Two Journeys

I like to ask you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. As I've studied the Scripture for many years, as I think about as a pastor, I think about the people that are entrusted in my care to shepherd and to pray for you and as I think about my own spiritual condition, I think about my own soul. I've come to the conclusion that there is a single greatest danger that faces every human being on the face of the earth. There is no danger like it, of infinite danger to all of us, and that is that we will lose our souls. It’s the danger that on Judgment Day, Christ would say to us, "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." This is greatest danger that faces every human being. For Jesus said, "What would it profit someone, if he should gain the whole world and lose his soul?" The second greatest danger that faces every person (and this is for Christians to hear carefully), is that you will waste your lives on things that don't matter.

And the text we're looking at this morning, comes really in the flavor of a warning, although there's promise in it, promise of eternal rewards, but it's couched and set as a warning. And the idea here is that all of us who are Christians are building something. Really, every human being is building something, there is a life work. The question is; are we building well or poorly? Are we building wisely or foolishly? That's what's in front of us. And what's amazing is, if you're a Christian, God has guaranteed that to some degree, your life will not be wasted. There will be some good works flowing through you of eternal value, and you can rejoice in that. But I think we're all going to feel on Judgment Day there should have been more. I really believe that, I think we're all going to feel that, "Oh, if only there had been more." And it'll be the last moment of regret we will have, because the Lord Himself with His own hand will wipe every tear from our eyes, and there'll be no more mourning, there'll be no regrets in heaven, we will be deeply, richly satisfied with Christ's work and satisfied also with our own. We will not be lamenting missed opportunities in heaven. But I think we will lament them on Judgment Day.

And my job is to help minimize that for all of you. So it would be wise for you and for me to heed the warnings and the encouragements in this text, and to build wisely and well. So not, "How do I put it shoddy workmanship." A little while ago I was reading about an earthquake in Turkey in 1999, August 17, that hit a city in Turkey, and many of the buildings collapsed and killed people, there were 17,000 deaths in this earthquake, 45,000 injuries. And the overwhelming majority of the deaths were caused by the collapse of new apartment buildings that were poorly built. Shoddy workmanship resulted directly in the deaths of people. And so there were poor foundations, they were laid poorly, there was lack of structural integrity in the buildings, lack of reinforcing steel rods, rebar. And the walls just collapsed, the floors collapsed and people were killed. The buildings had not been properly inspected by governmental officials, construction companies paid bribes and cut corners and people died as a result. Similar tragedies have hit in other places as well, I think of an earthquake, similar earthquake in Port-au-Prince Haiti. Same thing, shoddy workmanship resulting in the deaths of many.

Now, we're surrounded by building projects all the time. When we go out of this building, to the left there's a high-rise skyscraper which I'm told is office building and condos. Don't you hope it's being built well? And there's a parking garage straight back there. I've been watching it rise. One of the buildings is prettier than the other, but the other is functional. And I'm hoping that the structural engineers have done their work well. And so, when the cars start going up those spiral ramps that they'll hold the weight. We've got the new public library over here which is growing before our very eyes. And there's all kinds of steel work and concrete work, aren't you hoping and praying that the work is being done well, quality work?

Well, as we turn to 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, there is an architectural metaphor, Paul has been using an agricultural one, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it but God made it grow." But now he shifts over to an architectural metaphor: "You are God's field, God's building." So we're both, but now he's talking about structural integrity and building. And he's calling on the workers on the church of Jesus Christ to build well and wisely. The text makes it plain that shoddy workmanship in the construction of the church will be exposed, it will be made manifest, it will be revealed by the day, Judgment Day. Conversely, excellent workmanship will also be manifested, will be disclosed, it will be revealed on Judgment Day as well, everything will be laid bare.

Now, the picture in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 is more of a communal building project. It's a community building, we're all working on this thing. Jesus gives us a much more individualized picture at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. You remember after laying out those three incredible chapters of doctrine in which He's talking to his disciples about how to be a disciple of His in this world, He then gives the warning to all those who have heard his teachings, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice, is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rains came down and the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, but it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice, is like a foolish man who builds his house on a sand and the rains came down and the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."

It's always been amazing to me that the Sermon on the Mount ends with a great crash. And so that noise, if you can hear it by faith, is an individual person's life crashing down when severely tested. Now, these two images I think, should not be kept separate. It's not like there's two different building project. You got like the Amish barn raising going on, that the whole community works on, and then you've got your individual farm that you're building, and they're two just separate things. We know in the end they must be harmonized, they're the same thing, you as a Christian are building something with your life. And that is part of the building of the church of Jesus Christ, they are not separate but they are together. And so we need to look at both the idea of a collective building of the church well and wisely and also individually, the call to you to ask, "How are you building, what are you doing with your life?"

So there's a focus, first and foremost, I think, on those that are called into the ministry of the Word, like Paul and Apollos were, to do very skillful work in the Word and not shoddy workmanship, those that follow him, as the church in Corinth rises. But then it just becomes the language, it becomes universal, "if any man builds on this foundation…" So it's really speaking to all of us and that we're all involved in this building project.

Now this, 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, is one of the most exciting, interesting, provocative paragraphs in 1 Corinthians. It stands as both a continual warning to us and a continual exhortation and encouragement to us. That we should, as those entrusted with the ministry of the Word, build well and wisely and be very careful. And that you as a church should not accept shoddy workmanship from the pulpit or from any teaching ministry of this church. If the Lord doesn't return in our lifetime, if this church continues to be a light shining in a dark place, I will be replaced someday. All of the elders will be replaced, it's up to the church to be certain, you choose craftsmen that will be rightly handling the Word of God, and not put up with shoddy workmanship in the teaching of the Word.

But then each of you has to look to yourself and say, "What am I building with my life? Is it going to last on Judgement Day? Is my work going to survive the testing that's coming on Judgment Day?" Both of those things are in play here.

So let's start with Paul and a statement about himself. Paul said, "I laid a foundation,"  in verse 10. "By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder." So Paul laid the foundation. And he makes it plain in verse 11, The only true foundation is Jesus Christ, "for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ." So he asserts that the foundation's already laid. The work is finished. In John 19, when Jesus breathes his last, He says, "It is finished." It's perfect, there's nothing that can be added to the finished work of Jesus Christ in atoning for sins. So he said, "I can't lay a foundation other than what Jesus already laid."

The author to Hebrews, in Hebrews 1:3 says concerning Jesus Christ, "After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven." That's a finished work. Purification for sins has been perfectly provided by the blood of Jesus. He sat down, He's finished with His atoning work. There's nothing that Paul could do to add to that work or improve it. This is the sure immovable foundation of the church of Jesus Christ. And it will never move. However, when Christ suffered and died for His people, He did so outside the gates of Jerusalem, in Judea, a long way away from Corinth. And my guess is that the people in Corinth knew literally nothing about it when it happened. Life went on in the pagan Corinth way, just like every other day. They had heard nothing of Jesus. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on someone they've never believed in? And how can they believe in someone of whom they've never heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?

And so Paul sent out to bring the good news of the death of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world to Corinth. And so he laid a foundation in their minds and hearts by his clear, simple Spirit-anointed preaching of the Word of the Gospel. As he said in Chapter 2, he said, "When I came to you…I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." So that's how he laid the foundation. He didn't lay anything, but by proclaiming Christ crucified and resurrected, he established in their minds and hearts, the foundation for their souls and for the Corinthian church. That was the foundation that Paul laid. And he said no other foundation could be laid.

The Earthquake/Shaking is Coming

It's the only foundation that will survive the massive earthquake that's coming. And there is an earthquake coming. There is a shaking coming on all these structures. Jesus alluded to it, the rains came down, the streams rose, winds blew in beat against the house. There is a testing coming, there's a shaking coming of every structure, all of it. And no other foundation will survive the massive earthquake that's coming. Now, you may say, "Are you talking about literal earthquake? I've lived through an earthquake in Japan in 1995, January '95, I lived through an earthquake, some of the buildings in Kobe survived, some were destroyed.

And I've seen the buildings that were destroyed by that earthquake and some that survived. So are we talking about a literal shaking?" Yes, actually yes, there is a literal shaking of the earth that is coming. As the author to Hebrew says in Hebrews 12:26, "now he has promised, ' Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.'" He's going to shake everything. He's going to test everything. Or again, as we saw in the Book of Revelation, you remember in Revelation 6:12-17; "As Jesus opened the sixth seal, it says there was a great earthquake, and the sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat's hair, and the whole moon turned blood red and the stars in the sky fell to the earth as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. And the sky receded like a scroll rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place, and then, the kings of the earth, and the princes, and the generals and the rich and the mighty, and every slave, and every free man, hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains, and they called to the mountains and the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath is coming, who shall be able to stand?"

So yeah, there's a shaking that's coming. But you could also say it's just a metaphor for the shaking of your life by Judgment Day, the testing of your life, the soundness of the foundation. And Paul says, "There's no other foundation that's going to survive the testing." No other gospel will survive it. Paul says in Galatians 1, "If we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than what we preach to you, let him be eternally condemned." That false gospel, those other messages, those other religions will not survive the shaking that's coming. And all of the buildings that they are building on those faulty idolatrous, demonic foundations will crash to the ground, they'll lose it all. There is only one foundation that will still stand after the shaking that God is going to bring, and that is the foundation of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. As Paul said, "By the grace that God gave me, I lay that foundation in your minds and hearts."

And what grace that was, that God gave to Paul? How did he get involved in that? He hated this Gospel, he hated the church, he was against it. But he says later in the same book of 1 Corinthians 59 and 10, he says, "I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God, but by the grace of God, I am what I am." "And so by the grace that God gave me, I have the privilege of laying the foundation O Corinthians in your hearts and minds."

And Paul has already established that he and Apollos were only servants. One planted the seed Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So they're nothing but only God who establishes growth. But they had a role, and it was through Paul and Apollos that they came to believe. And so there was a role that Paul played in laying this foundation. Through human agents, people come to believe or if they've already believed, they believe more and better and stronger, and so we have a work to do through faith in Christ. And it's interesting, Paul calls himself a wise master builder. So you're wondering about Paul, "Where now is your humility?" "I am a wise, I am an expert builder." Well, humility doesn't mean saying falsehood about yourself. Paul actually had through the grace of God, skill in knowing what went into a healthy local church. And so look at Verse 10, "According to the grace God of god given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation." The word "skilled," is wise. "With the wisdom that God gave me, I knew how to do this, I knew how to begin a church in Corinth." He was very wise, Paul was carrying on his ministry in a very wise or skillful way. He understands God's will, he understands what he's trying to do and he's doing it well.

And he calls himself a master builder. Literally, in architekton or a ruler builder, from which we get the word "architect". So it would be somebody in charge of the work, in charge of the work site. Maybe he even drew up the blueprints, he knows the whole plan. And you can imagine in our context, a subcontractor who's going to be bringing in other workers and evaluating them and choosing who's going to actually get to work on this project, but he's just in charge of the whole thing. So he is a wise master builder, and so he knew what went into a healthy local church, how to begin it, how to start the work, and then how to disciple and train leaders, how to teach them about the ordinances, water baptism, the Lord's Supper, church discipline, elders, deacons, discipleship patterns, all of these things, healthy marriage, parenting, all the things that goes into a healthy local church life. He says, "as a wise master builder, I've been doing that." But then when that work was done for Paul, it was time for him to leave. And so he left. He was called on to be a trailblazing, church planting apostle to the Gentiles, his time in Corinth had come to an end. And he left, and Apollos came and he implies others came too. And they're building. "Someone else is building on it" in verse 10. So he speaks a warning to everyone who comes after me in this work in Corinth, and then symbolically, all Christian work that follows that first generation.

He gives a warning, and that includes all of us. Each one who follows me in this work better be careful how he build. See to it how you build. You better see it, literally in the Greek, look at how you're building, see it, be careful how you're building. It's a sober warning for all of us.

Now, 2 Corinthians, Paul talks about some that come masquerading as servants of righteousness, they are actually serving Satan. They are false apostles. Satan masquerades as an angel of light and they masquerade as servants of righteousness. He's talking there about false teachers who would come later. However, I don't think that's what he's addressing here. 1 Corinthians 3, he's talking about genuine Christians who are building on the true foundation. Because he mentions that they who do some shoddy workmanship are themselves saved, but only as those escaping through the flame. So we're talking about genuine Christians who come along and don't do good work on the foundation that He laid. So I winna give you four criteria for evaluating the work.

Four Criteria for Excellent Workmanship in the Church of Christ

There are four things I want you to look at in terms of following Paul in building the church of Jesus Christ.

These are going to be evaluated among other things, on Judgment Day.

1) The method you use

First, the method. Paul says, "Let each one be careful how he builds." What is your approach? Now, God ordained that the foundation would be laid through the simple, clear, preaching of the Gospel, but to build on that foundation it must be a careful handling of the Word of God. Careful handling of the Scripture. And so I think about 2 Timothy 2:15, which says, "Study to show yourselves approved unto God, workmen who do not need to be ashamed rightly dividing the Word of truth." So, be certain that the craftsmen who come after have a method in the Word of God that's accurate and faithful. And I would advocate preaching and teaching systematically through the Word of God, not shrinking back from any difficult text.

I like to follow consecutive exposition, not every expository preacher does that, but expository teaching and preaching is the best. It's good skillful work. And by that I mean, you get out of the way of the text and just use the text as the message. And so, the point of the text becomes what we end up talking about. I don't come to 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 thinking, "Oh, what do I talk about?" Or "Hey, I think I'll talk about architecture." The text talks about it, so you're just following the text. I advocate that. And it's not enough to just preach the Gospel, that's milk, that's the beginning.

Now, the Gospel is also meat, I understand that as it's applied to the life, but you need to move on from God-man-Christ-Response and move on from just preaching the simple Gospel week after week after week after week after week, at that same church. That is not going to build the church toward maturity. And so Paul says to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:27, "I have not shrunk back from preaching to you the whole counsel of God." The whole counsel of God. So some churches focus on personalities, they focus on entertainment, they have a certain style of public presentation that tickles the ears maybe or uses humor or uses just the big personality in front of the screen or something, others look to other techniques and methods and things like that.

We must trust the Word of God to build the church. That's the method by which a healthy church is going to be built.

2) The materials you use

And then it's not far from the materials, it's almost the same thing. The materials that Paul talks about here, gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay and straw, look at it in verse 12 and 13, "If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each one's work." So this talks about actual building material, so its doctrines, its teachings that come from the Word of God. But also, spiritual leaders need to put their lives on display. There needs to be a role modeling. Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. So there has to be quality teaching and quality living, and that will build the church well. Now, since the work is going to be tested with fire, the image here is fire. We understand that gold and silver and precious stones survive fire. To some degree you could say they're either forged in fire or purified by fire, but wood, hay, and straw are consumed.

And so the image at the end here is if what you've built burns up, then that would mean that wood, hay, and straw, are bad in this setting. Although you could imagine fine workmanship in wood, and so it's not universally bad, but in this setting, wood, hay and straw represents bad building materials. You don't want to have used those on the church of Jesus Christ. So what we have to do is we have to make certain that the things that we're doing with our lives, what we are teaching, how we are living is of the highest quality that will survive the scrutiny, the manifestation, the disclosure, the testing, all those words are used here, it's really intensive here. This disclosure that will happen on the day, on Judgment Day. So what this says to me, if we go to the individual work that's going on this collective project, each one of you and I, all of us, need to make the most of our brief time on earth. We don't have long here. The days are precious, and it's all we ever have is today. You don't have yesterday, you don't have tomorrow, all you have is today and you're called on today, if today you hear His voice, don't harden your heart. So build with gold and silver and costly stones today, and that must mean obey His word. Do what He told you to do like a servant would. Make the most of your time.

3) The manner in which you build

Thirdly, manner. Paul will make it very clear later in this book, but I want to go ahead and reach for some of that and bring it back here. It matters how you do what you do. He's going to make it very clear in 1 Corinthians 8, in the section on meat sacrifice to idols. The knowledge, right doctrinal knowledge about idols and meat and all that isn't enough. You need love. So knowledge alone destroys actually, it pops up. It's like a bubble economy, you can imagine a bubble structure, it's going to pop, it's not going to survive Judgment Day, but love edifies or builds up. So there's that sense of structural strength in right doctrine plus right affections or love. Oh, he's going to make this very plain in chapter 13 as you well know. He goes on and on right in the middle of the section on spiritual gifts, including prophecy, and teaching, and speaking in tongues, and all of those things. Right in the middle of that he says basically, "Can I just stop and say something about the manner in which you use your spiritual gifts?"

"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but if I have not love, I am a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and I can fathom all mysteries, and if I have all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. And if I give all that I possess to the poor, and if I surrender my body to the flames but if I have not love I gain nothing." And then he describes what he means, love is patient, love is kind. While you're doing your spiritual gift ministry, are you a patient and kind person? Are you doing it in a patient and kind way, or are you easily angered? Are you arrogant, boastful, rude? Series of negatives that love is not. So the manner in which you use your spiritual gift ministry and in which you build matters a lot.

4. The motive in building.

And then finally, motive. We could say a lot about this, but it must be the glory of God. "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God," 1 Corinthians 10:31. So method, materials, manner and motive, all of these things will be tested on Judgment Day.

And so what will remain of your life work? Look again at these words Verses 12-15, "If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light." It will be revealed. So shown, brought to light, revealed. "And the fire will test the quality of each one's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward, if it is built up he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved but only as one escaping through the flames." So, Paul is going to make this very plain at the beginning of the next chapter. We can't really evaluate another person's work until Judgment Day. There's a lot of things that are hidden, there's just some things we don't know. And so we think we know this pastor, this leader, this godly man, godly woman, but we really don't know them, all we can know is what our eyes show us, we don't really know. And so Paul actually says at beginning of Chapter 4, he says to judge nothing until the day. That day is going to bring to light the hidden secrets and the motives of men's hearts.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, George Whitefield wanted to put on his tomb, "Here lies George Whitefield, what kind of man he was, the day will reveal." That's all you need to put on my tomb. You don't know me, you won't know me, but Judgment Day you'll know me, you'll know who I really am. So it's going to be revealed in the text here, with fire, and fire is going to test the quality of each person's work. There is a warning here but also a promise. Our works all of them, everything we've done in the body, while in the body, whether good or bad, will be tested. 2 Corinthians 5 makes that very plain, whether good or bad, everything will be tested, evaluated. Here, the testing is with fire, and in this image, the gold, silver, costly stones, survive, and the wood, hay and straw gets burned up. So that is shoddy workmanship.

Teachers, preachers, who rely on gimmicks and not the faithful expounding of the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, will see their work was shoddy. And that goes back to 2 Timothy 2:15, listen again to those words, "Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman," who what? "Does not need to be ashamed." Well, when will that shame come, Judgment Day? Judgment Day. Hopefully, if it would have been then, sooner the better. Better be ashamed now and change, and start teaching and preaching accurately and faithfully the Word of God. So also for all of us, that we would not be ashamed on that day, let us be ashamed now.

Well, there's time to do something about it. All of us are going to have our works tested. So what kind of things are wood, hay, and straw? I've thought a lot about this, what's going to burn up? Well, certainly sins are going to burn up. All of our sins, things that we did that violated our conscience, that violated God's Word, it's going to burn up, it's worthless in terms of building the church. Sins of omission, sins of commission. But also I think just things that really were of no eternal consequence. God wants us to have common grace blessings, He wants us to enjoy this world, He wants us to be able to enjoy hobbies, pass times, entertainments, pleasures, He gives them to us in measure to enjoy, but we know that there's a possibility we can become addicted to those things.

Netflix, spectator sports, hobbies, shopping therapy. I don't know what all to say, it's not that the Internet itself evil, but it's just too much. And up to a certain point, it was a gift of God, but beyond it, it is just wood, hay and straw. All the time you're spending on, it's just going to burn up. And I think about our words, like our words, James talked about the tongue. Boy, do we say a lot of words? I say a lot of words. I pray, "O God protect my words while I preach." I feel like the Lord says, "Well, I would like to protect you all the time. It's not just when you're preaching, all of the words matter." Jesus said in Matthew 12:36, "I tell you the people have to give an account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken." Do you believe that some of your words will be gold or silver or costly stones, but some of your words will be wood or hay or straw, do you think so? Some things you say you wish you hadn't said. It's like, "Oh God, that I would not speak straw anymore." So we talked about arguments, complaining, conflicts, filthy language, off color jokes, all of these things that the Bible makes very clear are disgusting to God. That we would put a guard over our mouth and say nothing except what is helpful, for what? "Building others up according to their needs," Ephesians 4:29. So build with yours. Oh God, make gold come out of my mouth, may silver come out of my mouth, may diamonds come out of my mouth.

You want to know how to do that? Do a lot of this, talk about this a lot. You know what, Scripture this, Scripture that. Make it be said of you, "you're always talking Scripture." I remember one person they said about him, he was so saturated in the Bible that if you pricked him his blood was Biblin, just Bible came out all the time.  I would like to be like that. That's safe for me. Other than that, I'm thinking maybe the more I go on, the more it's going to be wood, hay or straw. And what does it say if what you have built is burned, what does the text say? Suffer loss. I have meditated it, looked at it in the Greek, yes, it's there, loss. And it's hard to see it go. It will be painful, therefore I just cannot get away from a painful Judgment Day for Christians.

He himself will be saved, but…

I know one of you will say to me. Romans 8:1, is the favorite one. "There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Friends I'm not talking about condemnation, I'm talking about evaluation. You will be evaluated, your works will be evaluated. There is a distinction in the text between the person and his or her works. The works can get burned up, the person can be saved, but only as one escaping through the flame. There is a distinction made. So our persons have been judged if we're Christians, at the cross. Condemnation poured down on Jesus in our behalf, He is our lightning rod by simple faith, not by works, all of our condemnation is gone, hallelujah. We will be saved. But what about the works? They're going to be tested, they're going to be evaluated. And if you see them burn up, it will hurt you. My job is to minimize your suffering and maximize your portfolio, your retirement portfolio. How's your retirement portfolio? I don't mean the one that you're gonna have for 11 years or 16 years, I mean the one you're going to have for eternity. My job as a pastor is make you eternally rich by teaching the Word. I can't make you anything, but to point to riches. And that's what he's calling on us, it says, in Verse 15, "If it is burned up, he himself will suffer loss. He will suffer loss, he himself will be saved but only as one escaping through the flames."

Now, if the individual has literally no works at all, no good works, I would say that they're not born again. They're not born again. This comes from many places in Scripture. But John 15 in particular, Jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me, and I in him, he will bear much fruit, apart from me, you can do nothing." It says, "He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit. While every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes so it will be even more fruitful." The branches that are cut off are collected and thrown in the fire and burned. So what does that mean? It means people, I think in that context, who hang around Christians, who go to church but they're not converted, they're not genuinely born again, there's no fruit, literally no fruit in their lives. They are not talked about in this text. Because the people here are saved, and if you are saved, there will be good works. Praise God, you'll have something to show for your life. But there is a sense of loss here in which you could have had more. So what does it mean that he himself will be saved but only as one escaping through the flames?

Well, I was reading some time ago about the Clipper Ship Era. And I was reading about one particular captain, and this is what they did, this is the fastest way to travel from San Francisco to New York back before the Transcontinental Railroad. And so he put all of his gold that he had gotten from the gold rush on a fast clipper ship, which he owned. And he was going down around the Straits of Magellan and going back up to New York to live a comfortable life. But at a certain place, a certain point, there was a severe storm right near the shore, the boat and everything he owned in that life went down but he made it to shore. Bereft of all of his worldly possessions but he himself survived. So that's a pretty striking image. This one is even more striking. To actually have to have a sense and experience of Christ's disappointment or displeasure with you over the wood, hay and straw of your life. We should feel that now, don't you think? It's good to feel it now when we can do something about it. I don't want to be that kind of person.

The promise of reward

Conversely, there's a promise here in Verse 14, "If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward." And so next time I preach on 1 Corinthians, I'm going to talk more about that. I'm going to talk more about rewards and how to store them up. So I'm going to be getting ready to enhance your retirement portfolio, but you do your own study and we'll come together on that text.

