for this person in the church. This could be good for my mother.
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Wow, yeah. We use the Bible as a window to look at other people and their sin.
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It's not like a mirror looking at how ugly you are. We need to repent from that.
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We need to change that. The truth should always humble you, always. So he continues, remember brethren, there were not many mighty, dunatoi.
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Not many had power. This could be physical power, but it's likely he means not many had the kind of social or political power that you think of.
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You know, you have Nebuchadnezzar, you have Alexander the Great, you have men like Julius Caesar, but none of the
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Corinthians were like them. None of them. And the apostles weren't like those men either.
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Nor was Christ even like those kind of world leaders. No, God would not let anyone think that any world leader could affect the kind of change to the world that he would bring by the
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Holy Spirit. It would have to baffle men. You see the conquest of these men, you see the conquest of Rome, you see the conquest that the
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United States has made, but the gospel would be different. It would baffle people.
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You know how organized you have to get in the campaign to infiltrate other nations, to take them down, to topple their government, to take over, to sustain all that, to fuel all that, to pay for that?
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The gospel, though, takes on a power of its own. You know, the gospel was supposed to get too big for the apostles.
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It was supposed to get too big for the evangelists who were sent throughout the
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Roman Empire. The gospel was supposed to get too big for local churches, the ones that they planted.
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You can't contain it. The power of the gospel baffles mankind.
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It would show that no one single man or woman achieved any of it. God shuts down the men and women who put notches on their belt, those who look for a pat on the back for one more convert, one more convert, one more convert.
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God shuts those kind of people down. He fills their churches with people with ears who want to be tickled.
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It's not even a church. God shuts that kind of stuff down. One more well dug, one more orphanage built.
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I have been to a mega church where on a screen twice as big as this, and there were two or three of them, on this screen, they had the head pastor, and he was pouring water into children's mouths in Africa.
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He was like digging dirt. I doubt he dug the whole well. I think you need a machine for that, but he's like, you know, it's ridiculous.
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And then all the women were like, I remember, Sarah, you remember this? There were women in front of us going, oh, pastor.
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You know, it's sick. It's honestly sick. It's funny, but it's sick. It's disgusting. The whole video was this pastor and all that he did in the name of God.
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It was disgusting. And he got the praise that he wanted. And if that's what you want, if you want the praise of men, then
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God will never praise you. If you want the praise on earth, you'll get the praise of earth. You won't get the praise of heaven.
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You want the reward of earth, you'll get the reward of earth. You won't get the reward of heaven. That's what you get.
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God will transform the world in such a way where only he will get the glory. Only his son will have a name that is above every other name.
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You see, the world wants power in displays that are similar to lightning.
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The world wants power in displays that are similar to lightning. Let me explain.
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I remember in Arizona, we would have monsoon season and sometimes we'd park our car and it'd be pitch black outside.
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And with our little daughter, we'd watch the lightning over the mountains during monsoon season.
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You'd see the lightning flash and it was really neat. But you know what? Lightning is brief, it's impressive and powerful, but it's brief.
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But God's power, although greater than the sun, is more powerful compared to the lightning.
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The sun is more powerful compared to lightning. The sun is always taken for granted.
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You know, the shining ball of light out there, that sun's taken for granted all the time, but it's always there.
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It's always more powerful than anything else within sight. The sun's more powerful than any nuclear plant that we could create.
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It's constant. The sun is unyielding. It's always displaying consistent brilliance.
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It's always giving off life and radiance. Lightning in the sky at night is not more spectacular than the sun.
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The sun is 864 ,000 miles wide. It's 109 times wider than the earth.
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It would take 1 .3 million earths to fill the volume of the sun.
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The center of the sun is 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. In a regular space suit, you could get probably about, they say, they think within three to four million miles from the sun.
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Any closer, it'd kill you. But it's just right outside these windows.
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It's just going. It's there. And such is the power of God.
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Such is the power of God compared to the so -called power of men. The power of men is like a brief blitz of lightning, but God's power is constant.
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It's more powerful. It's bigger than anything else. It's like the sun, but infinitely greater.
