The Antidote to Division

Please remain standing for the reading of the word. Today's text is 1st

Corinthians chapter 1 verses 18 through 31. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved is the power of God.

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

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not

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

God through wisdom. It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach

Christ crucified. Stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both

Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

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

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the

Lord. Let us pray. Father, thank you so much for this opportunity to worship you.

Thank you so much for allowing us to gather without persecution. Lord, I lift up our brothers and sisters throughout the world who are being persecuted for their faith.

Lord, help us to remember what a privilege this is to do this safely and without danger.

Lord, I pray for your service this morning. I pray for Josh. I pray that you would bless the teaching of your word.

Lord, that you would convict, that the Holy Spirit would convict us to teach us and to grow us.

Lord, it's in your name that I pray. Amen. As we saw last week, there are many dangers in the church at Corinth, and you're going to hear this often as we go through for the next few months in 1

Corinthians, is that there is a tendency, I've seen it over and over again, to look at this letter and to look at 2

Corinthians and to immediately look down our long noses at the church at Corinth and to think, what a bunch of idiots.

I've heard it many times. I've probably said it many times. Long ago when

I was thinking about doing 1 Corinthians as a series, Bart had suggested to me we should subtitle it

Church Gone Wild. As I've dug in, I think there is an element of that, but I think what we've done is it is very easy for us to grab on, even historically, to look at other people and to pick and to see all of their faults and all of their stupidity while being completely blind to what's going on with us.

And I think one of the things that we have to bring out in historical context is that the church of Corinth is in severe danger from every direction.

There are threats from the outside. They are in a culture where the imperial cult that has all the power of the government is in full effect in Corinth.

It's a Roman outpost. It's an important Roman city, and the imperial family has declared the temple worship of Aphrodite to be the religion of the area.

So there is persecution and pressure coming from the outside. But inside the church at Corinth, there is the constant threat of sinful leaven and false teachers within the body.

2 Corinthians gives us much more of a window into this threat that came in, as so -called super apostles would come in and try to deny the ministry of Paul and try to deny the centrality of the message that the apostle had given them.

But there are also threats of division on the inside among God's people. And that's what

Corey preached on last week, and that's what we see as this passage this morning is an important talk and an important piece that's talking about how do we avoid the disunity and the quarrels that so mar the church of God.

See, within our Reformed ranks, I've watched over the last few years as we have had comfort among our ranks.

What we like to do as human beings in our pride is we like to look at who's on the outside and we like to identify how horrible they are so that we don't ever have to look at ourselves and we can grow in factions.

And so it's been a comfort for us within the conservative church to look at COVID, LGBT, leftism, transgenderism, all this stuff.

These things are very bad. They are a scourge on our country. But what we've done is we've undeservedly grown comfortable in looking out and shooting fire arrows when it's safe to do so, while ignoring what's going on and what the power is going to be to defeat these things.

So that's been difficult. But when we look at the culture, we can all band together and we can all agree with each other 99 .9

% about all of these issues and we can pat each other on the back and think we have unity in the church because we agree on all these threats from the outside.

But it's a false unity because unity is developed through the Holy Spirit and he binds the people of the church together.

So it is a fake, paper -thin unity that is easily torn asunder when an enemy is defeated.

When we are together against an enemy and then that enemy is defeated, the war no longer goes on and we find that there was no friendship underneath.

That it was all about a common purpose. So what we've done is we've looked outside and then we also, with the second kind of threat, with false teachers and leaven inside the church, it's often been painful for us to look and lament the lack of church discipline and discernment that marks the church in America.

And it's true. But in reform circles we're often blind to the misuse of church discipline and the leaven that we tolerate within our own churches.

We always want to look outside. We always want to say, how in the world can this man be an elder?

Do you see that they have women pastors over there? Can you believe what they're doing over there at that church?

And what we do again is we develop paper -thin camaraderie to hole up in our enclave and to shoot little darts over at the other churches.

But it's not painful for us, it's exhilarating. Because we like dirty laundry. You know you do.

You like to hear the morsels. If the news every night was about all the good stories going on in the world, no one would watch it.

No one would be on social media if everything was positive and encouraging all the time. We like those little juicy morsels of salacious gossip.

