These are the best days in church history. We have more resources and more opportunities than any Christians in any generation. Copies of the Bible in our native language are ubiquitous, or at least easily obtained for not much money in not much time. Access to the Scriptures in the original languages, as well as access to learn about the original languages, surpasses any Reformer’s imagination. There are books that are about books that are about the books of the Bible. We could (search and) read notes from Spurgeon’s sermons while listening to this sermon. We could download and listen to any number of sermons before the drive home.

We also live in a time when it is easy and cheap to make websites for our local churches and ministries. We can print brochures for our “brand” of church, host conferences and seminars to promote a certain style or emphasis of theology, even create business (or buy from them) that provide strategies for reaching more people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. In today’s market, if we have an Internet capable phone and a logo, what can stop us?

This spirit of building is at least American if it isn’t Christian. Entrepreneurial Evangelicalism, which is different from individual Evangelicals who are entrepreneurs, grows richer every day, claiming to produce a rising number of conversions and claiming to have transferable answers for how to see increased interest and attendance wherever we minister. This is amazing, and, I don’t use this phrase willy-nilly, a lot of it is going to burn.

The spirit of building is Christian. The question is not whether or not we should build. We will build, the question is how? In 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 Paul likened the church to a field and compared his work to that of a farmer. In this paragraph, verses 10-17 (one paragraph in the Greek New Testament, though understandably two paragraphs in most English translations due to the change from mostly third person to second person in verses 16 and 17), Paul refers to the church as a building and work on the building to that of a contractor or construction worker. Building is Christian, as a verb and as a noun; we build and we are a building, but a day is coming when not everyone’s work will pass inspection.

There are two main ideas in these verses. The first is building on the foundation of Christ in verses 10-15 and the second is destroying the temple of Christ in verses 16-17.

In these verses there is an assumption and an admonition.

The assumption is that, like any building, there is a foundation, and for “God’s building” (οἰκοδομή, verse 9) the foundation is Jesus Himself.

Paul begins, According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation. Was it God or was it Paul who laid the foundation? Yes. It was God’s grace giving Paul wisdom, and “wisdom” would be a more fitting translation than skilled due to the fact that he’s already referred to the wisdom of God numerous times in the first part of his letter. He was a wise architekton, a chief carpenter or mason, doing more than drawing plans but laying the groundwork on which the entire building would rest.

In verse 11 he clarifies, For no one can lay a foundation, at least not a solid one, other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. The church of God is built on the cornerstone, rejected by the builders of men but “chosen and precious” (1 Peter 2:6-7). This is the assumption, not because it is unspoken but because it is the necessary condition. Paul brought the gospel of Christ and laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it.

The admonition is at the end of verse 10 with explanation in verses 12-15 that fills in the picture. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. As I said earlier, it’s not whether or not but how. Building will happen because nature abhors a vacant lot. So, preachers, “Beware.” Watch what you’re doing and what you’re using.

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

There are different materials that a builder could pull off the shelf. Paul lists six types, though they really could be distinguished into two according to their flame resistance. Gold, silver and precious stones don’t burn up, in fact they are refined and brightened by fire. The fire shows their quality. On the other hand, wood, hay, straw, like used for patching holes or for making a thatched-roof, these are consumed. Wood lasts a little longer, but still turns to ash. It is an interesting quality standard, since we don’t usually give rewards to contractors based on how much of their building survives fire.

The Day is the day of the Lord, the day of His coming (see 1 Corinthians 4:5), the day of judgment, a day that had not and still has not arrived. It is coming, though, and it will make each one’s work…manifest, it will be revealed. The Day will show our work, and it is God who makes the inspection.

The apostle depicts two ways of working, a wise way and an unwise way, with two possible outcomes after the fire. First, If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. This is the best case scenario. The work will be judged by fire, and some of the work survives. The word more simply means “remains” (so NASB). If there is something left over after the blaze, then the worker will receive a reward, the same word as in verse 8. Honestly, compensation for planting and watering sounded a lot less intense than this. There you just may not have as big a harvest, here you may not have anything at all.

The second possible outcome, If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. This builder is still building on the foundation of Christ. This builder is still saved by Christ. He himself will be saved, he has not lost his justification by faith. But it is possible that a Christian preacher/pastor could spend his whole life doing work that will burn, especially if that work was to build up himself and his wisdom. “Those attempting to build with human wisdom construct a flimsy house of straw” (Garland). We tend to hear preachers talk about how so much work in this world will burn, but it is preacher’s work that God will burn up. The preacher will go to heaven, but only as through fire. This is a proverbial way to say that he will “just get out in the knick of time.”

Because the fire hasn’t come yet we can’t know the quality of a man’s work with complete certainty until the Day. One of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed mowing my yard is because the progress is evident with every swath; not so in pastoral work. We must be patient and careful not to consider our judgments absolute. We can’t see all motivations or perfectly evaluate every method. The Corinthians who had been judging should settle down.

At the same time, preachers certainly ought to examine their work as best as possible now, in light of these words and the certainty of the coming fire. We are in the path of flame. This is Paul’s point in saying let each one take care of how he builds so that more work will “survive.” There is work that survives and the worker rewarded, there are workers that survive but the work is burned.

The paragraph promotes the opposite of a laissez-faire approach; “Meh, do whatever work you want and don’t worry about the quality because you can’t know until later.” No, stop building with dried out stubble. Stop using human wisdom and man-centered techniques to build a crowd. Preach the word of the cross.

And isn’t there application from this admonition for those hearing the preaching, too? The letter addresses all the Corinthian listeners, not just their leaders. Ought not the building care about the work being done on it? Ought not your desires be different from the sorts of flammable materials that the world finds easier to work with?

Here is Paul’s third metaphor for the church in the chapter. The church is a field, a building, and now most specifically, it is the temple. It is also more urgent than the planting and watering in verses 5-9, and it is different activity than the building in verses 10-15. After addressing the teachers, now he addresses the temple.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? The way Paul asks the questions he expects that they should know the answer. He starts ten questions in 1 Corinthians like this. He didn’t need to qualify “the Day” in verse 13 because it must have been a major part of his teaching. So with this truth.

God’s temple is the place where God dwells. God is omnipresent, meaning that He is present everywhere at the same time. But there is something special about His dwelling place. There had been a few temples throughout Israel’s history, great buildings in Jerusalem where God called His people to come and worship in His presence. Solomon’s temple, in particular, was built using gold and silver and precious stones (see 1 Chronicles 29:1-7). Paul says that the people are the place of God’s presence; God’s Spirit dwells in you. In chapter 6:19, each individual believer’s body is God’s temple, but here there is no doubt that in 1 Corinthians 3:16 temple refers to the whole catholic church. Instead of the grand architecture and splendor of the brick and mortar temple in Jerusalem, this small, mostly Gentile, still fleshy yet founded on a crucified Christ group was part of something much more glorious.

This makes any attack on the people of God a serious matter. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. This is not building badly on the foundation, this is battering the foundation, or at least the walls. The word destroys means to ruin, to corrupt, and with the building metaphor, to tear down or knock down. When it comes to home improvement projects I am much better at rough demolition than finish carpentry, but such destruction of God’s temple leads to the destruction of the worker. This worker isn’t saved.

Paul doesn’t describe the precise difference between building with less valuable materials and destroying the temple. The line of division between the two may not be that thick. By implication, jealousy and strife and division are an attack on the temple.

Cicero (De amicitia 7.23), for example, maintains that no house is so strong, no state so enduring, that it cannot be fundamentally overthrown by animosities and divisions. Paul allows the readers to imagine that their petty jealousies (3:3), boasting (1:29; 3:21; 4:7), arrogance (4:6, 18, 19), and quarrels (1:11; 3:3) might qualify for this bleak judgment. The survival of the church and their salvation is at risk. (Garland)

Christians may behave in ways that are much too human, but so may non-Christians. God is holy, His Spirit is holy, His people are to be holy. Paul affirms that the Corinthians are the temple, they should be acting according to that holy reality. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Without knowing Christ’s conclusive judgment on our building, I can say that we take seriously the problem of faith that rests in the wisdom of men rather than in the power of God. We are concerned about how much wood, hay, and stubble is being used in the universal church, used by those who seem to be ashamed of the gospel.

You are here, at least this morning, and so you have not chosen the easiest path for church involvement. Our worship week by week expects each believer to offer themselves as a sacrifice of worship. We do not see you as an audience, you are not given too many opportunities to feel comfortable as if that’s all you were. We confess our sins for sake of forgiveness in Christ. We put ourselves under the knife of Christ’s Word to flay us open as living offerings. We commune with Him at His Table, knowing that He judges those who do it unworthily.

We are seeking to build with gold, silver, and precious stones. We are certainly not the only ones who are working in such a way as to have a lot of the work remain. But it is also true that there is junk building going on around us. Not all of it is up to fire code. It is certain that much of what we see marketed to and by the church in the name of Jesus will burn. Christian celebrities may not have much of their work remaining after the Day.

It’s been said that the graveyards are full of people the world could not do without. That tongue-in-cheek comment is intended to point out that no man is indispensable, but just the opposite. Every man is replaceable; no one on earth is necessary in an ultimate sense.

Perhaps in no occupation is this more true than in preaching and pastoring. You might not know it from how so many of us pastor-types promote ourselves and pimp our ministries and prepare our legacies. Sometimes it is not the preacher’s fault but the fault of his followers. They not only listen to but lean too heavily on a man. But too high a view of those in ministry fails to acknowledge how ministry works.

This does not demand that we have too low a view of preachers either. No man is indispensable but God has made many men instrumental in our faith. While God could have done it other ways He chose men to teach (or translate and transport) God’s Word to us. The Holy Spirit used and uses these men to grow us up for fruitfulness. So in terms of God’s story, He has caused certain effects through men and, in that way, we are to thank God for their work.

1 Corinthians 3:5-9 is about the proper perspective on those who preach the word of the cross. The Corinthians had the wrong perspective and had divided over which preacher was best. From 1 Corinthians 1:18-3:4 Paul demonstrated that such quarrels missed the point. The message ins’t something that can be marketed. The Holy Spirit must overcome the natural man’s revulsion to a crucified Christ. As is true of the message so it is true of the messenger, which now becomes Paul’s focus through 4:7 if not 4:21.

Those elders who “labor in preaching and teaching” (as Timothy called them, 1 Timothy 5:17), who labor for the Lord of the harvest (Matthew 9:37-38), must be seen in their proper place. This paragraph profiles six principles of gospel labor that should give perspective both to preachers and those who listen to them.

Where there is jealousy and strife and sectarian quarrels there is too much fleshliness. It’s the human way to divide over which human, including which preacher, is more important. “When one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human?” (verse 4) And isn’t this a misunderstanding upstream?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each.

Shouldn’t the question be “Who is Apollos?” and “Who is Paul?” Apollos and Paul are persons after all. Yet the interrogative pronoun in Greek is not Who? (masculine) but What? (neuter). Some later copies of the text changed it to the masculine form in order to tone down the grammatical discord. But this is Paul’s point: the person himself should be considered as a tool.

Apollos and Paul, and all laborers like them, are servants (διάκονοι). They are agents of another, those who answer to someone else, they do what someone else wants. Servants are not greater than their masters. The Corinthians were seeking to increase their own status by attaching themselves to certain men, and Paul explains that they were going the wrong way, at least in the eyes of the world.

The Lord is great, though the worldly-wise refuse to acknowledge His glory. The Lord assigned to each servant his labor, and that labor was effective. They were servants through whom you believed. The servants were God appointed means to bring about the faith of the believers, so Paul quotes Isaiah to the Romans that the feet of those who bring good news are beautiful (Isaiah 52:7 in Romans 10:15). We are thankful for those who spoke to us the word of life (see Hebrews 13:7), but we remember that they only did what the Lord assigned.

Apollos and Paul represent types of instruments that God uses and each had a different role in the labor. Paul likens their work to farming and, even though most of us are not farmers, the illustration is common enough to connect.

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

Paul was the plowboy, the first in Corinth and he sowed the seed of the gospel. Apollos came to Corinth later and was the water boy, he supplied the water of the word for sake of the plants’ growth. But Paul was in Corinth for 18 months. He certainly did more than evangelize. And Apollos didn’t only talk with believers. Yet they each had different opportunities at different times in the process.

That said, God gave the growth. It is the theological and historical fact. Rhetoric never made a seed grow. No man makes a seed grow. There does need to be a seed and the seed does need to be buried under the soil. God provided the gospel and God sends sowers. Even still, He must cause the growth.

[M]inisters, like agricultural laborers, perform tasks which remain conditions for growth (not sources of growth). (Thiselton)

Only He brings life from death. Men are instruments, but God is the cause.

What was implied in verse 6 is applied in verse 7.

So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives growth.

The planter and the waterer are not merely Paul and Apollos; those two weren’t unique laborers. Paul and Apollos are the examples at hand, but anyone planting and anyone watering are not anything. The contrast is not completed with but only God who gives growth. A couple things about this. First, the word “only” in the ESV isn’t in the Greek text. The contrast is, if the planter and waterer aren’t anything then God is everything. Without Him the other work is nothing but useless.

In context we already see that God uses instruments. He delights in it actually. But for all the potential a knife has sitting on the table, it cuts no meat without a hand to move it. Instruments, in and of themselves, are limited.

Second, God who gives growth is a fine translation. But the growth-giving is adjectival and emphasizes the ongoing nature of the growing. If we said that “the growth-giving God is everything” we might hit a meditation sweet spot. God gives growth. He is the grower. Growth is His idea. He has built the reality of growing into existence. He invented, created, and keeps sustaining growth patterns and processes in both the physical and spiritual realms. He is in the growing business, and there would be no growth by anything any man ever did apart from God’s work.

It is less than silly to quarrel over which man’s labor is the better “nothing.” God gives growth so only God gets all the credit. To identify more with the planter than the waterer (than the weeder than the fertilizer, et cetera) misses the necessary (if invisible) hand behind the instrument. It also misses the unity of purpose even though they may not share a unity of task.

He who plants and he who waters are one.

This “oneness” doesn’t mean that they are actually the same instrument. This doesn’t mean that they are one in the type of labor, or timing of labor, or fruit of labor. It means that they are both working toward the same end: harvest.

Paul and Apollos had a bigger goal than gathering followers for themselves. The division of labor doesn’t mean that there are different products desired at the end of the line. Each person does his part for sake of the one desired product. To love the waterer without the planter accomplishes what? To love the planter and not the waterer means you have a failure to see the whole process.

Each laborer has a shared goal but not each laborer receives the same assignment or the same assessment.

Each will receive his wages according to his labor.

Wages is translated as “reward” by every other major English translation. It means “remuneration for work done,” or “recognition for the moral quality of an action, recompense” (BAGD).

Though it isn’t stated explicitly, who is giving the wages here? God is. Paul will say more about this in a few verses, but the Lord appointed him to the work and the Lord will appraise his work. The Lord knows what He wants us to do and the Lord knows how He will work through it (see 1 Corinthians 4:3-5). Jeremiah preached for 40 years and had zero converts. He will still receive a reward because he was used by the Lord “to pluck up and to break down” nations and kingdoms (Jeremiah 1:10). The Lord assessed Jeremiah according to the purpose He gave Jeremiah. Others see many profess and progress in Christ who only worked 1/40th of the time. The key is that the Lord Himself gives the reward.