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Not many mighty. Every false religion can point back to some man or some woman.
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You have Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell. You have Mary Baker Eddy. You have
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Jim Jones, David Koresh, and so many more. Christianity is the only religion that starts and ends with God.
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Cult leaders, cult leaders have to feed the beast that they made. Cult leaders have to get more people.
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Oh, I've got to get more people to believe on this because I need more money, of course. Cults need money. And so the cult leader has to get these people.
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He's got to gain more and gain more. And they've got to give their life savings for it. They've got to sell everything for it.
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And so, and even so a cult leader has to start trying to find out who's causing problems because he doesn't want the whole cult to implode on itself.
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So he's, he's then, he or she is then finding people who are naysayers or questioning and you've got to remove them.
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Otherwise you can't contain it. And so a cult is something that someone, some man or some woman has to control so delicately.
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But the gospel of Christ takes over in this world seemingly without men or women, without them.
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Now, I'm not saying that men or women don't spread the gospel or that there are not appointed leaders or officers in a church.
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I'm saying that the means and the ends are God's. God controls it.
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I've told some of you before, some of you have asked me, you know, now we just reached three years of ministry.
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We're working on our fourth year of ministry here. I'm relatively speaking a new pastor. Although I hear at year five is when most pastors quit.
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So I guess in that sense, I'm tenured, you know. But some have asked me,
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Pastor Wade, what's it like? And I said, I've told you, sometimes I step back and I look at this or I look at a koinonia or I look at you guys evangelizing or I look at you guys singing.
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And it almost brings me to tears because it hits me all at once that I couldn't have made this.
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Pastor Andrew couldn't have made this. This, it feels like it's just going, you know,
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God just made this and it goes. And yes, we serve and you serve and we all participate, but it takes the power of God to do this.
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This isn't Wade's church. This isn't Andrew's church. This isn't even ultimately your church.
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It's God's church. And we're all just in it. It's amazing to me. It blows my mind.
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I couldn't empower this. Someone else takes the credit. Who has the power to do this?
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You know. So Paul says, remember Corinthians, not many of you were wise, not many of you were mighty.
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And then he says, not many of you were noble, noble. The word noble here is eugenics.
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It is from where we get the word eugenics. You ever heard of the word eugenics? Typically you hear
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Bill Gates name tied to that word eugenics, or you hear about Nazi Germany tied to eugenics.
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Eugenics was, it literally means in the Greek, good genes, good genes, good genetics.
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You're trying to whittle down a bloodline to get the best genetics. And so you have people, you have people like you have
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Margaret Sanger, who was the founder of Planned Parenthood, who said, boy, it's too expensive to send the blacks back to Africa now that slavery is illegal.
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And so what we need to do is kill them from within. So to exterminate the blacks, we're gonna make
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Planned Parenthood in low -income places where there's a lot more minorities, and we're gonna kill them from within.
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And that's really where abortion came to be from. And Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist, wanted to get rid of them, didn't want them to mix with society.
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Nazi Germany, they would look at those who had Down syndrome or things like that, and they would wanna get rid of them.
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Kill off those who have bad, what they would call bad genes in society.
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And so this word noble is eugenics, good genes. And so we've learned already that this is not a philosopher or a wise man religion.
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This isn't a religion imposed on the people by a powerful king or politician, one with might.
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But now, nor is Christianity a religion for just those of noble stock.
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Those well -born with high pedigrees in the ruling class, this isn't just a religion for them.
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And you gotta think for the Corinthians back in Greece there, you had people who were just born right into slavery.
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You had free men, freed men with a D, free men, freed men, you had slaves.
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And so slaves could become freed men, but they would never ever become free men, okay?
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And so with that came a limitation. You couldn't go up all the way. You could go up a little bit in social class, but you couldn't go very high, okay?
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It was really hard for them. And so noble stock was important to the Corinthians.
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Good genes. This was something that you were born into. Prestige only came from a noble bloodline, but one doesn't become a child of God by blood.
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One doesn't become a child of God by the will of the flesh or by the will of man, but by God.