We enjoy it. It titillates us. And so when we look at the third threat, which is division and quarrels within the church, we ignore them.

And the reason we ignore them is because they are always painful to deal with. Because there's no way to look outside, and there's no way to blame it on somebody else.

When we have quarrels inside, it's due to our own pride and our own sin. So it occurs to me that I have preached this morning's text on an

Easter a few years ago, and I preached a sermon that was very theological. And I think at first blush when you hear

Brady read it, and when you read over it this week, I think that this section seems to be much more theological than practical.

But I don't think Paul intended it to be that way. I think this is the practical outflow, how you accomplish what he admonished them last week to work on, which is to quash these quarrels and factions.

So what I want you to do this morning is I want you to look at the practical wisdom that Paul gives through the prism of the cross.

And he said that he was not going to proclaim the gospel in wisdom of words so that the cross will not be made empty.

And then Paul proceeds in this text to use high rhetoric and wisdom.

And it's paradoxical. But he does that because I believe that he is gently making fun of the church at Corinth.

Because this church is one that has adopted this leaven. They've accepted it. They have showboated with the gifts that are being poured out.

Ladies and gentlemen, you would be amazed if you were in the church at Corinth at what you would see in that place.

You would have seen miraculous outpourings of the Holy Spirit. You would have seen the gospel going into a city that was darker than what you can imagine.

Not the church gone wild. The very early church without many fathers that needs admonishment, that needs to be corrected.

So take heed, church. We are in great danger. Great danger when we focus on others, get tribal, and become blind to what we are doing.

As the prophet Isaiah said, astonish yourselves and be astonished.

Blind yourselves and be blind. They have become drunk but not with wine.

They stagger but not with strong drink. For Yahweh has poured over you a spirit of deep sleep.

He has shut your eyes, the prophets, and he has covered your heads, the seers.

The entire vision will be to you like the words of a sealed book. Which when they give it to the one who is literate, saying, please read this, he will say,

I cannot, for it is sealed. Then the book will be given to the one who does not know how to read a book, saying, please read this.

And he will say, I do not know how to read a book. Then the Lord said, because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but they remove their hearts far from me, and their fear of me is in the command of men learned by rote.

Therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous, and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the discernment of their discerning men will be hidden.

This was a judgment oracle about the devastating hardness and dullness that God puts on a people who try to honor him with a religious activity while missing what

God desires. God desires a humble and contrite heart. How can there be divisions among us when we have a humble and contrite heart?

How can we quarrel when our brothers, when we remember who we are and how we've been purchased?

See church, a divided church is fundamentally a blind church. We're blind to who we are, blind to what we've done, and blind to what we're called to be.

It's like trying to read a book that is sealed up and cannot be opened and understand that God will make the wise babble like fools because all wisdom and all understanding comes from the

Holy Spirit. A divided church has forgotten who God is. It's forgotten who we are and what the purpose is.

So the purpose of CBC is this. We've stated it and it's been this from the beginning.

We are committed to proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, teaching Christians to obey all that Jesus has commanded, and equipping them to serve with their

God -given abilities under the leadership of the elders. To serve with God -given abilities.

See in the church at Corinth, what we saw was that the people were quarreling over two different things.

As one of them becomes unveiled, they were quarreling over who baptized them, over who their leader was.

So they were pitting apostles and teachers against other apostles and teachers. They were dividing the church into cheerleading squads who fought much, and the more they fought, the less they would accomplish.

They were showboating in their miraculous gifts, thinking that that was the end of the church. That the goal of the church is to have gifts poured out so that we can show how very holy we are through our spiritual gifting.

All the while forgetting that it's called spiritual gifting. It's not yours.

It's Jesus'. Do we see this today? Do we might as well put this on our bumper stickers?

I'm of MacArthur. I'm of Vody. I'm of Calvin. Or the most pious among us,

I'm of Jesus. I have no confession but the Bible. Oh good for you.

You are oh so pious. See we have the same functions as Solomon would write, there is nothing new under the sun.

Our lives are a vapor and we scrabble and claw for a little bit of credit from our fellow man.

And we think that we're going to present that to God. We have to watch out. We have to watch that we do not divide into quarrelsome factions.

It's so easy. It's so easy and it's so seductive. Josh, I'm so glad you're preaching today.