Evaluate your life and your works

Let me do some application and then we'll be done. First, this text calls on you to evaluate your life and works. First and foremost, I just want to ask, are you in the faith at all? Are you a Christian? Are you born again? Do you know that your sins have been forgiven through faith in Christ? Remember I began the sermon saying, the greatest tragedy, the greatest danger that ever faces anyone is to lose their soul. The Gospel is simple, it's easy to understand the God who made the universe and everything in it, also crafted you in your mother's womb, desires to have a relationship with you.

He has given laws by which we are to live and all of us have broken them. We have broken the 10 Commandments, we have broken the two great commandments, we are law breakers, and we could not save ourselves, we are under the death penalty, we stood in danger of dying eternally in hell, and we couldn't save ourselves. So God sent a son Jesus into the world who lived a sinless life and died an atoning death in our place. He shed His blood for us. And He was raised from the dead on the third day and by faith in His name, repentance of sins and faith in His name, all our sins can be forgiven. So let me just ask, are you a Christian? Are you born again? Now is the time, today is a day of salvation, trust in Him.

Evaluate how you have been building your life

Secondly, if you are a Christian, same thing, evaluate your life. Evaluate what you're doing. How are you investing your life? How are you investing your time? What are you spending your time on? What are you spending your money on? What are you spending your strength on? Is it gold or silver or costly stones? Or is it wood, hay, or straw? And the image of gold, silver, costly stones, if you could rearrange silver, gold, costly stones, that's the ascending order of worth and value. So it's almost like good, better, best. I just want to invest my life on the best things that I can do. And that's a challenge, because the flesh fights that all the time. But evaluate, what are you spending your life on?

And if you want to have more gold, silver, costly stones, then I would urge you to saturate your mind and your heart, every day in the Word of God. Strengthen your faith. It will take the gauze, the hazy vision that Satan puts in our minds and you'll realize the significance of today. And then you'll say, "Secondly, God you have ordained some good works for me to walk in today. Help me walk in them, by the power of the Holy Spirit." And then look at your life big picture, what is the big project of your life for Christ? Do you have one, do you have a spiritual gift ministry? Do you have a calling in life? Everyone needs one. I'm in vocational ministry. Most of you won't be. But you should all have a definable spiritual gift ministry that you're doing a lot. Is that going on in your life? So close with me in prayer.

Father we thank you for the time we've had to look at this. I pray as we analyze it and think about it more next week, that you would help us to be as rich as possible in good works. Help us to be as rich as possible in things of eternal consequence. Help us to be strong in the spirit and make the most of every moment, to redeem the time because the days are evil, and Satan is working against, and our flesh is so weak. Help us O God be strong. Thank you for your grace, that first and foremost, you've delivered us from hell. And secondly, O Lord, you have delivered us from wasting our time, wasting our lives. So God give us grace to see the day properly and make the most of it in Jesus name, amen.

Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 3:5-9. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, was a staggeringly talented man. He was the ruler of the greatest empire the world had ever seen up to that point, he was a military genius, an amazingly gifted administrator, and he was a shrewd judge of men. He had penetrating discernment. He was able to organize lesser talented men, to maximize their abilities, and through sheer willpower and fear, he galvanized the Babylonian people into a force for world domination. By his conquests, he made Babylon amazingly wealthy. Gold and silver and jewels flowed into the city from the distant corners of his mighty empire, and with the wealth of his conquest, he made the city of Babylon brilliant. The walls were heightened and fortified, the houses were embellished and enriched with the finest materials. His own palace was the envy of the world. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, mythological perhaps, but a symbol of the beauty of the capital city of that empire. It was planted with trees from all over the world, and the fruit trees were lush and abundant.

Now, one night, King Nebuchadnezzar was walking on the roof of his palace, and he looked out over his capital city with deep-seated pride. He was looking out over the city that his genius had built. He was in awe of what he had done, the things that he had built, and he breathed in the fragrant air of his creations and his successes, and he spoke in self-worship. "Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?" He didn't, it seemed, speak these words to anyone in particular, for I don't think he really much cared what any other human being thought. He was drunk with self-worship at that moment, but Almighty God heard what he said and he read accurately the pride of his heart. God knew that the spirit of Babylon was dominating this man's heart, it was a spirit of soaring arrogance that led the Babylonians centuries before that to build a lofty tower, the Tower of Babel, to make a name for themselves. And it was also the spirit of self-worship that led the true king of Babylon, Satan, to ascend in heaven to topple Almighty God from his throne, as it's reported for us in Isaiah 14.

The king of Babylon, Satan. "You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High." God hates that arrogance in Satan's heart, and he hates the fact that we, the human race, have joined Satan in the same arrogant rebellion. And so, he had warned Nebuchadnezzar in a dream, a year before that evening walk out over the rooftop palace, that if he didn't repent of his pride and give God the glory for his empire, he would be struck by God and given the mind of an animal for seven years, until he acknowledged that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men, and gives them to whoever he chooses.

Now, friends, there's nothing wrong with a certain level of joy in accomplishment. God has created human beings in his image, and has given us remarkable brains and dexterous fingers. And we can make beautiful things, even amazing things. With our skillful labors, we can build strong, soaring buildings, we can paint masterpiece paintings, we can compose concertos for violin, and some of us have the skill to play them. And there's nothing wrong with working hard at our tasks in our jobs and feeling a certain level of satisfaction in our labors. As Ecclesiastes 2:24 says, "A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God." However, everything we put our hands to in this world, every physical thing, is temporary, and someday it will all become dust in the wind.

God’s Servants Must be Humbled

Everything that God builds through the church, by the power of the Spirit, is eternal. All of the work that we do in the spiritual fields, the harvest field, spiritually, is eternal. The building that we do in the spiritual structure that is rising to be a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit, is eternal. The glorious work of the harvest, the glorious work of the building of the spiritual church of Jesus Christ, that's eternal. And to be qualified for this work, the highest and most glorious work there is, God's servants must first be humbled, and I mean humbled to the core. We must acknowledge, from the depths of our hearts, that we are merely servants who can accomplish nothing apart from Christ and apart from his Spirit. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Someday, we'll be in Heaven, we'll be in a far more glorious city than Babylon ever was. And I can imagine we might walk on the rooftops of aspects of the new Jerusalem, and when we do, God will not have a single one of his servants walking arrogantly before him, as Nebuchadnezzar did that night, saying, "Is this not the new Jerusalem I have built by my courageous missionary work, or by my boldness and workplace evangelism, or by my skillful teaching or preaching of the Word of God, or by my faithful hidden prayer life, or by my lavishly generous financial giving to the work of the Kingdom, or by my tireless unsung labors as a servant behind the scenes, or by my works, my sacrificial works of mercy to the poor and needy?" He will not listen to any of that and we will not want to do it, for we will be so completely humbled and understand that every one of the living stones that went into building that city were quarried by the sovereign power of Almighty God, and we're just part of it, and God was gracious to us.

And if God is going to use you greatly, brothers and sisters, he must humble you greatly, and this text will do it. This text has the power to humble the servants of God, to humble us deeply.

Remember the context here, the Corinthians were carnal in their mindset, they were focusing too much on hero leaders, great leaders. They loved the philosopher, the traveling philosopher types that would set up schools of philosophy and, by their skillful rhetoric, would gain followers for themselves. They were used to that in Greece. And along comes Paul, and he does this kind of thing, and they say, "Okay, he's our new leader." Apollos came later. And so we have that division uncovered for us in 1 Corinthians 1:12.

"One of you says, 'I follow Paul;' and another, 'I follow Apollos;' and another, 'I follow Cephas.'" (Cephas is Peter).  Paul returns to this in 1 Corinthians 3:3-4, says "You're still worldly, you're still carnal" "For since there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one of you says 'I follow Paul,' and another, 'I follow Apollos,' are you not acting like mere men?" The gospel trains us in a whole new way of thinking about everything, and here, especially about human leaders. A humble way that recognizes that God alone can make this field produce a harvest. God alone can build the spiritual edifice, the structure, that is the living church of Jesus Christ.

Yet, though God could have done all this himself, or he could have chosen to use angels to do all of this work, instead, he chose to redeem us from being his enemies and serving his enemy, king Satan. He redeemed us from that dark domain and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved son, and enlisted him in his service, adopted us as his sons and daughters, and involves us in the family business. And we have a role to play in that family business, which is salvation for the elect to the ends of the earth, that's what God is doing. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. And so he will assign to each of us, as we walk with him, helpful, beneficial tasks to the end of building that kingdom, but it is vital for us, as his servants, to be humbled as we do those tasks.

And that's what 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 is all about. So Paul begins by asking, in verse 5, some rhetorical question. This question's for impact. "What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe, as the Lord has assigned to each his task." So Paul humbles himself and humbles Apollos. What are we? For the effective power behind the church, the Corinthians were looking at the wrong place, they were looking at human leaders, human hero leaders that God had used to plant and develop the church. Now, some of your Bibles, some of the translations say, "Who is Paul and who is Apollos?" Possible that that's what the text says, the original text. As though we are men with no name, no reputation, nothing special, no suitable qualifications.

You remember when the Lord called Moses to lead the Jews out of Egypt, and when Moses realized, as he's looking into the flames of that burning bush, the magnitude of the calling, he said to God, "'Who am I, that I should go to pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?' And God said, 'I will be with you.'" As though Moses were saying, "I'm not the kind of man you would choose for an important mission like this. I'm not qualified for it. I didn't go to prophet school, or ambassador school, or public speaking school. I'm not qualified for such a challenging mission, so who am I that I should do that? My credentials don't line up." God's answer to Moses' question, "Who am I, that I should go to pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" Was no answer at all, at one level. He didn't build up his ego or his self-esteem, like in a counseling session. "Oh Moses, you're underestimating yourself, you're exactly the kind of person that I need. You are qualified in ways you don't even really imagine." He didn't do anything of the kind.

Instead, he just simply said, "I will be with you," and that's all that matters. The power for the deliverance of the Jews from physical slavery in Egypt was not going to be human, it was not all about Moses' skill set, not his eloquence, not his clever diplomacy, not his military tactical skill. Just the outstretched arm of Almighty God. Now, if that was true with the Exodus, how much more true is it with hearts and souls being won to Christ and an invisible, spiritual church rising to the glory of God? Even more true, when it comes to that task.

But actually, I think the text doesn't say, "Who is Paul, and who is Apollos?" I think it, rather, it goes even deeper. "What are we?" It's almost more dehumanizing. Like, "what am I?" Not "who am I?" But "what am I?" It's more humbling. It goes to the core of what we are. I am a clod of dirt that was scooped up in the hand of God and God breathed breath into me. It's the same feeling, I think, that came over King David when he wrote Psalm 8, "When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place…" one thought dominates my mind: "What is man that you are even of him?"

So I think it goes to that level. What is Apollos, and what is Paul? Then Paul answers the question. We are "only servants, through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each his task." Compared to Christ, compared to the Holy Spirit, we played a minor role. So your focus, oh Corinthians, on Paul and on Apollos is twisted, and it's actually bizarre, if you see it properly. So imagine you and your friends have been invited to a lavish banquet at an incredible palace by a monarch. And he welcomes you in warmly, and commands his servants to care for your every need, and his servants seat you at your place at the banqueting table. And the servants are there to feed you and to give you whatever drink you desire, and they come and go, and you're eating, and you're amazed, you're looking around. It's just an incredible atmosphere, just an amazing time, but then you and your friends start to argue about which of the table waiters is the best.

 "Well, mine brings our food a little more quickly than the other." It's like, "No, no, but this guy knows how to pour the drink like I've never seen, didn't spill a drop." And they go on and on for hours about the servants. Bizarre. In this analogy, you should be thinking about the king and his generosity and his lavish kindness to you in letting you be seated at the table. The servants don't matter.

That's about the point that Paul's making here. "And we are just servants, as the Lord assigned to each his task." We had a task assigned to us. Now, the goal is the same, and that is the saving faith of the Corinthians. We are "only servants, through whom you came to believe, as the Lord has assigned to each his task." God used human instruments to bring the Corinthians to saving faith in Jesus Christ, an eternally consequential work. He used humans as servants to that end, through whom you came to believe in Jesus. So God assigned to Paul to arrive first in Corinth, and to serve as a trailblazing, church planting apostle to the Gentiles, that was his call.

He was called, we're told in Romans 15, not to build on someone else's foundation, but to go to some new place, where no one had ever heard the name of Jesus, and do that kind of work. That was Paul's calling. And so he went first, like he always did, to the Jews, and he reasoned, Sabbath by Sabbath in the synagogue with the Jews, seeking to prove, from the Old Testament scriptures, that Jesus was the Messiah that had been prophesied. And if he followed the same pattern that he did in other Gentile cities, he would go, during the day, to the marketplace, and would reason, day by day, with those who were there to buy and sell.

After his work in Corinth was done, because he was just a trailblazing church planter, it was time for him to move on and go do that same work in another Gentile city. Along came a different man, Apollos. And in Acts 18, we learned about Apollos. That he was "a learned man with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, he had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately." Now Priscilla and Aquila had to instruct him a little more accurately about the facts concerning Jesus' life, but once he got that, he just took off. And he was powerful in speech, and "he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate [Acts 18:28], proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ." That was Apollos. And he seems to have been a better speaker than Paul, very polished in his public presentation, very gifted.

Now, through both of them, Paul says, the Corinthians came to believe in Christ, but they had different tasks as the Lord assigned. Look at verse 6, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it." So Paul uses actually two images here, but first an agricultural image he's going to move for the rest of the chapter to an architectural image. They're just teaching the same thing different ways. But he starts with the agricultural image, the farming image as Jesus often did. The Kingdom of heaven is like a seed that a farmer went out and scattered or like a single seed in the garden that grows. It's a lot of agricultural images. In verse 9 he makes plain what this field is, "we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building."

So Paul's task is the planting of the seed with the Word. That would be initial evangelism, reasoning from scripture to the end that God's elect will first hear about Jesus, and begin to come to faith in Christ. Maybe just like we heard in the testimony that it's like a light switch for some, or like a dimmer switch for others. So maybe it was a process for some people, maybe others got it right away the same day they heard they could see it. But that was Paul's task, planting the seed. And along came Apollos and his task was to water seed that had already been planted to build on someone else's foundation, and continue the work. So I don't know a lot about agriculture, I know a lot about Biology. I know I can kill any seed that God has ever made. We can put it in the ground and nothing can come of it. I've proven that. My wife has a little more skill, she can put seeds in the ground and things come from it, good things that we can eat. So, I'm out of that business but I appreciate it. But I think my understanding is the seed has a hard shell that protects it until the time has come for it to grow.

So it can be in a bag of seeds, nothing's happening, but you put it in the soil and there's moisture in the soil, and then you add water. And I think the hard shell dissolves, to some degree, like Jesus said it dies, the seed dies and the internal genetic material starts to flourish. Tap root goes out and a root system starts to develop, and the thing starts to grow. That's as far as I'm going to go with that analogy, I can't carry it any further. But we see here, Paul planting the initial seed, Apollos coming and adding the necessary water. They had different tasks, different roles.

And God is very wise. Jesus is very wise in dividing the labor. He talks about this, Jesus does in John 4. You remember the encounter he had with the Samaritan woman at the well. And Jesus's disciples were in that town in Samaria, they were probably saying to each other. What are we doing here? Because they're Jewish people, they hated the Samaritans, Samaritans hated them, and they're like, "look, let's go and get lunch, buy lunch, and let's get out of here. I don't know why we're even in Samaria…" I don't know that they actually said this, that's not in the Bible, but you have that indication they're there to buy lunch and come back. Jesus is winning a soul. And he wins her. And she is so excited she leaves her water jar there and goes into the town and says to the Samaritans, "Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" And they all come immediately, and follow her to go find out more about Jesus. In the meantime Jesus's disciples have come back and said, "Okay we got lunch. Let's eat. Oh, they're about to get a spiritual lesson and if you look for it properly, a spiritual rebuke.

 I have food to eat, that apparently you know nothing about. My food is not the food, you went and bought in Samaria. "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and finish his work." And then he said this. "Do you not say four months more and then comes the harvest? I tell you open your eyes and look at the fields. They are white for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages. Even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying, One sows and another reaps is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard labor and you have entered into their labor." It's the exact same teaching.

God’s Division of Gospel Labor

God wisely does a division of labor in the advancement of the gospel. In mission work, in evangelism, very rarely is it one person from beginning to end that brings a soul to Christ. In the history of the Christian church and especially in the history of missions, it is often the case that a trail blazer goes out ahead of everyone else, like a morning star and sees very little return on the costly investment. And then someone else comes along and things start to flourish. But it could never have happened without the hard initial trail blazing work. I get the image of our forbearers, the settlers, the colonial settlers, they were just a different level of human being than us. You get that feeling? I actually once tried to chop a tree with an axe that had blocked... My chain saw wouldn't start and I was swinging at a tree that was about eye level and after five strokes, this is a shameful thing to admit, I was done.

And after about five minutes, I could give another four whacks. I'm like, If Daniel Boone could see me now. But what were they like? They went through the Cumberland Gap on the wilderness road and settled in some valley somewhere in Kentucky. It was covered with trees and they got to work and they started cutting those trees down. Maybe they girdled it by taking the bark 360 degrees around and it eventually would die, but it would not produce leaves and so they could... The sunlight could stream through and they could plant a small crop, subsistence crop of beans, but it was a work in progress. And as the winter went on, they would chop down these trees cut it up for fire wood or for building timber.

I just can't... It's staggering the amount of labor. And then you got stumps and you got your team of oxen out there. And they use a certain kind of hewing axe to get the root system out and they pull up those stumps and they begin to plow. And they bump into some rocks and they pry them up and at some point they have a plow-able field and then they can start planting a crop. So, I have a similar image here with evangelism. Jesus uses a similar image. Others have done hard labor before you. You came along and you reaped what others have labored for.

There's an example of this in church history in the Puritan era in England, Medieval Roman Catholicism had not preached the true Gospel, there was centuries of spiritual darkness in England and then the Reformation came, and rediscovered the true gospel of justification by faith alone apart from works of the law and the Puritans came along and began preaching that true gospel but it was hard work. The earliest Puritan pastors had to plow some tough, hard soil.

Richard Greenham was an example of this, he was a pastor in a place called Dry Drayton. Seems to be like a spiritually a suitable name for the analogy here. Seven miles from Cambridge during the years 1570 to 1590, he worked extremely hard. He rose daily at 4:00 in the morning and each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, he preached a Morning sermon at day break to catch his people before they dispersed into the fields for they were farmers and he preached twice on Sundays, and he preached with such fervor that his shirt was drenched in sweat, and he catechized their children every morning and then spent every afternoon in evangelism, walking from field to field preaching the gospel among the farmers. He would walk along plowing farmers as they're plowing, sharing the gospel as they walked.

He was renowned especially as a skillful counselor of souls, he was really skillful at marshalling biblical truth to help troubled souls, but no one in his immediate vicinity cared about that counsel. People would come from miles away, to come and listen to his counsel. He had very little visible fruit in his own parish. JI Packer said about him, For all his godliness, insight, evangelical message and hard work, his ministry was virtually fruitless. There was, at the time, a little rhyme that was spoken of his, Greenham had pastures green, but his flocks were full lean, meaning they were like starving. But the generation that followed, other pastors came and reaped a bountiful harvest in that area. He did the hard work, others reaped the benefits of his labor. Packer said about England at that time, "There was much fallow ground to be broken up. It was a time for plowing and sowing but the reaping time was still in the future."

 And so it is on the mission field. Missionaries may work among an unreached people group for a decade or more and see very little fruit but then God blesses and all of them are working for the glory of God. And Christ, I want you to notice is very wise in doing this, to assign to each is task. People have different gifts, different talents, spiritual gifts, different personalities and different callings and this division of labor humbles all of us. Because no one person is all competent, independent, able to do the whole thing himself or herself.

So verse 6 and 7, it's plain, God alone gives spiritual growth. "I planted the seed, Apollos watered, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow." Biological growth is a gift of God. The apple farmer can do all the right things, but he cannot make the seed grow into a sapling or the sapling grow into a sturdy tree with vigorous branches or the tree produce buds, or the buds turn into apples, or the apples come to full fruition. We can't do any of those intermediate steps. Something only God can do. Every step of the way is produced by the secret activity of God in the plant and the farmer cannot say he produced any of it.

In the same way only God can give spiritual growth, this is what we've been seeing in 1 Corinthians 2. Remember the Apostle Paul came to Corinth, and when he came, he resolved to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified. He was with them in weakness and fear and much trembling. And his preaching were not a display of human skill, human rhetoric, but of God's power through the Holy Spirit, so that their faith would not rest on man's skill and effort but on God who sends his Spirit.

He told us very plainly in chapter 2:14, The natural man cannot accept the things that come from the Spirit of God because they are foolishness to him, and he cannot accept them, because they're spiritually discerned, and those people are blind, and we have not the cure to that blindness. And so, in all evangelism and in all missions, we have a limited role to play. The real work can only be done by God, through his Holy Spirit. So also, once an individual has come to faith in Christ, their growth, their progress and sanctification, is only by the sovereign Spirit of God. A pastor like me, I can preach the Word week after week, godly parents can raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, a discipler can meet with a disciple and pour out scripture and exemplify the Christian walk, but we can only do so much only God actually produces spiritual growth in a human heart.

And so Paul goes so far as to say we're nothing. We are nothing. So neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow. So that's the answer. What am I? What is Apollos? We are nothing. God is everything. Now, listen, Paul isn't meaning to insult us, he's not trying to insult Apollos or any human being, we are created in the image of God. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, God knit us together in our mother's wombs and God sent his only begotten Son into the world to save human beings. "It's not angels he helps, says in Hebrews 2, but human beings. So he's not saying we're nothing in that sense, but what he is saying is God doesn't need us for any of this.

No one man or one woman, is indispensable to the work of the Kingdom. God is able to raise up from stones, preachers of the gospel, and evangelists and missionaries as John the Baptist said. God doesn't need us, but he graciously gives us a role to play, Isn't that marvelous?

So that you're not wasting your life on dust in the wind, you actually are called to do something of eternal consequence. Look at the next verse, in the next passage, that I'll preach on, God willing. Verse 10, where he says, "By the grace God gave me I lay the foundation, as an expert builder, and someone else is... " But God's grace gave me a role. God's grace gave me a ministry. It is by the mercy of God that we have this ministry, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:1.

And he says The servants, all of whom are called by Christ and empowered by the Spirit, we're all one. Look what he says again in verse 8, he who plants, and he waters are one and each will receive his wages or rewards for his labor.

So, we're one strong assertions of unity here. We're part of the same body. He will talk about that in Chapter 12, one may be a hand, another foot we're all part of the same body with Christ as the head. Different roles, different function, same body, and we have the same purpose. Apollos, and I we're on the same page. We have the same goal. And that is your completion your perfection in Christ, and Heaven. That's our goal. We have the same purpose, same Lord same calling. Different tasks, but we are one. Essentially he's saying, we're not in competition with each other, we're not rival factions. Paul versus Apollos like an MMA bout. Come and watch big fight Friday night. We'll see who wins. Not at all, they didn't have MMA back then, but you know what I mean. They did have wrestling. But no, it's nothing like that. We are actually one in purpose. And we're not in competition. Like you're saying. I follow Paul and not Apollos? Oh yeah, I follow Apollos and not Paul. That whole thing's wrong. It's foolish.

Picture you're out in an orchard and it's planting time and you see two people wearing the shirt of the orchard with the logo on the back and this one individual is planting all these little saplings and someone else is coming along with this sprinkler hose system. And as you're watching, you're not saying, Alright they're in competition, I wonder which one's going to win. They have the same purpose, and that is that the orchard will eventually be even more fruitful at harvest time, the same purpose. That's what he's saying. And then he mentions rewards the one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor.

Now I'm not going to talk about this at all today. I'm just saying God in His grace will reward faithful service. We're going to talk about this for the next two sermons in 1 Corinthians as we talk about gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay and straw, and how God will reward, faithful service for His glory.

Applications. To all you who are hard-working, servants of God. I just want this passage to humble you. Just be humbled by this. Learn to say I am an unworthy servant. I've only done my duty. Luke 17. Someday we're going to be there. Brothers and sisters, we're going to be there, we're going to see the glorious city, and I believe that God is going to show the human labor that went into building it. I think the rewards don't mean anything apart from that, the crowns don't mean anything if we don't know the story so we're going to learn the story, but all of us are going to be so thoroughly saturated in the mindset of the glory of God, we're going to see all of the human labor that went into building the new Jerusalem in the proper light.