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That's how you become a child of God. One must be born again. One must be born of water and spirit.
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And this is something that only God can exact upon someone else.
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When Paul preached the foolish message of the cross to those of nobility, they couldn't conceptualize their need for Christ.
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Why would you need to be born again when you idolize the bloodline in which you were born?
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These types of people believe that they don't need purity, they don't need their blood to be pure.
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I should say they don't need purity spiritually. They don't see that they need the untarnished blood of Jesus Christ because these type of noble people cherish their own blood.
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They love their blood. They love their family in a way that is idolatrous.
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When the prophet Jeremiah lamented over the coming demise of Zion, he cried out, where are the true wise men?
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And the Almighty says in verses 23 and 24, Jeremiah chapter nine, thus says the
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Lord, let not a wise man boast of his wisdom and let not the mighty man boast of his might.
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Let not the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the
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Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth for I delight in those things, declares the
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Lord. Many people believe that this is the formula that Paul's following in his letter.
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Did you see that? He said, not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble.
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And then Jeremiah says here, not many wise, not many strong and not many who are rich.
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Very synonymous, very similar, okay? Point is, some of us need to let go of this.
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The Corinthians needed to let go of this. We need to know we were nothing without Christ.
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You were not wise, you were not mighty, you were not noble. Maybe by earthly standards, truly weren't without God.
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We were nothing without Him. But these Corinthians were in a culture that coveted the highest social standings.
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Their pagan neighbors were obsessed with obtaining worldly honor. And I'm sorry to say that it impacted the church in Corinth.
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It's impacted the American church. It's impacted the church today. Arrogance and disdain for others began to infect the church.
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For them, it wasn't, as Philippians 2 says, regard one another as more important than yourself.
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It was regard yourself as more important than all the others.
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That's what they became to be. But let me make this very clear to us.
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Not one, not a one, was called to this salvation because of who they were or who they would become.
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Let me say that again. No one, not a single person was called to this salvation because of who they were or what they would become.
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Not one, but you would be called to this salvation because of who
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Jesus always was and is. That's the fact. That's it.
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And so for the first time in history, in Christ, whether mighty, wise, or noble, or not, we've become equal in every way.
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Go to verses 27 and 28. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.
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And the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen the things that are not so that he may nullify the things that are.
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So you look in those verses three times. What does it say three times in those two verses?
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But God has chosen, one. And God has chosen, two.
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God has chosen, three. Three times in those two verses, it says the phrase,
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God has chosen. We are seeing the very prerogative of God in his plan for salvation.
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This is not unlike the shaming of the false gods in Egypt, in the book of Exodus, that the
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Lord will make sure that no one but him will have the glory. Everyone will know that there's a God in heaven.
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He has chosen. He will do it. He is the active initiator here.
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He moves when no one else moves. God seeks when no one else is seeking.
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He chooses when no one has the power to make a choice. John Calvin rightly observed here that when
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God shames and nullifies the strong, the great and the wise, he's not exalting the weak or uneducated or worthless above the others, but brings them all to one common level.
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And you see this in action in different places in the Bible. Go to Luke chapter 14 real quick in your printout or in your
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Bible, Luke chapter 14, Luke 14. Look at this parable of Jesus.
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You see how everyone's brought to one common level here. Luke 14 verses 15 through 24.
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Look what Jesus says. When one of those who were reclining at the table with him heard this, he said to him, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.
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But Jesus said to him, a man was giving a big dinner and he invited many. And at the dinner hour, he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, come for everything is ready now.
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But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it.
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Please consider me excused. Another one said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I am going to try them out.
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Please consider me excused. Another one said, I have just married a wife and for that reason,
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I cannot come. And the slave came back and reported all this to his master.
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Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, go out at once into the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and the crippled and blind and lame.
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And the slave said, master, what you've commanded has been done and there's still more room.
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And the master said to the slave, go out into the highways and along the hedges and compel them to come in so that my house may be filled.
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For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.
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This church is to shame the noble and the powerful. You don't have time for God.