I just love your preaching. I'm of Josh.

I'm of Corey. If you knew how big of idiots we were, just ask

Kelsey. She can tell you. Paul gives us an antidote for this sinful foolishness and I think that we've missed it.

And so he punches us in the face with the most simple thing of all that is delivered in very clever wording.

And that is the foolishness and the weakness of who? Of God. The foolishness and the weakness of God.

And then he ends with a crescendo. Can you imagine how weak we are when we see the foolishness and weakness of God is so much stronger than men?

So much. Have you ever invented anything with your mind? Have you ever spoken anything into being?

Friends, do you know what the weakness and the foolishness of God is? It's that God created a rebellious people so that he could bleed out his blood to save them.

That is weakness as accounted by human beings. And we have so many false religions because this weakness cannot be believed by those who deem themselves to be wise.

Because the rebellion of human beings is that we believe God owes us something. The one who created us out of dust owes us something.

He owes us our wages because we constantly think that we have something to offer

God. We have nothing to offer God. Nothing. He doesn't need anything from us.

We don't complete him in any way. Everything that we have, including our wicked rebellious acts, are made possible by the benevolence, the long -suffering, and the patience of God that reveals his character and his love for a created people.

So the word of the cross, Paul will divide into two groups. Remember, this is the antidote for factions and divisions.

And the first thing Paul does, you have to see it, he's very clever, is he divides into two groups. And these are the only two groups that really matter.

And that is, the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.

There's two groups. There's the perishing, the God -haters.

And we try to nice them up, don't we? Oh, he's a good man. And there's a natural way that we can say that.

Most people, because of the grace of God, are not murderers. Most of them are not. That's a good thing, okay?

God has shown his grace to a wicked creation that he restrains evil through his law. But there are two groups.

If you have no faith in Christ, then you hate God who created you. You're just working it out in a different way.

Maybe you rebel and you break his law as much as you can. Maybe you cloak yourself in self -righteousness and be a moral person so that at the end of the day you think you're going to stagger up to the judgment throne of God and offer him your good works.

And he's going to say, depart, I never knew you. Your works are nothing. Your works are wicked.

When you helped that old lady across the street, that might have been good in a common grace sense, but it was wicked in a spiritual sense because you thought that you would offer that to me and spit on the blood of my son.

That's what we're dealing with. The cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.

Foolishness. Moronic. How could you be so stupid? That's what the perishing belief.

How could you be so stupid? But to those being saved, it's the amazing power of God.

See, the perishing, those who are lost, who hate God, they ask the question, what does a guy who may or may not have lived 2 ,000 years ago have to do with me?

So what's the natural conclusion of this? Hey, if there is a God, and most people believe there is, they always have.

Why? Because it's true and it's obvious there is a God. So what they'll think is, I need to let my good deeds outweigh the bad so the universe will give me good things.

Every time you hear the television talk about the universe rewarding something, understand that that is setting up a secular pagan

God at odds with the God of all creation. The universe is not doing anything. Do you understand that?

The universe has been created by a passing thought of God. That is how cosmically great

He is. All the reaches of space that we can't explore, He spoke into being and it wasn't hard for Him.

Did you know there's one thing God has ever done that was hard for Him? And that was to die for your sins.

In fact, it was so hard for Him that He prayed that that cup of wrath would be taken away from Him.

It was brutally hard. And so we see what God values through the difficulty and perseverance that He would go through.

He values you. He values His people. He has adopted us. But see, the ones being saved, they don't ask these questions.

What we see is that being saved is spiritually discerned. God has revealed to you what

He's done. And so what happens is this is not an intellectual proposition. You are not being saved by saying,

I believe Jesus did something. You are being saved by the power of the Holy Spirit. And when you have the

Holy Spirit, it changes who you are, what you desire, and who you love.

Do you love the world? Then you hate God. If you love

God, that's because the Spirit has changed who you are. See, the message of the cross is that you are completely lost without being saved by the power of God.

And this power is completely incomprehensible to the perishing. And so Paul reveals that God has a plan and he starts to divide these two groups and he divides the perishing group into two other people.

He talks about the Jews and the Greeks. And then their avatars, the scribes and the debaters.