While He can give it any way He wants, usually the reward is not separate from the people. In fact, it does damage for preachers (both planters and waterers) to disconnect the idea of reward from their people.

Think about a farmer. What reward is he looking for? He doesn’t want a pat on the back from his neighbor, or a check in the mail from the government. He wants his field to produce. That is his natural wages. So the reward a preacher wants should be commendation from the Lord (see 1 Corinthians 4:5; Matthew 25:21), yes, but also growth among those he labors for.

A knife doesn’t cut a steak in order to get a better spot in the silverware drawer. A knife cuts the steak for sake of seeing the steak enjoyed. It’s true for parents; their primary reward for faithful parenting comes in their kids (and grandkids) not apart from them. In other words, I don’t want something unrelated to your growth as my reward from the Lord of the harvest.

He’s about to make a transition into another analogy, from the agricultural to the architectural, from a field to a building (verses 10-15). But he does sum up in the final verse of this paragraph.

For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

There are two possible emphases of the first phrase. Either we work with God or we work with one another for God. The first emphasizes that we partner with God as His co-workers, the second emphasizes that we belong to God. I think the context points to the fact that we are all God’s. We are fellow-workers, among whom there should be no rivalry, no competition, because all of us will answer to the Lord.

We also work in the same field, and the field is not ours. We don’t take extreme ownership, we take extreme stewardship. We have responsibilities, we will receive recompense, but the whole thing is the Lord’s to decide. He assigns, He gives growth, He assesses the work, He owns it.

This is hard labor. κόπος, the final word in verse 8, is a frequent word Paul uses to describe burdensome, difficult, “backbreaking toil” (Garland). The image of a farmer here is not driving his air-conditioned tractor or running multi-field irrigation schedules from his iPhone app. This is the kind of labor that requires long hours and requires faithful, timely, knowledgeable work. And still God must give the growth.

God’s invisible and sovereign hand is not a discouragement. When God grows, He does just not add, He multiplies. That said, 0 x infinity is still 0. There must be labor, but God uses the labor to produce fruit exponentially. This makes me want to be more humble and to work harder. It makes me want to trust Him more to give growth and give energy so that I need less breaks.

This is particularly for Paul and Apollos, for preachers and pastors, and it is supposed to be a uniting perspective for the church. The Corinthians were dividing over their favorite tool and giving too much credit to the human instrument. While God Himself calls us to give thanks for and esteem those who labor for us (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13), we ultimately recognize that these laborers are servants of the Lord who sent them to us.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

All right, I'm among friends that's good because we're gonna try something new today Sean and I talked Over the last couple weeks We've the elders have been introducing big subjects like You know grace The five points of Calvinism things like that During the time we've introduced our church. I've tried to talk about about worldview, Kuyper's lectures to Princeton, all kinds of things like that. So it ended up where I would show up with 23 pages of notes and try to cover a book in 40 minutes. And with my crazy head, I wanna go down all the rabbit trails when something's interesting and that can get to be out there, okay?

But the whole purpose of this series is that we realize we've come from churches that usually have preached through the Epistles, but maybe some of their younger people or new people to our church have not really gone through Epistles. So we as elders felt that we should each take an Epistle and give it to you a chapter at a time. Now that may seem like too much when you know some of us have been raised on one verse at a time and all of that kind of thing. That same pastor that does one verse at a time I watch him do one word at a time through Romans and it took six weeks to get through one word. So we want you to understand the subject of of these epistles in a way that you can have a broad overview, have a good understanding of it, and then you can follow down all the little rabbit trails.

And as all of you know, as you study God's word, you can really dive deep and go down all kinds of things with a word study or whatever, but sometimes those word studies lead you astray. You're learning about a word, you're learning about a thought or something like that, but it doesn't really apply to the context in which the word is put. So I have divided First John into a little smaller paragraphs than the ESV did, and what I did was copy the King James or the new King James, because I like the way that it splits it down in smaller segments. And I have 12 slides, And Sean suggested that I pick a word, pick a couple of verses, talk on it, and then move to the next thing.

So my notes tonight are the text and another page and that's it. So here we go, right? All right, so first thing I'd like to do is read the text. First John two, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this, we know that we have come to know Him. If we keep His commandments, Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his words, in him, truly the love of God is perfected.

By this we may be sure that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Beloved, I am writing to you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

Buddha, whoever hates his brother, is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his namesake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I'm writing to you children because you know the Father. I write to you fathers because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, desires of the flesh, desires of the eyes, and pride in possessions is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, so now many Antichrists have come. Therefore, we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

But they went out and it might become plain that they are all, or they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One and you have knowledge. I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist. He who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us, eternal life. I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you, but the anointing that you received from him abides in you. And you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you abide in him.

And now little children abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and do not shrink from him in shame at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. That's a lot. I've told you before, I'll tell it again because this is the chapter that got me saved. The guy that I hired to come to work for me and witness to me and asked me if I was a Christian and I told him with lots of bad words that I was and I wasn't, he said to read 1 John. I denied it, I read Revelation instead. He went nuts that I was reading Revelation. He said, no, you need to read 1 John.

I said, I can't even find it. Show me the table of contents in the Bible that he gave me. I looked it up. I started reading it. Gale happened to be out that night. I got to 1 John 2, and I got to 1 John 2, 4. And it said, whoever says, well, first I ought to tell you that at that time we lived in a very nice house, and I had a championship pool table that I played on. I did all kinds of crazy things. but I would have a couple drinks, shoot, pool, and then I went in to read. And when I ran in to read, Gail was not there, and I had gotten to 1 John 2, and I read all this, and I got to verse 4, it says, whoever says I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

It stopped me up short, because I had claimed to be a Christian, but in no way, shape, or form had I lived that life. I got baptized at nine at a Baptist church in Tucson, but after about 14, there was no way I lived a Christian life. And when I got to that verse, I said, well, I say I know him, but I knew I did not keep his commandments. I really had no idea what all the commandments meant, but I know there was no way I was keeping them. So I got out of bed at that time, got down on my knees, and I said, God, if this is the truth, show me. And I was one of those people that I changed. And I was the witness that caused my wife to come to the Lord also.

I was the miracle that she had demanded from people that, you know, show me a miracle and I'll come to you. Well, I changed so much, nobody knew who I was after I asked that. And I got saved in February, started going to seminary in August, and it was crazy. And I'm one of those people that if I get an interest in something, I kind of jump into it full force.

And so, and I sweep everybody along with me with all my enthusiasm and crashing into the walls and all the rest of it. So, I John 2 is a big deal to me. But 1 John 2 is very simple and very deep. I mean, you know, hello. But that's the way God's Word is to us. Once we get saved, the Spirit is the one that teaches us. As Sean was talking about this morning, we have all kinds of fantastic teachers now. I mean, here we are 2,000 years after Jesus died on the cross, And we have all these people, all these books, all these podcasts, all these sermons we can listen to with our earbuds, you know, in our phones, on our car, whatever, on TV, on and on and on.

And we are immersed in this, but we need to back away and understand it's all pretty plain. And if God's spirit lives in us, we know what to do. It's pretty simple, most things. Some things get a little more complex, you know, this person and that person and who did what to who and so you solve all that. But basically the Christian life is due unto others as you would have them do to you. Love your brothers, right? And John reduces all that down, but he also reduces it down that without Christ and without the Holy Spirit, you can't understand any of this. And he came to demonstrate everything that all that thick part of your Bible was talking about, he came then and demonstrated it to us and now we live after that.

And we'll talk about that in some of these things. So the first paragraph deals with sin, as my little note says up there. But remember that the chapter one ends, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us. Okay, so we confess, homologuio, we agree with what we did with sin. So he is faithful then to forgive us of that sin. Then he immediately launches into chapter two. Remember that John didn't have any idea about chapters. Chapters were introduced to us in the 1500s. He just kept writing his letter. And he said, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. So he wants them not to sin, but obviously he uses very plain language and he uses the present tense.

That was something I brought up in the first chapter. Everybody says, well, I sin. So if I do sin, then he's not talking to me because I don't sin. No, he's using extreme cases to shock you into the thing of, oh yeah, I'm in that camp, so I need to confess. And if I don't confess and I say I have no sin, then I'm a liar. So therefore I need to confess. So we're in this treadmill, but as we go through that treadmill, we understand further and further where we should be. So he says, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, which he's already said in chapter one that we will be forgiven.

He is the propitiation for our sins, the payment, okay? The blood sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. all right I once I got saved I really got cranked into theology I mean I couldn't get enough of it and the whole world thing I ended up at a brethren seminary in Long Beach the largest brethren church in America and they started Grace Seminary West there in Winona Lake in the Midwest but they They started a Western division, and all of a sudden I got introduced to Calvinism. I read A.W. Pink's sovereignty of God. You must read the Baker edition, by the way. Do not read the heretical edition where Ian Murray cut out chapters of the whole thing.

Read the right book. And I did confront Ian Murray on that. He said, people can't handle that chapter. That's why we took that out. The chapter is on double predestination. If God sends some people to heaven, obviously he sends some people to hell. And that's a hard teaching. People don't like that. So they decided to take it out of the book. Well, AW Pink did not agree with that. So anyway, the whole world thing, I took first year Greek, I know what the Greek says, the whole world. So therefore, he forgave the sins of the whole world. So I had to lump the sins of the whole world into common grace because I knew that the whole world wasn't saved, but I had to literally squeeze that into my definition of the whole world.

Now, this involves, all of you aren't gonna understand this, but I need to go down this little rabbit trail because I got enough time to do it. Jim was looking forward to our first meeting as elders as we were going through the what we believe statement and thought that Sean and I were going to butt heads over this issue. And we read through the thing and I said nope, whole world is world, no problem, we'll move on. And Jim goes, oh man, I waited for this meeting all this time to have this wreck happen and it didn't happen. So the issue is, if I'm going to say it's the whole world, I have to balance out if Christ died for the whole world, the whole world will be saved.

Now the way I tap dance around that, I said common grace allows the whole world to be in the picture. But common grace does not take care of sins that will get you into heaven, okay? Common grace, the rainfall and the just and the unjust and all of those things. So the whole world had to mean something different. And the whole world means everybody can be under this. All types of people, all kinds of people.

Obviously it can't be everybody or everybody would be saved. Okay? So that argument didn't happen. I retreated from my position and repented from my sin. It's still a problem in our fundamentalist circles. Those are the people that tell you they're 4.3, 4.2 Calvinists that they agree and all the rest, but that one little verse hangs them up. The problem is when you really are honest with yourself, you can't really, you have to be a lawyer type person to argue that stuff and that's not a good idea to be a lawyer talking about God's word, all right? Pretty simple. So anyway, his propitiation is for our sins, those of us who are believers, and not for ours only, but also the sins of all the people in the world that are believers.

And this is a point, too, that I want to make about our church. We pray for other churches. We are not the only church that has the true gospel and all of that. And if you don't come here, you're going straight to hell and all the rest of it. There are a lot of people that are going to be in heaven that don't agree with every jot and tittle that we agree with, and they're going to be amazed that we're there because we don't agree with every jot and tittle they have. All of our theology will get straightened out when we get to heaven, so let's remember that. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.

Then a new paragraph I think should start, and that's the next slide. And it's 1 John 3 through 6, an obedience as a test. This one is kind of interesting because as I got shocked, realizing I had not obeyed these things, and if it was true that I wasn't a Christian and I wanted God to reveal it to me, well, hello, read the next verses. And by this we know that we have come to know Him. If we keep His commandments, whoever says, I know Him, but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in Him. But whoever keeps His words in Him, truly the love of God is perfected." Oh man, I was hung out to dry. There was no way I was doing that. So therefore, I was not a Christian. So I asked Him to reveal that to me.

"...By this we may be sure that we are in Him. Whoever says he abides Him, Him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Okay, so now we got the problem. This is exposed. So all of us are perfect little Jesus people and we're walking perfectly. Probably not. Okay, so we have a present active indicative, you know, pull a Greek card. It means it should be the habit of your life, but it doesn't mean that every stinking time you're doing it, because nobody fulfills us accept Jesus. And he is conforming us, I'm going to give you a little steal for chapter 3, he is in conforming us to his image. But that conforming is a process.

So all of us are working through that. So as we work through our daily grind and confess our sin, get a little better at it, and then we take two steps back, then we take another step forward, all that kind of stuff, that is the Christian life. And if you're frustrated with that, you need to get over it. I'm I'm 71, I got saved at 37. It's still a grind today just like it was before. It gets a little easier, it gets a little clearer, but you still realize, oh my goodness, how can a perfect God reach down and save some idiot like me? That's crazy. And when you do that and you realize, and then he indwells me and allows me to see these things, what a blessing that is.

So it just gives you, every day it's a fresh look and new power to look at it the right way. So whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way which he walked. Okay, then we come to the next one, which is two seven through eight. Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I'm writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Okay, what the heck is he talking about? Beloved, I'm writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning.

Well, now he's talking to believers, beloved, my beloved. John is the old man of the church at this time. He's probably close to 80, 90 years old, and he's telling them, no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. What beginning? Is he talking about creation? Is he talking about the Old Testament? Is he talking about the beginning of the gospel? I believe he's talking about the beginning of the gospel. Remember that Christ came, Christ told those people, hey, I am the fulfillment of what you've seen. They didn't, they couldn't see that, but he told him, he is the one that fulfills all those things in the Old Testament. And when he fulfilled that, he did perfectly in the gospel to die for our sins. So he is the fulfillment of the Old Commandment, but he is the one in the beginning of the gospel that fulfilled that. At the same time, it is a new command that I'm writing to you, which is true in him and in you.

It's true in him because he did it, and it's true in us because why? We got the Holy Spirit to allow us to see those things. Rabbit trail. People in the Old Testament that saw holy things did have the Holy Spirit. Don't buy into the fundamentalist teaching that the Holy Spirit was only available to people in the New Testament and the old people in the Old Testament don't have it. I can give you a long list of people that were enlivened by the Spirit, but they were, the Spirit was given to them for special occasions to do that. But if you were a believer, you had God's Spirit, or you couldn't understand those truths.

You would not be able to comprehend God's things without his Spirit. So he gave us those things to see that. And then at the same time, It is a new command that I'm writing to you because we can live it out, which is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away. All of us that have been saved for a while realize, okay, that's fading, that's fading. I'm getting better at this, I'm getting better at this. Ooh, I'm really bad over here, but I am getting better over here. So it's fading away and the true light is already shining. We know when we have crossed the line in whatever walk we're in, okay? And that's another thing that happens in your Christian life.

There are levels of things that you will realize that God spares you from when you first get saved. You know, when you first get saved, I mean, I have people, you know, when they first get saved, you know, they come to me and I'll have people come and advise me, oh my goodness, do you realize that guy's living with his girlfriend, he's doing drugs, He's doing this, He's doing that, na-na-na-na-na. And I said, that's all right, God's going to take care of that in the right time and then just disciple Him along. You just can't unload everything on that guy. I mean, like when I got saved, I realized, oh my goodness, I was a Baptist kid, I got baptized.

I know that I'm a Christian because I got baptized and I'm anti-precision of faith when I was nine years old. And then I started to realize, well, maybe I wasn't, maybe that was false. What do I do with that? And the guy that discipled me, he just said, well, that's a good thought. You ought to think about that. He wouldn't give me the answer. And then eventually I understood, no, I need to get re-baptized. Boy, did I make my Baptist relatives mad. There is no way that you need to get re-baptized because they had kids that were living disobediently and they got baptized at nine years old like I did. And so therefore they were Christians.