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He doesn't have time for you. He rejected the Jews who rejected him.
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It's very contextual here, but it's also got a timeless principle to it.
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God has chosen the things the world regards as foolish to shame the wise.
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What do you see here? He says, get the lame, get the blind, get the ones without power, get the ones who are foolish, bring them in, they'll get it.
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They'll get to sup with the master. And this is to shame them,
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Paul says. This word to shame is to humiliate or disgrace someone.
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That is the person feels a sense of unworthiness though previously they thought they were greatly worthy.
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And so that's what happens. They lose their sense of worth when they're humiliated or shamed. God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.
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And in this, God doesn't take the weak and make them like the strong of the world.
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God didn't take the lame and the blind and the deaf and the sick and the lepers and suddenly make them into these kings and queens.
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No. He brought them from a low standing up. There's no doubt about that.
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But God doesn't save these type of people. He doesn't save you and me. Again, I've kind of mentioned this before throughout the sermon so that we would be higher than Jesus so that we would have more of a name than Jesus.
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He makes us strong, not of this world, but of the heavenly world.
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And so it's not necessarily pauper to prince or kid to king or beggar to bureaucrat or Aladdin to Alibaba, I don't know.
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We were watching Aladdin two nights ago, right? There's not this crazy exaltation after coming to Christ.
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There's something better than that. There's not a worldly exaltation. There is something far better than that.
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God is not concerned with the upheaval of social classes with the gospel, though that can happen.
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The wise of the world thought the cross was pure folly and incapable of saving people and bringing them to heaven.
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The strong and mighty of the world thought the cross was far too weak. So first the wise of the world thought the cross was stupid.
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Now the mighty of the world think that the cross can't actually save people.
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It's impotent. It's not strong enough. That's not the case.
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Therefore, these type of people felt that they would have been lowering themselves.
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The wise, the mighty, the noble, when they look at the cross of Christ, they go, ah,
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I don't want that because that'll make me lower than what I am now. That's what they see.
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They can't commit themselves to Jesus Christ. They look at Jesus Christ as not as something, as someone who lifts them up.
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The wise and mighty and noble of this world look at Jesus Christ like a ball and anchor, right?
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A millstone that brings you down. That's how they look at Jesus Christ. You see this play out many times in the gospel scenes and the parables.
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You have sinners and lepers and prostitutes hearing the forgiveness of God. Tax collectors beating their chest.
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Forgive me, God, a sinner. While you have next to him a Pharisee going,
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I'm righteous, I'm not like this guy. Jesus says, that one who was beating his chest, forgive me, a sinner.
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He's the one who walked away justified, not the other one. But the
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Pharisees and the scribes, they were blinded to their sin. They saw no need for Christ's righteousness as they believed they were already righteous.
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If you see, church, if you see that you're not like God, then you're going to see your need for God.
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If you think you're like God or better than God, you will never think you need him.
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And that's hard to see. That takes the spirit of God to make you see that. This is to the wise and powerful shame, but both
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Jews and Greeks know well the image of shame and dishonor. Their reputations were highly valuable to them.
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Public shame was a desperate worry for these people. And yet that's not even what Paul had in mind.
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This is an eschatological phrase right here, a final shaming.
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God will give a final shaming, a public declaration at the last judgment.
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All creation will see those who thought the cross was foolish. Everyone will see.
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And you see it in Revelation a bit too. You see people rejoicing. Oh God, thank you for pouring out the bowls and judging the earth.
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And people praise God for that. Oh, praise God for your justice. You see that in the word of God.
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All creation will see that there'll be a final shaming. It'll be horrible. The psalmist says, let me not be put to shame, oh
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Lord. That's my prayer. That's always my prayer. I know I'm secure in Christ.
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But I say, just like the psalmist, let me not be put to shame, oh Lord, for I call upon you.
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And the psalmist says, let the wicked be put to shame. Let them be silent and sheol. You see, in choosing weak and foolish people like you and me,
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God has already started to humiliate his enemies, though it will climax at the end.
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God, by choosing us, has already started to humiliate his enemies, who are we?