The Greeks are the debaters. The Jews are the scribes. And he has this thing that this simple little deal where this man who dies on a cross is going to disarm all of the wisdom of the wise, all the discernment of the discerning, and all the power of the powerful.

And it's going to make them look absolutely stupid. Do you understand? There is a huge desire from those who set themselves up as wise to disprove the

Word of God, and it can't be done. I've seen in my lifetime the fad of new atheism die.

Do you remember it? Dawkins, Hitchens, they called them the four horsemen of atheism, right?

Godless heathens who would shake their fist at a God that they knew existed, and they would suppress the truth, and they have utterly lost the argument.

They were the wisest, right? The world saw them. They were high intellect people, and they have been completely disarmed.

Nobody believes that nonsense anymore, right? Nobody believes in atheism. It's stupid.

It's on its face stupid. So what have we done? We have separated, and we have decided, hey, we're not going to go with the debater now.

The perishing have figured out, wait, we don't want to debate anymore. What we want to do is see the signs.

So enter secular paganism, and it's all about UFOs, and it's all about paranormal activity.

Why? Because men in perishing will see the cross as foolishness, and they will search for signs, or they will search for wisdom.

The atheism was the play for wisdom, and the secular paganism is a search for signs, but God has a plan to destroy all of that.

He will destroy every tool of man that is held up to hold on to his own rebellious independence from his creator.

So the wisest become fools. The cleverest seek the things of smallest value. Do you understand?

When the wise and the clever, they set themselves up, and they try to investigate, how old is all of this?

When did it all happen? What they do is they set themselves up to gain the least valuable things while losing everything.

The only thing that matters, Jesus says it, if we live forever, if we have a creator, and we are eternal beings, doesn't what happened in eternity matter so much more than what happens for 80 years here?

That's wisdom, is it not? But the wise of this world put everything on the 80 years here, and so God has made them fools through his own foolishness of the cross, because the cross is so hard to believe for those that are perishing, because man in his natural state is rebellious and proud, and we think we don't need

God because we've got this ourself, and then a hurricane rips the whole village down, and we're like, yeah, we've got this.

It's ridiculous. So the two broad types of those who are perishing is we have the Jews who seek signs.

The signs means attesting miracles. There is a constant search, and we saw it in Mark. There's a constant search from the scribes and the

Jewish leaders, are you really who you say you are? They knew he was who he said he was, but they wanted one more sign.

You know, if you just do this, we would believe. No, you would not. See, the constant search for miracles today, and this is why the blasphemous ministries of Bethel, IHOP, all of these charismaniac stuff where we're lengthening people's legs, punching people in the face to run out the spirit, we just abominate all of scripture when we do that.

What it is is an age -old heresy of looking for signs. That's all it is.

Has not God spoken? Has not God given us the foolishness of the cross? It's not good enough for those who seek for signs.

See, the constant search for miracles, it will validate a reason to look outside of your self -righteousness.

So yeah, maybe I know I'm a sinner, and we know that sinfulness erodes all of these sign -seeking people.

It's an infectious cancer in there, but I don't have to be righteous if I can just see the signs.

That is the idea. See, the Jews want to ignore in this time that they have killed their Lord, so they search for signs.

See, today this quest is found in world religions that manufacture or follow supernatural events in order to bypass the demands of the cross.

This is the Mormons. This is Hinduism. This is the Jehovah's Witness stuff.

We got to have a burning fire in the bosom that tells us God is speaking to us. We got to see some miracles.

And it's a stumbling block because the miracle already happened and you tripped all over it.

There is no self -righteousness in the cross, is there? The cross levels all of our self -righteousness to the ground because it says, it was not good enough.

All the righteous things you did, God still had to die for you. You had nothing to offer.

Totally at odds. But what about the Greeks who search for wisdom? These are my people. This is the one I don't like the sign thing.

It makes me scared, all right? The wisdom thing, though, we have to ask, how does all of this fit within reason?

We got to develop epistemologies. We have to philosophize and be sophists and let all these words, we got to craft the right syllogisms to see how

God has not saved us through the cross. What does it all mean? And then the, we've never heard this one, right?

God's good, right? How can a good God allow evil? Oh, stumped me there.