So when I said I needed to get rebaptized because I was a fake, they didn't want to say their kids were a fake. So that really made them mad. And we became those five pound Bible toters that nobody would want to listen to. And the issue is what's in your heart? What are you doing? If you're not living it, you're really not it. Now, does that mean that you're perfect and you're doing everything? No, no, no, no, no. But what you realize when you step out of bounds, You ask for forgiveness, you repent, and you move ahead. And then two days later when you do the same thing, same thing goes over. But then pretty soon it starts fading in the back and then you know what happens?

You realize, oh my goodness, I got over all of that. Aren't I doing good? And then God peels the onion one more layer and you realize, oh my goodness, now I got to deal with that. But that's part of the Christian walk. So that's really good. All right, so now we're gonna go the new and the old, we did that, now nine, the light and the dark. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

This is back to treat others as you would have them treat you. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness. Now, do I love all you people the same way? There is no way that's going to happen. Do you love me the same way? No way that's going to happen. But we love each other on a whole other plane. We realize we're going to be living with each other forever, eternity. And in that place, God is going to conform us, 1 John 3, to the image of his son and we will understand each other on a whole nother level that we don't even see right now. And those very people that irritate you, that you do love in a Christian way, okay, even though they're irritations, you love them, you want the best for them, you will try anything to work with them, but they can be very frustrating.

But you are up doing that, you are living that out. And that's, I believe, what he's talking about. So if you really hate your brother and then you're not willing to jump in the mess and try to help him, that's bad. But if you're willing to jump in the mess and you still don't know how to help him, that's good. We are all in that pile together, trying to help people get through the bad stuff. So if you love your brother, you abide in the light, and in him, there is no cause for stumbling. So as you abide in the light, you can help your brother not to stumble. Now, is he gonna listen to you? Maybe not, maybe so. Sometimes it's a great story, sometimes it's not so good.

It's back and forth and up and down and all the rest of it that happens. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness. That guy's, he's a failure. I can't do anything with him, he's done, he's toast, I'm not doing that. Never, ever, ever give up, okay? But the problem is that you have to make sure that you're wise with those people. If somebody rejects the faith and walks away, church discipline takes care of him, we announce it to the thing, but what happens when that guy calls you two years from then? I need help. Do I tell him, I'm sorry, I'm busy, I don't have time for you. No way.

That's the time. That's the first Peter 3.15. To anyone who it asks, give him that hope that is in you, reach out. That's the whole point. That's the point of church discipline. That's the way that you separate the body of love and all its unique characteristics. He's left that and then he wants to come back, we reach out and bring him back in. So you never, ever give up, okay? Those people you think that are hopeless, don't ever put them off your prayer list. I mean, God waited for me at 37, and my whole family on my mother's side thought, I was a wonderful Christian man. Give me a break.

But it's, you know, just remember that. So whoever hates is in darkness, because, all right, but whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going, because, why? He hates it so much that the darkness is even blinded him. He is darker than the dark. So again, it's John just pounding on people that way. Okay, then the next section is the people about little children and your sins are forgiven. So this is verses 12 through 14. Children, young men, and fathers. All right, I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. Little children are the first people that come to the Lord.

I believe God, please help me, help me up. Not necessarily little children. In our congregation, we encourage the faith of the kids. That's why you see five-year-olds can take communion. If they can give us a testimony of faith and that they're in that direction and the parents see that, we want to encourage their faith, not discourage it. So I'm writing to you little children because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. Then he immediately jumps to the most mature category. I'm writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. The hymn is God. I'm writing to you fathers, the most mature, because you know him, God, who is from the beginning.

Now, you start out as little children, you work into the young men that's coming up next, but you end up to be fathers or mature Christians, okay? The next one is I'm writing to you young men because you have overcome the evil one. Now, what happens to you when you get saved, if you get saved later in life, if you haven't been in a Christian family and raised up, you know. But even then, you'll have these stages. So when you overcome the evil one, is I was a young man and I asked for help, and then I decided, well, I need to go to seminary and learn about this, so I did that for about a year, and then all of a sudden I realized, oh man, now I gotta study the cults and I have to understand how to fight them and how to go out and argue all these things.

I realized the devil's out there, and I have to fight against him, and I have to overcome the evil one, which was a bad apologetic, but in that time I wasn't quite wise enough to understand it. I had people telling me about it, but I didn't quite get it because I felt I needed to argue. I mean, after all I was saved and I had Walter Martin on the radio. What else did I need, right? So that's the stage that you are when you're the young man. And then I write to you children because you know the father. Isn't that interesting how he started off with children, They're forgiven for his namesake. Then he told fathers that you know him who is from the beginning, God.

And then all of a sudden he puts this little phrase in here, I write to you children because you know the father. He's reminding us, I think, of the amazing thing you see in young people in the faith that know God and absolutely can proclaim that and act that way. They pray that way, they immediately see the error, and they're going to fix it. They know God doesn't want that, so therefore they're gonna pray. That's the right attitude, okay? And then he repeats, I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. And then he goes back, I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

So he includes all of those groups, And he kind of shuffles the deck all together that they're all in different stages and that they are able to exhibit that and live that out on all their levels. And when that happens, then the fathers blend with the children and the young men and all of that. It all works together in a corporate way that is really fascinating and wonderful. Because like we see it in our family, Hallie's one of ours that she just sees people and she's gonna pray for them and we gotta fix this and we're gonna go and make that happen. And Maggie's one of those that can analyze the thing and think about it and work on it.

And Calvin's kind of a football coach kind of person. And we have all of that going on in our household and it's fascinating to see the way it all melds together and does work together. And I'm sure you see that in your kids, or your family, and all the rest of it. So that stage of all those things, and all of us are working to be in that stage where we know who God is. And once you get to that stage, a lot of this stuff melts, it can boil down, and you can look at people and tell them yes or no answers, when maybe before you wouldn't say it that way. But remember, God is, His Spirit can convict anybody of these things.

And you don't need to be worried about, oh, I'm going to defame God or something like that when you're speaking the truth. Okay. So be strong. And I think he starts to graduate that now in 15 through 17, which I titled Love of the World. There we go. Do not love the world or the things in the world, for if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Wait just a second here. I like my life. I like what's going on. I worked hard to get here. I like living with my family. I like being with my grandkids. I like this church. So what's the problem here? Well for all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes. Pride and possessions is not from the Father, but is from the world.

And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. I think here he's reducing it all back to what is the situation. God is God, you're not. Get over it. You need to be with him. That's the ultimate fulfillment. Now, is he saying that we shouldn't enjoy all these things? I would say in this paragraph he's telling you to make sure you understand all those things are passing away. I mean coats, clothes, you know cars, all those things they don't they don't last long. You got to keep fixing them. They keep wearing out all that kind of stuff. Now is it wrong to live comfortably, be nice to people, provide them these things? No, but he is is reducing it right down to the bottom line.

If you are standing in front of the wall and that guy with the gun tells you to deny Christ, what are you gonna do? No, then he shoots you. Okay, you then end up and the world is passing away along with his desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Now, I hope we don't have to get to that point, But maybe we will. But the other part of it is that don't let these stark black and white controversies exhaust you into a point where you think none of this is worthwhile because we do need to engage the culture. Or as Doug has said in the new thing, enrage the culture, which is good. That's what we should be doing.

So the next one is talking about Antichrist. 1 John 18 through 19. So now he says, children, now he's put us all in that category, nice guy, right? But he's John the Apostle, so I guess he can. Children, it is the last hour, as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming. So now, many Antichrists have come. Therefore, we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But if they went out, that it might become plain that they are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

So now we have the introduction of Antichrist. Okay? Everybody hears Antichrist, and we come from the fundamentals background, we're immediately into the end times movies and all of that stuff. Antichrists are people that are against Christ. How many people you know at work are Antichrist? A lot, I'm sure of it. How many people are out there that are Antichrist? Lots of them. So we are in that position. The Antichrist in our system has not shown up yet, but lots of little Antichrists have been. Some of those Antichrists were actually believers in part of systems. If we've been Christians long enough, we might have admired somebody's ministry or somebody's books that then turns out to be an Antichrist that ends up rejecting the faith, denying the fundamentals of what we believe.

Calvin, in his commentary on 1 John, obviously launched into the papacy over this whole paragraph. And it's true. And it's true today. The Lutheran Church is in the process of uniting back with the Catholic Church at the moment. They've been working on it since 2000. It's just heresy beyond heresy. because, remember, that the Catholic Church has not recanted anything from the Council of Trent in 1600. And that was their answer to the Reformation was the Council of Trent. They have come up with just convoluted ways of talking about, well, faith in Christ, and faith in Mary, and faith in praying to the saints, and all these things.

You can just boggle your mind over it. That's what's so great about reading 1 John. He keeps it very, very simple. Jesus is the answer. That's it. You don't need anything else. And if you start adding all these other things in, you just fall down the rabbit hole of some kind of convolution that man has created, not what God has created.

That's why the gospel is foolishness to men. How can God himself come down and die for you? What kind of God would do that? Send himself to die for you. Only a God that really understands what he's created, right? So, that's the end of the Antichrist. They're coming up again here soon, okay? Then 1 John 20, 21.

Oh yeah, the anointing, I already read that. but you have been anointed by the Holy One and you have knowledge. I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and because no lie is of the truth. This is one of those really interesting things that gets abused by the modern day Charismatics, but also it's abused by the fundamentalists because as soon as you start talking about the Holy Spirit and these things that you feel, they think, oh now you're gonna drive the truck over into the ditch of feeling and not keep it coldly literal interpretation. This is a supernatural existence that we live in.

The Holy Spirit is the one that allows us to see these things. What we're talking about is foolishness of the natural world, and that only the Spirit of God can allow us to understand them in a way that can be explained, but it can only be explained to those people that have been enlightened. Anybody that tries to argue anybody into the kingdom has seen this. You can't argue people into the kingdom. You can't give them enough facts until God opens up their eyes and they realize there is a God and they're not him and who is he? And how do I find out about him? And then you can, because they ask, can tell them, hey, God wrote this book and has revealed himself to you.

He's also revealed himself in the general creation and all these other things, but he has specifically told you how to have a relationship to him through his word. And only the Holy Spirit can open that up to people. You can't do it. You can convince them and get them all hyped up and get them rolled along for a while. But then when the first hiccup comes, those are the first ones that fall off the truck. They're not really there. And until God gets them there, we can't really do much with them.

Okay, so that's 2021, now 22 through 23. So who is a liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist. Now this one, he says, this is the Antichrist. He who denies the Father and the Son, no one who denies the Son has the Father, who whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Now he introduces the Antichrist. Is he talking about all these people that are denying Jesus is the Son of God and God Himself? Is that the Antichrist? No. I think he is being more specific saying, This is what we're talking about. We're gonna focus right in now that the one who denies who Christ is, is obviously anti-Christ.

And if you don't know Christ, you're not a Christian. That's why they call us Christians, because we follow Christ. We are in the cult of Christ. So the idea that the Son and the Father, whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. So he's making it clear that if you deny Jesus, you're not in the right camp, okay? So you're a liar.

Then he immediately, he swung the pendulum over there and banged you on the head. Now he's gonna swing it back over here and tell you how to abide, how to live, how to exist. So in 24 through 25, he says, is let what you heard from the beginning abide in you, the gospel. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us, eternal life. That's a whole bunch in two verses there, right? So what we heard from the beginning, the gospel, if what you heard from the beginning abides in you, if the gospel of Christ died for your sins, You can't do anything about that.

All you can do is worship him and do what he tells you. And, you know, abiding in him means you live out his life as he would have you do it. Then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise he made to us, eternal life. And by that you will have eternal life. And you get taste of that now. Even as you live out your life and as you live it out with your friends and they conquer this sin and that sin and you move along and you get more and more like him, you see, oh my goodness, this is really wonderful. And then this is what God does to you. He peels that layer of the onion and you realize, oh my goodness, I've gotten clear to this level.

And then he peels it off and shows you, that's a great level, but God's clear up here and you're still down here. Oh my goodness, how am I gonna get there? And he, as a great father, the perfect all wise one, says, okay, you can get to the next step now. You're ready for the next step. Now, you are never going to be God, but he, like a loving Father, gives us those revealings and brings us to the next level, next level in his time, and he knows what the right time is as we abide in him.

Then we end up with 26 and 27. 27 I Write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you I write these in the world blue That's why I sent you this letter, right? So he's got this letter talking to him But the anointing the Holy Spirit that you received from him abides in you and you have no need that Anyone should teach you now is he dismissing teachers? Well, I don't think so. He's teaching you in this letter He wrote you a letter to teach you, okay? So the idea is to teach you what is true and what is not true. If in your soul and you're a fairly mature Christian, you think something isn't ringing right, don't swallow it.

Go and ask. Ask the elders or the teacher that gave it to you and get an answer and work through that. And depending on the way that person responds to you, may indicate to you, oh my goodness, that person isn't very sure either or whatever. So there's a whole interweaving between teaching and accepting and all of those things that you need to go through. And don't feel because you don't know and it just feels wrong to you, it's wrong to ask that question. That question should be asked and should be addressed. So that's the, that you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it was taught to you abide in him.

He's just rephrasing all of that to tell you, keep on truckin', keep trying to put the stuff together, and he will bless that. And he will bless your study and your comprehension and living that out. And he will give you all kinds of examples. How many times have you prayed for somebody, Oh Lord, please bring somebody to Bob to help him. And then about two days later, you realize you are that person.

Oh man, I was praying for somebody else. I don't even like Bob. Well, you weren't required to like Bob, you were required to love Bob. Okay, love and like are two different things, okay? So loving Bob is probably where God's gonna put you. And the very prayer that you're making, you might have the answer already. And then when he reveals it to you, don't go, oh, don't do that to me. But anyway, that's a God thing and he does that a lot.

So now we're down to 28 and 29, don't be ashamed. And now little children abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, You may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. What can you say?

If you're abiding in him, we have confidence and do not shrink from that confidence at his coming. Now, is he coming tomorrow? I don't know, but probably not. Is he coming next week? Maybe not. But the thing is, you have confidence in his time, he will come. And if you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been vored of him. So as you work together with people that are working on the same way you're working, not perfectly righteous, but you're trying to correct and move in that right direction, this is the fellowship that we have. And we have a great fellowship, I think, here at TEC, but we also have to remember there's a bigger fellowship all throughout the world.

There are people being killed for Jesus probably right now, somewhere in the world. And they may not even have the faintest idea to be able to even accept the teaching that I gave tonight that's pretty simplistic, but they know Jesus died for them, okay? And they're willing to die for that. And that's something that you need to remember sometimes because we live in a pretty sophisticated world and we can think, oh, these poor, dumb people don't really understand. They understand a lot better than we do. I mean, I think it's really a healthy exercise to think, okay, what would it take for you to deny Christ? Pulling out your fingernails, torture, killing your wife, killing your kids, whatever.

I mean, those are kind of exercises that until it happens, you don't know what you would do. But sometimes it's interesting to think of that, because if we really believe God's in charge and he's in charge of us and he loves us and knows what's best for us, sometimes those things are really hard. My sister going through it with her husband, early Alzheimer's, Terry and Ginger with Terry's dad.