And we're going to recognize and honor the human servants, but we're going to know to God be the glory, for all of it. So we're going to see that and we're going to be filled with a sense of the greatness of God in Christ. So the more you can do that now the better, don't think of yourself as indispensable. If you're a hard-working, fruitful servant of God, think of yourself with sober judgment, not too highly of yourself, or too lowly. However, I think you should celebrate the kindness and mercy of God in involving you in this work. Isn't it a good thing that you're not going to see all of your works, torched and turned to ash on Judgment Day? You actually get to do something that's going to survive and last, if you are serving God faithfully now.

Now to those of you who are believers in Christ, but maybe you're feeling some conviction, you're like... I actually just don't know what my ministry is. I would not say that I actually have a definable ministry. I mean I have a life and I go to church on Sunday and we pray, we give God thanks before the meal, and we do some things but I don't actually honestly have a ministry. Well, this passage then should convict you. It should convict you to say, God, would you please show me what my spiritual gifts are, and get me going, get me busy in the building of the kingdom of God, so I don't waste my life on an empire that will become dust, in the wind.

Babylon is gone. All of the things that mighty Nebuchadnezzar built are dust in the wind. They're gone. I don't want any of you, my brothers and sisters, to see that happen to your life work. So this may be a call to a fork in the road for you to say, "What can I do for the spread of the gospel here in Durham and to the ends of the earth? How can I be involved with the International Mission Board? How can I encourage some missionaries? How can I give more money, financially? What can I do to lost people in my company or on my college campus? What can I do to be involved? How can I encourage brothers and sisters that are already Christians, how can I help them grow?"

Now to you who are not yet Christians, I just want to give a final word, I just thank God you're here. Week after week, we pray that God would bring us people who are not yet converted. And I just want to reach out to you and say, "Oh that today would be for you the day of salvation. That you would realize through the preaching of the Word, that there is a creator, God who made the universe, and who made you. And because He made everything, he is a mighty king and because he is a king, he has a right to make laws and he has made laws, the Ten Commandments and the two great commandments, and we don't follow them, none of us do, all of us have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God and we are convicted by the law as law breakers. And we have no hope, we cannot make it right. But God in His love and His mercy, sent His Son Jesus, who was born of a virgin, and who lived a sinless life, and walked on this earth.

And taught many parables and teachings and did incredible miracles but He came especially to die. "All we like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him on Jesus the iniquity of us all." He is our substitute. And all you need to do to be completely forgiven of all your sins is trust in Jesus, repent, turn away from the darkness, turn away from the sin and trust in Jesus and you will be forgiven. Close with me in prayer.

Lord, we thank you for the time that we've had to study your Word. We thank you for the wisdom that flows to us from that Word. We thank you that you have taught us not to boast about men, but to trust in you, the one who gives good gifts to all of us. Thank you for the ministry of the Word. Thank you for faithful servants who bring it to us, but Lord, we know that the true growth, the real growth only comes from you, and so we give you all the glory in Jesus' name. Amen.

Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 3:1-4. And as we come to this text, we're coming to a text that has been a battle ground text for many decades. For here, we come face-to-face with the idea of the "Carnal Christian." The "Carnal Christian” doctrine wrestles with the perplexing problem of sin in the lives of Christians. It's a problem for all of us. It's the greatest problem you have in your life as a Christian, your own indwelling sin, and also trying to understand the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of a genuine Christian. But along with that has come, some, I think, false explanations that results in this idea of the "Carnal Christian." What do we mean by that?

Well, John Reisinger put it this way. "Many who regularly occupy church pews or don't regularly occupy church pews but filled church roles and are intellectually acquainted with the facts of the Gospel, never strike one blow for Christ. They seem to be at peace with his enemies, they have no quarrel with sin, it seems. And apart from a few sentimental expressions about Christ, there's no Biblical evidence that they have experienced anything of the power of the Gospel in their lives. Yet in spite of the evidence against them, they consider themselves to be just what their teachers tell them - that they are, 'Carnal Christians.' And as carnal Christians, they believe they go to heaven, though perhaps not first class and with few rewards. The most serious aspect of the situation… is not the carelessness of these church goers, it is the error of their teachers who by preaching this theory of "the carnal Christian," have led them to believe that there are three groups of people, The unconverted person, the carnal Christian, and the spiritual Christians."

Well, this is an issue that I had to begin wrestling with early in my Christian life. As I've mentioned before, I was led to faith in Christ, by a fellow fraternity brother, who was involved with campus crusade for Christ ministry, now known as Cru. And the first time I ever heard the Gospel, they used a booklet called "The Four Spiritual Laws." And Cru members or workers have used this for years. It's a good tool that divides the Gospel into four headings, God, man, Christ, response. But soon after I was converted, I began to be discipled through the Cru ministry there at MIT and the discipleship I received was incredibly helpful.

One of the tools they used, was another booklet that Campus Crusade for Christ put out called the spirit, the Holy Spirit booklet or the blue booklet or sometimes called The Bird booklet, because it showed a picture of the Holy Spirit as a bird on the front. And it was teaching, basically, how to live the Spirit-filled life. And the audience was people who had prayed to receive Christ, maybe they have already been through the four spiritual laws but now they wanted to know how to live. Or perhaps the audience was for people who have done that years and years ago, but weren't living anything of the Christian life and wanted to know now what they should do, how they should live spirit-filled life. And in that way it was incredibly helpful tool for many people, because it gave them very practical aspects of what I would call sanctification or the progressive life of the Christian. Which is very, very important to know. But the idea that the human race can be divided into three categories, the unconverted person or the natural person, the spirit-filled Christian and the carnal Christian, I think has progressively become for me a dangerous idea. And I want to try to skate through two different things. One is to show why it's a dangerous idea, but on the other hand to show how beneficial it is for us to understand the role of the Spirit, Holy Spirit in our lives.

Now, to illustrate this idea, the Blue Booklet, the Holy Spirit booklet use three diagrams. The first is the non-Christian diagram. So in the booklet they showed a circle representing the person's life with a chair in the center, representing the throne or control center of the person's life. And then many random various sized dots inside the circle representing the various interests and issues of that person's life. The letter S representing self, is on the throne ruling the life. The cross representing Christ is outside the circle entirely. The person is not a Christian. This is a lost person, this is a non-Christian, the unregenerate person, the person who's not born again.

The second diagram is the spirit-filled Christian. They showed the circle, again, representing the person's life. The chair in the center representing the control center or the throne of that person's life. But then they show the circles representing all of the interests and ideas and issues of that person's life in a kind of a concentric array around the throne with lines going toward the center, showing that the issues of that person's life are in harmony with Christ who's on the throne of that life. So you can see the cross representing Christ is on the throne, S representing self as dethroned, yielding to Christ's Lordship. This represents the Christian who is a spirit-filled Christian leading the spirit-filled life. And all the issues of this person's life are focused on Christ and His will, on Christ in His glory.

The third diagram is the one that's of interest to us now, the carnal Christian diagram. This is a third kind of person according to this teaching. It's exactly like the non-Christian diagram. No difference at all except one thing, the cross is no longer outside the circle, but is now inside the circle, but as you'll notice, at the foot of the throne. The self is still ruling this person's life and the random various sized dots are still all over the place, not in any way aligned to Christ. Honestly, the diagram implies that there's no difference at all between this person's life and the non-Christian life, except that Christ is in the life.

Sometimes the disciple there would go on and describe the carnal Christian and his or her lifestyle, such as legalistic attitude, impure thoughts, jealousy, guilt worry, discouragement, critical spirit, frustration, aimlessness, fear, ignorance of spiritual heritage, disobedience, loss of love for God and others, a poor prayer life, critical spirit, no desire for Bible study and many other such things. But for all of that, a Christian with their sins forgiven, living a consistently sinful life but forgiven the whole time for all of their sins. And you may well ask how do you know that the cross is in the life, how do you know that the sins are forgiven? On what basis?

Well, the answer would be given because they prayed the sinners prayer sometime in the past. Or they signed a commitment card or they came forward at an evangelistic rally, or having watched on TV or online some evangelistic presentation at a certain moment, they gave some kind of ascent to the Gospel. And then in comes at that point, a teaching known as "Once saved, always saved." So if you have at any time in your life, prayed that prayer, you will most certainly be going to heaven no matter how you live. And that the entire human race can be broken into these three categories. This is the carnal Christian teaching.

Now, there are larger issues with this that factor in in our geographical region, sometimes known as the Bible Belt, but more extensively across the US, with evangelical churches that have an understanding of the Protestant Gospel of justification by faith alone apart from works. They're familiar with the language of evangelicalism, the language of the Gospel, they've been around at their whole lives perhaps, and they have in the Bible Belt at some point, in high school or at some point they, maybe when they were children, came forward Sunday morning invitation at the end of a sermon, or prayed the sinner's prayer or did some kind of commitment card, and that happened at some time in the past. And they became at that moment, maybe a member of a Bible-believing church and their names are on the roll, but then for years after that, have done nothing different at all. It's really not impacted their lives at all. And the membership rolls of churches just like ours, Baptist churches, evangelical churches, are filled with people like this, who have made these kind of one-time off commitments, and then became members of the church, even that very day.

By the way, that's why FBC has a membership process. You can't become a member of our church today. So there's a process to slow all that down. But in other churches you could become a member right there and then, and then the names are taken down, and so the churches like ours are filled with these kinds of people who are members of the church, but they haven't been seen in years. Churches like us. Then would have something called like a homecoming Sunday, once a year, maybe in the fall sometime. You can see them advertised on churches with sign ministries. And what they're trying to do is get those folks that are members to just come back for one Sunday at least. And a percentage of them do come back for one Sunday, at least. Maybe they will come back at Christmas time or at Easter or whatever, but then they're just going to settle back into their normal way of living their lives. And yet for all of that, and this is the key issue here, they are assured of their final salvation no matter how they live, apart from any works.

So their understanding of justification by faith alone, which is a precious doctrine, is skewed because their faith doesn't have any works that follow it at all. And the idea of assurance of salvation, what many call "Once saved, always saved," others call it "perseverance of the saints," is skewed as well. And these two things, I think poisonously work together to give a false assurance to literally tens of thousands of people, and that's what I think is in front of us as we look at 1 Corinthians 3:1-4.

Along with this finally is something called the Lordship controversy, which flared up a number of years ago. And that has a question; can you accept Jesus as savior but not as Lord? It's really just a cousin or a brother of the same theological issue here. Can you have Jesus save you from your sins, but not recognize his Lordship as king over your life? And some people think that to link Jesus as Savior and Jesus as Lord is bad doctrine because you're adding works, and you're perverting the free grace of the Gospel. And you're adding a lifetime of works and uncertainty to the simple free offer of believe in Jesus and you'll be saved. And so they would say something like; Jesus plus nothing gives you everything. Just believe in Jesus and it... And the implied aspect here is, it doesn't really matter how you live after that.

Well, this morning as we come to 1 Corinthians 3:1-4, we're wading through all of these things, we're wading into all of this. And why is that? Well, because any who try to route these ideas in a text of Scripture will inevitably come to 1 Corinthians 3:1-4, at some point. And they will see how the Apostle Paul addresses these Corinthians as carnal in the KJV translation. Other translations have a different translation, like you heard the ESV a few minutes ago. He calls them brothers and Carnal, and so thus some would claim that they are "Carnal Christians," and so that's the approach.

Two Categories of People

So I'm going to lay my cards on the table. I do not believe that the Bible divides the human race into three categories of people, but two categories of people. You're either dead in your transgressions and sins or you're alive in Christ Jesus. Those are the two categories. If you are dead in your transgressions and sins, the Bible would also call you a child of the devil. If you're born again, you would be called conversely a child of God. Those are the two categories. Jesus spoke like this all the time. There was wheat and weeds, there were good fish and bad fish, there was light and darkness. There's not three categories.

And yet all of us, every single one of us struggles with sin. And we all have moments, like when you look at that carnal Christian diagram, it's like, "Yeah, that was me Thursday afternoon, and again Thursday evening, actually. Friday morning, repented of my sin, filled with the spirit but by lunch not so much." Any of you know exactly what I'm talking about. Christ is definitely in your life but things are a mess right now. And so can I get some help for all that, please? Can I get some help for living the Spirit-filled life in the midst of what's actually happening for me? And so things are not so clear and easy but I just think it's important to know you're either alive in Christ or you're dead outside of him. And that three categories is just not a helpful way to think.

Alright. So let's walk through 1 Corinthians 3:1-4, that's our primary job now, and show why we cannot root that carnal Christian teaching in this text. What is Paul actually doing here? Well, he's rebuking the so-called carnal Christians at Corinth. This is a scathing rebuke from a loving spiritual father. Next chapter in 4:15, Paul says "In Christ Jesus I became your father through the Gospel." So he is giving them a verbal spanking here. And sometimes a loving father has to do that. So look what he says in verse 1-4, "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly." Carnal in the KJV. "Mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed you are still not ready, you are still worldly, for since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men or ordinary people. For when one of you says, "I follow Paul" and another, "I follow Apollos", are you not mere men or ordinary people?"

So he begins by saying, "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual." Even as he's rebuking them, he takes a loving stance toward them. He's not being harsh with them here, he loves them, they are his brothers and sisters in Christ, they are equally part of the body of Christ. He wanted to teach them the fullness of God's teaching at every level, but he was evaluating their ability to accept his teaching. "Brothers I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly or carnal, mere infants in Christ." Now this is actually very important for a teacher of the Word of God to do, evaluate in a feedback loop, are the people able to understand what you're saying? Jesus did this the night before He was crucified with His own apostles. John 16:12, He said, "I have much to say to you, more than you can now bear." That's a feedback loop isn't it? You can't handle everything, I would say to you. When the Holy Spirit comes, He'll teach you the rest, but you're not ready for it, now. So you need to do that. If people are not ready to hear what you're teaching, then it's a waste of time.

And so Paul has to slow down and address them. And he says, "Not as spiritual but as worldly," or carnal, in the KJV. People of the flesh as though they were non-Christians. Now, the word spiritual goes back to the end of the last chapter. Remember how we were seeing that the world thinks Christ crucified as foolishness and a stumbling block, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God and the wisdom of God. In chapter 2, he shows us why because the Holy Spirit has come into our lives to show us, the wisdom and power of Christ crucified.

Look back in Chapter 2 verse 12, he said, "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God is freely giving us." So it's the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the lives of these Corinthians, that changed everything. And at the end of the sermon, I'm going to give you some marks of regeneration. I'm going to put it all in the line of what the Spirit does in the life of a true Christian. And I'm going to ask you, is the Spirit doing this in your life? Is the Spirit doing that in your life? Everything is focused on the spirit. And then at the end of Chapter 2, as you know, the last thing he said is, "But we have the mind of Christ." So the Holy Spirit has come into the genuinely converted Corinthians, to teach them to think about Christ crucified and then everything else like Jesus does, and gives them a new mind.

We know that the natural person, in 2:14, cannot accept the things of God, because they are foolishness and spiritually discerned, he's not able to understand them. But you Corinthians, the genuinely converted people have been brought out of darkness in to light. You now have the Holy Spirit, you can understand spiritual things. That's where we were at the end of Chapter 3. But now Paul is saying to the Corinthians, "But I couldn't talk to you like that. I couldn't address you as I want to as spiritual people, I have to talk to you as though you're not converted, as you're unconverted people. Or, he calls them infants in Christ. A new born baby is immature but still human. A full member of the family, a son or daughter of that family, human definitely, but a baby. Now you cannot be a Christian without having the indwelling Holy Spirit of God.

Romans 8:9, says, "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ." So again, there's two types of people. Either the Spirit is in your life, or he's not. Alright, but the spirit was in them, but they were thinking and acting like babies, and as babies in Christ they needed baby food. Look at verse 2, "I gave you milk, not solid food or meat, for you are not yet ready for it, indeed, you were still not ready." Babies have no teeth, thank God, say the mothers. Thank God. They are not able to handle a T-bone steak. It'd be child abuse to do it. But we know in the normal progression of things they develop teeth, they grow their teeth, and then little by little you give them more and more solid food, more and more adult food, as time goes on. That's the image, the analogy.

Milk Teaching and Meat Teaching

So when it comes to Christian doctrine, there is milk and then there's meat. So what does that mean? Well, milk are those basic Christian doctrines that you would explain in an evangelistic setting to a non-Christian, the basic facts of the gospel, who Jesus is, who God is, who Jesus, who we are, what sin is what Christ came to do, His death on the cross atoning for sins, His bodily resurrection from the dead, the need for faith and repentance in Christ, that's all milk. All the things you would explain to a non-Christian or then you would go back over with somebody who had just become a Christian. That's milk.

So, what's meat. Well, meat are harder aspects of the Christian life. Ironically, we would go back to the cross. There are aspects of the Cross-centered life that are meat for us. To learn every day to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Jesus, no matter where it lives, that's meat. And it's hard to do. So that would be an example of meat, how the cross as it preaches self-denial and self-sacrifice at every moment and what that practically, how that works out, that would be an example of meat, but that's not the only meat I would think of. I also think meat would be any doctrines that are hard for immature Christians to accept, but are biblically true. They run contrary to the normal way of thinking. And it takes a while to be able to process the truth of it. For example, God's sovereignty and salvation, the aspects of that, eternal predestination of individuals, who God knows by name before they're even born, predestination. God's sovereign activity and Providence, how God controls even the sparrows that fall to the ground or the hairs on your head. And yet there's all this evil in the world, that's hard to understand.

And then the higher levels of theology, for example, the author to Hebrews use the exact same kind of illustration, I like to give you meat but you still need milk. Does the same thing in Hebrews 5. Why? Because he wants to tell them about Melchizedek  You're like, "Who's Melchizedek?" Friends, this is not a sermon on Hebrews 7, so we could do that another time, but Melchizedek's an image, a type of Christ, in the Old Testament. So it's just a higher level of theology and of illustration that at some point you need to come into as a Christian, to fully understand Christ, who he was, what he did. And the author to Hebrews there, and Hebrews 5 and 7, says, "I'd like to have given that but you're not ready." That's milk and that's meat. Meat would be the harder aspects of Christian theology that'd just take a while to be able to absorb. And it takes spiritual teeth to chew on it for a while, think about it, reason it through and then come to a peace with it.

Paul's saying that the Corinthians weren't before able to chew on this meat and they're still not able to chew it. So he's rebuking them for their own spirituality and their immaturity. Look at verse 3, "You are still worldly, for since there is jealousy and quarreling among you. Are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?" Paul says they are worldly, other translations as I said, of the flesh, carnal, fleshly. Also saying, it's like they're unconverted, they're not unconverted, but they're acting as though they're unconverted.

Now, in Verse 1, the Greek adjective is fleshy, that is of the flesh. But in verse 3, the adjective is, fleshly or that is like the flesh. So what's the difference? Well, take, let's say a woman's blouse, you could say that the blouse is silky meaning it feels and acts like silk but it's not silk or you could say the blouse is silk, meaning it's made of silk. And so what he is saying here by that shift, that subtle shift of language, he's saying, You're acting unconverted, you're not unconverted but you're acting it. Now, let me just pause. I would say all of our sin moments, we're acting like we're unconverted at that moment, we all do it, we all act like pagans, from time to time. And we're learning little by little, to stop doing that, that's sanctification, that progressive growth in holiness, stop thinking like a non-Christian. But that's what he's saying, here. And the proof he gives is their jealousy and quarreling. One says, "I follow Paul" one says, "I follow Apollos." That jealousy was just pagan. That's what the Corinthians did all the time, with rhetorical philosophical leaders. I follow Plato, I follow Aristotle, I follow Socrates, etcetera. He's saying you're doing the same things, which you've always done.

And he says in Verse 4, "For when one says, 'I follow Paul,' and another, 'I follow Apollos,' Are you not mere men? It's an interesting expression. You're acting like natural humans and you should be acting like super natural humans. There should be a super natural aspect of your life as a Christian. Something that to some degree makes no sense to the non-Christians. Remember Jesus does this exact same thing at the end of Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount. "You have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." Then He said this. "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even the tax collectors do that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?" Do you see how he's arguing? You shouldn't be living like that. There should be a supernatural aspect of your life as a disciple of mine.

Look, pagans know how to greet people who greet them. Non-Christians know how to invite their relatives over for a meal. I'm asking you to love your enemies. I'm asking to act like God. And then He cinches it by saying you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. That's a supernatural life. But Paul's saying, these Corinthians are not acting supernatural, they're acting just like unconverted people.

Alright. Now I've walked through 1 Corinthians 3:1-4. There is no ground here for the carnal Christian teaching. He's not saying you can have all your sins forgiven and live however you want. He's not teaching that at all. So what is the problem with this? So what can we do with this carnal Christian teaching? How can we adjust it? Well, I think as we walk through, we have to see what's wrong with it.

First, it misinterprets 1 Corinthians 3:1-4. Whatever doctrine, I want you to ask, I want you to have the instinct to say "show me the scriptures." How do the scriptures teach this? And actually, the preponderance in the New Testament is directly the opposite of this. Almost all of these Epistles; Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, they're written to people who claim to be Christians to teach them what the Christian life should look like. Not giving any one ground to live like pagans, not at all. So it misinterprets this.

It misinterprets the vital connection between justification and sanctification. Well, let me put it simply, between how your sins are forgiven and how you should then live after that. Justification is how you are made right with God, how can your sins be forgiven? The Bible teaches plainly, it's by faith and not by works, by trusting in Christ, His death on the cross, His resurrection for you, all of your sins will be forgiven, and that's going to be true the rest of your life. If you ever sin, if you ever violate God's word your forgiveness will come from the same place every time, Christ crucified in your simple faith in that, for the rest of your life that is true. But that's not all of salvation, there's more of salvation than justification. There is a transformed nature that comes, your heart is changed. The heart of stone is removed and a heart of flesh is put in, and you begin to think differently by the power of the Holy Spirit, you begin to live differently and you begin to grow and imitate Christ more and more, that's called sanctification or Christian growth. And this teaching just doesn't seem to harmonize that at all, doesn't seem to understand that. It separates the blessings of the New Covenant, the blessing of the New Covenant. You get it all. You get everything.

In Hebrews 8, the author to Hebrews quoting Jeremiah, says, "I will write my laws on your minds and put them in your hearts. I will be your God and you'll be my people. And I'll forgive your wickedness and remember your sins no more." They're linked together. A transformed nature and the forgiveness of sins are linked together. If God forgives you your sins, He transforms your nature. If He transformed your nature, He's forgiven, your sins. They go together. You cannot separate them. Therefore, it makes no distinction at all between true or genuine saving faith and between fake faith, spurious faith, counterfeit faith.

Saving Faith vs Counterfeit Faith

Wait a minute, is there such a thing? Yes, biblically. There is such a thing. In John 2, Jesus was talking about people who were excited about His miracles, and they believed in Him. That's what the text says, but Jesus didn't entrust Himself to them because He knew all people, He didn't need anyone's testimony about their hearts because He knew what was inside them, they were not genuinely converted. They were scintillated by His miracles, but they didn't really believe in Him. Or James chapter 2 makes this very plain. It asked what kind of faith justifies. The demons know the right facts about God and they're not forgiven. They just tremble, they shudder. So knowing the right facts, that's not enough. Faith apart from works is dead. So dead faith and demon faith, does not justify. So this carnal Christian teaching doesn't seem to make any distinction there.

What kind of faith saves? Well, the kind of faith, says James, that produces good works. It also emits repentance, a genuine biblical presentation of the gospel involves repentance, it's a call from Christ the King to stop living the way you were living. To turn around from it. To turn your back on sexual immorality, to turn your back on lying and arrogance and pride and selfishness, to turn your back on all of that wickedness turn your back on it and live a new life. So it's repentance and faith, but this carnal Christian teaching seems to deny that repentance is even needed. And it teaches wrongly on assurance. Reisinger puts it this way: When a person professes he belong to Christ and he yet lives like the world. How do we know that his profession is genuine?" How do we know it's not genuine? There are always two possibilities. He may be a true Christian after all, who is just in a season of back-sliding, or he may be deceived and not ever have genuinely come to Christ, only God knows. Two errors therefore must be avoided. One, saying, unequivocally that he is not a Christian, or saying unequivocally that he is a Christian, and this is very dangerous for churches like ours.