See, the cross is foolishness to the Greek because they will not accept the answer that's right in their face.

Can all of evil and sin be reconciled by the cross? Does it not all make sense?

See, God appointed evil to maximize his own glory. He uses evil for his purposes, not that he causes it because we are evil enough.

We're all doing whatever we want to do. No one has to tell you to look at that pretty girl. No one has to tell you that you want to gain just a little extra money by greedy means.

No one has to tell you that you want to lie to make yourself look a little bit better.

No one has to tell you. It's natural. God didn't make you do it. You did it.

And then he used it. See, the cross is foolishness because it does away with all these ridiculous philosophical questions.

And it says this, you know what the answer to how can a good God allow evil?

The answer to that is you need to repent of your sins and trust in the King of creation. That's the answer.

Are there good answers for theodicy? Of course there are, but we don't need to get brought into that.

See, the cross stymies philosophical debates and sophistry because simply put, every answer is found in Jesus and always has been.

Every philosophical question, the yes is found in Jesus. Every question about the anthropology of man is found in the

God man. He is perfection and he gives us a standard. The foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

So now we go and he takes these two groups, remember the perishing and the being saved, and he looks at these two within the perishing.

How do you perish? Well, you make moronic arguments about how God's not real because evil and old stars and this kind of stuff.

Or you look for leg lengthening and gold dust blowing out of the vents and hearing a burning voice come in your hair that tells you to brush somebody's hair or something like that.

Yeah, that's a Beth Moore reference. She's an idiot too. And he's going to take all those and now these

Jews and the Greeks that he's lampooning, he's going to bring them in because among the Jews and the Greeks, which is basically everybody in this time, what he's going to do is say within these perishing ones, they divide into Jews and Greeks, but also there's

Jews and Greeks who are called and that's the only groups that matter. Remember, what's the context?

I'm of Paul. I'm of Apollos. We're quarreling. This family's so disturbed that she's writing a letter that's like, man, these guys are fighting cats and dogs,

Paul. You need to help us. So what's Paul's answer? The called and the perishing.

This is a crucial verse and I'm going to come back to it in the sermon here in verse 26, but I'm going to skip 26 for now and I want to look.

The Jews and the Greeks. God has chosen foolish things of the world. See, what happens to the stumbling block is the gospel is a stumbling block for those who desire signs, right?

What does a stumbling block mean? It means you're looking for something, you're striving to get it, and you trip and you fall on your face.

So I want signs. I want miracles. I want to see all this and what's happened is definitively the greatest miracle that's ever happened in history was not the

Red Sea Parting. That is a natural miracle. People being healed of sickness miraculously, that's not the greatest miracle.

We can understand how God would do that. What is foolishness that we cannot understand is how can God himself die?

How can God become a man and be God at the same time and die?

Why would he ever do that? Doesn't that definitionally make him not God? See, this is why it's such a difficult miracle and it's a stumbling block because if you're looking for somebody's leg to get lengthened, you can be easily satisfied by that.

But if you miss the miracle that God has died on the cross to erase your sins, make that make sense.

And if I'm looking for signs, I've stumbled over the greatest miracle that's ever happened and I've fallen flat on my face.

And all this happens through the Spirit. See, the Spirit takes the stumbling block away when you believe.

When you're called, it all starts to make sense that there's one sign that matters among many.

There are many signs and attesting miracles of God and they exist to this day. They do.

God is doing miracles today. But it's not for our increase, it's for his.

And then we miss something, right? The simple preaching of the gospel is powerful to penetrate hearts because what it does is it's the means by which

God unleashes the wisdom and power of God. Do you believe it?

Do you believe it? I know you probably wouldn't be here if you didn't believe it personally for yourself.

But it's easy for us to be very negative and easy for us to look at the world that's darkening and to not believe the power of the gospel to change lives.

See, even Jonah believed that, did he not? What was Jonah's big problem? His problem was not that he didn't believe the power of God to save, the problem was that he did believe it and he hated the people that God had sent him to so much that he didn't want them to be saved.

I wish we were more like Jonah. What we do is we hate the people that are out there and don't want them to get saved, and we don't preach to them.

And we look at Jonah and we laugh at him, don't we? Don't we laugh when the fig tree curls up?