One of the worries Terry has, his dad would have said he was a believer. But has he slipping away? He was also one of those guys though that did say, that's a private thing, I don't really wanna talk about it. Well, as he deteriorates further, that discussion becomes harder to have with him. So it concerns Terry. Is he really a believer or isn't he? These are really tough questions. I don't really have the answer, but I think we have to operate as we do with everybody. If they claim to be a Christian, we treat them like a Christian. And if some people are impaired by mental health or all kinds of things like that and they start doing weird things, sometimes we just have to realize God's in charge and we're not.

And I don't have the simple answers to that because you see people a lot of times, I mean seminary professors that end up going off the deep end and getting a little dingy and all of a sudden one day they just start swearing and they never swear before ever. And then the next minute they can, you know, teach their lesson to you. And then five minutes later they're over there, you know, saying all a bunch of bad words. So you, I don't know how to do that. I don't know what God's doing, but we know that God has our best interests and we need to live through those things. And we need to abide in him and not let the darkness hide our eyes.

So let's pray and we're done. Father, we thank you for the Apostle John and what you did through him writing this book and through the gospel and through 1 John 2 and 3 and Revelation. It's amazing the clearness in the Greek that he gives us and the sentences he gives us. They're not that complicated. They're very simple, clear to understand. Help us to understand those things, help us to live those things out through your spirit, for we know that without that we couldn't even attempt them. And we thank you for all these things, but obviously as John said, without Christ we are nothing and we do abide in him. So we thank you most of all for his sacrifice and we pray these things in his name, Jesus Christ. Amen.

So let's pray and we're done. Father, we thank you for the Apostle John and what you did through him writing this book and through the gospel and through 1 John 2 and 3 and Revelation. It's amazing the clearness in the Greek that he gives us and the sentences he gives us. They're not that complicated. They're very simple, clear to understand. Help us to understand those things, help us to live those things out through your spirit, for we know that without that we couldn't even attempt them. And we thank you for all these things, but obviously as John said, without Christ we are nothing and we do abide in him. So we thank you most of all for his sacrifice and we pray these things in his name, Jesus Christ.

Spiritual men—the ones who have received the Spirit of God and have been instructed by Him—have God’s own wisdom. Even though natural men—those without God’s Spirit—think the gospel of a crucified Christ is folly, spiritual men are able to discern all things, including the world- and history-altering results of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Spiritual men have “the mind of Christ,” they have the lenses to put everything in perspective in light of the cross.

A problem happens, however, when a man with the mind of Christ doesn’t look at things with that mind. 1 Corinthians 3:1-4, confronts these sorts of Christians for acting all too human. They are acting like mere men rather than acting like spiritual men. We might call them carnal Christians. Our word “carnal” comes from Latin carnis "of the flesh” which is the genitive of caro "flesh, meat.”

All the evidence in the context signals that Paul is talking to Christians. He just referred to natural men, to those who aren’t believers, those who won’t accept the things of the Spirit of God. But in this paragraph he addresses his readers directly as “brothers” in the first sentence, and this fits with all the titles he’s used for them since the beginning of the letter. They may be infants, but they are infants “in Christ.” In the following paragraph, he and Apollos are “servants through whom you believed.” There are no qualifications; these are Christians.

But they were not acting like Christ. What’s worse, they thought that they were the spiritually mature ones. Paul’s words sting, but the Corinthians needed it. Their life together in the gospel was at stake. And if they couldn’t see how the word of the cross affects their selfish ambition and preference over preacher, how would they see the wisdom of the cross in other areas of their lives?

In 1 Corinthians 3:1-4 we see three characteristics of carnality.

There is a threefold not being able in these initial sentences. Paul was not able to address them in a certain way, they were not able to receive what he said, and in fact they are still not able to receive it if he tried now. What it was is what it still is, and it’s not good.

And I, brothers, was not able to speak to you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. This goes all the way back to Paul’s initial preaching in Corinth, preaching that they received, but only up to a certain level. They are brothers, and they are in Christ, but they were not spiritual, not in the fulness of maturity. “Spiritual” is the key word in chapter 2. The spiritual understand the things freely given by God; they discern all things, and it all starts with recognizing the wisdom of the cross. The Corinthians got it, but with limitations.

They weren’t spiritual but people of the flesh. This is not the same Greek word as used in 2:14 for the “natural” man. The natural man is ψυχικὸς, this man is σαρκίνος. It’s an adjective about things belonging to the physical, material realm. There is a similar word used twice in verse 3, σαρκικός, which overlaps in meaning with σαρκίνος but maybe emphasizes that it characterized them. They were “fleshy” and even now are “fleshly.”

At the time Paul was with them they were infants in Christ, and the diet he fed them was according to their capacity. I fed you with milk, not solid food, and that was because you were not ready for it. It was too hard to chew. Before we talk about the two types of food, note that it hadn’t gotten better. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. It’s an adverb party: even…now…not…yet…still. By this time, some three or more years after Paul’s visit, what had been a more understandable immaturity is less acceptable. Being childlike is one thing, being childish is another.

What does Paul mean to compare between milk and solid food? At first it might seem to indicate different truths, as in, milk refers to simple truths and solid food refers to more complex truths. Milk is Doctrine 101, solid food is all the way up to footnote in the appendix of a ThD thesis. But is the contrast between a four spiritual laws gospel arithmetic and Supralapsarian trigonometry? Was Paul concerned that they weren’t ready for advanced systematic theology?

That may be true, but it’s not what in this passage. It isn’t that doctrines such as predestination or the Trinity aren’t to be shared until later (actually, the truth of the Trinity is required up front for every disciple, Matthew 28:19. And Jesus regularly talked about the Father’s electing purposes with crowds of unbelievers, John 6, John 10).

The solid food is the deep wisdom of God, and that meaty-wisdom is known in the word of the cross. But it’s the same “word,” the same cross, as milk and meat. The milk of the gospel is received like a hungry infant. Spiritual newborns see that Christ made sacrifice for their salvation. They look to the cross in faith, and that’s good. But the mature also see their salvation for sake of making sacrifice like Christ. By faith they live out the cross, which is solid food. Infants want what they want for themselves, which is okay up to a certain point, but those growing up by the Spirit give of themselves.

It is not dissimilar to the admonition given by the author of Hebrews:

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:12–14)

The solid food for the mature belongs not as much with acquired information but rather with acquired practice. The milk/meat doctrines are the same but the implications of those doctrines is not. The problem with the Corinthians was not that their sentences were full of grammatical or theological mistakes. The problem with the Corinthians was that they were denying the word of the cross by their all too human behavior. They puffed themselves up as Someones. They put their favorite preachers on pedestals. They thought they were connected to special and impressive people, making themselves out to be the important. And they showed themselves to be spiritual infants with a diminished capacity to taste the deep things of God.

“the self-centered competitive naiveté which characterizes young children who have not yet learned to respect the interests of the Other will lead to misjudgments about the quality and required methods of Christian proclamation and teaching.” (Thiselton)

There are some truths that are harder to pronounce, but the issue for the Corinthians is that they weren’t living according to a spiritually mature perspective.

How do we know if we are being carnal? The rest of the paragraph answers.

Paul asks a confronting question: For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? The NASB makes the fact more clear, “For since there is…among you.” It’s not a question of whether or not there was jealousy and strife, but a question of if they realized what the reality of strife among them meant.

Jealousy is defined in one Greek dictionary as “intense negative feelings over another’s achievements or success” (BAGD). Our English word jealous is rooted in the Latin word zelosus, which itself comes from the Greek word, zealos (ζῆλος). Strong, even overpowering feelings, of discontent or resentment toward what someone else has, possessions or position or recognition, is a sign of carnality. It is the way of man to be upset when Self doesn’t get his/her way.

The second word strife is “engagement in rivalry, especially with reference to positions taken in a matter” (BAGD). It is angry or bitter disagreement over fundamental issues, like which Self should be served first. Jealousy is the water boiling in the pot, strife is the mess on the stove when it boils over. These conflicts manifest themselves in direct confrontation, in sideways criticism, in backdoor digs. It might look like complaining to another friend, or getting a parent on your side, or writing a post online flaming the one you wish you could be like.

These show someone is of the flesh, σαρκικός not just σαρκίνος as in verse 1.

The difference between the two terms is: “fleshy,” and you cannot help it; “fleshly,” and you can but do not help it. “Fleshy,” you carry a bad load but will soon be rid of most of it; “fleshly,” you follow a bad norm and refuse to get rid of it. (Lenski)

This is behaving in a human way. It could be translated, “walking according to man.” Walking is the typical metaphor for conduct become habits. Walking is especially used in the wisdom writings of the Old Testament such as Proverbs. We’re not to walk in the way of evil, but to walk in the way of insight (9:6) and integrity (10:9) and uprightness (14:2) and wisdom (28:26).

Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool,

The way of man is egocentric passions that are at war within and without. Jealousy and selfish ambition is a “wisdom” that is “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:15-16), manish, hellish.

This final question in the paragraph provides a particular example of their carnality. Jealousy births strife that alienates. For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? Paul returns to 1 Corinthians 1:12 where he started his concern over their quarreling. This is only one expression of selfish desires, but it is the one he tackled first.

This time Paul only mentions two groups, those “of Paul” and those “of Apollos.” The reason he doesn’t mention the Cephas group and the Christ group is because he’s about ready to describe those who personally worked among the Corinthians (3:5-4:7). There is no evidence that the apostle Peter ever went to Corinth, and certainly Jesus did not. Both Paul and Apollos did, and Paul will demonstrate that they worked together on the same side though they didn’t do their work at the same time.

Dividing over which pedestaled preacher (of the cross) you believe will elevate your own status to the highest degree is carnal. It is being merely human or, “all too human” (Revised English Bible). It is based on carnal standards and has carnal ends. He asks the Corinthians, “Are you not just men?” It really is all too human.

Carnal Christians not only exist, but they are the ones who are sure it is not describing them. Carnal Christians exist, but it’s not okay. Since that means it could happen to us, how are we to know? We look for evidence of striving jealousy and then the rotten fruit of division.

There are at least two ways to be inconsistent: unbelievers can behave like believers should (but can’t explain it), believers can behave like unbelievers (but shouldn’t).

Application of carnality extends to quarrels over music style, dividing over favorite ministry outreach, strife over method of doing anything (schooling, parenting).

As believers we have a new principle AND expectations based on that spiritual power. Those who teach us have responsibility to observe and confront based on those expectations.

If we can’t put gospel preaching in its proper perspective, how will we get the rest of the letter? There is more to come about church discipline, marriage and divorce, business contracts, food, and spiritual gifts. We will learn what it looks like to walk according to the Spirit but we won’t be ready for it if we are walking according to man.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

You can turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 1, and we will get there in just a few moments after a few introductory comments. Nobody earns an inheritance. By nature of what it is, an inheritance is bestowed on a person of privilege who does not earn it. The giving out of an inheritance is exclusively at the discretion of the giver, not the recipient. And even the term birthright can carry with it sort of connotations of entitlement. And that is not the case. The one who is giving has all of the authority to give or not to give. And the recipient does not earn it any more than he controls when or where or to whom he is born.

Yet the book of Ephesians is a book about a rich spiritual inheritance that we have in Christ. and then what to do with it. This reality builds up our gratitude while at the same time crushing flat our pride, reducing it to stubble. Our inheritance though in Christ far surpasses the legacy of the richest billionaire or the most noteworthy philanthropist. It outlasts any dynasty and makes old money of the Kennedys and the Kardashians look like the stuff of board games. It actually cannot be rightly compared with anything in this world because it is in fact infinitely greater. And we inherit it along with Christ. And that would be remarkable for begotten sons, for those who are actually flesh and blood of their parents, of the flesh and blood sons of an earthly king.

But our inheritance is actually greater while our worthiness is lesser than human princes. Because we inherit all of these things having been predestined by God before we've done anything good or evil, to adoption. So if you're given to pride or arrogance, this book is for you. If you're given to despairing, because this life is actually hard, this book is for you as well. We may not know necessarily how we are to live or what decisions we are to make, but it is important along the way that we rehearse the promises of God. Now how many of you would say that you're actually pretty familiar with Ephesians? The book?

Like a number of Pauline letters, it's pretty cleanly divided into theology and behavior. So the lessons and then how to apply those lessons. And six chapters is divided right in half along those lines. But what I want for us to get is that there is an inheritance that we have in Christ and it comes in the form of, well, it's actually not very easy to describe, but part Part of it are a bunch of promises that Paul points his readers to and then the application of that inheritance takes us into the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters. This is a very relevant book for us and for a host of reasons. As we consider the Ephesian church and its context, the readers of this letter were first generation Christians.

Many of them had a lot of behavioral baggage that they were bringing into the church. If you consider, for instance, why did Paul find it necessary to write the mandates that are in the back half of chapter 4? If you were to look at like chapter 4 verses 21 to 31, there had to have been some reason why he felt compelled to tell his readers things like, don't lie but speak the truth, or don't steal, but do honest work, and those sorts of things. That's actually understandable given the context. And it'd be nice to say that now, nearly 2,000 years later, we are a fully mature church, and completely impervious, no longer susceptible to those sorts of temptations or dangers, and that we would never think of dragging the world's behavior or thought patterns into the church in our context.

But of course that's not the case. But we'll explore that more when we get to Lord willing chapter four. Ephesus was also very proud of the temple of Artemis, great as Artemis of the Ephesians. And you can read about that in Acts chapter 19, quite the hubbub that Paul created when actually turning the hearts of people away from the worship of Artemis or Diana and two, the worship of the true God. That temple served as a destination for pagan pilgrims who brought with them a lot of revenue into the city. But I am pretty sure that the pagan Ephesians would have kicked Artemis to the curb if they could have had two casinos and an outlet mall to bring with it travelers and their dollars.

But this isn't for us though, we can't relate. What's more, this letter provides all sorts of principles, as I've already stated, that are relevant today as they were in the first century. And that's one of the great things about principles is that they transcend the practical, they transcend the details and the different variables of the situations that we're looking to apply those principles. So as we are studying the book of Ephesians, we can look for principles that we can apply even now as they are transcendent. So I wanna encourage us, well first of all, The resolution here is actually not that great. I have another map later on.

But as you look at Ephesians, you see that this is Asia Minor, it's now modern day Turkey. And this is Paul's second missionary journey. And right at the dead center of it was the church at Ephesus. So just to help orient, but I'll return to another map later on that's perhaps more beneficial. I wanna help us to orient our thinking a little bit. There's lots of things to look for, but I would encourage us to look in particular for two things, theological riches and principled helps. There are gonna be lots of other things to look for, of course, you can look at the Book of Ephesians, I'll talk about this later on, as an unfolding or an articulation of the work of the Holy Spirit.

It's also kind of fun to keep your eyes peeled for unanticipated surprises. But in particular, I want us to zero in on theological riches and principled helps. So first, theological riches. Paul's letter, and this is not an exclusive list, but this letter includes some things like the doctrine of divine election, chapter one, verses three through seven, the preserving seal of the Holy Spirit in chapter one, verses 13 and 14, and we'll talk about that a little bit tonight. Our station in Christ, that phrase is used more than a dozen times in this letter. All that we have as our inheritance is rich and spiritual, we have because of the work of Christ and our imputed righteousness from Him.