In the 20 years I've been here, we have worked progressively, little by little, to get our church roles to reflect one of two healthy relationships as church members with our church. Number one: Able-bodied and regularly attending corporate worship here on Sunday mornings, or number two, physically unable to do that. That's it. Those are the two categories of healthy church membership. The third able-bodied, but not regularly attending must be ruled out. If they're going to work, if they're going shopping, if they're playing golf on Saturday, they could and should be in some Bible believing church on Sunday, the church they are a covenant member of, if they can. So for us as elders, we're going to progressively just rule out that third category based on this entire Doctrine.

And the carnal Christian view also has a low view of sin and its dangers, sin is poison, it is dangerous to our souls. And just because we're forgiven doesn't mean we can do it. It has a hardening effect on our hearts. And so to get good solid teaching about the Gospel, if you begin to sin, the Holy Spirit will come around you, and start pressing on you to hate that sin and repent from it and turn from it. Or bring brothers and sisters around you, the church will get around you until you repent and start living healthy again. That's just what he does in a Christian life.

And finally, the carnal Christian teaching has a low view of Christ and His United offices. You cannot separate Christ the Savior, from Christ the King. He is Savior and He is Lord all at once. As a matter of fact, I think His greatest gospel invitation that you will find; He had a lot of great ones, but it's in Matthew 11:28-30, He says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened. And I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls for My yoke is easy and My burden is light." I believe the yoke is His kingly authority, the Gospel of Matthew is all about the Kingdom of Heaven, it's about I am the King, the King of Heaven. You've been rebelling against my authority. Now stop that rebellion and put your stiff neck, now softened by the Holy Spirit under My yoke and follow Me. And you will not find it burdensome, you'll find My commands are not burdensome, you'll find a whole full rich way of life. But you must take My yoke upon you, if you want to be saved, you can't separate Jesus as savior and Jesus as Lord.

Alright. Well, we have to have instead a healthy understanding of Christian growth. I was listening to a John Piper sermon on this, and he gave a very interesting analogy, based on that diagram that I gave you. He kind of expanded out and made it more three-dimensional. So imagine an empire with a capital city and a palace fortress representing the non-Christians life, that whole thing is non-Christian life. And the Holy Spirit, Christ through the Holy Spirit leads an amazing commando raid, blast through the walls of the palace fortress, gets into the throne room and assassinates the old King. Kills him, dead. So the person we were in Adam died the moment we generally came to faith in Christ, we died with Jesus. That old king is dead, and there's a new king ruling. But the palace hasn't heard anything about it. And so like any other Palace coup, the word has to spread. And more and more the palace gets subdued to the new king, and then eventually the capital city gets subdued but in the outlying districts there's still a civil war going on. And that war may last the rest of your life until various aspects of your life get the word that Christ is king. I find that helpful, if you don't, then don't use it.

But the idea is that it takes time for Christ's reign over different parts of your life to be extended. Alright. So what then shall we do? Let's understand saving genuine, saving faith. Genuine saving faith involves repentance. And what you've done the moment you came to Christ, is you began a work of seeing accurately sin and hating it, and that will go on the rest of your life. At that moment that you trusteed in Christ, all your sins, past, present and future are most certainly forgiven by simple faith in Christ. But you're going to need again and again to come back and confess your sins, why? Because you have an indwelling sin nature that's still vibrantly alive. Paul talks about it in Romans 7. "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do, and if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good, as it is, it is no longer I myself who do it but it's sin living in me that does it." It says at the end of Romans 7, "What a wretched man I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" "From this indwelling battle with sin?"

Thanks, be to God through Jesus Christ. Jesus is someday going to deliver us. But in the meantime, we have to fight, we have to fight, fight, fight every day. We have to fight the good fight of faith. And how do you do that? Well, understand the role of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:16-21, says this. "So I say live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They're in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want, but if you are led by the Spirit. You're not under law. Now, the acts of the flesh are obvious. Sexual immorality, Impurity, and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of God." Well, those words are the death knell for the carnal Christian idea.

As I've described it, that you can live however you want and still go to heaven. Don't be deceived. "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control." The Holy Spirit works these beautiful virtues in a genuine Christian. So the rest of your life, you are going to continue to be weird. As a matter of fact, you're going to be surpassingly supernaturally weird. You are going to be inconsistent and struggling. The angels in heaven aren't like you and neither are the demons like you. There's no struggle with either of them, and those that are dead in their transgressions and sins, they don't struggle, they are dead in sin every day. And the redeemed in heaven, they don't struggle, they're done at last with sin. That leaves us, friends. And what that means is you're goanna go in and out of carnal moments by the power of the Spirit, you're goanna be renewed, refreshed, convicted and then you're goanna keep living and guess what's goanna happen, you're goanna sin again. But as you continue to walk in the light as He is in the light, you'll be able to confess your sins and the blood of Jesus will keep cleansing you from all sin. That's the Christian life, that's what's laying out ahead of you.

The Marks of Regeneration

Now, you may ask, what are the marks of regeneration? How can I know that I have been saved? I wrote them out right after BFL, I actually left BFL early, sorry. But I was like, I got to write these out. But as usual, I can't read my writing. It happens all the time. But I'll do the best I can. First of all, let me just say, 1 John, is the book to answer this question. That's what it's given for. How can I know? This is how we know, this is how we know. This is what the book is all about. What I want to do is take some ideas from 1 John and just put it in the work of the Spirit and we'll be done today.

Is the Holy Spirit in your life or not? That's the question we're having to ask. Does the Spirit testify with your heart that you're a child of God? Is the Spirit active in these ways? In what ways? Well first, it says in 1 John 3:9, "Whoever is born of God does not sin." Wow. But that's not teaching sinless perfection, because he said in the 1 John 1, you can walk in the light, and still need cleansing from the blood of Jesus. So it's not perfectionism, but what it means is your relationship with sin has radically changed once you become a Christian. Now that you're genuinely Christian, you hate sin, it's the greatest grief in your life. You don't sin willingly. You sin bitterly and reluctantly, you're not just comfortable with sin, with the enemies of Christ, not at all. You grieve over your sin, not right away, but if the spirit in you, He will make you grieve. Is that happening for you? Does the Holy spirit make you grieve over your own sin? Because He's grieved over it. Does He then make you grieve over it? That's a genuine Christian. You hate sin, you hunger and thirst for righteousness. You may not always achieve it, but it is what you want.

Number two, 1 John 5:1 says, "Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God." Ours is a Christ-centered faith. The Holy Spirit ministers Christ to you. So do you believe that Jesus is your savior and your only savor? You can't save yourself. You have no hope of saving yourself. Christ is your only hope. Do you believe that? That's what the Spirit works. You believe that Christ is the Son of God, He died on the cross for you, He rose from the dead. Anyone who believes that, 1 John 5:1, is born of God.

Thirdly, 1 John 2:29, says, "Everyone that does righteousness is born of God." But what does righteousness mean? It means obeying God's laws, His moral law. And so, if you're born again, you have taken on and brought into yourself the whole moral law of God, and you delight in it, you say not just part of it. You want it all. You want to love God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbors yourself in all the particulars. And whatever the word of God teaches you as healthy righteous living, that's what you want. You delight in all of God's law, and you're consistently seeking to obey God's laws and do righteous acts by the law of God.

Fourthly, "we know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers." The brothers and sisters in Christ. That's 1 John 3:14. Love other Christians, enjoy fellowship with other Christians. You don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together, as Hebrews 10 says. But you come to church. You come to Bible study, you come to home fellowship. You're involved. You've got people speak in your life, and you love it. You're delighted when brothers and sisters do well, when they're growing. When you hear that somebody becomes a Christian it makes you happy. Psalm 16:3 says that the faithful ones in the land, they are the glorious ones and whom is all your delight. You just love other Christians. And again, not perfectly, I know we don't perfectly because we're all sinners, but you enjoy Christian fellowship.

And then fifth, whoever is born of God, overcomes the world. 1 John 5:4. You see the corruption in the world. Not excited, and in love with the world. You'd know first John 2 says, "Do not love the world or anything in the world." And so you hate the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. Wherever you get drawn in and sucked in by them. You're defiled by it and you know that's not what you want. And so you overcome the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. So I'm asking you, is the Spirit working these five things in you? And if you came here today and you were outside of Christ, I'm just going to urge you cross over from darkness to light, right now. Trust in Jesus, you've heard the Gospel this morning, that God sent His son to die on the cross for sinners like you and me. All you need to do is believe in Him. We don't call people to come to the front and talk to the pastor. You can talk to me actually at the back, you can come to the back and talk to a pastor after the service is over, but it's not required at all. What is required? Hearing with faith, the Gospel. That's it. But then if you do that, do you understand the kind of life that the Holy Spirit will work in you if you're genuinely born again?

Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the things that we've learned today, God help us to be discerning in our thinking. Help us to be discerning about this carnal Christian idea. Help us to be discerning that there are only two kinds of people. Help us to grieve whenever we behave carnally as the Corinthians were doing. Help us to grieve over it, help us to grow and grace in the knowledge of Christ. Strengthen us, O Lord, and help us to follow you and to be pure, in your sight and the live lives that are pleasing to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

So turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. We are looking this morning at verses 6-16. We live in an age, relentlessly hungry for information. Some people even call it the information age. It was born by digital technology which has resulted in remarkable devices like the smartphone. It's amazing what these things can do. Search on Google, some words of archaic medieval poem, and it comes up in like three-tenths of a second. It's more than just freaky fast, it's just simply freaky. Google's supercomputers handle 40,000 search queries per second on average, 3.5 billion searches every day, and 1.5 trillion searches a year on average. So there's this relentless thirst for knowledge, for facts. And it extends to an instantaneous awareness of current events. An earthquake in Haiti, or popular uprising in Venezuela, the death of a celebrity, all of it coming to us in real time, as it's happening. This is the power of these smartphones. Data shows that by next year, there may be as many as 2.5 billion smartphone users worldwide. Yet for all of this amazing access to knowledge, there's an appalling lack of wisdom. The world continues to go on, in its foolishness, acting like there is no God, acting like there are no 10 Commandments, that there is no death, and no Judgment Day that follows.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is being heard every single day by more people than ever before, in history, but it's also being rejected by more people than ever before in history. Now, the text that we're going to look at today explains why. Look at verse 14. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned." But we who are Christians, we have been rescued from that spiritual darkness. And we have been specifically rescued from our darkness by the Holy Spirit of God. And so this morning we as Christians are going to celebrate the sovereign work of the Spirit in our lives. That He was able to speak into the darkness of our hearts, and show us Christ. And He's still doing that, He's going to continue to do that, as long as we live. This is the ministry of the Spirit of God. We're going to continue to follow the argument of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 as he wrote to the Corinthian church concerning the wisdom of God in the cross, and we're going to see specifically the ministry of the Spirit and delivering that wisdom to us.

The deep mystery of God is infinitely wise. Paul is tracing out for the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1-2, the apparent foolishness of the Gospel. And he's done it for a very clear reason because the Corinthians, like all Greeks, loved human philosophy, they loved human wisdom, they were enamored with it. Greek philosophy was their glory, it's what made them shine in the world. And Paul is seeking to expose their pride, their arrogance, the utter foolishness of human wisdom. And so he's been revealing effectively the competing systems of wisdom here. God's wisdom versus man's wisdom. They're in direct competition. And he's been revealing how God's wisdom appears to be foolish to the world, to the natural mind. And he does it in three steps. First, in the middle part of 1 Corinthians 1, he begins by talking about the cross of Christ. And the cross of Christ seems foolish. How could a dead Jewish man on a Roman cross be the Savior of the world? That just seems foolish. And then the second step was the Corinthian church itself. How could such an assembly of people that no one really would want, not many wise, not many influential, not many of noble birth, the foolish people really of the world, that no one wants. They are Christ's church. And that seems foolish.

And then the third step we looked at last week is how would God choose as a messenger someone like Paul, who was not a very polished speaker and had rejected the strategy of polished rhetoric and speaking. He put that aside, and was even that day, not at his best. He said he was with them in weakness and fear and much trembling. It seems foolish. Why would God use such a messenger? But there is, in fact, an amazing wisdom in all of this. So as Joel began his reading in verse six it starts with the word 'yet.' So, I've been tracing out why we're turning now, we're turning a corner concerning all of this. There actually is an amazing wisdom in all of this. He's been calling Christ crucified the foolishness of God and the weakness of God, but actually it is infinite wisdom, it is infinite strength. And in this competition between God's wisdom and man's wisdom, God is going to have the final word. God is in the business of leveling human pride. Isaiah 2 makes this plain that God is set against human arrogance, human pride, against all the lofty towers and the stately trading vessels, and all the high mountains of human arrogance, those are idolatrous self-worshipping systems of human arrogance. Isaiah 2 says that God is going to level all of that. "The Lord alone will be exalted in that day." And He uses the gospel and the church and messengers of the Gospel to level human pride.

The Gospel is Actually an Infinitely Wise Message

So actually, Paul says here, we do preach a message of wisdom. Look at verses 6 and 7, "We do however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined, decreed for our glory before time began." So Paul speaks of we, we being messengers like me. Faithful evangelists, faithful missionaries, faithful pastors who are preaching this message. We who are speaking this message, we actually are speaking a message of wisdom. In fact, you're going to see on Judgment Day just how wise this message really was. In my home state of Massachusetts up in Newburyport there is the burial site of one of the greatest evangelists of all time, George Whitefield. And Whitfield wanted this put on his tomb as a memorial, concerning his life, "Here lies George Whitefield. What sort of man he was, Judgment Day will reveal." Now George Whitefield was one of the most famous men on earth at that point. A lot of people spoke for him or against him. He said, "You want to know who I really am, wait till Judgment Day. Then you'll see."

That's true of all of us, what kind of person we really were will be revealed on Judgment Day. Well, I want to take that idea and apply it to the Gospel. Here is the Gospel of Christ, how wise it really is will be revealed on Judgment Day. But it would be very good for all of us to see its wisdom now while there's time. Before Judgment Day comes when it's too late to believe this message, it is good for us now, by faith to see how wise the message of Christ and Him crucified, really is. And so he says, "To the mature, we speak a message of wisdom." Or to the perfect, that's one translation but I think it just means to those who have received this gospel message, to those who love it, who are swimming in it, and delight in it, we can see it, can't we? We can see this is a message of wisdom. So, among the mature we are speaking a message of wisdom. And this deep mystery of God is infinitely wise. It is wise because it lines up with the central reality there is in the universe. It's foolish to live in a fantasy, in a fantasy world, in a world that isn't. We believe that God the Creator and the King and the Judge has a throne in Heaven, and that throne is the center of the entire universe. And so it is infinitely foolish to deny that Creator, King and Judge, that God.

But this gospel message lines us up with that central reality. So it is very wise. The deep mystery of God and Christ is infinitely wise also because there are just so many dimensions to it, it's a very deep, wise, multi-faceted thing, what God is doing with sinners in the world through Christ. And so, it's very wise actually. And it's so wise and so overwhelming that the Apostle Paul as he was unfolding the deepest clearest exposition of the gospel, which is the book of Romans, as he's going step by step by step, and especially in that section in Romans 9-11, where he's dealing with the perplexing problem of the Jews and why the overwhelming majority of the Jews are rejecting Christ, and he gives us three chapters of answer to that, including the future when all Israel will be saved and he goes through all of that. And then it's almost like he looks at what he's written and he can't fathom everything that the Holy Spirit has told him to write in the book of Romans. And so he just gives this incredible doxology. "Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable His judgments. And His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? And who has been His counselor?" And so he's just in awe at the words he wrote that he doesn't understand, but he wrote them as an instrument of the Holy Spirit. And so, it is wise, this gospel is wise, because it is so multi-faceted and complex.

Thirdly, this deep mystery of God is infinitely wise, because it is so powerful in humbling humanity, and we need humbling. We have been allied with Satan in his arrogant rebellion against God, who sought to ascend and topple God from His heavenly throne. We joined him in the Garden of Eden, and we have been arrogant and lofty and so proud and boastful, this gospel is wise because it humbles us. And what it's going to do is it's going to rescue people from every tribe, language, people or nation and humble us and quiet us around the throne of God, where we celebrate His grace in saving us. That's what it's going to do. So it's a very wise message.

It is also infinitely wise, because it displays all of the perfections, the qualities, the attributes of God, puts them all on display. God's power, His justice, His wisdom, His mercy, His kindness, His patience, His love, all of these things are on display in the cross and in the gospel. And so it's infinitely wise, finally, because it overcomes all of Satan's complex powerful opposition to it. Satan is very intelligent, far more intelligent than any of us, and he set up all of these faulty religions and these idolatrous systems, and they're very persuasive and they're very powerful. God's wisdom is wise because it knows how to topple all of those systems and level them and rescue us out of them all, redeemed in Heaven. So see how wise is this gospel, how infinitely wise.

The Ultimate End of this Wisdom: God’s Glory and Ours

Now, the ultimate end of all this, look at verse 7, is God's glory in ours, in our glory. That's the end, that's where we're heading. God will be glorified by us being glorified. Look at verse 7, it says, "We speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden, and that God destined or predestined or decreed for our glory, before time began."

Now that's amazing. Before time began, God worked out this message, this gospel message, so that we would end up glorious in His presence. Now God does everything for His own glory, it says in Revelation 5:13. And this is a little glimpse of heavenly worship. They're all around the throne, and they are celebrating and this is what they say, "To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb," that's Jesus, "be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever." That's what we're going to be doing in heaven, just giving God the honor and the glory. So God does everything for that, for His own glory. But God will be most glorified in us when we are finally glorified in Him. When we are in our resurrection bodies, when we are shining like the sun in the kingdom of our Father, God will get maximum glory from any of His creatures at that point, that's the maximum glory there will ever be. And so God actually destined this message that we would be glorious in His presence, and it'll be His glory in us. It's not an independent glory like we're in competition, we'll be shining with His glory.

In Revelation 21:10-11, an angel showed John the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. Now listen to this Revelation 21:11, "It shone with the glory of God and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel like a Jasper, clear as crystal." That's the people of God, and we're going to be shinning with the glory of God through Christ. So God destined this message before time began, that we would end up glorious in Him. How powerful is that?

Now, the deep wisdom, this deep wisdom of God that we've been talking about is hidden from the people of this age. It is a secret wisdom. Look again at verse 7, "No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began." This is a mysterious thing. This is a hidden wisdom. And Paul calls the wisdom of God, the secret thing hidden in the mind of God, he calls them the deep things of God. This is something that the world with all of its philosophical brilliance, or its scientific acumen, with all of the precision of human technology and science, we could never have figured it out, never have plumbed the depths of it.

The focus of this wisdom is Christ who was hidden in the mind of God, before He revealed Him. Isaiah 49 speaks of Christ being concealed like a secret arrow in a quiver, and at the right time, He unveiled Him. And little by little He unveiled Him in prophecy, but then at the right time, unveiled Him. This wisdom has been hidden in the mind of God, and God destined for our glory before time began. So that means before God said, "Let there be light," He worked all of this out. Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world. So that means He was effectively, it was worked out that He would die for our sins before God said, "Let there be light." All of this was worked out in the mind of God, before time began. And Ephesians 1 tells us that God chose His elect people from every tribe, language, people, and nation, before the world began. It says in Ephesians 1:4 that God  "chose us in Christ," "before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight." So this is something God had worked out before the creation of the world.

Now, God's wisdom is not the wisdom of this age. Verse 6, "Not the wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing." Here he makes it plain that the secret wisdom of God is not the wisdom that Satan is selling in the present age. The rulers of this age rejected it in every generation. So back in the day, the Greek heroes like Alexander the Great, who thought might makes right and won an empire with the edge of his sword, rejected the wisdom of God. And philosophical heroes like Plato and Aristotle and Socrates, they didn't discern the wisdom of God, they didn't discern Christ. And so also the rulers of our age are going to be universally rejecting the gospel of Christ. Don't be shocked by that, that the movers and shakers of the 21st century in America and around the world, the political leaders, the Fortune 500 CEO’s, the best and the brightest, the most brilliant individuals, the talking heads that everybody goes to for all this insight, for them, almost universally, this is foolishness. Just like it was in Paul's age.

But Paul says the rulers of this age are coming to nothing. They're going to be exposed on Judgment Day as having been wrong, having been foolish. The crucifixion of Christ as essential moment in human history proves their blindness. Look at verse 8-9, "None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory." The rulers of this age proved that they did not understand what God was doing by crucifying Jesus.

Some people think the rulers of this age refers to Satan and his demons, and that kind of terminology is used in Ephesians 6, but here I really think it's humans. Because in context he says, "As it is written, 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard…'" He's talking about human beings, human rulers. And so, Annas and Caiaphas and the Jewish Sanhedrin, by rejecting Jesus, by the high priest tearing his robes and saying, "He's spoken blasphemy," they didn't recognize that Jesus was what the text says, "the Lord of glory." They didn't see Jesus as the Lord of glory. And why? Because Isaiah 53:3 says, "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him." Nothing in His appearance, He just looked like an ordinary man, and they considered it blasphemy that He would be calling Himself the Son of God. And so, they didn't see it. If they had seen and known who He was, they would never have crucified Him.

Pontius Pilate, I think he was puzzled by Jesus, he was troubled by Jesus. I think he wondered who Jesus was. His wife had a dream about Him, he was afraid of Jesus in some sense, but he didn't recognize Him as the Lord of Glory. If he had, he would never have given the order to his soldiers to crucify Him. They would not have crucified Him if they had known who He was, the Lord of glory. Supporting verse in verse 9, "However, as it is written, No eye has seen no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him." Now people who use this verse to talk about our own future. Like, I'm writing a book now on heaven, and one person said to me, "Well, I don't think we can know anything about heaven 'cause it says, 'No eye has seen no ear has heard, neither has it entered the heart of man what God has prepared for us in heaven.'" Just read the next verse. God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. So, so much for that.

But I don't even think it's talking about Heaven, this is talking about Christ crucified and resurrected. It's talking about the gospel and no eye has seen, and no ear has heard and neither has it entered into the heart of man. The natural mind would never have thought of this. We would not have come up with this gospel. No human author, no William Shakespeare, no Charles Dickens, no Mark Twain, would have ever been able to concoct this, they never would have come up with this story.

Some time ago I came across a bit of prose, written to just give us a sense of the greatness and the mystery of the life of Christ. Let me read it to you. It Said this:

"More than nineteen hundred years ago there was a Man born contrary to the laws of life. This Man lived in poverty and was reared in obscurity. He did not travel extensively. Only once did He cross the boundary of the country in which He lived; that was during His exile in childhood.

He possessed neither wealth nor influence. His relatives were inconspicuous, and had neither training nor formal education. In infancy He startled a king; in childhood He puzzled doctors; in manhood He ruled the course of nature, walked upon the billows as if pavements, and hushed the sea to sleep. He healed the multitudes without medicine and made no charge for His service.

He never wrote a book, and yet all the libraries of the country could not hold the books that have been written about Him. He never wrote a song, and yet He has furnished the theme for more songs than all the song writers combined.

He never founded a college, but all the schools put together cannot boast of having as many students. He never marshaled an army, nor drafted a soldier, nor fired a gun; and yet no leader ever had more volunteers who have, under His orders, made more rebels stack arms and surrender without a shot fired.

He never practiced psychiatry, and yet He healed more broken hearts than all the doctors far and near. Once each week the wheels of commerce cease their turning and multitudes wend their way to worshipping assemblies to pay homage and respect to Him.

The names of the past proud statesmen of Greece and Rome have come and gone. The names of the past scientists, philosophers, and theologians have come and gone; but the name of this Man abounds more and more. Though time has spread nineteen hundred years between the people of this generation and the scene of His crucifixion, yet He still lives. Herod could not destroy Him, and the grave could not hold Him.

He stands forth upon the highest pinnacle of heavenly glory, proclaimed of God, acknowledged by angels, adored by saints, and feared by devils, as the living, personal Christ, our Lord and Savior." —The Incomparable Christ

Now, no human author would come up with that, it's impossible. And the rulers of this age cannot understand this Wisdom. Verse 14, "The natural man," that's the literalistic translation. One translation says, "The man without the Spirit," but it's just the normal man, the non-supernatural man, "does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." Every unbeliever around the world is inherently hostile to both the Law and the Gospel. When he hears the law of God, he fights against it. Romans 8:7 says, "The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot."