Oh, why did you take my shade away? And we're like, what an idiot, Jonah. We're that.

We're so much worse, are we not? Do you believe the power of the gospel that has been given to you in full canon with hundreds of years of confession, with many attesting signs that show its power over time?

Do you know what Europe was before the gospel? It was a dark place of barbarism and pagan rituals, and it was turned on light in Europe, not because of their ingenuity, but because of the power of the gospel.

People were saved, and when people are saved, they start to love the poor. They start to take care of people who are under them, and that provides time for people to build things, to learn things, and to stop murdering each other.

The power of the gospel is powerful for personal salvation, but it's also powerful for kingdom building.

Let's just use, I know a man here, he sits here, he toils at the U of A. It's a dark place.

Dark place. Many of the issues that we have flooding out in Fayetteville come from that location, right?

Why is Fayetteville a little different than the other four? University, right? It's a place of sophistry.

Can you imagine what would happen if the gospel took hold of that place?

See, we don't have to save, we don't have to get a million people saved all at once. It's when you get a

Crispus, right? When somebody like that is saved and he starts to proclaim the gospel, we see the power of God to change hearts.

See, the weakness and foolishness of God, don't miss it. What did it do? Do you believe it? What did the weakness of God do?

The weakness of God destroyed Satan, destroyed death, and destroyed sin.

The weakness of God. What do you think the wisdom and power of God looks like? Can you imagine?

His arm is stronger than we can imagine. And to properly focus on the power and wisdom of God shown in weakness and foolishness, this is the antidote, guys.

It should start to properly align our thoughts about ourselves. Let's look back. Verse 26.

Consider your calling, brothers. Think long about your calling.

Now, I was seven years old when I was called, and there was foolishness to be sure.

But there's been a trajectory in my life, and the reason why is not because I'm great. It's because God changed me into a different creature.

Over time, by God's grace, the things that I once loved, I don't love anymore.

And the things that I do love are not those things of old. I love to sing among God's people, and I try to do it loudly.

I love to go to my Lord in prayer. I love to be among his people. How can we do that when we hate our brothers?

What is the answer to division? It has eluded the church, and we don't painfully look at it within our midst because I would ask you, are there quarrels among us?

Are there factions? Are there grudges? They're so easy to jump into, and the way to get out is difficult because the way to get out is the assault on pride.

Think about it. Analyze it. Stay up at night. To my shame, I couldn't sleep the other night.

I hate to admit it, but I'm going to. I played the Lynx at Springdale in my mind every shot.

And in my mind, I think I shot like a 30, which shows my delusion.

Do we think about and analyze our calling in this way? Lord, how did you call me? How am

I worshiping you? How am I showing that I love you by my love for my brothers? Do I hate what you've called holy?

Do I grudge and grumble against that which you love? See, it's not the high -minded that show the glory of God.

It's the base things. It's the rudimentary things. It's the things that the world doesn't love.

And here's the thing. There's two groups of people. You're not here. You're not here because God lined us all up in a line, and we were the top 50.

That's not what happened. That's not at all what happened. God chooses the base, the foolish, the weak, because the power is not us.

It's the gospel. Friends, we have the power of God inside of us.

He has come to live with man, and he lives in you. You are a temple and a tabernacle where the high priest could only go in once a year, and he would fear death going in there, and that is your heart.

This is not ethereal spiritual stuff. This is the reality that God lives inside you.

Do you want to defile the place that God lives? What happens to such a man? Do you want to claim that you're a temple while you love all the defiling things of this world?

It should not be. Where we see quarrels and stubbornness and factions in the church is where we regard sin lightly because we love it.

We love our sin in our pride. I do. God, help me. I know

I do. It's so bad.

It's so bad. Is it not how easy lying can come to your mind?

How easy it can be to say a word to try to elevate yourself a little bit and try to cut somebody out just a notch?

It's so easy. It's so seductive, and what it does is it shows that we have not considered our calling.

Friends, it's not because you're smart, and Mark, we saw it over and over again. Do we need the repetition? And Mark, we saw the stubborn unbelief of the wise and powerful that was set against the belief of the blind, poor, demons -possessed fools who were laying in the gutters.

That's who God saved. That's where this church came from. That's where all of us came from was a bunch of roughneck fishermen who proclaimed the gospel to a bunch of rubes.