It carries with it, or it includes the theological lessons related to spiritual death and new life in chapter two, verses one through seven. Or salvation by grace through faith in chapter two, verses eight and nine. The mystery of the church in chapter three, verses one to 13. I'm just gonna stop there because there are things like that really, really glorious truths that we would do well to take to heart and submit to, and then of course look to apply them, and there's more and more and more. The glories of Christ in the church and the husband-wife relationship pointing to that. Also, I would encourage us to look for principled helps.

For instance, when we are given to despair, when you are sad, you can recall your identity in Christ and the spirit's seal of our inheritance. We're going to see that before we even get out of chapter one, that Paul just wants for his readers to, his prayer for them is to understand who and what they really are. And when you think about what we have in Christ, that's a great prayer. When you're tempted to live like the world, we can recall that that is inconsistent with how we have learned Christ, chapter four. You did not learn Christ in this way. When we are given to discouragement by our spiritual progress or lack thereof, We can recall that in as much as we individually comprise part of the body of Christ, that is the bride of Christ, he is personally invested in presenting us to him pure and spotless.

I found encouragement in that for years that Christ has taken a personal investment in making sure that I get there. So when I can't do it on my own, I can remember that he is at work for me. When you are tempted as a parent, perhaps, to discipline your child in anger, you can remember that that is what Paul says not to do. He actually gives some help with that and says instead of disciplining your children in anger, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So there's the discipline of men and the discipline of the Lord and they are at odds with one another. When we are tempted to become prideful in our own privileged position, we can recall that we were dead men given new life and we did nothing to earn that, and so on.

Our blessings, our blessings have implications and our blessings have application. And Paul would have us to live like what we are in Christ and in Christ we are royalty though we are born as peasants. So as we study tonight, we should look for reasons, new reasons to be grateful. Let's talk about Ephesians for just a moment here about the background and context. I showed you a map just a moment ago of Paul's second missionary journey. Let's go back to that. As we look at Paul's second missionary journey, on the first missionary journey he had a very brief pit stop in Ephesus and things apparently went really well.

They begged him to stay. He couldn't really alter his travel plans but he promised to come back and come back he did. And between approximately, in the middle 50s, he stayed there for about three years, so probably about 54 to 57 or so. And to give you some context, he was there from about 54 to 57 and Nero was a teenager and an emperor at that point. So Paul labored for three years to establish the Ephesian Christians in the faith. So he knew from first hand experience the sorts of troubles that they experienced at that location in Asia Minor.

So if you're at all familiar with like the well this is Asia Minor and in the opening, the greeting that Paul gives in First Peter, Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia are five provinces in Asia Minor. And so this was a very vibrant and highly populated area. And in Asia Minor there were over 200 independent communities. And in effect Ephesus was the capital and Paul realized that Ephesus occupied a strategic role in Asia Minor. You can see that it's also a port city, really close to the water right there. That's why it was a popular place for travelers. It's also highly likely that this was a letter that Paul sent to be read by not just the Ephesian church, but other churches.

All this is by way of background and context. A gospel influence in Ephesus could actually have a significant leavening effect on that whole peninsula. So you can read about it after Acts chapter 19 comes Acts chapter 20 and that is the tearful farewell to the Ephesian elders and he left the fledgling church in the capable hands of those godly men. And that was again about AD 57. Some six years later or so, 62, 63, from Rome in prison, there's a strong case to be made that that's where this letter was penned. Paul wrote this letter and probably two others, we think Colossians and Philemon, he also sent with Tychicus.

So with that orienting background, let's spend the remainder of our time tonight looking at chapter one. So as soon as Paul greets the Ephesian Christians, it's a really fantastic way to start. As soon as he says hello, he backs up the dump truck and starts unloading blessings upon blessings to those promises to the Ephesians. And although this book doesn't really address the matter directly of bearing up under persecution, it's important to remember that these were hard times to be a Christian. There was not an abundance of solid teaching to cling to. There wasn't actually an abundance of godly teachers, although the number was growing.

The church was expanding like wildfire, it really was. Nero was just hitting his stride. And he's known in some circles as the great persecutor of believers in infamy. But he became emperor when he was still a teenager, so he actually really, really was prolific in a bad way. but he only was an emperor until 68. So if this is written between 62 and 63, then there's good reason to suspect that outside of Rome, but clearly in the Roman Empire, he was giving his approval to the persecution of those Christians who were scattered about. The church had a good deal of attempted syncretism trying to drag into the church some of the old habits.

And like today, so that's worshiping two different things at the same time. Like today, there was a lot of reason to be excited and there was also a lot of reason to be discouraged. And with that being the case, the glorious promises of God in Christ are precisely what Paul prescribes to help orient the Christians at Ephesus and us. So these promises are for us too and they have implications regarding how we are to live. So this letter written to the church at Ephesus, it was a good church, Paul knew the church, It also was probably intended to be read beyond Ephesus as well. And these principles apply to us too.

Ephesus was decadent, the culture called evil good and good evil. And there's all sorts of overlap with what we experienced in 21st century America today. So I think now is a good time. I'm going to go ahead and read it beginning to end. It's only 23 verses and there are three major sections that we're going to zero in on. And they are the three paragraphs that are outlined in at least the English Standard Version translation, although that is certainly not the case in the original Greek. I understand verses three through 14 are one sentence, for instance, but let's read it. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him, you also, when you heard of the truth, heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, What are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints?

And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might, that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places. Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And He put all things under His feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." I've roughly outlined chapter one by paragraph emphasizing these three promises. Promised blessings in Christ in chapter one, verses three through 10.

Promised inheritance through Christ, verses 11 to 14, and promised victory with Christ in 15 through 23. That's actually not accurate. It's hope in Christ. Hope in Christ. I forgot to change the slide. Christ is victorious, but that's not the promise right there. It's assumed.

So you can correct that type of form if you want. Hope in Christ. First, promise blessings in Christ. In the first full paragraph, Paul gives his readers a mountain of reasons to marvel at their privileged position in Christ Jesus. And this comes in the form of a litany of blessings. So right off in verse three he says, we're blessed, he says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And then he goes on to catalog these different types of blessings. So this introduces the matter of blessings to God, from God to the believers, and then he begins to delineate them in the next verse.

First, we have the blessing of divine election. Even as Paul says, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. Now in some circles, the doctrine of election's a big deal. I mean, I think it's a big deal. It is, and a lot of times, Calvinism is reduced in some people's thinking to just the teaching of divine election or all those other soteriological implications. But in reality, if we talk about, to use the word again, Calvinism, as God is sovereign overall, well then of course divine election is one piece of that. And it is interesting that this is one thing on a long list of things that we have to be thankful for.

So this is nevertheless one of the passages that you do need to carve out of your Bible if you want to reject that doctrine. It is one of the classic passages on divine election. The sovereign God of Scripture and the universe has chosen certain souls for salvation, for adoption as His children long before they ever do right or wrong. And Paul would have a pretty great list of blessings if he were just to stop here, but he's just getting warmed up. So the doctrine of divine election kills any sense of pride because he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, before we had opportunity to do right or wrong, which we could not do apart from Him anyway, long before we were even born.

He continues then, the blessing of adoption, in verse 5, In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will. So once again, before having done anything good or evil, God predestined us for adoption. God the Father has one begotten Son, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. He has many adopted sons and we are numbered among them. And it is only possible that we can be adopted because of Christ's work for us. It is by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and by our being given His righteousness and by Him taking on our sin and its punishment, being sin for us, that we were able to then stand before God as blameless, let alone as sons.

Where in this equation does our own work or our own righteousness factor into our worthiness to be recipients of a spiritual inheritance? Nowhere in here. We see in verses 6 and then he comes back to it in verse 8. In fact, I'll just read those three verses. To the praise of his glorious grace with which he blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his, grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight." I've heard it described before that some people think of grace as actually a substance that can run out. But grace is favor.

And there is one truly gracious favored one, and that is the son. And then as we are given his righteousness, the father looks on us with favor. And Paul is building a case here that he'll, it escalates and kind of ramps up and he sort of gets carried away by the end of the chapter when he begins praying for the Ephesian Christians to cling to these hopes. In the beloved, in Christ, God has blessed us with his favor.

The blessings of redemption and forgiveness, I just read that in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight. Now, Paul is laying it on pretty thick now. It's really starting to, the dump truck is starting to empty out, but redemption and forgiveness are also themselves graces from God. What else does he say? Verses nine and 10, the blessing of the knowledge of his will, making known to us, says Paul, the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Now one of the great riches of Ephesians is that in it, we learn some truths from the mind of God. The mystery of the church was revealed by God to Paul and then Paul wrote it down for us in chapter three. And we all know now because Paul has said it, of God's intention to showcase his genius through the church in chapter three, verse 10. We learned in chapter five, the example for husbands to follow and shepherding their wives is actually Christ himself with relation to his church, how he initiated for her, how he sacrifices for her, and how he redeemed her when she did not want it. All of these things defy human intuition.

So it's a really good thing they're written down in the pages of scripture, or else we would be inclined to not believe them. And so this is God peeling back the curtain a little bit and letting us see some of his ways. God is under no obligation to make his ways known to us. He does not answer to us. Sovereignty by nature means answering to no one, and there is one who is sovereign, and that is God the Father. So he does not answer to us. And yet, from time to time, he does help us to know what is his will, decreed and desired, and that, says Paul, is itself a blessing. So in Christ, God has not only set forth, set in motion, a plan, a big redemptive plan, But he has made some of it known to us.

Of course there remain many things that are still secret in the councils of the Trinity, but the revelation that God has given to us is gracious. And now God has set in motion this plan to unite all in Christ. And this is the comprehensive work of the spirit and it dovetails well into the next section. And that's promised inheritance through Christ. This is as good a time as I need to point to. the better map because of even the color contrast, you can see things a little bit better, but Ephesus is right there. And you also get this cool little key right here because there's other parts from the first missionary journey as well.

Verses 11 through 14, and lots of work of the Spirit, but promised inheritance through Christ. Paul says that in Christ we have obtained an inheritance. We're starting to understand what this inheritance is. And this fact helps us to understand it further. If it's something that we have received, it's stated in the past here, it's a done deal, then we can know what it is not. It is not earthly riches, it is not fame, it is not a guarantee of safety. Rather, this inheritance comprises spiritual blessings in Christ that come with our sonship. According to verse 13, the Holy Spirit is the guarantor and the guarantee of our inheritance.

He is the seal of our inheritance. He is actually the one making all of this happen. And as we examine this great inheritance through the first half of the letter, we see the unfolding of the work of the Holy Spirit. Teachers like Stott and Boyce, they actually thought that that's a great way to describe the book of Ephesians is Paul's articulation of the work of the Spirit. You can make a pretty strong case for that. It is the Spirit who effectually calls us. It is the Spirit who glorifies Christ as He grows in us a love for the Son. It is the Spirit who unites Jew and Gentile in Christ, and that's in chapter 2. It's the Spirit who reveals to us the mysteries of God in like the church, for instance, and we see that in chapter It's the spirit who generates our behavior in church body life. You see that in chapter 4.

It's the spirit who enables us to walk with discretion in the world and with harmony and marriage. We see that in chapter 5. It's the spirit who protects us from spiritual attack, giving any sort of effectiveness to the armor of God. And the spirit who also counterintuitively directs us how to submit enslaved master relationships or in husband-wife relationships. We see that in chapter 5 too. So, we're in good hands if the Spirit who brings all this about is Himself the guarantor of our inheritance in Christ. We have been sealed, says Paul, with the promised Holy Spirit. Other translations, the Holy Spirit of Promise.

And it's not unlike a king's signet ring, stamped in wax, if broken was punishable by death unless it was done by the recipient. If God seals us with God, who can break the seal? In verses 15 through 23, we see promised hope in Christ. Promised hope in Christ.

Now as we had mentioned before, Paul had been separated from the church at Ephesus and the surrounding area for some five years or so when he penned this letter. But he had evidently gotten wind of their love for all the saints and their faithfulness to Christ. And that was cause for great rejoicing. "'For this reason,' says Paul, "'because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus "'and your love toward all the saints, "'I do not cease to give thanks for you,' and so on." So he says there in verse 16, I don't cease to give thanks to you, remembering you in my prayers, because he had heard that they were walking faithfully."

If you're wondering how to pray for someone, actually before I even get to that, think about the joy that Paul must have experienced. John talks about this. It is a great joy to faithful men to hear that their children in the faith are walking in the truth. It is a great delight to parents to know that their children are walking virtuously, that they are loving Christ and being faithful. It was ahead to have been a tremendous source of encouragement and joy for Paul to hear that the congregation that he had invested in for three years was loving Christ and loving the saints. So he says their testimony made him thankful to God and that was cause for his prayers.

And so he was thankful in his prayers but he went further as well. Look at verses 17 and 18. He prays for them to have wisdom and understanding that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints. And so we've learned about the inheritance for the saints and the inheritance of Christ that is shared with the saints. If you're wondering how to pray for somebody, take cues from Paul here.

Pray that if you want to know how to pray for somebody, pray that he would understand who he is in Christ and live accordingly. Man, what could that not ameliorate? What could that not address? Doesn't that put a lot of things into perspective? So your life is terrible right now. Think about your identity in Christ and live like it. The Christian life, it's said, is about becoming what you already are. Positional and practical sanctification. Positionally, we're set apart for Christ. We're identified with Him already. We're given His righteousness. We're actually seated with Him in the heavenly places in Christ.

Practically, we battle flesh and the sin and the temptations of the world on a day by day basis. And through worship and through means of grace, little by little, Christ effectively changes us into His image and likeness. So it's quite a simple prayer and a potent one for the Christian Ephesians for whom life was probably not easy. If they could but remember who they were in Christ, then they'd be just fine.

Take a look at the second half of verse 18 through 23. And allow this to blow your mind. I'll give a few comments and then we'll read it. There are a lot of glorious aspects in this chapter. I do, I do like this chapter, but this is probably my personal favorite, that Paul's prayer is that the power that God the Father worked in Christ's resurrection and elevation of Christ to a position of glory alongside of the Father, his right hand, and over all of creation has been likewise put into use in us believers. That ought to be mind-blowing. That same power that God used in redemption is at work in us now. That's how potent the work of the Spirit is.

Read it again with me, starting in the second half of verse 18. What are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and this is what He wants them to know. He's praying that God would reveal this information to the Ephesians that you guys may know. What are the glorious riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, verse 19. And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also the one to come." And then he states a fact of Christ's elevation.

and He put all things under His feet." We can trust that. It's God the Father put all things under the Son's feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. God the Father exercised great power in the glorification of the Son. Now, according to this great power, He has worked in us and we don't even know it. So it'd be fitting for that to be our prayer as well. This book is full of lessons and their implications. And if we were to stop there, that would be worth meditating on for a month. If Paul would have us to think about who we are in Christ, our identity in him, and to act in a way that is consistent with it.

Paul might've gotten carried away there a bit at the end, And that's good. But the end that he punctuates the chapter with is a bit of a doxology. And it's a fitting reminder for us too that there are a great number of wonderful things that work for us which have been promised to us. And indeed they are already ours in Christ.

You have a guaranteed spiritual inheritance. You are, as adopted sons, spiritual royalty, and it's a gift. It is a gift for you in Christ because of his work, and you're having been adopted. You didn't choose it, at least not of yourself. You didn't work it, and it's a good thing that Christ has done it because we couldn't. He's done it all, and we are recipients with him. So may Paul's prayer apply to us as well. That's kind of my hope for you all and may he grant us a spirit of wisdom and understanding to know what is the hope to which he has called us. Let's pray.