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We're riding in this place in minivans. You know what I mean? We make our own lunches.
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We don't buy them. We do things that the world thinks is stupid. My wife jars apricots.
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People are like, just go buy a jar of apricots. But that's just like material things. We read the word of God.
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We take time out on Sunday. We come here at 7 a .m. and we'll stay until two. People are like, you're nuts.
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Go golfing. Go hiking. You're crazy. It's to their shame.
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It's not your shame. If that happens to you, it's not your shame. It's to theirs. God has not only chosen the foolish and weak things to shame the wise and the mighty, he has chosen the base things and the despised things.
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The word base here in the Greek is agene, which is opposite of eugenes.
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Right here, base is the opposite of eugenes, which is good genes. That means no genes.
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A is nothing. Agene, no genes. God chooses the people with no good genetics, no nobility.
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These are people who are insignificant, according to the world's standards. God chose people whom you would normally walk by with no regard.
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God cares about the people who no one cares about. The almighty is not a respecter of persons.
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God will take those who have no prestigious blood. God could care less about your pedigree.
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We're all from Adam. And this doesn't make sense to people. You don't give eternal bliss and reward to nobodies.
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You give it to the best people. That's at least what the world thinks. This doesn't make sense.
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But this is his will, the despised and the ones with no genes were chosen.
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This word despises literally one who has no value, the worthless. God didn't become any better by choosing you.
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These are worthless people, the despised. This is the same word that's used for Jesus Christ in Acts chapter four when it says, they despise the chief cornerstone.
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Paul goes on to say, look at this verse, Paul goes on to say the things that are not to shame the things that are.
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The are nots, the nothings of this world were chosen over the somethings.
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This phrase is often used for things that don't exist. But in this context, the apostle is saying,
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God called those who are considered as though they don't even exist.
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And in doing so, he will nullify or render to nothing the somebodies and the things that are.
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This is final destruction language, by the way. God has taken the are nots,
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God has taken the nothings and he will nullify or cancel out the things that are the somethings.
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This is final destruction language. And this is not annihilation type language where they turn into nothingness or they don't exist any longer.
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Just like the ones chosen were not ontologically nothing, but that the one praised, the ones praised for the most excellent earthly existences will be regarded as nothing in the caverns of hell.
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You get what I'm trying to say? The people who were the ares versus the are nots, the somethings, the things that the world considers valuable, they will be regarded or nullified as nothing in the pits of hell, nothing.
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There'll be no articles, no monuments, no halls of fame in hell, no name plaques, nothing.
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Another soul shamed and perishing where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.
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And yet that's not ultimately Paul's point here. What he's trying to say is
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God is well pleased with doing the opposite of what sinful humans expect.
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And it's not that God learned what we would expect and then he did the opposite.
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It's that humans always hate what God has already planned. We hate what God does naturally, but God does the opposite of what we desire.
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James, the brother of our Lord agrees when he says, listen, my beloved brethren, did not
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God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love him?
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If you remember the early church in which James was writing his letter to, they were treating rich men better than poor men.
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There'd be a poor man who would walk into the church assembly in rags and they would make him sit on the floor, but they would let the rich man take a seat.
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And so he says that that's worldly, that's evil.
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God has taken the poor of this world to be rich in faith. And it truly is astounding though many have thought that you are not existent, though many have despised you, though many have overlooked you in your life, for God to choose you, he didn't despise you.
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God won't shame you now. He shamed his son for you. He gave you wisdom for salvation when you had not one instruction for the life to come.
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You had nothing. You and I were fools when God came to us.
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And that makes it all the more important that the Corinthians and all of us remember who we were and how we brought nothing to the table.
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So why did God do it this way? Why did he do the opposite of what we expect?
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Verse 29, so that no man may boast before God. It wasn't just to shame or nullify the wise and the strong and the things that are, but so even the weak could never boast before God.
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Both groups cannot boast in front of God. All mankind, male, female, rich, poor,
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Jew or Gentile, no one, no one can boast before God. No one can go before the throne of God and showcase something that they did or something that they possess or show themselves something that their own hand produced.