That's who we are. And even if you're not, even if you are accounted this world wise as Paul was, are any of you as good as him?

Oh, no. No, listen. Paul intimidates me. I hope that he will shake my hand someday in heaven.

I have to trust that the cross is level. I would dearly love to meet an apostle Paul, and I need to get in line. There's probably about six billion ahead of me, okay?

But the apostle Paul, he is wise. But what happened? When he adopted the foolishness of God, is he deemed wise by the world anymore?

No. He's a fool. He gave up his position in the world, and he gets persecuted over and over again, adrift at sea, whipped, scourged, stoned.

Why? Because the power that was inside of him is of surpassing value, and so any wisdom that he had, it could easily be answered.

Who is the great debater of this age? Paul. Paul's the great debater of this age.

Who is the great scribe of this age? Paul. Have you ever read Hebrews? He was quite the scribe.

Have you read this section? Have you ever heard a sermon be preached anything like how these verses sound?

You've never heard anything like that. He was the great scribe and debater of this age, and what did he do? He became foolishness so that the surpassing power of the gospel would not be interfered with.

That's what it means that he did not come with words of wisdom to empty the cross of its power, because the cross needs to be preached roughly, bluntly, simply.

Do you six -year -olds understand the power of the cross? I'm looking at you kids.

Do you understand that you are a sinner? You disobey your parents because of who you are, but Jesus has died for your sins, and it's every parent's desire in here would be that this simple message that confounds wise people, that trips up sign seekers, draws you like little children into the kingdom, and it will change who you are.

It will, Knox. It changes you. It changes who you are. As a seven -year -old, it changed everything that I wanted.

It didn't happen immediately. It's not microwave. It happens over time, and it's a slow, slow crawl.

Man, we preach this often in Reformed churches. We are gung -ho about the doctrine of total depravity, and total depravity is true.

There is none seeking God, not even one. However, however, to those being saved by the power of the cross, are you seeking

God? The answer is yes. Yes. I can tell you

I am seeking God. Why? Because I am no longer the perishing. I am one who's being saved.

I am not totally depraved. I was. I was totally depraved.

Christians, we need to hear a steady dose of this. We need to stop the navel -gazing thing. Oh, I'm such a worm.

You were. You were a worm. Now you're a son. Do you treat your son like a worm?

Oh no, I don't think so. No, you don't give your son scorpions for his birthday, do you?

No, you give him good things, and that's what God has given us. So this is what we need to hear.

What does this look like? And again, the cap is we do not let ourselves boast in the flesh.

There's no reason to boast. However, there's a thing that we got to keep in tension. If you're a child of God, this applies to you.

I love it. It has wrecked my world for the last month. I'm going to read a piece of it. I told, I looked at myself in the mirror this week, and I said, you get 2

Samuel in this sermon. So here it comes. David writes,

Yahweh has rewarded me according to my righteousness. According to the cleanness of my hands, he has recompensed me.

For I have kept the ways of Yahweh, and have not wickedly departed from my God.

For all his judgments were before me, and as for his statutes, I did not depart from them. I was also blameless toward him, and I kept myself from my iniquity.

Therefore, Yahweh has recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness before his eyes.

Isn't that weird? That's David as an old man. This is the very end. Did David commit iniquity before God?

Yeah, I think so. He murdered somebody, committed adultery, let his kingdom be torn apart by his son by not disciplining him.

It's a dirty story, but at the end of the day, how can you make a claim like that, David? The answer is this.

We boast only in the Lord. We boast only in the Lord. He saved you to show his power over sin due to your low standing in sinfulness.

You're not chosen for your talent. It's exactly the opposite of that. Don't despise the gifts that he has given to you.

Is it not in our confessions and our creeds he has given you righteousness? Are you righteous or not?

We know legally the answer, right? You are righteous. You are righteous. Do you feel righteous?

Be careful if you start feeling righteous, but here's the thing. You are. You are righteous, and you should pray to God accordingly.

You should pray that he would deliver you from iniquity, that he would make you blameless as he has promised to do, that you would go out and you would not despise the gifts given to another.