Father, we do ask for your spirit's help to understand what we are in Christ, what is the inheritance that awaits us in glory. And when we are given to pride, we pray that we would remember that we have not earned this. we have been given it. And as those who have been given much and who are grateful allow us to boast in you with tremendous humility. Give us humble boldness to speak these things without blushing and help us to walk in light of these principles. We do pray that you'd help us to understand the rest of the book in light of these things as well. As we continue to learn lessons and then look for ways to apply them in the world and in our homes and our communities, we ask for your grace to do that too.

We thank you for the promises of your word, and we pray that you'd help us to carry these things into the week, and we pray these things now in your Son's name. Amen.

Today is a monumental day in church history. It is the closest Sunday to October 31st, the day that is usually acknowledged as the day in 1517 when Martin Luther made public his 95 Theses against indulgences. It is as impossible for us to know how much we’ve been influenced by the 500 year-old Reformation effects as it is for a fish to know how wet the water is. We’re in deep Christian waters due to God’s blessing on the Reformers’ work.

1 Corinthians 2:14-16 is not the text of Scripture that broke open the protest, but it sure does explain a lot of what was happening. This paragraph probably isn’t the first one that comes to mind when we think about the five solas or the five points of the doctrines of grace, and yet it does, at least in context, touch all ten doctrines. For many years after my own “conversion” to Calvinistic theology, verse 14 may have been my single-most referenced verse regarding evangelism and preaching and teaching and pastoral counseling, especially when it came to wondering about why it seemed so difficult for people to listen.

Paul has been poking at the immature divisions among some of the Christians in Corinth since his greeting to them at the beginning of the letter. Their quarreling came about because they were focused on the wrong things. It is not too simple to say that they were focused on man’s things—his abilities and accomplishments and social ranking—rather than on God’s things. This is no good on a number of levels, including the self-evident demotion of themselves. If you could choose, whose trail would you rather follow to the top of Mt. Wisdom? The path of the old Sherpa or that of the new prancersise instructor? And what does it say when you start dividing into tribes by what brand of hair product the prancerciser-prophets use? You’d say that has nothing to do with whether or not they can get us to the top of the mountain.

The philosophers of the world are the pracerciser instructors. They are dancing around selling their particular brand of leotard as the key to wisdom, and the only thing sillier than that is that Christians copy their moves. As if a certain hair spray or pair of stretchy pants will help us promote Christ.

You can’t get someone to love the gospel with gimmicks. And it’s laughable for men to convince themselves that they can think God-level thoughts apart from God-given help. It illustrates the great axiom: to misjudge is human. We are constantly getting things wrong, including our stubborn tenacity to deny that we’re getting things wrong. “Nuh-uh.” The only way out of this, the way that Luther and Calvin and Tyndale and other Reformers realized, is by God’s Spirit.

Here is a Reformation text worthy of a 500 year anniversary, even knowing that it will only be any good to us as God’s Spirit helps us to appraise what we’ve got and why it’s so great.

In 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 there are two declarations of reality, one about the limits of human judgment and one about the reach of spiritual judgment, and then one amazing celebration of these realities.

Paul’s just said in the previous paragraph that he and the preachers of the cross “do impart wisdom…a secret and hidden wisdom of God…revealed to us through the Spirit.” He’s completely dependent on God’s Spirit for his own understanding: “we have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.” He doesn’t need or use rhetorical eloquence as defined by the world, he is “interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual,” the ones who have God’s Spirit.

Now he contrasts the one who is spiritual (verse 13, and again in verse 15) with the one without the Spirit. He’s called the “natural man,” the man in his humanity apart from external, supernatural help. He’s got two problems that are quite logical within his own system.

The natural person [man] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. Man can think. He’s a rational creature. Homo sapiens are the genus of wise men. One of our best prancersisers even used Latin to verify our existence by our thinking: Cogito, ergo sum.

Any reasoning man would question an infinite God humbling Himself by limiting Himself and lowering Himself to take on the form of a man, to take on the form of a servant, all the way down to “even death on a cross” (see Philippians 2:5-8). The all-powerful God would die for the ones who were killing Him? This is unmarketable fiction. Who would buy it?

Yet this is what some people call “good news” and they sing about it and call this cross-work a work of glory. They refer to a crucified Christ as the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:8). A natural man won’t receive it. He’s got a place to put that sort of story in his mind, the same place he would put a paper invite to LinkedIn: the garbage. Based on the premises of his starting point, it is illogical to believe these things.

As a matter of fact he doesn’t accept it. As a principle of will he won’t accept it. And in terms of capacity he can’t accept it. It doesn’t mean that he can’t ever, but he can’t ever naturally, he can’t intrinsically, within his own human power.

The natural man is not able to understand [the things of the Spirit of God] because they are spiritually discerned. A man who is five feet tall cannot stand next to and see the top of a ten foot tall box, not without a boost. In spiritual things, he doesn’t even know where the box is or how tall it is, let alone see what’s on top.

His argument is sound: glory comes from status, sacrificial death lowers status, therefore there is no glory in sacrificial death. It is folly to the Gentiles and a scandal to the Jews. It makes sense with the definitions he’s using. His argument is sound, but it is not valid because all his examinations start with definitions limited to the human level and, in truth, there’s more than just the human level.

His obstinacy and impotency are part of his depravity. And it is consuming, total, troubling. He’s blind but thinks he sees. He won’t and can’t believe without divine intervention. And do we (prancersising preachers) think we can convince him to see by selling him a different pair of leotards? Or talk about his blindness while sitting on couches drinking lattes? Or attract him out of blindness with our Christian rock band? That’s foolish, but now it is us who are the fools.

The Roman Catholic Church used worldly ways to spread the Pope’s empire, not Christ’s kingdom. Selling pieces of forgiveness papers is natural. Convincing people to go on a pilgrimage (and pay) to look at special old bones is natural. It makes a man feel better, at least for a little, about how he impressed God. It’s natural to believe that God would give a man some credit for doing that.

But the Scriptures reveal that Jesus alone is our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. He purchased our peace and saves us by grace (1 Corinthians 1:3, 4). Our faith doesn’t rest in the wisdom of men, others or own own, but in the power of God.

Two words are repeated from the end of verse 14: discerned and spiritual. The ESV doesn’t translate them the same way, but the contrast is even more clear by using the same vocabulary.

[But] the spiritual person [man] judges [discerns] all things. The “natural” man is limited, even if he isn’t always wrong. But if the world operates in ways he can’t know, doesn’t that pump the brakes of how impressed we can be by him? He can explain what a nucleus is, but he’s entirely wrong about why every nucleus in the world exists.

The man helped by God’s Spirit gets God’s wisdom even to the depths of God (1 Corinthians 2:10). God’s Spirit reveals what true wisdom and true love and true glory are in Christ’s death. We get how to be reconciled to God and how to be in fellowship with one another. We receive the things of the Spirit of God.

Verse 15, though, doesn’t limit the spiritual man’s discernible powers to “spiritual” things. Verse 15 says the spiritual man judges all things. How about the gospel? Government? Goat-hair sweaters? Goat cheese? Grammar? Gender? Having the Spirit doesn’t mean that we know all the facts about everything, but it does mean we can put the facts into their proper context.

“The natural man does not probe and judge aright even the common things of this life, to say nothing about the gospel; does not see their true nature, purpose, relation, etc. He magnifies these things out of all proportion and hence devotes himself to them exclusively and thus misuses them.” (Lenski)

The Spirit gives Christians insight into every thumb’s width in the world.

Differentiate: to develop distinguishing characteristics; to become distinct in character.

It’s a great word. The spiritual man, the one who judges all things, is himself to be judged by no one. Here’s the third use of “judge” in the paragraph and it shows more power of a spiritual man. Paul is explaining that whoever came up with the standards to judge the public speakers in Corinth were using the wrong ones, so they were wrong.

This verse has been used to defend the worst sorts of queer teaching and twisted behavior by professing Christians. “I am judged by no man, including, you, Mr. A Chump Pastor.” There is a sense in which this is true ultimately; every man answers to God as his final judge. But it is also the Spirit who makes us spiritual has revealed His Word and He’s revealed boundaries for believing and behaving. He’s also at work in a fellowship of spiritual people, making us into one body with different members that depend on each other (1 Corinthians 12).

But being judged to be fools by natural men should not bother us. It should give us unassuming assertiveness. It’s one of the things spiritual people know how to judge: why they’re being judged.

The final verse in the paragraph explains both of the previous verses with a surprising, yet scriptural celebration of the powerful mindset we’ve been given.

”For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” Paul quotes Isaiah 40:13. The context of Isaiah 40 is a humbling of all humanity before the LORD God who did indeed measure the waters in the hollow of His hand and weigh the mountains (and sherpas and prancersising philosophers) on His scale. He can be likened to no other. “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.” So you discovered a new species of flower? Congratulations, you’re ready to counsel the Creator of the flower. You reasoned that reason could answer all your questions about the meaning of life. Whom do you think you are, Mr. Hume? It’s not actually that impressive.

But we have the mind of Christ. “Christ” parallels “Lord” in the quote; Jesus Christ is the mighty, ruling, rewarding, recompensing God of Isaiah 40. The word mind “νοῦς denotes ‘a constellation of thoughts and beliefs which provides the criteria for judgments and actions’” (Jewett quoted by Thiselton). To have the mind of Christ here means to have a mind that humbles itself in light of the cross (see also Philippians 2:5-11).

In the context of Isaiah 40, Who has the mind of the Lord? is impossible. But in 1 Corinthians 2, who has it? We have by His Spirit! Certain of the Corinthians thought they were smart, and they misjudged the situation.

The Renaissance and the Enlightenment and Modern Science have seen artists and thinkers and researchers and inventors and doctors who have made terrific advances for humanity who don’t have a clue about Why. They have found and developed and produced some fantastic things (by God’s common grace), things Christians can give thanks to God for, but because of the natural man’s starting point, the best he can do is be inconsistent.

Man-made religion is no better, such as were pre-Reformation conditions. The Bible, as illumined by the Spirit apart from human tradition and human rhetoric, puts man in his place to receive the glory God predestined before the ages began. It is by grace through faith in Christ. And we have His mind! What’s in His mind? What can He explain about all the things He’s created? How far and deep do His interests extend?

So seeking status and boasting in anything other than Christ is logically less impressive. And if you’re talking with a natural man, pity and patience and Christ are better than arguments and proofs and cleverness. When we come to read the Bible or hear it read and taught, we remember that it’s a spiritual thing and we should depend on the Spirit.

Reformations happen when preachers preach a crucified Christ alone and God’s Spirit awakens Christians to see all things in God’s wisdom.

The phrase "little did he know" might be used in a story to give critical information to the reader that is unknown to a key character. This narration takes on a perspective called "third person omniscient." The author knows more than his characters, and that usually sets up dramatic tension. The readers know that the bridge is out ahead but the semi-truck driver shifting up trying to escape from the bad guys doesn’t.

The apostle Paul is not all-knowing, but he knows far more than the "rulers of this age." Paul doesn't have all wisdom, but God has revealed "a secret and hidden wisdom" to Paul while the world saw none of the signs. As he explains in this next section of his letter to the church of God in Corinth, the wise and powerful of the world not only miss what God is doing, they have undone themselves through the very thing they considered their triumph.

Again, Paul is not omniscient, but he is providing voice to the third person omniscient narrator and pulling back the curtain on God's revealed wisdom. The world is lost, the world has lost. The world has not been the same since the Logos took on flesh, was crucified, and rose again as the firstborn from the dead.

I used to think about the gospel as the good news that because of His work on the cross Jesus made salvation possible for everyone. Then I came to think about the gospel as the good news that because of His work on the cross Jesus secured salvation for all who would ever believe. And now I see that the gospel is also the good news that because of His work on the cross Jesus has turned the world upside down. The nations rage and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord. The wise among men plot their overthrow of God, and He who sits in the heavens laughs. If the rulers of the earth would be wise, they would hurry to kiss the Son and take refuge in Him before they perished. But by continuing to pretend that they are something, that they are men of understanding and influence, they bring their own doom to pass.

These spiritual truths are weltanschauung truths, world- and life-view truths. These spiritual truths are concrete walls against the cotton-candy arguments of the world. These spiritual truths are intended to humble us, yes, and they fortify our conviction in the wisdom of God.

Paul has been painting the contrast between the word of the cross and words of eloquent wisdom since 1 Corinthians 1:17. There is folly and offense, there is power and strength, and which is found on which sideline is not according to the world's scorecard. Paul himself refused to orate himself into esteem or show off his verbal skills, instead he proclaimed Jesus Christ and Him crucified and let God's Spirit do the demonstrating of power.

Now in 2:6 Paul explains that the wisdom of God in the word of the cross is a deep wisdom. It is a World-Upsetting, Glory-Making, Mind-Bending, Freely-Given Wisdom from God.

A well is a simple concept but it can reach deep into the earth. The message of Jesus Christ and Him crucified is similarly focused but it is anything but simplistic. The word of the cross is deep, and we’re about ready to see how deep it goes.

In contrast to the “wisdom of men” in 2:5, among the mature we do impart wisdom. Paul doesn’t identify the mature, the spiritual adults, by name (or group), but they are the ones whose faith rests in the power of God. They are the ones who believe the gospel of a crucified Christ and are coming to live in light of the cross. These are any (and should be all) Christians. He’s not setting up a new division in the church made up of the spiritual upperclass; he’s confronting divisions not creating them.

But he speaks not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. The this age wisdom is the worldly wisdom of status seeking and self-seeking among the wise, the scribe, the debater of this age (1:20). It’s the usual way of the powerful and noble-birthed (1:26). The rulers of this age are in this category, and certainly include those in political power who put Jesus to death (see verse 8). The Greek word for rulers almost always refers to human kings and emperors and governors (for example, Romans 13:3). But there are spiritual authorities and powers above and behind the men and women. There are supernatural, angelic forces that motivate and manipulate men.

When Jonathan, Andy, and I were on our way back to the Pittsburg airport after the ACCS Conference early on a Sunday morning, our shuttle driver had a lot of questions about “spiritual” things. One of his questions was if we thought there was a “system of evil” behind all the bad things in the world. Yes, there is.

Humankind is more than a collection of individual entities or agents, but a corporeity within which evil and evil forces become endemic and structural. (Thiselton)

And the cross of Christ subverted the whole system. Persons and demons and structures of society are doomed to pass away. They are dethroned. Talk about dealing with corruption by draining the swamp.

Paul and the other gospel preachers imparted a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. The point of this wisdom being secret and hidden is not that it is too deep for humans to understand ever or at all, but that they couldn’t understand it unless God unveiled it. He did not reveal it apart from His Spirit, which is the point in verses 10-13. It is still hidden from men who only have their worldly perspective.

More amazing than the fact that this wisdom was only recently made known is the fact that this wisdom was decreed before the ages, from before the world began, and for our glory. Decreed is fine, but the word is elsewhere translated “predestined” (as in Romans 8:29, and the NASB translates it as such here in 1 Corinthians 2:7). God decided beforehand in His wisdom to mature and magnify all who believe. The wisdom of God is actually the only way that humans can actually be complete in honor.