The mind of the flesh, that's the natural mind, hates the law of God. Ten commandments, two great commandments, hates, fights against it. But also in this text, we would say the unregenerate mind does not accept the good news of the Gospel either. The blind eye cannot receive sight. No unbeliever can ever be talked into or persuaded to, or threatened or bribed or coerced into faith in Christ, just like none of those things would make a blind eye see. It's beyond us to do that. The Spirit searches out and reveals to us the deep wisdom of God. However, though no eye has seen, though no ear has heard, though it has not entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him, the Spirit has revealed these things to us.

When I was going back over the sermon a couple of days ago, it became pretty emotional for me at this point because I have increasingly realized what I owe to the third person of the Trinity for my salvation. I would still be an unbeliever. I was converted at age 19 as a junior at MIT. I've gone on into a career in science and would never believed if it weren't for the Spirit. Look at verse 10, "But God has revealed it to us by the Spirit," unveiled it to us by the Spirit. Look at the powerful work of the Spirit of God in Verse 10-11, "The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God."

Now, the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. We believe in one God who has eternally existed in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, co-equal with God the Father, and God the Son, and His unique role in all of this, is to reveal Christ to unbelieving minds. To do it powerfully and effectively. And first, the text says, He searches all things, even the deep things of God. This reminds me of the first two verses of the Bible, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." So you get the sense of the depths and the darkness, and the Spirit is active and ready to work.

The images of undulating chaos and turbulence and darkness and the Spirit of God hovering over the waters, He's ready to bring light and order out of the darkness and out of the chaos. Do not think the Holy Spirit of God was not involved in creation, He was. Just as Jesus was involved in creation, triune God created all things. And so it is with human conversion. 2 Corinthians 4:6 says, "God who said Let light shine out of darkness, made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." This text is saying He does that by the Spirit. By the Spirit, God says Let the light of Christ shine in your heart. That's what the Spirit has done for me and for all of you who are Christians.

And what's amazing here, is the Spirit is said to understand the mind of God. And by extension, I'm gonna say He understands the human mind as well, He searches the mind of God, He searches out the deep things of God. Remember that doxology, Oh, the depth of the riches, the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Who has known the mind of the Lord?" This text actually answers. The Spirit has, the Spirit knows the deep things of God, He plumbs the infinite depths of the mind of God. He knows exactly what God the Father wants out of the human race. He knows what God the Father intended in sending His only begotten son Jesus into the world. He's not misunderstood theology, He's actually really good at theology. The Spirit understands predestination, election, He understands justification by faith alone, He understands sanctification, He understands glorification, He understands every heading of theology very, very well. He has searched out the mind of God and knows exactly what God thinks about all of these things.

And though it doesn't say overtly here in the text, it's true, He understands your mind too. He's able to plumb the twisted dark depths of the human sinful mind. Says in Jeremiah 17:9-10, "The heart," the human heart, "is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind." He does that by the Spirit. So what that means is the Spirit of God both searches God's mind and searches our minds and is able to convert us and bring us together. He knows how to heal us, He knows how to give us spiritual sight when we are blind. I don't know if this is a good analogy, but I look on Him this morning, at least as a master safe cracker. He's able to pick the locks of your deceitful heart, and suddenly the door swings open. How did that happen? You put up all these defenses against Jesus. How many defenses did Saul of Tarsus put against this gospel?

Remember how He said, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads." He's been pressed, he's been pushed to faith in Christ, but he's resisting, resisting, resisting. But the Spirit of God is able to cause the locked gates of the soul to swing open to Jesus. He has that kind of power, He did it in my heart. All of you who are genuinely converted, He did it in your hearts too. He has that kind of power and that is a miracle, it's called the miracle of the new birth, of being born again. Jesus said to Nicodemus, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again." But Nicodemus didn't understand that, and so Jesus used this, in other words He said, "Flesh gives birth to flesh but the Spirit gives birth to Spirit. The wind blows where it wishes, you hear its sound but you can't tell where it comes from, where it's going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

So the Spirit works on us to be born again to faith in Christ, and so every Christian in the world owes his or her salvation as much to the Spirit as he does to Christ. Jesus provided the atoning blood, the Spirit painted it on the doorpost and lintels of your soul. Just like the Israelites did on the night of Passover, He has painted the blood of Christ on you, and by that you are saved. Without that, it never happens.

Jesus died 2000 years ago, and many people have heard about it and know about it and never believed it and went to hell. And so there needs to be that separate act of the application of the blood of Christ to our souls individually, and the Spirit does that. And the Spirit, verse 12-13, teaches us the words of the Gospel, the words of theology. Look what it says, "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truth in spiritual words." So the spirit of the world, Satan, is teaching worldlings, the people of the world, the language of the world. The language of wealth, the language of power, the language of pleasure, the language of self, that's what the spirit of this age is teaching the people of this age.

But the Spirit from God teaches us the language of spiritual riches that God is giving us. He puts these riches into words that people like Paul and pastors like me speak, that's all we do. Just words, words that capture how rich Christians are in the Gospel. And the Holy Spirit is able to marry spiritual truths with spiritual words. It's a difficult phrase in the Greek, but the sense is, He's putting together, knitting together, the spiritual truths that God is giving in words where you get to understand what they are. Because they're all invisible. And so the Spirit teaches us the words of theology, the words of preaching, the words of scripture, so that we can understand how rich we are in Jesus

Now, the Spirit of God also transforms our status and our judgment. Look at Verse 15-16, "The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment, for who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ."

Martin Luther, who was put under a death sentence by the Catholic authorities, the Holy Roman Emperor and by the Pope used this text to say I'm above all of your judgments. You can't do anything to me. I am not judged by any of you. I've been already judged at the cross, and now I am innocent through faith in Christ. And so we're not under any worldly judgment, we've been already judged and now declared to be 'not guilty' through faith in Christ. But we get to evaluate the world, we get to judge the world, we get to say that the pleasures and the powers and the principalities of this world are going to nothingness, and we'll still be standing when they're all swept away by the judgment of God.

And then Paul says, amazingly, the last verse of this chapter, "We have the mind of Christ." Isn't that amazing? If you're a Christian you have the mind of Christ. Not you ought to have it, you do. Through the indwelling Spirit, you are already fully capable of thinking like Jesus Christ, about everything. And yet Philippians 2, Paul says to the Philippian Christians there, "Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ," and then talks about humility. So it's like, how do I put that together? Ah, contradiction in the Bible. No. He says here, You have the mind of Christ. In Philippians 2, he says, now use it, think like Jesus. And so in everything at every moment of our lives, we're able to think and then live like Jesus, by the power of the Spirit.

Alright, applications. First to the unconverted, the things of the Gospel, maybe when you walked in here even this morning, might have seemed foolish to you. But maybe this morning, something's happening inside your mind, inside your heart. Happened to me. October of 1982 it happened to me, and all of a sudden things change. Maybe that's happening for you. You've heard the Gospel this morning of God sending His Son who died on the cross for sinners like you and me, that we're justified, we're made righteous by faith, not by works, that's the gospel. And it may be that this is happening to you right now, you're seeing yourself more and more as a person who needs a Savior, that you have violated God's laws, that you need a Savior, and that Jesus is the Savior.

If this is happening to you, this is the work of the Holy Spirit. And not only that, He begins to show you how glorious Jesus is, and you feel an attraction, a magnetic attraction, to Jesus and you want to follow Him, this is the work of the Holy Spirit of God. Let me just give you a warning, if today you hear His voice, don't harden your heart, don't put it off, call on the name of the Lord. You don't have to go anywhere, even now you can cry out inside your mind, inside your heart, Jesus save me, and He will.

Now for you who are Christians, stand in awe of the wisdom of God in all of this. You have been instructed how amazingly wise this gospel is, just stand in awe of that. This is a wise message. And isn't it amazing that He crafted it for your glory? Think about that. This message will glorify you. It is the power of God for your full salvation, it will get you to glory, just stand in awe of that.

And secondly, give the Holy Spirit full credit for your salvation. Thank God for sending the Spirit for you. Understand you would still be in darkness and blind and not born again if it weren't for the Spirit of God.

Thirdly, rejoice that the Spirit's not done working on you, He's still hovering over the deep of your heart. He's still got more things to teach you, He's teaching you more and more the significance of the final statement. You have the mind of Christ. Now use it, use it here, use it there, use it in thinking about money, use it in thinking about marriage, use it in thinking about sex, use it in thinking about your time, use it in thinking about everything. You have the mind of Christ, now use it. And feed on this Scripture, feed on the word to know what that means. The mind of Christ totally harmonizes with the words of Scripture and the Spirit can minister that to you.

Fifth, understand the state of the lost. We are surrounded by people who are without hope, and without God in the world, and they will never understand this message, and they're lost and they're on their way to hell. If they're not converted, they will be condemned for their sins. This is the only hope for them. And as you begin to talk to them, you're going to begin to realize just how true verse 14 really is. It's going to seem foolishness to them, they're going to push back on it, etcetera. Don't give up, the Holy Spirit has power to transform sinners. He has the power to pick the locks of their soul, and it will swing open, or just maybe blow open all the defenses and then the light floods in. How powerful is that?

And so, let us this week, just say, Lord lead me to someone who's ready to hear this message and just open the gates of their soul. I would love to see that happen. I would love to be sharing the gospel with someone who says, "That sounds good. What do I do?" So it's like, Lord lead me to someone who's ready to come to Christ and I will rejoice. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank You for the time that we've had in Your Word, we thank You for the power of the word, we thank You for the power of the Spirit in our lives. Thank you that You hovered over the deep of the mind of God, and You are able to draw the truths from the mind of God and deliver them to us. And thank You that You have hovered over the depths of our own twisted wickedness, the deceitfulness of our minds and You've been able to bring the truth through all of those obstacles, and barriers and hatred and dislikes, in order that we might be saved. God, make us truly thankful and make us bold as never before. Bold in our sharing of the Gospel. It's in Your name that we pray, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Turning your Bibles the 1 Corinthians, Chapter 2, we'll be looking this morning at Verses 1-5. Now, all of us I think has a tendency toward hero worship, it's in all of our hearts, we tend to idolize great men and women and build monuments and museums to them, to honor them. And it occurs to me that I indulge in this myself. This past summer, Christy and I went on a 30th anniversary trip, to England, and we went to a Jane Austen Museum and they had all kinds of artifacts from her life and I think a life size cut-out of her, and all kinds of things, and I enjoyed that, the great author of Pride and Prejudice. Then when we went to Oxford we went to the pub where C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and other great authors (they are Christian authors) used to meet. And we went to the very booth where they sat where there was a plaque and I just felt something special about that. And then after that I went to meet up with some missionaries in the Balkans and I went to a museum for Nicholas Tesla in Belgrade, the great Serbian physicist, and they had artifacts from his life and probably a cardboard cut-out of him too and I just enjoyed that.

And then I went to Prilep, Macedonia and there it was just amazing, it was over the top. In downtown, Prilep in 2006, they've renovated the whole area and they have no joke, 250-300 statues of great men and women from Macedonian history, culminating in this great warrior on a rearing horse waving a sword, who they say is the Macedonian warrior. But they wouldn't tell us who it was, because Macedonia is in somewhat of a conflict with Greece over where Alexander the Great really came from. So there he was a great Macedonian warrior wink, wink, but we're not saying who he is.

And so there's all of this kind of greatness in this hero worship, and there's, to some degree, nothing wrong with that, but as you study the Bible and you begin to realize what the Bible says about every man and woman boy and girl in the world, and you understand the wickedness in our own hearts you start to realize that hero worship is completely inappropriate. For Romans 3-23, says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." There's only one perfect man there only has ever been one perfect man and that is Jesus Christ, and the Bible exposes the moral weakness, the failures of every individual.

Even more dangerous than kind of general nationalistic, or literary hero worship is that that zeros in on religious movements. A hero worship centered on religious movements are especially dangerous, where the founder of that religious movement makes him or herself the focus of everything. That's the essence of a cult. Everything's about that leader, it's all about Muhammad as he starts Islam, it's all about Joseph Smith as he starts The Mormons or Charles Taze Russell as he starts the Jehovah's Witness movement or Sun Myung Moon as he starts The Moonies or Jim Jones as he leads the people to drink the purple Kool-Aid, David Koresh with the Branch Davidians or L Ron Hubbard with Scientology.

I was reading a website that talked about the mentality of these kinds of cult leaders who make themselves the focus of everything religiously. And it went on with 50 traits of these kind of cult leaders. But the first eight, I thought were interesting. These kinds of coercive cult leaders have a grandiose idea of who he is, what he can achieve. He is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success power of brilliance, he demands blind unquestioning obedience from his followers. He requires excessive admiration from his followers and from outsiders. He has a sense of entitlement expecting to be treated special at all times. He's exploitative of people, of others, especially concerning their money, demanding their money and absolute loyalty. He is arrogant and haughty and interpersonal relating and he has an exaggerated sense of power that enables him to skirt the law or even break it. That was just eight of 50 traits of these kinds of individuals.

Now, hero worships is always going to let us down, but especially that kind of religious cult-like hero worship. But God through the Gospel, wills to expose human sinfulness and to level human pride. He wants to humble the human race while he saves a multitude from all over the world from their sins. And in the second section of 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks of his own experience in preaching the Gospel in Corinth. He shows them that God was humiliating him and indeed all humans by the simple act of preaching the Gospel of Christ crucified. Paul was not preaching himself, he was not a cult leader. He was not starting a cult, centered around himself by the act of preaching Jesus Christ in him crucified all human wisdom and power is leveled, is humbled. God's wisdom and power and grace are exalted, and sinners are saved by that grace. So today we're going to talk about the center of evangelism. Jesus Christ and him crucified. We're going to talk about the humbling of the Evangelist in weakness and fear and much trembling, and we're going to talk about the power of evangelism, the Holy Spirit of God and we're going to talk about the product, the ultimate product of Evangelism and that is faith in the power of God, not in human power.

So let's look at the first of those, and that is the center of evangelism. Jesus Christ and him crucified. Look at Verse 2 of Paul's resolution, he says there, "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." Paul goes back to his mindset when he first came to Corinth. Remember the context, he had been rejected by the philosophers, the geniuses on Mars Hill and Athens. They had mocked him, and scorned him and said, "What is this babbler trying to say?" They especially mock the idea that a dead Jewish man on a Roman cross was a savior of the world, and that he having died would take on a physical body, again in resurrection that was utter foolishness to them. Paul then left Athens and made the 50-mile trip along the Greek coast line to Corinth pondering the experience that he's had of humiliation and scorn at their hands, and he said, I resolved that I was going to approach the ministry, this certain way. Look at Verse 1-2, "When I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed you the testimony about God, for I resolve to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." So here we have the center of the Gospel, Jesus Christ and him crucified Paul calls it "the testimony of God," as though Paul were a witness at a court trial, and God is on trial.

In the hearts of sinners, the whole thing is reversed, like Jesus standing before Pilate. God is being evaluated and judged by us and Paul's a witness to that. Someday, though, that's going to be reversed we're going to stand before God, and give him an account. But right now, the witnesses are making a case for God to unbelievers and so as I proclaim to you the testimony about God. Paul said he rejected eloquence and superior wisdom for these things could never humble and subdue a proud rebellious heart make it submissive to a king, to King Jesus.

Chapter 1, he's already told us that there's a limitation to all human philosophy, and wisdom. "Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" So Paul resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Listen, he's not being anti-intellectual here, as though he hated deep thinking. Some of our critics say that about Christianity. They want to make it like, we're stupid people or anti-intellectual. That's not at all. Paul had one of the most brilliant minds in history, Paul wrote the Book of Romans.

On one of his trials, someone said, "Your great learning is driving you insane." Paul, was not anti-intellectual. That's not what's going on here. But he had seen through all human wisdom and brilliance and saw the limitation and how it was essentially in opposition to the grace of God. He wanted to focus his mind on nothing except Jesus Christ. The infinite mystery of who Christ is, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for by him, all things were created, things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible. Whether thrones or powers, or rulers or authorities. All things were created by him for him, he is before all things, and in him all things hold together…" The greatness of Christ. I resolve to focus on Jesus.

From the moment that the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus filled with murderous threats against the Lord's disciple, on the road to Damascus the resurrected Christ showed him some of his glory on that road. And from that moment, he could never get enough. Philippians 3, said, "I just want to know Christ." I want to know Christ. I want to know Christ every day. I consider all of the things I used to live for rubbish that I might gain Christ, and be found in him. All I want to know is Christ. So when Paul came to Corinth, his mind was focused entirely on Jesus Christ.

But not primarily Christ as the Creator and the Sustainer of the universe, the King of Kings and Lord of the Lords. Yes, all of that. But primarily Jesus Christ in him crucified. God in the flesh, whose flesh was nailed to the cross. A God who had blood, whose blood was poured out at the cross. That's what he wants to zero in. So is embracing the shock and horror, of the cross. Foolishness to the Greeks, a stumbling block to the Jews, but salvation to the called. That's what he resolved.

Application: Focus your mind on Christ and him crucified

So I'm going to just stop through this sermon. I'm just going to make applications as we go. And so what's the application for us? Well, Paul's determination needs to be ours as well. We've got to focus our minds this week on Christ and him crucified, as we seek to win lost people around us. And if you're a Christian, that's your mission, this week. Not just mine as a Pastor, we have lost people who are around us who don't know that they're lost. They're without hope and without God in the world, and it's our task to tell them about Christ and you need to do the same resolution. I'm resolving to focus on Jesus and him crucified. We must teach clearly in this church, the doctrine of the incarnation, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. Born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, did all these incredible miracles, walked on water fed the 5000, healed every disease and sickness among the people. Raised the dead. This is Jesus, this is our savior.

We also need to teach the doctrine of the Substitutionary atonement that this Jesus took on a human body so that He might die in our place. And take in himself the just wrath of God we deserve for breaking God's laws. We have violated God's laws and we need to teach Christ and him crucified.

And I just want to stop right now and apply it to any of you that are here today that just you know you've come in here as non-Christians. You've been invited by a friend to be here today and you're here today as a favor to a friend or maybe you're just interested or somehow you found yourself at church today. And I just want to plead with you, I want to reach out to you now, and plead with you to be reconciled to God, through faith in Christ. All you need to do is trust this Jesus Christ, this son of God who died on the cross, who shed his blood and your sins will be forgiven. You'll be set free from these invisible chains that have been on your soul or around your heart, you'll be set free. And you'll be forgiven of all your sins, past, present or future not by works, but by faith and by grace.

So we've got to do this and we've got to embrace the fact that without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sins and not shrink back from that. This bloody cross. The church is always under pressure to conform to societal norms on this. And give up this awkward, embarrassing offensive message of a bloody cross.

I heard a story some time ago of a seeker sensitive church. Seeker sensitive churches of those that are trying to be evangelistic at every moment. In the Sunday morning service, their whole service is set up for seekers, for people who are interested in the Gospel and there's nothing wrong with having a yearning to have people come in. We want to have lost people coming to our services and we want to welcome them in, but seeker sensitive churches go beyond that to try to remove offensive things from the service and from the preaching that would cause people to stumble. And sometimes they go too far. And I heard this story about a new worship leader at one of these churches, and he did a series of blood hymns like "Nothing but the Blood" and "The Old Rugged Cross" and all that and afterwards he didn't know the mentality of the strategy of the church and so the pastor got up and apologized to the assembly there for all the blood language and said it would never happen again.

Now, that's the very thing that this church must never do, there's no getting away from "without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins." John McArthur also gives an illustration of this from this very passage. You heard the story of a church and it had on the side of the church, we preach Christ and him crucified. This came right from the text I'm preaching on today. But there was a leafy vine or something growing up on the side of the building and little by little, it started to cover over the sign. And it preached over the last part, and so all you could read was "We preach Christ." The crucified part was blocked by the vine and then the vine kept growing and all you could see was, "We preach." And then it covered over the word preach and just said, "we." And then the whole thing was covered over.

A church that turns away from preaching Christ and him crucified, signs its own death warrant it's only a matter of time before Christ will sovereignly remove that church. That local church is done. So we have to make this commitment, we have to resolve to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Now, what does that mean? It means to prioritize the cross over every other issue in life. It shouldn't be taken literally that Paul knew nothing about marriage, and parenting, and money. And politics and properly relating to the Roman Empire or the topic of slavery, or issues of justice in his... He knew all of these things, his Epistles are filled with these topics. But within the context, he's saying, "When I want to see sinners made right with God, I want to know that they are going to be forgiven of their sins. I am focused on this one thing." Jesus Christ and him crucified.

And secondly, I'm going to see all of those topics: Marriage, parenting, money relating to the Roman Empire. Issues of social... I'm going to see all of that through the cross. We're going to see this in... In Corinthians again, and again, he addresses very practical issues in that dysfunctional church, through Christ and him crucified. So, that's what he means by that. So first and foremost, we see the center of evangelism is preaching Christ and him crucified.

Secondly, we see the humbling of the evangelist. Weakness not eloquence, or brilliance? Now this is the third in a series of surprising humblings that Paul illuminates what God is doing to the human race through Jesus Christ and through the church. And the first, of Christ is just a message itself. Christ crucified is foolishness to the Greeks and it's a stumbling block to the Jews and so just by saving the world that way, that's a humbling of the world.

Secondly, as you remember, God is humbling the world by the church, by who he chooses because the Corinthians weren't that awesome. "Not many… [of them] were wise, not many… influential, not many… of noble birth, but God choose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise," he says. This is the third in a series of how God works to humble human pride and he does that by choosing Paul as a messenger preaching that particular message in that particular way. Very humbling to the human pride. Now Paul was not a polished speaker anyway. He wasn't really good at public speaking. Some of his opponents said in 2 Corinthians 10:10, "For his letters, they say are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech is contemptible."

In other words, he doesn't have his gestures down, he doesn't look like much. And he's just not good at speaking. Apollos on the other hand was a much more polished speaker than Paul was. We learned of him in Acts 18-24, he was an eloquent man who was powerful in the Scriptures. So, Apollos was trained in the skills of public speaking, the Greeks made much of eloquence of excellent language techniques, there are whole schools that taught rhetoric. The science of moving people with speech with sequencing your arguments and with skillful transitions and rhetorical techniques there were just a whole ways to go about it.

Now look, Paul knew about these things and he could have made a go of it. You could say, "Paul, you got to brush it up a little bit here. Tell you what I'm going to give you 10 weeks at our rhetorical school and we're going to brush you up a little bit and just make you a better public speaker. What do you say Paul, we'll pay for it." And Paul, would have rejected this. Like, I could do that. I could get better in rhetorical skills. But look what he says in Verse 1. "When I came to you brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaim to you the testament about God" and then Verse 4, "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power"

So anyway, Paul normally was not a great speaker. But he was at his worst I think there in Corinth it seems. Now, look what says in Verse 3. "I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling." Paul was struggling, I think, with a high level of human anxiety as he began his ministry in Corinth. Some commentators try to say it's a fear of the Lord, and it's trembling in the presence of God, don't do that. Paul was weak and trembling and afraid as he got up to speak. Unusually difficult. He's wrestling with something we all struggle with in evangelism don't we, fear of man.

Let's be honest, the number one reason the spirit-filled Christian people, do not witness is they're afraid what the people will say, or do when they witness. If you could have your fear of man completely removed, you would be a river of evangelism this week. And so he struggled, like we all do with fear of man, he was afraid of their reactions. What would they do? Would they turn away in indifference and just walk away? Would they stay there and mock him, like they did in Athens, even worse would they attack him physically, as it happened more times than he could count. Would he actually be in prison or maybe even killed? These are reasonable fears and the proof of what I'm saying is in Acts 18 when the Lord Jesus appears to Paul, in a vision and say to him...

This is Acts 18:9-10, "Do not be afraid. Keep on speaking, and do not be silent for I am with you. And no one is going to attack you and harm you for I have many people in this city." Doesn't that prove what I'm saying? Paul was afraid of these things. Paul's not some preaching machine. Just push the "on" button, and he's like a man of steel, just going through situations... He's flesh and blood just like any of us. He would wince if you raised a fist toward him. He would flinch. He's just a normal person. So when he came there in Corinth his presentation of the Gospel was weak and fearful and trembling. He was afraid.