Do you understand the power of the cross and how it's the antidote to division? It's simply this. What we do in our pride is we boast in the flesh, and we go, and it's easy for me, is it not?

Oh, I can speak the words that God gives me. And everybody looks.

Yeah, what a great deal. It's really terrible. We should love the gifts that God gives us, but not look at envy with another's gifts.

This is very difficult. It's very difficult. I've watched Corey many times. I've watched him go and disciple young men, and he cuts right to the quick.

It takes me like three times as long to get to the point, and he had to tell me a couple weeks ago, he's like, Josh, you suck at telling stories.

I was like, yeah, I do, and it hurt a little bit, but then I realized what it was doing is, deep in my heart,

I was like, man, I wish I could do that like Corey does, and I told him.

I was like, man, it's stupid. I'm so sorry. I thought this way. The envy gets in so easily. It gets in so, so easily, and it's easy for us to tribe up and then try to cut him down a little bit.

Wouldn't it be easy to feel threatened by somebody that you deem to have a little bit more spirituality than you? Is that not the whole point of Christian social media?

Is it not? It's pious wars. Look how pious I am.

Did you write down a whole scripture verse this morning like I did? How long were you in the closet with quiet time?

Do you understand this arcane teaching that I do? That's all it is.

It's so ridiculous, and Paul cuts right to the heart of it, does he not? Friends, as we walk away, and I'm at the end of my time, here's what you've been given.

All of us, we've been given righteousness. We've been given sanctification.

He is making you cleaner by the day. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it. It's not a straight line up.

It bends, okay? And you'll have kids, Samuel, and then it'll bend even more because you'll get mad like you've never been before.

It's going to happen. We have redemption. We have so many gifts, do we not?

Do you understand what a gift it is to be able to go to the Lord and pray, and you are talking to the creator of the universe, and he's listening to you?

What a tremendous gift that we look at and take for granted. Do you realize what a gift it is to have his word in front of us, to see it?

Do you realize, let's cut more to the point, do you realize what a gift it is to be united with other

Christians in common purpose, worshiping together? There should not be quarrels among us.

There should not. Don't let this message become theological knowledge.

It's not about that. What it is, is about you have to remember who you are, and you have to remember who God is.

His foolishness is pretty wise. His weakness is pretty powerful. How's yours?

How's your foolishness and weakness? It's pretty bad. How good is your wisdom, and how good is your strength?

It's pretty low. You think you're strong? You're like one bulging disc away from being crippled, and it can happen by sneezing.

Oh, I'm so strong. Don't exalt yourself, and let's not fall into the sin.

Look, the Corinthians, he'll say later, they didn't have many fathers. It was very difficult for them. We don't have excuses, love.

We don't. We have many fathers. We have many writings. And we have a clear admonition here that we're to love one another.

How do we love one another? By understanding what God has done. It's a time of Thanksgiving in November.

It's one of my, it probably is my favorite month. I don't know, December or November. It's all the same. Gets cold.

I like it. Remember who you are. Remember what he's done, and we will have unity here, and a united group can accomplish the mission, because God's going to work where his people love each other.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the power of the gospel.

Lord, that you have set what we did wrong to rights. Lord, that you brought a people who are wandering and far away from you into your fold, both the

Jew and the Greek. Lord, you have disarmed the wisdom of the wise, and you have made nothing, nothing, the discernment of the discerning.

Because Lord, all things that are of value in your kingdom are discerned spiritually.

And so Lord, I pray that you would protect our church, that you would protect us from exalting in our gifts over others, that you would protect us from proud and foolish quarrels, that we would love one another as you have loved us.

Lord, it is a message for us that we have to walk with, that you have put it in such a way that you are known by our love for one another, and how often we fail at that task.

Lord, would you protect us from slandering and gossip and envy and malice, but instead that we would give each other the benefit of the doubt, that we would bear with one another's burdens, that we would love one another.

Lord, that our lips would not be quick to shed blood, but our lips would be using words that encourage and edify.

Lord, we can't do it. We know we will surely fail in our power, but you've called us.

So Lord, help us orient our lives to that calling. Help us to consider it this week. Help us to look closely at what you've done.

And Lord, I pray that it would make a people faithful, that we would not wander like those who tested you in the desert, but instead that we would see your provision over us and we would be thankful and glad.