None of the rulers of this age understood this. They were busy seeking a name and a stage for themselves; Jesus was in the way of that, so they were convinced He had to go. Thinking themselves to be wise, they proved to be the fools. If they had [understood], they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. The White Witch wouldn’t have killed Aslan if she knew the deep magic. So also the rulers thought they secured their triumph by killing Christ. They actually and unwittingly secured their doom. “Evil always bungles things in the end” (Thiselton). Little did they know.

Only in God’s wisdom could crucified the Lord of glory not be an oxymoronic statement. It’s the only time this title is used for Jesus in the New Testament, and it refers to glory as being His to display and to dispense. He gives glory to those who love Him.

as it is written,

The as it is written phrase always introduces a quote from the Old Testament. But there is no single, obvious source for this statement. It sounds similar to a mix of Isaiah 64:4 and Isaiah 65:17, and perhaps that’s what Paul had in mind. No matter, it emphasizes that this world-upsetting, glory-making wisdom is mind-bending and it cannot be gleaned by human investigation, tradition, or imagination.

Isaiah 64:4, in particular, ends with “a God…who acts for those who wait for him.” “No heathen people ever conceived a God who would actually take care of those who placed their reliance on him” (Lenski). Who has imagined a God this kind? A God who designed to give the weak and unimpressive glory? Inconceivable (according to worldly wisdom).

No eye has seen empirical evidence for it, nor ear heard oral history of it, nor the heart of man imagined an abstract theory what God has prepared for those who love him. These are the truly mature ones (2:6). These are the saints who call on the name of the Lord (1:2). The ones who love Him aren’t great but, in His wisdom, He’s pronounced our glory.

Verse 10 begins a new sentence. Paul continues to explain the imparting of wisdom in this paragraph, but the emphasis turns from the glory of the wisdom to the giver of the wisdom. Paul was not the ultimate teacher.

These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

This is the doctrine of illumination. We understand God’s wisdom only by God’s work. He destroys our false but intoxicating paradigm for explaining the world and opens our eyes to see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). And this well runs deep.

God’s Spirit reveals truth to us, and He knows things. By the Spirit’s work we are born again (John 3:5-6) and come to believe that Jesus is God and that Jesus died and rose again for our sin. This is amazing. But the Spirit gets us to the depths of God. Can we agree that if there was a single repository, a Fort Knox, of true wisdom, it would be in the depths of God? So when God reveals wisdom to us by His Spirit, God is revealing Himself to us, His purposes and thoughts and nature. And when God reveals Himself to us, God is revealing the cross.

This is why Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me” (John 8:28). The self-sacrificing love of God in the Son is the glory of God. This is why the self-elevating love of ego in the world cannot be true glory. It is what men agree upon for a while (see John 5:43-44). It’s why we like those who are glorifying themselves; we know all about that. But giving true glory to another? Who isn’t on your level? At your own cost? Because it’s who you are in the nature of your being? No wonder the rulers of this age didn’t figure it out.

All men are doomed to die apart from this wisdom without God’s self-disclosure. That’s why in verse 11 Paul illustrates that even people can’t read another person’s mind. We’ve got to communicate even between mortals, let alone between the transcendent and the this-worldly.

This wisdom can’t be earned or bought or explored or demanded. It can’t be gotten by skill or by study or strength. It is grace. We have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. What have we been given? The Spirit has set us in a bucket and started to lower us down into the well. We’ve been given promises: “what God has prepared” (2:9). We’ve been given all speech and all knowledge (1:5), hope of being sustained guiltless (1:8), fellowship with the saints and the Trinity (1:9). We’ve been given wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption in Christ (1:30). We’ve been given a reason to boast that won’t get us laughed out of eternity (1:31). We’ve been given understanding of God’s election and decision to give us glory (2:7).

So sermons used by the Spirit are different. They don’t have to be cute or clever. They don’t have to be dressed up with extravagant words for the worldly. Preaching and teaching is only as good as the Spirit does the teaching. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. This might not be the best translation of verse 13, it might be preferable to understand it as “explaining spiritual things with spiritual words.” That said, the unspiritual people are the subject of the next paragraph, so this might set up the contrast. Either way, these truths are not communicated by the power of persuasive rhetoric as men define it.

Believer, be encouraged. God decreed this wisdom for you for your glory. God has prepared unimaginable things for those who love Him. God reveals these things through His Spirit. God even gave you His Spirit so that you could understand these things that are freely given to you by Him. You do have to be mature, reading more than bullet points and pull quotes and scanning the headlines. This is wisdom after all, but it is divine.

The world has no categories for wisdom such as this; God’s wisdom subverts and pulls the shirt over the world’s so-called wisdom. The world can’t see how good this wisdom is, how glory could come from denying self; God’s wisdom gets glory by way of a cross. The world won’t accept that this wisdom is gift; God’s wisdom is grace to us. How does the world work? What are the rulers setting up today that will work for our glory? How does the God who created the world work? We have His Spirit. We know His Son who died on the cross.

The application of these truths ruin any reason for division in the church. These truths also regulate the life of the church, as the following chapters unfold. The word of the cross leads to the way of the cross. We do not have the spirit of the world. We have the Spirit from God and we are no longer stuck in the system of the world. We understand the things freely given us by God.

Christian, the World-Upsetting, Glory-Making, Mind-Bending, Freely-Given Wisdom of God is yours.

The only thing worse than unrighteousness is self-righteousness. Here we are as the church, at an evening service no less, to hear the teaching of God’s Word. We are (ostensibly) not the people that love to have their ears tickled, we want the truth. And we know enough truth to know that God is holy, that God has standards, and that all have sinned against those standards. “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18).

The rest of Romans 1 presents an ugly picture of unrighteousness descending into disgusting and dishonorable behavior. But there is something worse. Before Paul gets to justification by faith and the righteousness of Christ near the end of chapter 3, he confronts the moral people (2:1-6), and in particular the moral Jewish people (2:17-3:20) who had God’s law and judged everyone else (except themselves) for not obeying it. Self-righteousness is worse than unrighteousness because it not only doesn’t submit to God’s law, it tries to make others submit to God’s law while congratulating itself.

Self-righteousness is a killer. It actually kills other people. Cain killed Abel because of self-righteousness. We usually talk about Cain’s anger, but why was he mad? His hatred boiled because he believed his offering should have been accepted. He did the right thing. God should have accepted his righteousness, at least as Cain defined it. The Jews killed Jesus because of self-righteousness. They believed that they were right and were doing what was right. They thought Jesus was the evil one, claiming things that messed with their system. Saul, who we know more comfortably as Paul, executed Christians because of his self-righteousness. He excelled his brothers in zeal so much that he killed for righteousness’ sake.

And self-righteousness is a figurative killer as well. Self-righteousness kills a man’s peace and joy; how can you ever be comfortable if you always have to perform perfectly? Self-righteousness kills a man’s friendships; it makes everything a competition, there must always be a winner, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. This is about what’s right after all.

And self-righteousness sends men to hell as slaves of guilt. Self-righteousness is the opposite of freedom, it is the enemy of grace, and it is the antithesis of the gospel. Men love it, God damns it.

After Paul planted some churches in the region of Galatia self-righteous men came behind him and questioned how he got the gospel he preached, they questioned whether his gospel of faith and grace was enough to save, and they supposed that such an emphasis on grace leads to unrighteous living. That’s why Paul writes the letter. It is a book of first principles, a book of the gospel, and a book about a truth always in danger of being forgotten or fought against by our self-righteous/legalistic little hearts.

Tonight I want to observe two parts to chapter one and then consider two doctrinal summaries related to the two parts of the chapter.

No other letter opening from Paul is so significant, both in what is said and what isn’t.

What is said is that he was an apostle. This, as we’ll see, is more than filling in the epistle formula; his apostolic authority was being challenged. He will defend his calling starting in verse 10 and will continue through most of chapter 2. In the first words he claims to be an apostle—not from men nor through man. He learned it and was commissioned directly through Jesus Christ and God the Father.

What is also said is that this letter is To the churches of Galatia, which makes it the only letter written to a plurality of congregations in an area rather to a single church. There are historical questions about which “Galatia” Paul means, a northern-historical group or southern-geopolitical Galatia, but it seems to fit best with the southern region through which he’d established churches on his first missionary journey.

The greeting itself foreshadows the rest of the letter.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (Galatians 1:3–5)

Usually a doxology comes at the end of a letter, or at least the end of a section. But Paul puts sovereign grace and peace first, a work of Christ’s atonement, atonement that changes the sphere we live in without changing our street address. We no longer have to live as slaves to godless fads or to the desires of our flesh. “In these few verses the three major themes of the letter—the source of authority in religion, the doctrine of grace, and the promise of full deliverance from sin’s power—are tied together” (Boice).

What Paul does not say is anything commendable. He usually gives thanks for those he’s writing to. Even to the Corinthians, though he didn’t refer to their faith, hope, or obedience, he still saw signs of gospel fruit among them. In the Galatian churches the gospel itself was under attack.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:6–9)

It wasn’t long after Paul was among them (so quickly), and they believed the gospel, that they were persuaded to believe a different gospel—not that there is (really) another one. We’ll see more about what the different gospel contained in the following chapters, but it is a “gospel” that requires works of obedience to the law and rituals such as circumcision for sake of salvation. He’s astonished; extraordinarily disturbed. This is not good news. Paul doesn’t just describe it, he denounces it. Divisions within a church are inappropriate, but if there is a different gospel, a distorted gospel, then those who preach it are damnable. Twice Paul pronounces this dedication to destruction: let him be accursed. It is the Greek word anathema, “Let him be damned.” No stronger language could be used.

One of the tactics used by the “troublers” (1:7; 5:10) was to discredit Paul’s apostleship. They had come from Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish world, where all the other apostles got their start. Paul was a late-comer. He had not traveled with Jesus. Though he now preached Jesus, certainly his message wasn’t approved by the R.P.: the Right Persons.

Paul begins a defense of his apostolic authority. I’ve heard so many times that Christians are not supposed to defend themselves, only to hear preachers turn around and point out how many times Paul does it. Rather than make an indiscriminate rule, we ought to ask Why is the defense necessary? and How is the defense made? These are the questions that need answering; it takes no wisdom to make a rule. Paul does defend himself here and he does it because the faith of the Galatians depended on the gospel Paul preached.

Paul begins by saying that he is not trying to please man (verse 10), something which the false teachers were trying to do, and I want to come back to that essential point about how men would be pleased. Then he describes how he got the gospel: I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it but received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. This was on the road to Damascus, and the light of the Lord knocked him down.

From verse 13 through the end of the chapter, and spilling over into chapter two, he gives a timeline of his testimony not to show that he was saved but to show that his reception of the gospel and of the calling to preach the gospel were directly from God. He used to be known for his self-righteousness, advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers, which was what caused him to persecute Christians and try to destroy the church (verses 13-14). But God interrupted his path and saved him by grace (verse 15), electing him to know Jesus and to preach Him (verse 16). He didn’t go to school to learn how to do it, he went into the Arabian desert.

After three years he did go up to meet Peter, called by his Aramaic name, Cephas, and James the Lord’s brother, but even now it wasn’t to get their approval as much as it was to make their acquaintance. Otherwise he was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They had heard about this guy, but now they rejoiced in his conversion.

We will see more about his testimony in chapter 2.

For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11–12)

The troublers acted as if Paul didn’t graduate from the right seminary, he didn’t have approval through the Right People.

This is still true for us, though it is applied differently. We do not receive direct revelation from God, we receive what has been written. Paul appeals to his testimony of God’s work, we appeal to the text of God’s Word. There was nothing that men—or angels—could add to the gospel Paul preached, and there is nothing that men—or angels—can add to the letters that Paul wrote (and the other men who wrote Scripture).

Paul’s example of defending himself means mostly that we should listen to him, and there is really no need to follow his example on this point because all our authority comes from God’s Word, already revealed and received. If as a pastor or a Christian what I say is denied, I should keep pointing back to the Bible.

We are originalist readers. We appreciate the work of those who help us to understand the revelation, but we do not give anyone or anything else the same authority as God’s revelation. We are not concerned about credentials of teachers as we are that they teach what is in the Bible. I am not a “No creed but the Bible” guy, but I am a “No creed gets more attention than the Bible.”

How will we know when it is God’s revelation? I’m not talking about textual criticism and the process of recognizing the canon, let alone transmission and translation. We will identify God’s Word, among other things, in that it will never allow, let alone exalt, man’s efforts to augment grace. And this is exactly what makes men so mad. They do not get to be the hero, they must be humbled.

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10)

God and grace are above the law. The law points to the need for God’s grace, and therefore there is no place for self-righteousness.

Paul refused to please men by pampering or pandering to their self-righteousness, which they define for themselves and measure for themselves and congratulate themselves. This is exactly what enabled these troublers to avoid persecution for the cross of Christ (Galatians 6:12). Jews loved self-righteousness, of course they would approve of these extras.

As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. (Galatians 6:12)

The two doctrinal points belong together. Though it may claim the words, self-righteousness does not want to submit to God’s revelation. Self-righteousness wants to use, or manipulate, parts of the revelation to prop itself up higher.

I chose Galatians as my epistle to study during this Sunday evening series because of Jew/Gentile, New Covenant questions. It’s been argued that this letter confounds Dispies, and I’m willing to drag my Dispensationalism through it and see what comes out. Based on the current schedule, we won’t get to chapter 6 and the phrase “Israel of God” until the first Sunday of September 2018, so we’ll have to be patient. Galatians is also more than appropriate for our study as a letter loved by Martin Luther (he called it his Catherine von Bora; “I am wedded to it.” Boice), championing sola fide, a doctrine well-remembered in this 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

But this is an important letter because we are a church more tempted toward the ditch of self-righteousness than unrighteousness. We are like those who want to make a good showing in the flesh (Galatians 6:12), those who are tempted to please men not by worldly compromise but by meeting external, community-agreed upon lower standards in order to feel good about our spirituality. But that is not the gospel. There is no freedom of conscience or experience of grace in that. Law, sin, death, devil, flesh, world are ALL defeated by faith in Christ. Satan will do anything to keep the guilt on us, including make us give wrong attention to the law. It is like a tomato plant boasting about the stake it’s tied to rather than the soil it’s rooted in. But the stake is completely powerless to make the plant produce any fruit.

Preaching is weird. That is not the only, or probably the best, word for it, but it is an unusual and strange thing to do. The apostle Paul told Timothy to “preach the word…in season and out of season,” and in some ways preaching is “in” and in other ways it’s “out” in this season of history. One of the reasons that I chose to preach 1 Corinthians was in order to preach about some of Paul’s principles about preaching.

Preaching is not his main point here at the beginning of the letter. If the three paragraphs starting in 1:18 are like a multi-stone ring, then the quarreling among the Corinthian Christians is the center stone and preaching is one of the surrounding gems. He appealed for them to be united in the same mind and the same judgement—the main problem, because he had hear a report that some measure of division was happening among them according to their favorite preacher—with gospel preaching being a related issue.

The gospel is a foolish and offensive message. There is no way to preach a crucified Christ in a way that appeals to man’s ego. Salvation doesn’t come by stroking self-esteem and letting a man hold on to his pretense. Abandon all hubris you who enter here by faith. God isn’t out to polish man’s wisdom to be a little more smooth or straight or shiny, He shatters the rock. God isn’t out to let men have a spin in His seat of judgement while He tries to make His case about why they should accept His claims. He atoned for such arrogant presumption on the cross.