But here's the key, he preached Christ anyway. He was afraid, but he preached Christ anyway. Can you do that by the power of the Spirit this week? Can you feel afraid and proclaim Christ and him crucified, anyway. That's the challenge for all of us. He put his hope in the message and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, if you'd been there at that moment in Corinth and you heard him preach. You might have been tempted to mock his stammering voice, his trembling voice. Maybe his hand was shaking a little bit, he's nervous. It's even worse if you have a paper in your hand, it makes it obvious that you're shaking. Maybe his eyes are darting and maybe he had beads of perspiration on his forehead, he was afraid.

But there was a hidden power, in this man and his message. There was something powerful about the Jesus, he was proclaiming and the story of who he was and what he did on the cross and how he was raised from the dead and how he came to save sinners like you and me. There is a hidden power, that changed their worlds. Those that believed. And so God is in the business of humbling the evangelist. If you want to be humbled get involved in evangelism. It's like, "Oh Pastor, why would I want to be humbled?" Well, because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. You want a journey of grace, then get humbled go see what God can do through people like you and me. We are in way over our heads. You have a sense of that? We're in way over our heads, the forces that raid against us are almost undefeated, the world, the flesh, and the devil, they just win day after day all over the world, in every language and culture they just win. The message itself of a Jewish man, dead on a cross, a bloody cross is the salvation of the world. If you just believe that's offensive to people.

We're calling on people to repent, from a whole lifetime of sins to turn their backs on habits that they have in-grade since childhood, and not only that but to turn their backs on all of their religious schemes that they were holding on to, that their parents and grandparents and ancestors believed. Or their own world view, that they've come up with, it's working just fine for them. They're own moral-ism, we're calling on people to turn their backs on all of that and trust in none of it. But to turn to Christ and Christ alone the impulse as people hear that is to mock or turn away in indifference or even more to lash out in anger sometimes. As we go out with this message, we're going to be, if we proclaim it clearly we're going to be a smell. We're going to be an aroma of life to some. But we're going to be a stench of death to most. It's just the truth. And so Paul says when he's describing all this who is equal to such a task.

And so, we are humbled. Look again at verse 3, "I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling." Paul's converts were one despite his performance, not because of it. Not by superior logic or dazzling technique, but by the true power of evangelism, the Holy Spirit of God. So here's the thing, feel your own weakness, as evangelists. Feel that reaching the hundreds and hundreds of people that are pouring into the Triangle Region most of whom are unchurched, probably lost, is so far beyond what we could do. Feel that your own efforts to convert worldly Americans at the workplace tomorrow or on the college campus tomorrow is just beyond you. Feel your own weakness and fear. Feel the fear you have. And by the power of the Spirit, act boldly anyway and share the Gospel. The fear that you have before you do it, is your gift to God, that's your sacrifice to God, if you act faithfully. If you overcome your weakness.

I will never forget. Told a story a number of years ago. A workplace evangelism situation. I was a engineer, just out of MIT, I was working and trying to be a faithful witness and sharing the Gospel. And there were different people, different reactions up their Massachusetts in Beverly, Massachusetts. And there was this one guy I used to interact with from time to time. He was the foreman of the assembly workers there. A tough man he was in his mis, silver grey hair. Never saw him smile once. People were afraid of him. I was afraid of him. His name was Ron. I won't say his last name. I still remember, but I won't say it. But the Lord laid Ron on my heart. It's like, "Oh God, why him. Not him." "I want you to share the Gospel with him." "When Lord?" "At lunch today." Ron usually didn't take lunch, he didn't have time for lunch, lunch is for weaklings, but occasionally he would sit at his work bench and eat a sandwich then get back to work. "Alright, Lord, I'm going to put a fleece in front of you. If he's sitting there eating a sandwich I'll go share with him. But if he's not there, I'm not going to track him down. I'm not." It's like that's what I'm going to do. So, I prayed. Peeked around the corner and there he was eating his sandwich. I'm like, "Oh God, no."

No. And I have never preached the Gospel with so much weakness and fear and much trembling, in my life. I said, "Ron." "Yeah." I said…I don't know what I said.  My mind was a blank. I was like, "Do you know about Jesus?" "Yeah, I know about Jesus." Then I said "I just think you need him" and I gave him a tract and walked away. That was it. Look, don't enroll in my evangelism school. It's not how to do it. I have no indication that Ron came to Christ. I wish I could tell you that He came to me at the end of the work day and said, "Andy, I have needed to hear that message for decades. No one ever had the courage to tell me, but I prayed to receive Christ, at 2:30 this afternoon. And I want to know, is there a church that you guys are starting? Is there some this... " That did not happen!

Thirdly, the of power evangelism, is the Holy Spirit. Look at Verse 4-5. "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on man's wisdom but on God's power," as Jesus said plainly, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth." The power does not come from human resources, but from the Holy Spirit of God, that overwhelming sense of humbling that you feel as an evangelist that should not be the end of the line. It should drive you to prayer and a seeking of the empowerment of the Holy Spirit of God. It is true that Paul said when I'm weak, then I'm strong, but that's only true if you turn your weakness, up to God and prayer by faith and rely on the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit delights to show his power on weak frail, men and women, boys and girls. I think about David Brainard who was a missionary to the Native Americans in the colonial era, in America, and he was continually sick with many illnesses but especially tuberculosis, which eventually took his life at age 29. He was beset with cyclical patterns of depression, he was terribly lonely and he was incredibly effective. Or I think about Lottie Moon, who was a missionary to China, stood all of 4ft three inches tall, was 50 pounds when she died, because of starvation as a result of the famine, there in China, but was incredibly powerfully used to mobilize Baptist missions. And God can use weak people, frail people. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity.

And he sovereignly is sent out by God the Father and God the Son, he is sent out to apply the blood shed on the cross. You remember the story of the exodus, the night of the Passover when all of the Jewish families had to slaughter the Passover lamb, and produced a bowl of blood, but that wasn't enough. They had to take hyssop and paint it on the door post and on the lintels and when the angel of death saw the applied blood he passed over. The second person of the Trinity, Jesus, it was his job to provide the blood of redemption, but it's the third person of the Trinity's job to apply it all over the world in every generation. And he is as effective at what he does as Jesus was at what he did.

So if you're a Christian today, you owe your salvation, as much to the Spirit as you do to Jesus. The Spirit sovereignly overcame all of your obstacles and won you to Christ. And he's the only one that can do that. The Holy Spirit's work, in evangelism is awesome and powerful, and as you, a Christian, just application point just begin by thanking God for sending the Spirit if you're a Christian. And then pray for the spirit to be out-poured on us here at FBC to reach as many people as we can in Durham with the Gospel. And especially this flows right from the text. Let's turn away from pragmatic man-centered approaches to evangelism.

The Folly of Pragmatic Man-Centered Techniques

American evangelicalism is rife with these pragmatic man-centered evangelism techniques. Charles Finney with his new measures, reduced revival and conversion to a science where if you can get the recipe right, you're going to get revival and you're going to get conversions, every time. He called it the new measures. And there are a lot of preachers like him out on the American frontier. There was a man, a Methodist preacher named Lorenzo Dow, this guy was straight weird. What an incredible, interesting man. He was turned out of every church, no church would... But it was okay. He did camp meetings, tent revivals, he would show up at a locality crowded like a theater or something like that, and he would call out in a loud voice, "One year from today, Lorenzo Dow will preach at this place" and then walk away and he kept all those appointments. Interesting advance notice. He was his own PR firm. He then would orchestrate techniques like he had this one young man climb a pine tree with a trumpet and at the right point, talking about the second coming of Christ, He did a gesture and the guy blew a trumpet. And people are like, "What was that?" And people were techniqued into an emotional reaction.

In 1959, a man named C. S. Lovett, wrote a book entitled Soul Winning Made Easy. What? Didn't seem like the spirit of 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, but that's... It was all about techniques and he took the techniques of the sales, sales approach, the sales force in 1950s American business world and applied them to evangelism with really Hokie photos of him there and he said that all you need to do at this key point having shared the Gospel you then want to lead them in the Sinners prayer. Prayer does not matter what they're thinking, it matters what they do. You put your hand on their shoulders, and you say, in a semi-commanding voice, pray with me. And then you push down on the shoulder and the psychological pressure of seeing you begin to pray, he will buckle. Friends, that's garbage. That man-centered technique is garbage. We need to realize that the power of evangelism and have conversions, and the Holy Spirit of God, there's no technique. Just like Elijah on Mount Horeb. He's not in the wind and he's not in the earthquake and he's not in the fire, he's not in the technique.

Finally, the product of evangelism is faith in the power of God. This is the ultimate end of all this. "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with the demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on man's wisdom but on God's power."

In Corinth, God used an unimpressive Jewish messenger displaying weakness fear and trembling, preaching a foolish and offensive message to change their world. Only God could do that. And so for the rest of your lives, we need to live out the truths of this message. Our entire lives and our witness in this community must follow the same pattern, the centrality of proclaiming Jesus Christ and him crucified. The humbling of all human evangelists who are going to go out throughout the Triangle Region this week in weakness and fear much trembling. You can do that part. The question is, can you, by the power of the Spirit over comment and share the Gospel of Christ and him crucified? Can you do that? Because by the power of the Spirit of God alone is this message advance.

And then the final result is people who are converted to that power and rely on God. Not on you, as some cult leader, or some significant person who found the technique but on somebody who relied on the spirit and shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ and him crucified. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to study your word. God, I pray that you would work deeply in our hearts. This message, help us O Lord, to know that we were saved by Christ and by him crucified. And the techniques and the approach that the messengers, used to it with us is not important. Help us ourselves to get over our fear, our fear of man. Help us, O Lord, to be willing to suffer rejection and scorn and reverses at work and not getting a raise. And people who used to be our friends, they're not friends anymore. Help us to be willing to pay the price so that we actually share this message this week, and that we can see people saved. Lord, that we can even hear their testimonies in the baptistery behind me, O God, of people who turned from darkness to life, we pray in Jesus's name, Amen.

So turn in your Bibles to Luke 16, the passage you just heard read. I just want to kind of embarrass myself here right from the start. The sermon outline you have on the back of the bulletin has a sermon title at the top, which is the title of all of my sermons before I write them. It's the template that I use on Microsoft Word. Now, I didn't need to tell you that. I don't think very many of you would be shrewd enough to say, "The sermon actually had nothing to do with the power of the Gospel." I think….generally, I think the power of the gospel relates to everything in the Christian life. But if I were gonna give this sermon a real title, it would be something like this: “A Window of Opportunity That Will Soon Be Closed.” That's what I think this text is about. This is how it spoke to me.

Now, as I begin, I think about the roles that we play in our lives. I've read through The Chronicles of Narnia to my kids. The first one is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And the wardrobe was a wooden box, a standalone closet that was a passageway into another world, and it had garments in it and all that. And my kids had something like that when they were growing up. It was called “the dress-up box.”

And I don't know, some of you may know exactly what I'm talking about, but inside were all manner of wild kind of clothing that our kids, when they were little, would put on and they could be, for a very short time, someone else. They could first just be grown-ups, or they could go to another kind of era in history: they could be colonial-era men and women, or they could be prairie folks, or they could be kings and queens for a day. And sometimes they would write plays and they would play roles and we parents would have to watch those play... I'm sorry, get to watch their plays. The plot development was scintillating, it was amazing, the different lines that they would have. And for a while, they would play those roles, and then they would surrender their dress-up clothes and go back to their normal lives. I think it's important for us to see our lives, our physical lives, and the roles we play like that, to some degree. They are all of them temporary. Everything that characterizes you, your life in this world is temporary, your intelligence, your physical strength, your wealth, your job, your role as parent or child, husband, wife.

For me, a senior pastor, all of these are like to some degree, dress-ups, and the Lord is watching to see what we do in those roles. They do not finally define us. They are all of them temporary. And we're going to be shucking off those robes and standing stripped of them before God on Judgment Day to give him an account of what kind of people we were in those temporary roles. And the more you immerse yourself in this mentality, the more your pride in that position will go away. Paul says in Corinthians, "What do you have that you didn't receive? And if you did receive it, then why do you boast as though you did not?" So as Jeremiah said, "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, or the strong man boast of his strength, or the rich man boast of his wealth, but let him who boast boast in this that he knows me." Or as it says in 1 Corinthians 1, "Let him who boast, boast in the Lord." We're gonna get stripped of all of these things. Life is fleeting and temporary, and someday we are going to die. All of us are going to die if we're not part of that mysterious final generation, and we will stand before God and give him an account.

So this is the third and final sermon I'm gonna be preaching on stewardship in connection with our More Than A Building campaign. Some of you have been here for the other two. Some of you are just here visiting this morning. For those of you that were not with us for the last two sermons, let me just remind you what this is all about. The elders of First Baptist Church are calling on members of the church to give sacrificially over the next three years to renovate our building. The reason for this is that our building is aging, and there are some significant areas that need to be addressed in order just to keep the building simply running: talking about electricity, plumbing, HVAC, different things like that, structural things, things that are not incredibly exciting or interesting, but they are aging and they just need to be upgraded. But beyond that, on top of that, a desire to freshen up the space of some aspects of our building, not all of it, to make it more architecturally attractive, bring us into the 21st century in appearance, similar to what was done in the Welcome Center right behind me, and its transformation from the Betsy Cheek Chapel to the present Welcome Center

We have in mind that kind of transformation for some of the other spaces in our building. And our desire is that this work on the building will enhance the building's role as a platform for ministry. That's all. We're living in a booming region of the country, population-wise. People are pouring in here to live and work and study, and that provides an opportunity for us. As Christ said to the church in Philadelphia, "Behold, I've set before you an open door which no one can shut." And so we have an opportunity to reach people who are pouring into this area, many of whom are unchurched, who are unsaved. They are without hope and without God in the world. We wanna reach out to them. And we want to interact with them, get to know them, build relationships with them, and share the gospel with them, the word of truth, the word of life, which alone is the power of God for salvation. We want to see them rescued from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Beloved Son, and then we wanna see them built up in their faith, see them sanctified, growing and developing to Christ-like maturity, so they themselves can be labors for this growing harvest field, a multiplication ministry.

We wanna see all of that happen here. Now, we're well aware, the elders are, that a building cannot achieve any of this. We could have the prettiest building in the state with breathtaking architecture, state-of-the-art technologies, lavishly comfortable furniture. We can have all of that. But if the Word of God is not being taught here, it will all be for nothing. If men aren't meeting with men and women aren't meeting with women for discipleship, if groups aren't gathering, ad hoc groups just led by the Spirit to intercede and pray for each other and for the community and to the ends of the Earth, it doesn't matter how beautiful our building will be, it's just deadness, if the Spirit isn't at work here.

Now, there are many texts that I could take to persuade you to give financially, but this one captivated my mind just 'cause it's so fascinating. Isn't it an amazing parable? It's definitely a head scratcher, don't you think? As you're listening to Herbert read it, I'm like, you probably were saying, first of all, "What in the world? And why would the pastor picked this one, and why would Jesus tell it to begin with? I mean, honestly, it seems a little sketchy, don't you think?” But the basic point, if I could just boil it down to the point, the key for me in this parable is that the master didn't fire the guy right away and escort him off the property. That's the key to everything. He had a window of opportunity in his role, and boy did he take advantage of it. And in that brief window, that closing window of opportunity, he used his position to build relationships. And Jesus grabs hold of that and says, "You need to do that same thing with your money, and I'm gonna extend it to your time and your energy, I'm going to advocate that beyond just money, but your time, your energy, strength and your money, you should use these spendable resources, which are gonna go away anyway, you should use them while you have them for the kingdom of God. Because some day all of them will be taken from you.” We are stewards, and so we have a closing window of opportunity and we need to seize it. So this is far bigger than the building. That's why the elders have been saying, “More Than a Building.” The principles by which the money will be raised will be lifelong for all of us. They go well beyond the refurbishment of this aging building. It just has to do with how you look at your life, how you look at the resources that you're stewarding. Are you thinking with an eternal perspective about these things, or not? That's what we're about.

So let's walk through the parable of the shrewd steward, we'll try to explain it. I'm just gonna summarize it. A wealthy owner, a rich man finds that his steward, his servant -- a steward, is just somebody who takes care of someone else's possessions -- has been squandering his wealth. He doesn't go in the parable into details, but he was probably living high on the hog. He doesn't want to lose that privileged lifestyle, we find that out later. So the owner is very angry with this manager, this steward, and he comes to him and says, "Settle accounts because you're gonna lose your position. I hear this report about you and you're out. So get things figured out and soon, you're going to lose your position." Well, this guy ruminates in the parable within himself, we get to listen to his thoughts. He said, "What shall I do?" He said, "I don't wanna dig and I'm too proud to beg." So those are his two options. He doesn't wanna work hard, he's lazy. He's used to the cushy life. And he doesn't want to beg. That's shameful. So he's got some pride here despite the fact that he's dishonest. And so what is he gonna do? He wants to land on his feet. So he comes up with a brilliant idea, shrewd idea, which his master later commends him for. Though he had been ripped off, he commends him because it's a very shrewd idea.

He said, "I know what I'm gonna do." And so he begins to call in the people who always master resources, the people who are indebted to his master, and he significantly reduces their debt. The first man comes in, owes his master 100 measures, maybe about 800 gallons of olive oil, that's a big amount, and the steward tells him quickly to sit down and cut it in half, down to 400 gallons. I think quickly, because I think he's looking left and right to see if the owner's coming in at any moment. "So let's get this done quickly." So he writes a new IOU, legal, because this man had the authority to do it as a steward, sends him off happy. Does the same thing with the next guy who owes 1,000 bushels of wheat, cuts off 20% in that case, and reduced it to 800 bushels of wheat. So the result of all of this is that these people now have a strong sense of gratitude to this man, and he expects that when he loses he loses his position, and then he goes out and knocks on the door of one of these people, they open the door, just happens to be dinnertime, says, "You know, I just lost my job today, maybe because I cut your bill in half. Any chance I might be able to grab dinner with you?" "And anything else?" "Well, I could use a place to stay for a while," this kind of thing.

That's what he's thinking is going to happen. He'll be welcomed into their homes and offered hospitality out of their sense of indebtedness. Now, the master finds out, as I said about this, and praises him for his shrewdness. So why is that? I can't imagine exactly how this would go, he's like, "Wow, you got me. You got me. That was pretty good. I don't know I would have come up with that, but that was good." Something like that, whatever the first century version of that was.

So this is a very strange parable, honestly. This would be straight unethical if it were a government figure today. It's called “influence peddling.” In some cases, depending on what it is, it's a crime to use your position in government to build connections so that people then give you kickbacks or jobs when you lose your position, something like that. It's illegal. So Jesus is using some pretty questionable ethics to teach us a valuable lesson, and what is that? You are all, we are all stewards of God's possessions. The possessions are not our own, they belong to God.

And just like the steward in the parable, someday we will all be losing our stewardship position. There is a closing window of opportunity. And so the clear command here is use your temporary wealth to make friends for yourself for the sake of an internal kingdom, specifically zeroes in on money, what he calls unrighteous wealth numerous times. I'm not gonna go into that, but it's just worldly wealth, tempting wealth, and as Jesus implies, wealth that really isn't wealth. It's not the true riches. Anyway, use that to build connections. Look at verse nine, verse nine we're gonna return to it several times in the sermon, but that's the number one verse I want you to zero in on, verse nine. Jesus applies it in this way: "I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings." So that's the parable, just walked through and explained. Now let's apply the parable generally to our Christian lives.

First, we need to understand the brevity of life, the brevity of life. All of us are mortal. We are all going to die someday. It says in Hebrews 9:27, "Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment." Now, the focus of my sermon here is an appeal to church members to give sacrificially to a building campaign or a capital project, but I'm aware that every single week, God brings us visitors. Church members are  faithful throughout the week to have built connections in the spirit of this parable, friendships, and have invited some people to church, it happens every week. And so I would be remiss if I just focused on stewardship and didn't preach the Gospel to you who are not yet saved. Let me just say to you directly, someday you are going to die. You don't know when that is. Your window is closing too. And after you die, it's not nothingness. There is something after you die. It's appointed to you to die once and after that, something, and what is that? Judgment. And at that judgment, you will be evaluated by the perfect eyes, the holy eyes of the judge of all the Earth, and there will be no hiding, there'll be no escaping, everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account, and on that day, you will not be able to save yourself from your sins.

And so Jesus Christ came, the Son of God, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, he was fully human, fully God, but lived a sinless life, did incredible miracles, taught parables like this one, but the central purpose of his physical life on Earth was to die on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sinners like you and me. And so he took the wrath of God and the punishment of God on himself and died under the wrath of God. The death penalty we deserve for the wages of sin is death. He died, but God didn't leave him in the grave. He raised him from the dead on the third day, and he was seen by many eye witnesses, and he ascended to Heaven and now sits at the right hand of God, and someday he will judge the living and the dead. That is the gospel, and all you have to do is believe that what I've just said is true, and that you are a sinner, you have violated your conscience, you have violated the laws of God, and apart from this gospel, you are lost.

But this is the day of salvation. All you have to do is hear this message and believe it with faith. And so I urge you to do that. Not urging you to put a card of commitment in the tray as it goes by at the end of the sermon, I'm urging you to cry out to the Lord now inside your heart, say, "Oh God, be merciful to me. In the name of Jesus, be merciful to me, a sinner, and forgive me." Alright, so this parable, the stewardship, key to the idea is this window of opportunity is closing, it's closing because we're mortal, where all of us is going to die. Genesis 3:19, "We're gonna work by the sweat of our brow. We're gonna wrestle with the Earth and it's gonna produce thorns and thistles for us, but also some harvests. And then in the end, in our wrestling with the dust of the Earth, we're going to lose and sink down into the dust from which we came." That is the curse we have in Adam, and therefore our lives here on Earth are fleeting and uncertain.

James, chapter four puts it this way, "Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you don't even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, I will live and do this or that.’ Instead, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.” So James is saying very clearly, our lives are very temporary. Every morning, I drive across a bridge near where I live and there's a lake there, Little River Lake. Frequently, especially this time of year, there's a mist that covers and it's a wispy kind of fall. If I were to pull up a chair in the woods near there and just watch the lake... I've never done this, but I can imagine this happening. As the sun comes up and the day starts to heat up, that mist will burn off, and it would be like it was never even there. And so it is with our lives. If the Lord doesn't return for another 100 years, 150 years, who is gonna remember any of us, 150 years from now? So our lives here on Earth are fleeting and uncertain.

Secondly, everything that we own, we own in stewardship, it is not our stuff. It's such a satanic deception, that your money is yours. In some sense, it is. That's why there's laws against theft. Against stealing, 'cause possession does matter. But before God, it's not the case. Everything you have is God's, you are a steward. Look at verse 12, he said, "If you've not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?" So, the someone else is God. The property of your own? Now, that's very provocative about Heaven. Real ownership is in the next world, not in this one, where we will not die and the things we have, we'll have forever.

David said, as I mentioned two weeks ago, 1 Chronicles 29, when they were raising money for the building of the temple, he said, "Who am I and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our forefathers, our days on Earth are like a shadow without hope. Oh Lord, our God has for all this abundance that we have provided for, building you a temple for your holy name. It comes from your hand and all of it belongs to you.”

It's a principle of stewardship. So since everything we have is really God’s, and since our time here on Earth is so brief and uncertain, we are exactly like the steward and the parable, we will soon lose our position, it will be gone. We have a rapidly closing window of opportunity, and Jesus said that we should use worldly wealth to gain friends for ourselves, so that when it is gone, not that it might be gone, it will be gone. When it fails you, one translation has “they”... the friends will welcome us into eternal dwelling places. So someday, everything you think is yours will be taken from you and you're gonna leave it all behind because it really wasn't yours anyway. Randy Alcorn in Money, Possessions, and Eternity, said this, "Money can be a tool of Christ, but it must be used as such now, before our period of service on Earth ends. There will be no second chance to use the money for Christ later. After his termination was effective, after he could work no longer, the manager would have no more leverage, he used his final days of service to win friends who could take him into their dwellings when his work was done."