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No one can bring something before God. And he goes, oh, okay, I approve of that.
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By that, on that basis, you're qualified to come in. Because then that person could boast, that person could take who they are.
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Hey, look at my noble blood, God. Hey God, look at all these works that I did for you on earth.
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Hey God, look at how strong I am. Hey God, look at how powerful I am. And you go before God and you present those things and God goes, okay, you're approved.
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You can enter into heaven. Then that person can turn around and go around heaven and say, you know how
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I got in here? No, it wasn't like you, it wasn't like the blood of Jesus. It wasn't
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Jesus's work. I showed him who I was and he let me in. Or I lived really righteously.
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I did my best my whole life. I did a lot of works. And he let me in.
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Then you could boast before the throne of God and it would no longer be God.
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Everything everyone has was given them. The word here, boast, is a word that has to do with the neck and the head.
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The word boast, it's a posture that someone has that they do with their neck. In Greek, you have this idea that their neck is really straight and really high.
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And they can boast before other people. They think they're the highest. They think they're higher before God.
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No one can do that. Those not chosen will go from boasting to begging and blaspheming, according to scripture, while those who used to beg and blaspheme will boast only in the
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Lord their God. You see, to receive a great gift and to boast as if you produce the gift is a high offense to God.
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No one can boast over something they freely received. The Corinthians did this with their spiritual gifts.
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They were given the gift of tongues. They were given the gift of prophecy, the gift of healing. And those gifts were given to them by the
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Holy Spirit. And they walked around as if, ha, I got this because of who
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I am. The Corinthians boasted because of who they were disciples of.
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They boasted because of who they admired the most and associated themselves with. But self -exaltation is an oxymoron in Christianity, okay?
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Let's go to our final verses for this morning, verses 30 and 31. Look at this.
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This is incredible. Look at this verse. But by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that just as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the
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Lord. Here's why you can't boast before God, church. Here's why no one can take their good works or their sacraments or their baptism or how much you volunteer or your church attendance or your tithe or your stellar performance.
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Here's why you can't take any of that and hold it up and say, this thing
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I did is why I'm saved. It's right here. What does it say? But by his doing, that's the phrase, by his doing.
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And the word here is in the genitive. It's possessive. It's God's possession. Whatever, whoever made you to be in Christ, it was
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God. It was him. Paul leaves no room for doubt. If you remember,
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John showed us Jesus agrees with this. Jesus knows this well. John 6, verse 44,
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Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him.
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No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws that person and I will raise them up on the last day.
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It's by his doing, lest a man could boast. One commentator says that this language shows that God is both the source and the cause.
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Only God can take nothings and make them into something.
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If God nullifies the things that are, it's by his doing that he establishes the things that were not.
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This is what the Bible often calls election. It's the Bible's words, not mine.
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Election is God's gracious act to save. In the letter to the
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Ephesian church, Paul will say it's by grace that they are saved. He says it's not of your doing, so that no man may boast.
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What a secure place to be, by the way. Who can undo God's doing, but by his doing?
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Okay, I'm gonna go up against God. God, I'm gonna cut down your doing. You think you can cut down God's doing?
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That's a secure place to be, but by God's doing, his doing, you are in Christ Jesus.
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Now, God didn't simply overturn the wisdom and strength of this world for his enjoyment.
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He overturned everything in this world for your salvation. Christ Jesus became to us, he says, wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
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The better English would have been for, for us. Christ Jesus became for us these things.
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You see, God's actions aren't just for him, but they're also for you. They're for me.
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Jesus became wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption for us.
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He was already these things in eternity past. This is in a mediator sense.
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Like he didn't become, he's always been righteousness. He's always been sanctification.
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He's always been holy. He's always been wise. And so not only do we find all wisdom in Christ and in his teachings, not only do we find how to be righteous and how to be sanctified and how to be redeemed in Christ, not only do we have all those things, but when we were fools of the world, he became our wisdom from God.
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When we were wickedness, he was our righteousness. When we were unclean and unholy, he became our sanctification.