In 1:18-25 a crucified Christ is beneath human wisdom and significance. So are Christians themselves. The cross is foolishness in the eyes of the world, and God calls fools to the cross. In 1:26-31 the resumes of the believers in Corinth are public record, and they were not impressive. They were not the educated or influential people. Yet God in His grace called them to Christ, and in Christ they got wisdom and acceptance with God and a status as His people. They could and should boast in the Lord, not themselves.

The message is not dependent on cleverness but on the cross. Those who believe the message are not important, but they are elected. And the one who proclaimed the message was also nothing special, just committed to proclaiming Christ. All this exposes preferences over preachers as petty, as foolish, and out of place with preaching Christ. It also provides some principles for preaching: 1) preach so that men will have faith in Christ not the preacher. There can only be one star. And 2) preach trusting that God, not the preacher, will bring men to faith in Christ. We preach Christ for faith and by faith.

Two “and I’s” at the beginning of verse 1 and verse 3 make for two points about the preacher.

Paul returns to his own principles. He talked in the first person about preaching the gospel in 1:17, then he described in third person how the world hears the gospel in 1:18-25, and then he described using second person who the Corinthians were in 1:26-31. He’s back to first person in this paragraph.

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. This is God’s revelation, the testimony of God, that’s what makes it special, and not lofty speech or wisdom. The “lofty speech” refers to high-sounding talk, to “big words” (TEV), and “wisdom” is the status-elevating philosophy of the world. Paul made a conscious choice not to “compose speeches fishing for admiration” (Garland).

It’s not that Paul was incompetent. “When Paul and Barnabas were in Lystra…the pagans identified Paul with Hermes, the Greek god of communication (whose Roman name was Mercury), because Paul was the chief speaker (Acts 14:12)” (Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry, 34-35).

But he explains, For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. This doesn’t mean that Paul only had one sermon, even less that he looked down on rational thought. He was making a grammatical and logical case while writing the letter.

It means that he only had one focus when he talked with unbelievers. He always focused on Jesus Christ, and especially on him crucified. But this is like limiting yourself to only talking about the oceans rather than land. A crucified Christ includes why there is death at all: sin, and how sin entered the world: Adam’s fall, and who is in charge of all of this: God, the Creator and Lawgiver. Speaking of which, there’s God’s law, and the sacrificial system, both of which Christ fulfills. So Genesis, and Exodus, and Leviticus are prerequisites to the cross. The promised Christ gets us Psalms and the prophets, like Isaiah and the Suffering Servant. Jesus is the subject of four Gospels, His virgin birth and His life and teaching and miracles. The crucifixion itself establishes doctrines such as substitutionary atonement and justification and the believer’s life and death in Him. Paul didn’t resolve to only use five words: “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Paul resolved to show how every star in the constellation revolves around the sun of a crucified Christ. This meant that he himself was not be the star; no preacher can be. And no rhetoric could be higher than the Savior.

Paul was not trying to impress the Corinthians with his language or reasoning or his charisma. Unlike so many of the traveling orators (similar to today’s motivational speakers, some TED talkers, and seminar gurus), Paul didn’t present himself as one with vitality and self-assurance. He wasn’t creating a brand for himself.

And I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling is the opposite of what the Corinthians were used to. Here was a humble man, not impressive in appearance, without a commanding presence. The weakness may have been physical weakness. We know from some of his other letters that he had problems in his body (he knew his accusers said “his bodily presence is weak” 2 Corinthians 10:10), and as he described his schedule he certainly would have been tired. The weakness could also have been a “sense of inadequacy” (Ciampa and Rosner) and discouragement as when his “spirit was not at rest” (see 2 Corinthians 2:12-13). Fear and trembling often went together. Maybe this was fear about whether or not he would be accepted by the Corinthians, or whether or not he would be faithful to his calling. More likely in context would be a certain sort of attitude of unassertiveness due to knowing who he was before God. He did not exalt himself.

He comes back to his preaching: and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. The word demonstration seems to be a technical word that the rhetoricians would know (i.e., Quintilian in his rhetoric textbook, Institutio Oratoria). The word is only used here in the New Testament and refers to the evidence or the proof that wins an argument. Paul’s proof was that a church existed in Corinth. Paul’s proof was that the weak and foolish of the world, the nobodies, were reconciled to God and putting to shame the wise by worldly standards. This could only happen by God’s Spirit. Effective preaching demonstrates the Spirit’s power, and the Spirit’s power points to Jesus. It’s important to note: preachers do right when they point to Jesus, and the Spirit also points to Jesus. Neither preachers, or the Spirit who works through them, point to themselves.

The purpose for all of this, which explains verses 3-4 but also belongs with verses 1-2, is so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. “Faith is based not on how entertaining, informative, or compelling the speaker is” (Garland).

Where does your faith rest? It’s one of the reasons that Christians get so upset when a favorite preacher of theirs has a problem. But while God may have used that preacher, and while his feet may be beautiful in having brought the good news, one’s faith must not be in the messenger. We can love the messenger and give thanks to God for him, but we cannot rely on him for our worship.

When your faith is “assailed by all the machinations of hell” (Calvin) you can’t afford for it to be supported by men alone.

The wisdom of men is like Washington weather: always changing. Today’s wisdom will be discarded with tomorrow’s news. The opposite of the wisdom of men is not the wisdom of God, but the power of God. He activates faith and obedience through His word, just as rain causes trees to grow (Isaiah 55:10-11).

Preaching is weird. Preaching is God’s idea. Preaching a crucified Christ is a foolish message, and the act of preaching, if it is done well without worldly ornaments, is also unimpressive to the world. Preaching is deeply personal, and is not about the person. Preaching requires diligent work, in study and in communication, and yet no human effort of any kind can accomplish the results. Preaching is focused on only one star, but by the light of that star so much more is seen.

The preacher is not a crafter of stories, he is a witness. Every Sunday (or teaching time) he is on the witness stand, and what is it you want him to do? Recite poetry? Give an alliterated outline of his evidence? Grandstanding drama? No. You need him to tell the truth even though none can handle the truth without the work of the Spirit.

This is very humbling. “Great” preaching is dangerous because the temptation is always there to believe the preacher makes the difference. This is why some divisions among Christians take place. This is why some preachers try to build their own platform. And it’s wrong.

So Charles Spurgeon, the “prince of preachers,” said:

“Far better for a man that he had never been born than that he should degrade a pulpit into a show box to exhibit himself in.”

Likewise, one of Spurgeon’s students went up to preach with an attitude of great confidence, but the preaching did not go so well at all. He came down upset and discouraged and talked to Spurgeon about it. Spurgeon replied, “If you had gone up as you came down, you would have come down as you went up.”

Now might be as good of time as any to observe that just because something is said from the “pulpit” does not give it more “biblical” authority. It is a great irony that the “Bible people” and especially “Bible preachers” talk so intensely about the “pulpit” when there is no pulpit anywhere in the Bible. There was an elevated stage that Ezra spoke from (Nehemiah 8:4), translated as “pulpit” in the King James Version, but twas something he stood upon not behind. Jesus sat down on the mountain for His sermon, and Paul was happy to talk wherever he could, which included many homes. I’m fine with a pulpit as furniture, and I appreciate the liturgical statement that many (not all) of the Reformers made by putting the pulpit in the center of the room rather than the sacramental elements such as in the Catholic church to represent the centrality of the Word. Symbol and liturgy do have a place and can support the truth. But the power and authority and wisdom of the Word is in the Word as taught and applied by the Spirit. The Spirit has never needed a pulpit, and a pulpit doesn’t remove the offense of the cross.

For that matter, I can appreciate that teachers and preachers can become better at their work. Principles of communication and rhetoric serve a purpose. Paul was using a kind of rhetoric while saying that another kind of rhetoric was useless. Paul’s sermons were different to different crowds. He showed flexibility in his approach and forcefulness at times. For that matter, classical rhetoricians such as Cicero and Quintilian knew better than to speak elegant but empty words. But it has to be about more than style that manipulates. When the emphasis turns from “preach the word” to “preach the word” a preacher is, and the people are, in trouble.

There may be place to evaluate sermons and with homiletical grade sheets. But preaching competitions? Applause for a good sermon? Again, men are always tempted to depend on themselves (and give credit to themselves), and sadly it is no less true in worship. Preaching must be by faith, that God will make it effective.

And so your faith must be at work in worship. You should not wait for some song or sermon to move your feelings before you worship. You were not saved by the melody or rhythm of any hymn, you were not saved by any outline or illustration. You were saved by faith in Christ, and so you worship by faith in Christ. This is the power of God.

I’m not sure what evangelism and apologetics and pastoral ministry were like a couple hundred years ago. We have some books, we can study history, but it’s hard to get a full picture of both what men wanted to say and what men wanted to hear. Since I’ve been alive and able to listen to gospel preaching and gospel presentations the emphasis is usually on how much value and worth and significance the other person has in God’s eyes. You don’t have to search too far to hear, “God values you so much that He sent His Son to die for you.” But, is that true?

What is man’s worth in God’s eyes? Does God see something of value in us that causes Him to love us? Yes, men are made in God’s image. No other created being in the universe has such capacity for glory as a human being. We do believe that all human life, all human lives, are valuable in this respect. But even at this point no person has inherent importance. Any value is still a gift and worth is borrowed. Our best glory is reflected glory.

And that was before the fall of mankind in Adam. We are all born into Adam’s guilt. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. We are sinners and we sin. We are wretched.

Yet men want to feel good about themselves. They want others to think they are great. They want respect and appreciation and admiration. They want to be liked, and get likes.

In his 17th century book Pensees, Blaise Pascal wrote:

That something so obvious as the vanity of the world should be so little recognized that people find it odd and surprising to be told that it is foolish to seek greatness; that is most remarkable. (Pensees, 5)

The cross does not boost our egos, it kills them. The cross does not make us feel good about ourselves, the cross demands that we repent from loving ourselves. Love of self belongs with wisdom as the world defines it. That’s why the world thinks that a crucified Christ is folly. But the word of the cross is the power of God and it ruins the world’s evaluation of status. Some people think a crucified Christ is foolish, yet a crucified Christ saves fools.

Paul could have pointed to any number of proofs, but he starts with the personal testimonies of those to whom he wrote. They were not special, certainly not in the world’s eyes. They didn’t have extra influence. They were nobodies. And Paul says God chose them to receive everything in Jesus. All they lost was pretense and all they gained was glory in God.

There were quarrels in the church (1 Corinthians 1:11) apparently not based on who was speaking the truth but who said it better. Believers were tempted to divide from one another based on a pecking order of personality and external preferences. But the church isn’t built around significance, it’s built around the cross, and the significant people of the world think a crucified Christ is offensive. Paul wants the believers to boast, but to boast like a nobody. To get them there he urges them to consider their calling.

Paul’s first evidence is the status of most of the church. They weren’t great or popular or pretty people by worldly standards.

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. Paul tells them to stop and assess, as if he said, “Look at yourselves! No one thought of you as anything special.”

The wise guys are those esteemed for their education and intelligence, at least according to worldly standards (κατὰ σάρκα, “according to the flesh”). The powerful are the influential; “the strength in view is not the strength of the weight-lifter but the strength of the opinion-maker” (Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry, 27). Those of noble birth are those with social status for their family resources and connections. Most of the Corinthian Christians didn’t come from the upper class, from the respected group of cultural taste-makers. They didn’t have “ancestry, accomplishment, or affiliation” (ESVSB).

In Roman culture, they were the plebeians; they didn’t have friends in low places, they themselves were the ones in low places. That not many means that there were some that the world recognized, men such as Gaius (able to host of “the whole church” - Romans 16:23) and Crispus (ruler of the synagogue - Acts 18:8), but the majority were of humble status. Some would have been slaves, some former slaves, some poor, perhaps wondering where their next meal would come from.

Yet they were called. Paul keeps using the idea in chapter one to emphasize God’s choice, and he’s about to say even more about God’s choice in the next three verses. God did not make His church out of celebrities and scholars and statesmen. It wasn’t because God couldn’t, but because He had a different point to make.

Here is emphasis by repetition: God chose, God chose, God chose. Three times God chose directly against what the world exalts and He chose on purpose what they would not in order to show the vanity of their standards and ultimately to show how little value humanity brings to the table.

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. The world has a system and that system means nothing in terms of who knows God or even reality. They think they’re doing advanced calculus and they’re barely fist-drawing shapes with jumbo crayons. Yet those who have faith like a child will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:1-4). God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. A man might have his hands on cultural levers, but no man has the power to deliver himself from sin, either in practice or before God. No one achieves abundant life, but the Shepherd gives it to His sheep (John 10:10). And God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are. These are the “nobodies,” the “nothings,” those who are not even considered to be persons, let alone significant persons.

The principle behind these choices is summarized in verse 29. So that no human being might boast in the presence of God. This is not because God can’t handle the competition. It’s because it’s not true and it cannot be the best for any man to prop himself up on a lie. How can he boast in his wisdom that can’t best God’s foolish thing? How can he boast about his money that God gave him? How can he boast about his ancestry? He had nothing to do with who his parents were. As the the Old Testament prophet urged: “Let all the earth keep silence before him” (Habakkuk 2:20).

So this is the profile of those God chose: foolish, weak, low, despised, nobodies and it was on purpose.

There isn’t any reason to boast in our inherent worth because we don’t have any. But we will get to boast (see verse 31). We don’t have anything that God hasn’t given to us. And what else could He give us that we don’t have in Christ?

Verse 30 could be translated “From Him you are in Christ.” An earlier version of the ESV had, “He is the source of our life.” The updated ESV has, Because of him. It’s not because of themselves, it’s not because of clever or charismatic teachers. From God we have four things in Christ:

All of these gifts are from God. We were not great but He has given us great things.

Consider your calling. Consider what you have in Christ. And now we have the antidote to human boasting (verse 29). We should boast but not in ourselves.

The so that sends us to the summary. Here’s what to do now. As it is written prepares us for the Old Testament quote coming from Jeremiah 9:24, though the entire paragraph assumes knowledge of Jeremiah 9:23 too.

Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 9:23–24)

We are to boast, to celebrate, to praise, to commend, to brag about knowing and being in Christ. Do acknowledge what you’ve been given and make sure others know you know that it’s been given.

Not many are chosen from positions of worldly influence, but that doesn’t mean God doesn’t choose any. “Kings are people, too” (Wilson, Empries of Dirt, 97). “God himself, by the mouth of David, exhorts kings to embrace Christ (Ps. 2:12)” (Calvin). But the existence and influence of the church doesn’t depend on having “important” members.

The Corinthian church was evidence of God’s grace, grace that messes up human standards of evaluation. Their backgrounds were not important, but God chose them because of it. He didn’t choose them because they were so “valuable” to Him, but because they weren’t valuable in the world’s eyes.

So the Corinthians should not have been puffed up against one another. They should not have been dividing over men’s words when it was the word of the cross that humbles, and gives real gifts in Christ. It didn’t matter who had more followers or likes, actually.

Likewise, not many of us are great. We are in a small town in a distant state. We are not people of platform, though we are people gifted in Christ. On the congregational level we are not impressive, and that’s exactly how God is using us to shame the famous, the influential, and independent people around us.

But in our hearts we still tend to want too much applause, influence, recognition, respectability. But we are not the eagles in The Lord of the Rings, we are not Gwaihir the Windlord. We are the dull and dumpy hobbits.

A final word from Blaise Pascal:

Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness. (Pensees (Penguin Classics), 57)