So thirdly, use temporary resources to build friendships. Though the money really belongs to God, and it's only temporary, it does actually have some value, eternal value. If we are generous with our money, it will be useful in building relationships for the eternal kingdom of God. Look again at verse 9, “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Well, how do you do that? How do you use worldly wealth to gain friends? Well, as we generously see needs and meet needs with our temporary resources -- I'm gonna extend it beyond money to time and energy as well, strength -- as we use these commodities to meet people's needs, to connect with people, it creates a relationship and a sense of gratitude and a desire for mutual blessing that comes back. It's just natural. This certainly works in terms of giving a party or a banquet in which you roll out the red carpet, you serve the best foods and there's beautiful decorations and all that -- creates inside the people a desire to do the same thing for you. Jesus even talked about that. They're gonna want to connect with you. Your guests will feel cared for, they'll feel loved, that you've looked after their needs. That's why we yearn to use hospitality as a platform for evangelism.

So I just wanna say, make friends with your lost co-workers, make friends with your lost neighbors, make friends with people and invite them into your home. It's a powerful platform for evangelism. So also when we give to the poor and needy, Jesus said, "They can't repay you, but you will have built a connection with them that will last beyond the grave, into eternity." Now, money can't buy anything directly, spiritual money, can't buy conversions, money can't buy spiritual growth, money can't buy any of these spiritual things. It’s just a tool. But those physical things, like rich, warm hospitality, create the context for lasting friendships, and if they're done in the name of Christ, they can be instrumental in winning the lost people to Christ. That's the rationale for a beautiful, comfortable building. It's not gonna win anybody. It's a platform in which people feel loved and welcomed, just like cleaning up your house and putting on a nice tablecloth before you have guests.

Now, for twenty centuries, Christians have used their time and their strength and their money to spread the gospel and to alleviate temporary suffering, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and heal the sick, and do that when it was best done, by far, as a platform for sharing the words of life. As we said at a conference I spoke at a few years ago, we care about all suffering, but especially eternal suffering, and so there's a desire to alleviate temporary physical suffering, but ultimately that they would be delivered from eternity in hell and instead spend eternity in beautiful dwelling places in Heaven. So money paid the fare for missionaries throughout the modern mission movement, it was money that was raised for William Carey that enabled him to go to India. It was money that was raised for Adoniram Judson that enabled him and his team to go to Burma. It was money that was raised by Hudson Taylor that enabled him to take the gospel to the inland regions of China. As an IM trustee, I can just tell you financially, the IMB is healthy and stable. We just voted in the annual budget, $264.4 million.

And they followed some really healthy financial principles, but they said something very striking. The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering that makes up about two-thirds to three quarters of the annual mission budget that enables missionaries to go on the field has plateaued pretty much, and what that means is that they can't very well expand and send more missionaries. They need to keep caring for the missionaries they have and replacing the ones that are retiring or moving off the field. And so it's kind of a stable...

Now, those 3600 or so missionaries are doing phenomenal work around the world, but we shouldn't see any kind of exponential growth to 4,000, 4500, 5,000 without a staggering work of God in financial generosity on the part of people like you and me, and people all around the country. And so, being generous with our money now will enable people to go on the mission field. It doesn't buy souls, it doesn't buy churches planted, but it does serve as a physical platform. When Christi and I and our two older kids were missionaries in Japan, it was the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, and it was the cooperative program that combination that paid for our salary to live in Tokushima and share the gospel with Japanese people. So money enabled these things, but it didn't buy any souls for the Kingdom. What’s happening is relationships are being built, friendships are being built that are useful for the eternal gospel.

Now look at what Jesus says in verse 9, he says, “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves,  so that when it's gone [and it will go], you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Now, what does that mean? It's time for some eschatological speculation. Eternal, I think, means heavenly. Dwellings is a place where people live. In heaven. So one concept of this is that you're receiving like 2 Peter 1-11, a rich welcome when you die. I think that's possible that that's all that's saying, But that's not the connection here. The connection is people who felt a sense of gratitude to you want to express it to you, but Jesus says, make sure they do it in Heaven, not now. And so they're going to want to welcome you into their heavenly homes. They're like, wait a minute, Pastor, and this is getting straight weird, they're gonna have eternal dwellings in Heaven? Yes, they will. You know why? 'Cause they're going to have resurrection bodies, and those bodies need to be somewhere, and Jesus said openly in John 14:2-3, he said there, “In my Father's house, there are many rooms [sometimes translated mansions, but just dwelling places]. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I'm going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come and take you to be with me so that you also may be where I am.”

Many of you are with us as we travel through the Book of Revelation. You remember the New Jerusalem described very plainly, descending and prepared and glorious. But then it was measured, as you remember, by an angel with a measuring rod. It had dimensions. So there is such a thing as eternal dwellings, and the idea is if you build friendships with people, they'll want to have you over in Heaven to say thank you. You're like, “Wow, that's pretty amazing.” And perhaps before you made the friendship, they weren't gonna have any dwelling in Heaven at all, instead they would have made their bed in the depths of Sheol, in the Lake of Fire, but because you gave sacrificially, there is that connection and that desire to be thankful. Alcorn says this, "One day, our money will be useless. While it's still useful, Christians with foresight will use it for eternal good."

So I thought about an analogy. I have lots of analogies on this. One of them is a ticket to Super Bowl 51. It's got a perforation in the middle, but both sides are still there with the hologram on it and all that. You're like, "Well, wait a minute, Pastor. Super Bowl 51 was a couple years ago."

Yeah, that's right. What's that ticket worth right now? Straight nothing. What was it worth, an hour before kick off? Oh, a lot. But there came a moment in which that thing went from valuable to worthless. So that's the way it is with our unrighteous wealth, so to speak. It's an interesting word, but just for a while, it's got value, but at some point it will flip and become worthless. And that's what he's saying. Or another analogy, when you land at a city, a major city or any city in a foreign country, you might, if you're gonna stay there any length of time, exchange money, because they just don't take American currency over there. And so, you go up and you exchange the money to the local currency because they're just not gonna take it. You have to exchange this money to Heavenly currency, they don't take American dollars in Heaven. And so, you have to exchange it. How? By being generous with it in the name of the gospel.

Look at verse 10. “He who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and the one who is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much.”Jesus is effectively saying, God is continually testing us all the time. You're presently in a job interview for a possible bigger role in the Kingdom of Heaven. The interviewer is God, and he's watching you to see how faithful you are with the small role you have now. If you want a larger role, be faithful.

That's what he's saying. God pays attention to small details, and Jesus says effectively, money is a little thing. It's not a big deal. Do you get that sense here? He's saying, It's not true wealth. Look at verse 11, “If you've not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?” Jesus is totally denigrating money in some kind of sense here. It is not true wealth.

What is? People. Eternal souls are true wealth. Influence you have for the gospel. That's truly wealthy. That's genuine wealth. So the bottom line for us is spend it wisely while it's yours to spend. We've got these three commodities. We talk about them often: time, energy, money. Unlike other things that are gifts of God, they decrease with use, they go away. So unlike a spiritual gift that actually increases with use, the more you use your spiritual gift, the better you get at it. It’s not like that. This is the opposite. Your time, you spend it and it's gone. Your money, you spend it. And it's gone, your strength that God gives you your energy, you spend it and it's gone. Now they can be replenished with more gifts from God, God could wake you up the next morning and give you another day, praise God for another day. This is the day the Lord has crafted with good works to be done. Today, we will rejoice and be glad in it. But you're gonna spend it. And then it will be gone. Time is short. Death will take away everything.

And friends, can I say this? Not just death. Other things take things away. Have you noticed that money just goes away? Have you noticed? Here is a scary thought, I'm ready to scare you with a thought. If God wants you to give X to something, and you give 90% of X, whatever that is. Is it possible at least, that God might go ahead and take that 10% of X away anyway? Car repair, house repair, medical need you didn't think you had, it just goes away. Cast but a glance at wealth and it flies away. You didn't get a chance though, to convert that 10% to Heavenly currency, so you get no credit for it on judgment day. So be very careful what God is telling you to do and give X, whatever X is. I can't tell you what X is, only God can. The time is short. On the flip side, speaking more positively, if you do give it away by faith exactly what God wants you to do, he will never forget and you will never lose your reward. You have converted it to Heavenly currency. 

So now, let me apply this to the More Than a Building Campaign and we'll be done. Over the past month, we've been hearing what God's Word has to say about stewardship, so this morning we have, as church members of FBC, an opportunity to apply these truths by responding to what God's Word says, and recording our commitment to the More Than a Building Initiative. Now the elders are fully aware, the building doesn't save anyone, as we've said. With that in mind, we know that since 1927, this building has been a great tool. And since 1962, the educational wing been a great tool and a home base for ministry. In an effort to steward our location, our strategic location as well, and to move forward in ministry, the church has voted to go ahead with a $3.5 million renovation initiative into that, and we've come to a time now, of corporate commitment. So as you heard last week, we already have a number of individuals who have made their pledges, their commitments already, and we have more than a third of the amount raised in commitment. So in your bulletin, if you could look in your bulletin or maybe find out there, you find a commitment card, just like this one, you see that.

Now, if you didn't receive a bulletin, there's gonna be cards at the end of the pew, so just take it in your hand. And in a few moments, I'm gonna pray, and the team, I'm gonna actually invite the worship team to come on up now. They're gonna play and we'll quietly... And we're gonna ask you to record your commitment and then fold the card up, so that you can give anonymously. Fold the card up and the ushers will come and collect it and pass it to the middle aisle where the ushers are gonna come. So I'm gonna pray that God would lead us in this time of commitment.

Father, we thank you for the things that we have learned, not just over the last three sermons, but just in our entire Christian life on stewardship. Lord, these are not new ideas to us who are Christians, we know these things, we know them. God, help us to live out now, what you want us to do. God, I pray for the members of our church, and indeed for anyone else who was not a member, who wants to contribute as well. Father, I pray that you would enable each person to give what you want them to give. Help them to give by faith. Help them to give sacrificially and cheerfully, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. Help them to give with eyes of faith. I pray that you work in all of us that we would give just way beyond the More Than a Building campaign, that we would give of ourselves, our time, our strength, our money, for the rest of our lives, to build friendships with people, so that we can see people rescued from darkness, we can see churches planted in unreached people groups, we can see churches planted here in the Triangle region of North Carolina. So Lord, just give us courage and give us faith now, as we make our commitment. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

So this is the second of three stewardship sermons that I'm preaching in support of the elders initiative, More Than a Building. Great video. A lot of that history I didn't know, I had never seen some of those shots before, so it's marvelous to see the heritage and the history. And my task this morning is to look at another time when another building was being built, that would itself in time, be destroyed, a temporary building, but established in the flow of redemptive history for a purpose that God would, once it was done, fill with the cloud of His glory, as a sign of His dwelling and His pleasure to use that temporary building for His eternal purposes. 

To link that to what it is we're trying to do in this building and in this community. So I wanna set it up by speaking of David's context and then of ours, and then walk through the text. King David was the greatest of all of Israel's kings in the Old Covenant. He had it in his heart to build a permanent structure for the dwelling of God, where people could assemble together and worship the living God. Now, up to that point, the Lord had been dwelling in that sense in a tent, a movable tabernacle that went from place to place. And the centerpiece of Jewish worship in the Old Covenant was the Ark of the Covenant and animal sacrifice, and the shedding of animal blood and the pouring out of that blood for the atonement of sins.

The Ark of the Covenant was a golden box, physical box, in which were kept the stone tablets, the actual tablets of stone that God gave to Moses on which were written the words of the Ten Commandments. Now, by David's time, the tabernacle was about half a millennia old, about 500 years old, approximately. So now that David had conquered the Jebusite city, which became known as the city of David, Jerusalem, and David had set up his home there, his palace, he had in it his heart to build a similar palace or structure for God.

1 Chronicles 17:1-2, it says, “After David was settled in his palace, he said to Nathan the prophet, ‘Here I am living in a palace of cedar, while the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord is under a tent.’ Nathan replied to David, ‘Whatever you have in mind, do it, for God is with you.’” But then God sent Nathan the prophet back with a second message, You are not the one to build the permanent house, you are a warrior, a man of blood, and it will not be you to build it. But then he said far more than David ever thought he would say. He said, I'm gonna build a house for you. I'm gonna build an eternal dwelling where you will dwell forever.

It's what he said in that same chapter. “I declare to you that the Lord will build a house for you, and when your days are over and you go to be with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him, as I took it away from your predecessor. I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever. His throne will be established forever.”

So David's good desire, his initiative, his desire to build a building for God, to give a gift to God, was superseded, overruled by God's eternal plan. And it involved God building him a house, a house for David and for all of us to dwell in forever, an eternal temple, built in the heavenly realms, where the redeemed will dwell forever and worship God forever. And the one who would sit on the throne of that kingdom would not be David, but David's eternally greater son, Jesus Christ. And that dwelling place, we call the New Jerusalem, and it's presently under construction, and it's doing very well, thank you very much.

As a matter of fact, I think it's almost finished, but I don't have a specific prophecy on that, but progress is being made every single day. And what David didn't realize, now that he felt settled in his life, is that Israel was actually not done with its journey, and neither was God. There were still centuries to go, including the grievous rebellion of the Jewish nation against the Ten Commandments that were in that golden box, against the covenant the God had set up, that necessitated God fulfilling His promise of a curse, that He would evict them from the Promised Land if they did not keep the covenant, which He did, and that the actual beautiful temple that He was assembling materials to build, would be destroyed, completely destroyed by the Babylonians.

Yet for all of that, God still wanted it done. God knew the future. David didn't know the future, but God wanted that building built. He wanted it to symbolize that new Jerusalem in that time and in that place in the Old Covenant, to symbolize what was going to come later, and He wanted David to take his lower position, to be willing to take a lower place in that structure, to not be the one to build it, but to assemble materials for it so that his son could build it, and David willingly, humbly took that lower place. God was greatly honored and glorified by all this, and He was moved, and He moved the people to give lavishly and generously to this building project, despite the fact that the temple that they were building was not eternal. It was temporary.

And it's interesting how David has a sense of that, doesn't he? We are just aliens and strangers here, we're just shadows passing through. Now, their Spirit-led generosity to build a temporary structure for the work of God in their generation, very closely parallels our present call to give sacrificially for our temporary building here in Durham, so that brings us now to our context. David, his place... Sorry, not David. David's up in heaven, he hadn't done anything. Anyway, sorry.

God has placed all of us here in Durham for this moment in time, none of us are here eternally, and everything that we interact with in our lives physically is temporary, but we are here to glorify God in our physical lives by doing eternally significant work, especially the work of the Gospel. Now, as we just heard in the video, God is blessed and is blessing our region with a nationwide reputation as a place desirable to live and to work and to study and to recreate, and so people are pouring in here from all over the country, indeed all over the world, and the overwhelming majority of those that are pouring in here to live and to study and to work and to recreate are lost.

They are “without hope and without God in the world,” Ephesians 2:14. And our privilege is to use our temporary resources, our time, our energy, our money, to do an eternally significant spiritual work through the Gospel, which alone can build that invisible spiritual temple, so our physical resources, our time, our energy, our money is just a platform, a tool, but the real work is done by the Word of God, the real work is done by the Gospel. And that's how this eternal temple gets built, seeing lost people, rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought over into the Kingdom of the Beloved Son, rescued from darkness to light, and then baptized and then taught to obey everything Christ has commanded. Built up, nurtured in the Word of God and strengthened. That's the work.

Now, we're beginning a financial campaign, More Than a Building, to upgrade our building, make it a better base of ministry to meet this eternal challenge. We are all well aware as we should be, that if the Lord returns in our lifetime, this building will be destroyed. 2 Peter 3 makes it very plain that everything in this present age is going to be consumed with fire, the elements are gonna melt in the heat, it's all temporary.

However, if Christ does not return in our lifetime, and it's maybe even another half century or more before the Lord returns, then we also know that everything that the $3.5 million buys, all the shiny new things, all the carpet, all of the walls and the furniture and all that, will themselves wear down, get old, look shabby after a while as we use them. We're under no illusions about this. When they built the beautiful building, you heard what they said in 1962, “this beautiful building.” It would mean nothing, they said, if it wasn't used by the Lord. They built it to be beautiful, and it's been beautiful and it's been functional for 56 years.

But time takes its toll on everything, and God has ordained that everything physical wears down, subject to decay. And so the time has come for us like earlier generations to step up and do our part for the future, just as we have inherited a building, we've been using it and it's getting used, and in some ways getting used up. And so it's our task now, it's our time to step up for the present and for the future, so that's our context.

So now what I'd like us to do is look at 1 Chronicles 29, so turn in your Bibles there. We're gonna just walk through the incredible verses in this chapter as a context for us. My basic idea here is, these are some of the greatest... some of the greatest words of worship you will find in the entire Bible. And eternal generosity, generosity, the Spirit-filled and it will be rewardable, flows from worship. It flows from a sense of the greatness and the majesty of God, and this is a marvelous text to celebrate that.

All right, so it begins at verse one with David's charge to the people. David, King David said to the whole assembly, "the task is great because this palatial structure is not for man, but for the Lord God.” And so he's speaking to the people and he's gonna charge them. But he wants to begin by giving them an example of his own sacrificial generosity toward this building project. Look at verses 2-5, “With all my resources I have provided for the temple of my God, gold for the gold work, silver for the silver, bronze for the bronze, iron for the iron, wood for the wood, as well as onyx for the settings, turquoise stones of various colors, and all kinds of fine stone and marble, all of these in large quantities.

Besides, and my devotion to the temple of my God, I now give my personal treasures of gold and silver for the temple of my God, over and above everything I have provided with this holy temple. 3,000 talents of gold (gold of Ophir) and 7,000 talents of refined silver for the overlaying of the walls of the buildings, for the gold work and the silver work, and for all the work to be done by the craftsman.”

So that's his own example. That's what he's going to do, leading out in giving and generosity, then he charges the people. Now who is willing to consecrate himself today to the Lord?  So there is an absolute necessity of leaders leading out, Matthew Henry said this, "Those who would draw others to good must lead the way themselves." And David does that here. Now, David had been made amazingly wealthy by the grace of God. God had taken him, the youngest of Jesse's eight sons, from following his father's sheep out in the desert somewhere, to become king over all of Israel, and along with that had come a staggering level of wealth. We didn't realize how wealthy David had become until he makes this commitment, incredible wealth, and he spoke out his gift plainly for all to hear. And it's incredible, 3,000 talents of gold.

So I looked it up and I did the calculation. You knew I had to do it. Whenever there's numbers in the Bible, I have interest. And so I'm gonna get a little geeky here, that calculates... A talent is 75 pounds, multiply by 16 ounces. Just keep on going. $1,200 an ounce, $4.3 billion. Now, all of you are looking a little concerned right now. All right, you're thinking, "all right, we're starting with three and a half million, where are we going with all this?" All right, we're not raising $4.3 billion, but a staggering level of generosity... And then the silver, 7,000 talents of silver, $126 million at today's prices. It's incredible.

Now, you may be thinking, Why... Is it okay for him to say what he's doing? I mean, didn't Jesus say, "when you give, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." Well, it's interesting about that, because Jesus did say that and he said "If you do it to be seen by others, you're gonna lose your reward." But in the previous chapter in Matthew 5, He said that we should let our light shine before others that they may see our good deeds and glorify our Father in Heaven. So we have to put those two together.

There seems to be a time to show and there seems to be a time to hide. A lot of it depends on your motives. What it is you're intending by showing or by hiding. There's some things God wants us to show brightly like the Gospel, and we tend to hide it under a bushel basket. And there are other things that we would want to publish all around for our own ego, and so people think well of us and that we're supposed to hide.

Randy Alcorn in his book, Money, Possessions, and Eternity, said, he went to a fund raiser in New York City and people were standing up and identifying themselves and making pledges to their charitable cause, and one man, said, I'll never forget this man, he rose, he gave his name, his wife's name, the name of his business and its location and the kind of merchandise they sold, and then he loudly announced. "We would like to give $5,000 anonymously." Kind of a head-scratching moment there. I think they should have just put the $5,000 in the advertising budget that... In a line item, 'cause that's what was going on that day, advertising.

But still many Christian agencies publicize their donors' gifts in many ways. They put them on plaques on buildings, or on the pews or the walls of the sanctuary, or they'll even, some of the institution will publish levels of donation, you know the platinum level and the gold level and the silver level and the bronze level based on what people gave, and there are names. Studies show that people give more when their gifts are publicized. That should make you scratch your head a bit, but that's the very thing that I think based on Matthew 6:2-4, churches should avoid, for then, we would be tempting people to lose their rewards,. Yet at the end of Money, Possessions, and Eternity, Randy Alcorn says "We should, however, find a way to do giving testimonies the way we do evangelism or mission testimonies, or parenting testimonies or other aspects of the Christian life, because we need to learn how to give. And some people are just really good at it."

And so he advocates that there is a time, and David at that moment of redemptive history, I think did the right thing by saying, I'm leading out and this is what I'm giving, very clear. And then in verses 6-9, we see the people's lavish response. “Then the leaders of the families, the officers of the tribes of Israel, the commanders of thousands, and commanders of hundreds, and the officials in charge of the King's work gave willingly. They gave toward the work on the temple of God: 5,000 talents and 10,000 darics of gold, 10,000 talents of silver, 18,000 talents of bronze, and a 100,000 talents of iron, any who had precious stones gave them to the treasury of the Temple of the Lord in the custody of Jehiel the Gershonite. And the people rejoiced at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the Lord, and David the King also rejoiced greatly.”

So here are the lower level leaders and they, like David led out, they led the way, they led the way and David had blessed some of them more than others, financially. God doesn't give to each person equal financial blessing, some people have greater resources than others, they're able to give more. And Paul talks about this concerning... as an analogy with the manna in 2 Corinthians 8, going back to the Exodus time. He said "He who gathered much, did not have too much, and he who gathered little, did not have too little."

Now, at that time, the amount gathered was staggering, as we already said, 5,000 talents of gold amounts to $7.2 billion worth of gold. Ten thousand talents of silver, that's 375 tons of silver. Worth $180 million. One hundred thousand talents of iron, 7.5 million pounds of iron to build the temple. People also gave precious gems of incalculable worth and value: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires to beautify the temple, and these were all the highest quality. For it says in 2 Chronicles 2:5, Solomon says, "the temple I'm going to build will be great because our God is greater than all other gods."

Yet, even when Solomon said that in 2 Chronicles 2, he acknowledged that no quality of earthly materials could equal what the living God who fills the universe, deserves. To honor him, he said, "But who is able to build a temple for Him? Since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain Him. Who then am I to build a temple for Him? Except as a place to burn sacrifices before Him." So no matter how beautiful we make this or any building, God's worth infinitely more than that. And we are not ever going to be able to build a box to contain God, there is no container for God, and that's not at all what we're trying to do, but what he said is, "except as a place to burn sacrifice and offerings."

That was the old covenant pattern of worship. That's all we're trying to do with this as well. The new covenant pattern of Gospel ministry. And the attitude of the leaders was the key here. In verse 9, “the people rejoiced at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the Lord, and David the king, also rejoiced greatly.” They gave freely and wholeheartedly. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9:7, “Each one should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver.” We should not imagine that God needs us to give. We must give cheerfully, willingly, generously. 

So then David just has overwhelming praise to God for that generosity, he's filled with joy. Verse 9, David the king also rejoiced greatly, and then David gave credit to God, first for the actual things they had to give, and second, for their willing hearts out of which they gave it. God gets the credit for both.

Now, when we come to verses 10-13, we come to the some of the most magnificent verses of praise you're ever gonna find in the Bible. Years ago, when I was an engineer, I was a year out of MIT, and I hadn't yet begun memorizing whole books of the Bible, so I was writing verses on 3 x 5 cards and memorizing them. And I memorized 1 Chronicles 29:10-13, because it taught me how to praise, taught me words to say... It says in Romans 8, “We don't know what we ought to pray for, the Spirit instructs us.” And so this is instruction on worship. I was on a mission trip in 1987 in Pakistan, and there was a sulfur bath, kind of a hot salty spring that was like 85-degree water and you would just... It was amazing. You would just float in it. You couldn't sink. You're just floating. And it was just an amazing feeling, 'cause we're surrounded by the Karakoram mountains, these majestic mountains... I'm just floating in this... So I got this, I don't know that I can get you all to float in verses 10-13, but to just have your minds and your hearts immersed in worship, and not just now, but as you're praying about what you're gonna do financially and frankly for the rest of your life, all of your sacrificial giving of your time, your energy, your money, should flow from worship. A sense of the greatness of God.