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And when we had an insurmountable amount of debt to pay, he redeemed us and became our payment.
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You had no way to pay, but he became your redemption. He became your payment.
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You see, Christ doesn't just become these things. He gives them to you as well.
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These are the things that had no existence in a fallen world. These were the things that were not.
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Righteousness, holiness, redemption, and true wisdom. These are the things that were not in us and in this fallen world.
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God made what could never be yours by the virtue of your own existence or your own labor, and he made them your possession.
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You and I own the impossible. You possess the impossible.
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But with God, all things are possible, right? They are ours in Christ, and he cannot be separated from them.
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Jesus doesn't just give you wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption and walk away.
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He's tied to those things. He's in them, he's with you.
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They can't be had any other way. You can't enjoy those things apart from Christ.
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And that is what's amazing about what Paul said here. To Greeks, wisdom was everything.
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To the Jews, works of the law were everything. And so in one verse, the apostle destroys all self -reliance.
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All self -reliance, wisdom, it's from God. Righteousness, from God.
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Sanctification, from God. Redemption is from God, it's not from you. You know, it reminds me, when
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I was a young teen, I had gotten a job at a AMC movie theater and I was making 5 .32
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an hour. And, you know, I'd spend it all on a lot of stupid stuff, but then
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I'd save some. And I remember taking like $90 to like an instrument store, wanting a
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Gibson Les Paul. Google Gibson Les Paul with a sunburst. Later, not now.
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And that's what I wanted. And I remember bringing like $90 .55 and was like looking at the
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Gibson Les Pauls on the wall and then looking at the price as like a 15 year old.
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And the guy goes, which one you want? I'm like, that one. And he said, how much you got?
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And I like, I put all of it out. It didn't take much space, by the way.
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I put it all out. And he's like, yeah, you're gonna need like 10 times that amount. And I was so bummed, but that's what our works are like.
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That's what our wisdom and our nobility is like. It falls utterly short to what
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God does for us. It falls utterly short. It doesn't amount to anything. It can't get you anything.
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You need God to act. That is what we can muster before God.
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It's nothing. And therefore it's a recognition that what we have is bunk.
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It's lame. It does nothing. My own holiness stinks. My own righteousness is laughable.
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My redemption amounts to a penny. Don't even get me started on my wisdom.
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It's nothing. The Corinthians must remember this.
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We must remember this. Only then will the boasting that creates the division that they have die and remain dead.
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If there's any boasting, Paul then quotes Jeremiah 9 again. Let him who boasts.
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If you're gonna boast, boast in the Lord. And in the Hebrew, this word boast is to exclaim a praise.
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It is literally to shout a hallelujah. You don't do that for yourself. You do it to God.
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Only he can receive it. They can only be directed toward the Lord. You see, the
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Bible is filled with men and women who gloried in themselves and their end was folly.
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Those who glory in the Lord will enter the wisdom of God, the righteousness, the sanctification, and the redemption.
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So let me conclude here now, brothers and sisters. I want us to consider that the very heart of boastfulness and pride and self -reliance is the heart of the adversary.
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You see this throughout scripture in the examples of different men and women. You see it in Pharaoh whose confidence was in himself and it was his undoing even to the end at the bottom of the
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Red Sea. You have men like Saul who lost the Holy Spirit for doing things his way and not
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God's way. You have men like Nebuchadnezzar who looked out upon the land of Babylon and said, this is because of my own hand.
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And God said, I'm gonna turn you into a beast and you're gonna eat of the grass of the field and the dew of the sky will be on your back.
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And God did that. You have men like Haman whose neck was broke on the very same gallows he had built to kill the
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Jews. Boasters, prideful, arrogant. You have men like Herod who boasted in his own glory and the people in the book of Acts started to praise him.
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More than a man, he's a God and Herod didn't reject any of it. Herod said, yeah, I'll take it.
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And it says in the book of Acts that Herod was struck by an angel and eaten by worms.
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And the height of this kind of pride and boastfulness takes place when someone goes to God and says,
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I did it. It was by my doing. When the text just said, by his doing, by his doing.
