A Word in Season: God’s Tools (1 Corinthians 1:27–29)

Media Gratiae

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

When you go to church, what do you see? When you look in the pulpit, what do you see?

00:07

Maybe when you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see those who, according to the flesh, are wise and mighty and noble?

00:19

Do you see the kind of men and women at whose feet the world will fall, praising their insight, their beauty, their status, their glory according to the world's standards?

00:31

Do you see many people who are mightily eloquent by the world's measure?

00:38

Those who are possessed of some phenomenal charisma that carries everyone and everything before them?

00:47

No, you probably look at the church and you think these are the offscourings of the world.

00:54

You look in the pulpit and you might think who or perhaps even what is that?

01:00

And you might look in the mirror and you might think what chance have we got? And the answer to that is to stop looking the way the world looks, to stop looking with eyes of flesh and to start looking with eyes of faith at God and His tools,

01:17

His instruments, His means to accomplish His ends. For Paul says in 1

01:23

Corinthians 1 that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty and the base or low things of the world and the things which are despised

01:39

God has chosen and the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are that no flesh should glory in His presence.

01:49

You see the world looks at the church and they think that we are nothings. They think that we are despicable.

01:55

They think that we are foolish and that we are weak and that we are despised and in their own terms they're absolutely right.

02:05

We have chosen to follow after Jesus Christ. We have been willing to take the reproach of Him made so by the work of the

02:15

Spirit in our hearts. We recognize that we're not going to win many plaudits or many awards in the world's stakes.

02:24

But our hope is not in our own strength or our own wisdom or our own status.

02:30

Our hope is in the might and the goodness of the God whom we serve. In fact,

02:36

God delights to take those things which are nothing in the eyes of the world in order to overturn that which is great in the world's eyes and that has to be our confidence as we go about our business as God's people in the world that He made.

02:52

In this world that is now fallen and in rebellion against Him. When we come up against the wisdom of the world, when we come up against the strength of the world, when we come up against the status of the world, where is our hope and what is our confidence?

03:07

It is in this that God himself delights to take that which the world despises in order to accomplish

03:15

His glorious purposes. And the purpose for which He does that is that no flesh should glory in His presence.

03:24

The precise point of what God does and the way the Lord God does it is that by using such despised instruments, by using such ugly and broken looking tools,

03:38

He will show that it is His strength and His wisdom by which

03:43

He accomplishes His purposes. Here is the strength and the wisdom of God as it is seen in the glory of the cross of Jesus Christ.

03:53

And here is the strength and the wisdom of the mighty God as it is seen in bringing about His purposes by the feeble and foolish looking instruments of His people.

04:05

And so you may go and look at the church and you may think, what are we? And you may look at the man in the pulpit and you might think, what is he?

04:13

And you might look at yourself in the mirror and you might say, what hope have we got? But you also need to look up in confidence to the

04:22

God of heaven and earth who glorifies His name by accomplishing great things by means that the world despises.

04:32

So do not look only at the tools. Look at the God whose tools they are.

04:38

Look at the God who is pleased to use such means to accomplish great ends in order that no flesh should glory in His presence.

04:48

So the world will not be able to boast at what they have done or not done. And the church will not be able to boast at what we have done or not done.

04:58

We will have to point again to God and say it is by Him that all good things are brought to pass, that every blessing is obtained.