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You've heard the apostle today. You've heard what our posture and attitude ought to be.
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You know what was given to you. In fact, later in chapter four, verse seven, the apostle says, who regards you as superior?
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What do you have that you did not receive? He says, and if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?
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So when you truly realize these things, when you truly know these, it changes things.
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I'm almost done here. I think of the example of in first Samuel two. You have
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Hannah, Hannah who was barren for so long. She was finally given a child and at the
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Lord making her womb fruitful and having her son Samuel, she breaks out in a song to God.
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Read it later, first Samuel two. It's an amazing song. And she says to the people in her song, boast no more.
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Do not let arrogance come out of your mouth. She says, the Lord is the one who brings low and exalts.
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He raises the poor from the dust. He lifts the needy from the ash heap. He shatters the bow of the mighty.
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It's him. It's him Hannah found out. And when Mary in the
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New Testament found out that she would get the privilege of carrying the Messiah in her womb, what did she do?
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She broke out in a song, just the same as Hannah. And when
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Mary sang, she sang, God has had regard for the humble state of his slave.
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She says, me, I'm a slave. She says, God scatters the proud.
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He brings down rulers from their thrones. He exalts the lowly and he fills the hungry with good things.
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Do you want to know the most effective way to avoid pride, arrogance, boastfulness, vainglory, division, bitterness, and so much more?
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Do what Hannah and Mary did. Boast in the Lord. That's what they did. They boasted in the
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Lord. They recognized who they were before God. Because you can't reach an end to the boasting that you can do in the
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Lord. Too much boasting in the Lord is still not enough. You boast, church.
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You boast in the Lord. You boast in what he's done. You brag about your God. When you brag about God, you'll find it hard to brag about yourself.
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I challenge you to do that. Recognize that all you have is from God and him alone.
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See that God flips what the world expects so as to shame the arrogant.
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You and I will constantly be tempted to think we did this. Do you ever serve your family a lot?
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You ever take care of an elderly person in your family? And maybe you get this stray thought and you think,
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I deserve what's coming to me. Maybe you think you deserve more.
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Not true. You and I, church, we are the base things.
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We are the despised things. We are the weak and foolish things. But by his doing, you are no longer nothings.
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You are somethings. Specifically, what you are is you are in Christ.
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And that's all the difference. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word today.
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Thank you, God, for showing us what we were, who we are. We're nothing without you,
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Lord. God, this humbles us.
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It should humble us, Lord. If any of us have been having difficulty with this and maybe we're not verbally saying that we're better.
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Maybe we're not verbally thinking we're better than other people here, but maybe inside we have.
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God, maybe sometimes we think we can offer something to you, a good bloodline, a good job, a good performance this week, our church attendance.
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Maybe we can point back to the day we converted and offer it to you. Maybe we think that,
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Lord, maybe subconsciously, God. But I ask today, Lord, that you would strip away all those things.
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Not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble. We were nothings, the things that are not.
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But you made us, Lord, different. And thank you,
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God, that you've exalted us in the heavenly way. You've given us an inheritance.
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You've made us heirs in the kingdom of God through Christ. And so,
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God, thank you for doing this. Show us, Lord, where we need to look into the mirror and not into the window.
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God, let your word be a mirror to our own lives and our own sin.
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By your Holy Spirit, convict us. And let us not only look at the
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Bible as a window to other people. And most of all, God, I pray that you would help us to boast constantly in you.
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We don't boast enough in you, and it's hurting us, and it's affecting our walks, and it's affecting our faithfulness in the workplace, and it's affecting the way that we parent our children, and it's affecting our moods, and we're depressed because we're not boasting in the
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Lord enough. So, God, let us leave this place boasting greatly in you.
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We love you, Lord Jesus Christ. For it is in your name we pray, amen. All right, church, well, we're gonna come to the
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Lord's table now. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, a baptized believer, please come to the table, partake.
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If you're not a believer today, please don't take of our table. It's not because we have anything against you, it's because of what the word of God dictates.