So let's just walk through these. Verses 10-13, “Praise be to you, O Lord, God of our Father, Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory, and the majesty, and the splendor. For everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom. You are exalted overall. Wealth and honor come from you. You are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. Now our God, we give you thanks and praise your glorious name.” David begins by praising the eternal God from everlasting to everlasting. You know what that means? That means that God is every bit as much worthy of this kind of worship now as he was 3,000 years ago. He's not changed at all. He’s an eternal God, and then David ascribes to God all the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty that there is in heaven and earth, he's the source of it. There is nothing in all creation that is even remotely close to God in majesty and greatness. As great as the universe is, all of the physical things in the universe, God is infinitely immeasurably greater than all of it.

And then David declares that everything in heaven and earth belongs to him anyway, he made it, it's his stuff. He owns it all. Look at Verse 11, “Everything in heaven and earth is yours.” It is such a deception that we have, that our money and our possessions are ours, they aren't... None of them. We are stewards of them. They're somebody else's property. The only way any of us will give to this building campaign or to give to anything for Christ for the rest of our lives, would be out of a prior sense that God owns me and everything I have already. And in that way, we will give rightly. David then goes on to declare that the kingdom that he's ruling, the very one who's throne he occupies is actually God's kingdom. “Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom you are exalted as head over all.” Mighty king David, bows the knee to the King of kings and Lord of lords. Then David speaks clearly about all the source, the source of all of his wealth. Verse 12, “Wealth and honor come from you. You are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.”

God is the one who has given us the ability to generate wealth, so that we even have anything to give it all. God puts people in advantageous positions, and their blessed circumstances mean that their labors will not be in vain, they will produce a prophet, they'll produce a harvest. Remember that God cursed human labor, at the Garden of Eden, under Adam. “Cursed is the ground because of you.” Your labor will produce thorns and thistles. But sometimes God mitigates the curse and opens up a land flowing with milk and honey, and that included Israel, and that includes us as well. Not in the same way, but we have been lavishly blessed. America is rich in natural resources, rich soil for crops, food is abundant, proper climate, proper rainfall for abundant harvest, so that food is inexpensive and people have freedom and time to develop other industries, and there are rich minerals in the hills and they're easily brought out and they're available for building projects here, and there are two massive oceans protecting us from invading armies unlike Europe, for Serbia has been invaded 145 times in its history.

And these and many other benefits have been how God has enriched America and us here, certainly we have worked. I'm not saying we didn't work. We worked hard. I don't deny that. However, what about the salt farmers of Ethiopia, who traveled to the Afar region, in a dry salt bed and they labor all day, in a 140° temperature to carve out blocks of salt and put them on camelback and bring them back over 50 miles, to sell for less than $10 a day for their labor? Do they work hard? They work harder than you. But they're poor, incredibly poor. So all of the wealth that we have has been given us as a gift of God's grace. We have to acknowledge that it's in God's hands to produce wealth for a people, and that we should not boast, but use it wisely. Look again at Verse 12, “Wealth and honor come from you. You are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all...” So for all of these things, David praises God. Verse 13, “Now our God, we give you thanks and praise your glorious name.” Then David humbles himself and his people in reference to this greatness. Look at verses 14-16, “But who am I? And who are my people that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have only given you what comes from your hand. We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our forefathers, our days on earth are like a shadow without hope, O Lord our God, as for all of this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your holy name. It comes from your hand and all of it belongs to you.”Who am I? Who are my people that we should have anything to give at all?

And I praise God that we averted the storm, hurricane Florence, but you know what, the real storm is the wrath of God, and we have averted that by His grace. It is by His grace that we are not condemned for our sins, that we still live, that we have anything at all. Good comes from His grace. God has created a refuge in Christ from the storm of His wrath, and we are huddled in that refuge by faith, and God has been good to us. David feels that. We're just aliens and strangers, you were just passing through. We're like a shadow... We're here today and gone tomorrow. Everything comes from you.

And then he gives God credit for the heart attitude by which they gave. Look at verses 17-19, “I know my God, that you test the heart and you are pleased with integrity. All these things have I given willingly and with honest intent, and now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you. O Lord, God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever, keep their hearts loyal to you, and give my son Solomon the whole-hearted devotion to keep your commands, requirements and decrees, and to do everything to build the palatial structure for which I have provided.” God is a God who test the heart, He puts us at certain moments in space and time, certain resources, certain opportunities, and then sees what we'll do with them, he tests our hearts. Opportunities to give are a test, and they show our heart desires. At that time, his people praised the test, but it was only because God had worked it in them, and he asked that God would continue to work until the structure was built. He yearned for God to finish that work in them.

Well, that's 1 Chronicles 29. Now, it's our time to step up and give. So what about us? Like David said so long ago, everything we own really belongs to God, and like David and his generation who died almost 3,000 years ago, we are aliens and strangers, and everything we will build with our hands will be destroyed some day. Bit we are involved by the grace of God in an eternal building project, and the work we do in that, the work of the Gospel ministry, now that's gonna survive. Lost people that are won to faith in Christ are an eternal treasure, and they will be crowns for us as well. As Paul says, concerning the Thessalonian church, “What is the crown in which I'll glory when I come? Is it not you?”

And so we are involved in the real building project, Ephesians 2, as we've said again and again, is the real temple. “We were aliens and strangers. But now we are members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His spirit.”

That is the real building project, and friends, that's gonna go on. That's gonna go on. We are living stones, 1 Peter 2, quarried out of a dark kingdom. And the time for the tabernacle and the time for the temple is done, it's obsolete. It's passed away now, Hebrews 9 tells us, it was just a type and a shadow. The real sacrifice was Jesus Christ, who gave His lifeblood on the cross that our sins might be forgiven. All the animal sacrifices that were offered in the temple, they were just types and shadows of the final, once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus for sinners like you and me. That's the true building project. Now for us, this $3.5 million that we're raising is to refurbish our aging building, it's just a tool... When we updated the Betsy Cheek Chapel just behind me, it went from a space that was not hardly ever used to one that's used all the time. We wanna see that expanded, we wanna see that kind of freshness, architectural freshness and beauty to be extended.

We're not doing the entire building. The elders felt there was a limit to what should raise now and what we should work on. Maybe future generations will wanna do more if the Lord doesn't return. But the attractiveness of this space is really just a platform. So that as I've said before, the space itself recedes and you're just with somebody, you're there for prayer, you're there for Bible study, you're there for a deacon meeting, you're there just to get together with some friends, you're there to study the Word of God, all of these things, in a beautiful space. Now, my main message here is not about More Than a Building, it's not about David. My main message to you is about the gospel, I don't assume in an assembly this size that every one of you is born again. I believe that God's gonna keep bringing lost people here every Sunday. I pray for it, and I just wanna say something to you. Maybe you really don't believe what I said a few moments ago, the real storm is the wrath of God, but it is. And there is only one refuge, but there is a refuge, and his name is Jesus Christ.

And all you need to do, you don't need to do anything. You need to hear this gospel message with faith, that God sent his son into the world, who lived a sinless life and died on the cross for sinners like you and me, so that if you trust in Him, all your sins will be forgiven. And I'm calling on you, I'm pleading with you, while there's time, before the real storm comes, flee to Christ. But if you do, you will become a living stone put into an eternal temple. And now I wanna speak to the rest of you who are born again. Our real sacrifice here is not gonna be money. The real sacrifice is gonna be yourself as living sacrifices. Romans 12, “Put on the altar of God, holy and pleasing to Him.” That's the daily sacrifice you have to make. Secondly, I'm calling on you to make the similar sacrifice Paul did for what we call the external journey for evangelism and missions. Acts 20:24, Paul said, "I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace."

Those are the real sacrifices, holiness of yourself offered to God and sharing the Gospel in evangelism and missions. Yet there is a financial sacrifice, we're not gonna be able to refurbish the building without money. And so the elders are giving to each one, a commitment card. You have it in your bulletin. You can take it and look at it. And so it's got a chart on it that gives you a sense of different things. This commitment card is gonna be extended over the next three years, it's not a strict or binding number, it's just a tool to enable the elders to make stewardship decisions as we move further along in the process. A phrase we've been using is, "your best guess is better than our best guess", in terms of what you can give. I think it'd be cult-like for us to assign you our best guess. I don't know what you make. I don't know what your life situation is, but you do, and so does the Lord.

Another tool that we've been using has been something called The Gift guide, and there's a slide that I would love to be projected here, and we've used this so that you can kind of find yourself and what our consultant Don Linscott told us. And this is something that people do, in terms of building campaigns all over the country is. They have different levels of gifts. So on the left-hand column, it's the number of those giving and then the amount that that gift would be. So $350,000. Some of you are looking at that like, "Oh, wow." But some of you are like, "Yeah, I think I could do that. God's been that generous to me." Like King David, you have it to give. And so, there'd be a number of gifts at a level, but just maybe only one could do that and one could do that. And then as you move down, if you look at the second column, the amount, for a three-year commitment, you'll come to a place where you will feel maybe comfortable, you can relax. You say, "I actually think I could give that over the next three years." Don Linscott says, that's a great place to start. It's not necessarily a great place to finish, but it's a great place to start. You say, "All right, I think that that would be a level I could give without a significant amount of sacrifice." Then you begin to look at things in your life that you're willing to give up, so that you could be part of this.

Now, here's the thing, God's gonna raise this money. We're excited about that. We're trying to teach just an approach to life for the rest of your life. How are you gonna make sacrifices for the rest of your life? What do those sacrifices mean? To evangelize or go on a mission trip or to send to someone else on a mission trip.

These same principles are gonna work the rest of your life, so we're asking that you find a level and then prayerfully give it to the elders by means of this card. So September 30th, we've got something, we call it, Commitment Sunday, and we want all of the members of the church to submit a card, no matter what the value. And the idea here is equal sacrifice, but not equal gift. So  some of you may be children and you feel like you can give a dollar a week for the next three years. That's a $156, that's a sacrifice for you and we're calling on you if the Lord leads you to do that. And then on up from there. If you really, you prayerfully, you just can give zero, put that on the card and put it in. And so we just have a sense of what the church, how the church is responding. But take the time to pray and just go before the Lord and say, “You know, Lord, what do you want me to do? And how do you want me to be involved?”

So close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to study your Word, to swim in the sea of your grace and worship. Father, I pray that you would now just be working in our hearts, be working in the church, help us to know what you're leading us to do in terms of this giving campaign, help us to know what you're calling on us to give, as you worked in David's heart and the people's heart so many years ago. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Well, this is the first of three sermons that I am preaching on stewardship. The elders and I felt it was wise for us to do that; a number of reasons for that. I think it starts with some of the recent history of our church, beginning with the chunks of ceiling that started falling from right there; I looked as I came in this morning. I reject techniques where I would have somebody up there, like, having flakes fall down during the sermon; that's not a good approach on preaching; other preachers do that kind of thing. But actually, we didn't have to orchestrate it. Some time ago, you'd come in, we'd have to clean up the carpet right here. But what was causing that was some problems with the roof, and our custodian told us that there was, I didn't know this, a little kiddie pool that was up there collecting rainwater. I'm thinking, "This is not good." And so, we have repaired the roof, and it cost a lot of money to do that. And we're also repairing the elevator in that wing of the church, which was put in the year I was born, and I've said to many people, I think I'm doing much better than that elevator. But I'll tell you what, I was scared when I saw the components that were being replaced and realized I’ve put my body in the hands of those electrical components for many, many years. You don't realize the courage some of you showed, many of you, in getting on that elevator. But it needed to be repaired.

But then, there was the experience also with the Betsy Cheek Chapel, which was a space right on the other side of this wall. Some of you have been here long enough to know what I'm referring to. There was a chapel there that was set up in honor of a young lady that died in the 1940s, and it was a beautiful little chapel, but just in the course of time, it just didn't have a use in the life of the church, and so, 12 months would go by, and we would hardly ever go in there. And it was just such a... It was just such prime real estate right on the other side; we didn't really have a welcome area where we could meet and greet. And so now, it's turned into the Welcome Center, and many of you would stand there... You have to be actually persuaded to come to corporate worship, because it's such a beautiful space, and just the natural light flooding in, which wasn't the case with the Betsy Cheek Chapel. And the elders began to think, "All right, we wanna paint the ceiling, but if... while we're at it, what else do we need to do?" And that's a question, the end of which may never come. You keep asking more and more, and so the elders just needed wisdom to know where to stop. And what's the right amount of refurbishment to do in our building, and we've prayed and sought the Lord on that.

And so, these sermons are in service to that vision, to revitalize our building. It's an aging building. There's two aspects of this 1927 building, and then the 1962 educational wing. And that building, for the most part, has not really been touched since it was first built, and you do get that feeling of it being somewhat dated architecturally. And so, it seemed reasonable for us to refurbish it. Either way, if we're gonna continue to use the building, we need to keep putting money into it, and so it seemed reasonable to ask, "Should we also do some aesthetic transformation as well?" So, for myself, this is the first time, as far as I know, that I've specifically preached a sermon on stewardship, on giving. For myself, I had been reticent to do that for a lot of reasons. One is I think we all know that... That picture of a false teacher, really, who is fleecing people for money, and just gets up week after week and, just by his personality and his communication skills, is able to just press people for money; some of the prosperity gospel teachers, some famous people up on TV.

A number of years ago, World Magazine... published an article, and I'll never forget the title. It was about private jets used by some of the prosperity gospel preachers and some of these famous TV preachers. Private jets, $50,000,000... $75,000,000 for a private jet. And the name of the article is, "What Would Jesus Fly?" And I was like, "Wow, what an article.” But it was really pretty scandalous, and you look at that, and I think we're aware of that type, and I just... for myself, I never wanted to see that. I see myself in that way, and I didn't want visitors coming…it's like, "Here they are talking about money; that's what churches always do." Secondly, it's also true that money is a very sensitive topic for people. I mean, Jesus likened when you're dealing with sin in someone's life to taking a speck of sawdust out of their eye, and the eye is very sensitive. People are extremely sensitive about their money.

And so for those two reasons, I had been reticent to preach, but the Lord has begun to convict me that I had been neglecting an important area of shepherding, honestly. I'd been neglecting an important area of discipleship. And so, with this More Than A Building campaign, this morning with this sermon, I'm aiming way above fundraising for the building. I believe, with all my heart, it's worth doing, and the money will come in. I'm really going far beyond that. I really... my desire, as a preacher, as a pastor this morning, is to see, more and more, see myself freed, as I was praying, from invisible chains that are around my soul, keeping me from full... fully giving myself to the work of the Lord and to Christ. There is something holding me back. And money is just a key diagnostic on that, but there's just this reticence I have. And so the text that I chose to focus on, although I'm not preaching through one text; we'll be looking at a number of them. But I see inside myself a tendency to save my life, like Jesus meant: "Whoever saves his life will lose it." And so I wanna be free from that, and I want you to as well.

So I'll begin by talking about money itself. First point I wanna discuss is money is a critical issue, a crucial issue for the life of our souls. A number of years ago, I read a book by Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions, and Eternity. It's a great book on the issue of stewardship; very thorough. And he began with a quote from Richard Halverson, who, for many, many years, was chaplain of the United States Senate, This is what Halverson said: "Jesus Christ said more about money than about any other single thing, because when it comes to a man's real nature, money is of first importance. How he handles money is an exact index to a man's character, or you could say soul." Alcorn goes on to tell us that Scripture devotes approximately twice as many verses, over 2300 verses, to money as it does to faith and prayer combined. 15% of the words Jesus spoke, as recorded in the gospels, deal with money, 15%. So, for Jesus and for the Scripture, this is a huge topic. It's vital for us to bring our spending habits, to bring our attitude about money under the discipleship of the Lord.

And we're gonna begin this morning by looking at two key texts... To get to the key issue of money and the state of your soul. And they really are two sides of the same coin. Jesus and Zacchaeus, so turn in your Bibles to Luke 19:1-10, we're gonna start there. Jesus's encounter with Zacchaeus.

And then we're gonna look at Matthew 19, Jesus's encounter with the rich young ruler. Now, when I say two sides of the same coin, what that expression means is that there's one theme, one truth being taught from two different perspectives, maybe opposite perspectives. And the coin is... That how Zacchaeus and how the rich young ruler... spent their money. What they did with their money was an indicator of whether they were saved or not, whether they were in the Kingdom of God or not. And the Zacchaeus story turns out well, and the rich young ruler story does not turn out well, but the key thing on both is, is Jesus's statements about what they did with their money; that's what we're looking at. So let's look at Zacchaeus and the account in Luke 19; I'm not gonna read through it, but Jesus had come to Jericho; he's passing through there. And this Jewish man, this tax collector... Zacchaeus was there; he was a chief tax collector. Now the thing that we need to understand is that tax collectors were almost universally hated by their countrymen. They were more than just collaborators, they were making money on the Roman occupation. And so they were hated, and Zacchaeus knew this very well. But his commitment to money was so deep that he didn't care. It didn't matter that people were hurling insults at him as he would walk down the street or seething with rage at him.

Beyond this, he was a chief tax collector. What this meant is that you could almost imagine a pyramid scheme where he's getting some kickbacks and some money from all the tax collectors in the region. He was perhaps a trainer of other tax collectors, so he was a very important man and very wealthy. And there was nothing that his helpless victims could do, because the might of the Roman army was behind these tax collectors, and so they were helpless victims of his greed. Now, Jesus Christ alone has the power to free our souls from these invisible cords, from these invisible chains, to unseat rival gods, to unseat idols, and he must do that in order for him to take his throne in our hearts, to actually be our Savior and our God. The idols have to be unseated, and money may be the number one chief competitor for the service to God. “You cannot serve both God and money,” so they're pitted against each other in that text. So we're not in any way saying that you can buy your salvation, you can buy forgiveness of sins by giving to the poor and needy, not at all. The universal testimony of the Scripture is that we are forgiven of our sins. We are justified by faith in Christ alone, and not by any good works, including giving to the poor and needy.

But Jesus was there to deliver Zacchaeus from the chains that held his soul. Now, Zacchaeus, I guess, had heard of Jesus. His reputation, by then, preceded him. He had perhaps heard of all the healings. And he wanted to see him, and so he ran to where the crowds were lined in the streets, as Jesus was going to Jericho, where the crowds were passing by, but he was a short man. As the song goes, and I'm not singing it for you. I'm only gonna have one humiliating experience in the pulpit a month, so I had that one last week. This week, I'm just going to say Zacchaeus was a wee little man. Actually, he's not as tiny as they make him out to be in the children's story, but he just couldn't see. And so he climbs up, he loses all dignity, all sense of self-respect. And he goes up this tree, and he's up like a kid in a tree just so he can get a good look at Jesus. Why? He wanted to see him, because Jesus did all these miracles. But also, perhaps he'd heard of the slogan, said with viciousness by Jesus's enemies, that Jesus was a friend of tax collectors and sinners. And he had no friends. And so he wanted to see Jesus, but then, something shocking happened. Jesus stopped right under that fig tree and looks up and says, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately, for I must stay at your house today."

Now, most of us know it's bad manners to invite yourself over for dinner. Now, I met my wife this way; she didn't know I'm telling this story, but... I was having dinner with Tim Shuman and his wife, Pam; they'd invited me over to dinner at their house. The three of us were going to have dinner; he was my discipler, and Christi came over; she was on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ to get up some Bible study materials and was gonna go do some things. Whereupon I invited her to dinner at their house! Which was awkward for Pam, in that I don't think she had planned on four mouths to feed. And so that we all got some ration... Rations of pizza, and some celery, and some other things. That was an awkward moment, but I don't regret it at all because I got a wonderful relationship out of it.

But I don't think Jesus, at this particular moment, is thinking about etiquette. Just like it says with the Samaritan woman in John 4, he had to go through Samaria. He had... He was on a mission from God, and he's gonna tell us at the end of this account what it is. He came to seek and to save lost people. And so I have to stay at your house today, Zacchaeus, for your eternal sake. And Zacchaeus came down immediately, and somewhere in there, Jesus must have shared the words of life with him, the gospel. And in Verse 8, it says Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord, here and now, I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount." The invisible chains that money had wrapped around this man's dark soul were broken; they were shattered by Christ and by the Word of God. And his soul was no longer dark, it was now radiant with the glory of God. How do you know all this? Just from what Jesus says.

Verse 9, Jesus said to him, "Today, salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham." It's the same way we know that the thief on the cross is in heaven, because of what Jesus said to him: "Today, you will be with me in paradise." And then Jesus says, "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." So what Zacchaeus did with his money, giving half to the poor and repaying fourfold any that he had defrauded, that did not save his soul. It was his faith in Christ that saved his soul, but this was a clear fruit of that faith. So part of pastoral ministry for me must be to preach the same gospel that Jesus did, and that must include seeking to liberate at least some people, for whom money must be unseated, if they're going to be saved.

Now, the second story, you can turn over to Matthew 19, is the rich young ruler, and that's the same story but in reverse; sad ending. This man came to Jesus, this rich young ruler attracted by Jesus's ministry. And beginning in Verse 16, we have this account. “Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, ‘Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?’ ‘Why do you ask me about what is good?‘, Jesus replied. ‘There is only one who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.’ ‘Which ones?’, the man inquired. ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.’ ‘All these I have kept,’ the young man said. ‘What do I still lack?’” Now, we may be very perplexed, as evangelists in training, at Jesus's methodology here. But why would Jesus give him the law, as though somehow, if he kept the law, he could go to heaven? But keep in mind, what was it he came and asked Jesus? "What good thing must I do to get eternal life?" His entire theology was messed up. And Jesus is, very skillfully, as a surgeon of his soul, trying to uncover his pride and arrogance. He says, "All these I have kept,” including honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself.

But Jesus exposes his false claim; look at Verse 21-22. "If you want to be perfect, then go sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Jesus spoke of perfection, which the law cannot produce. It can only describe a perfect life; it cannot produce it. And this man was not perfect, and therefore, he was not fit for heaven. Concerning loving your neighbor as yourself, that doesn't... mean a light aspect of life. It has to do with being willing to give as much of your time, energy, and money of yourself to others, as you do for yourself. And that this man, very clearly in a moment, was not willing to do. And so, he hears this statement: "Sell all that you possess and give to the poor, and you'll have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." He hears that very sadly, and he goes away because he had great wealth.

Now, we know that we are not justified by giving away our money to the poor and needy. There are some people that have amassed huge fortunes by terrible crimes, and toward the end of their lives, they want to buy a clear conscience by giving a huge amount of money to a charity. That will not work; it is not biblical. Unified teaching in the Bible is that all sinners are justified by faith in Christ, not by works. But like Zacchaeus, this rich young ruler was enslaved to his money; it was his god, and he had to be severed from it in order to be saved. Amazingly, he went away sad! Why was he sad? He got what he wanted; he made his choice; no one compelled him. But he wanted it all. He wanted both God and money, and he couldn't have it, and so he was dissatisfied. Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." So we're not talking about just an external habit here, we're going to the core. And so Jesus speaks a kind of an opposite word over the rich young ruler than he did over Zacchaeus. "It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible."

Now, many of us, if not most of us here, are remarkably wealthy by world standards. The question this passage searches us with is, what would we have done with Jesus's demands? We can easily dismiss it, saying "We know he's not really telling him to do that," or "It's not a universal requirement for people to sell everything they have and give to the poor." Suppose Jesus had only asked three questions. Suppose instead of what he did ask, he said, "All right, are you willing to part with all of your possessions and give to the poor and needy?” Secondly, “Are you willing to actually give a small percentage of your possessions to the poor and needy?” And then thirdly,”Are you willing to be thankful for all the stuff you don't give and be certain you're aware that it came from God?" What do you think he would have said? "Yes, yes, and yes," I believe.

Yes, Lord, I'm willing to give everything. And since you're only asking a small percentage, I can do that too, and I'm certainly gonna be from now on, very thankful that everything I have comes from you. I wonder if this is the same kind of bargain that many of us who are holding on to things in ways we shouldn't make with this text. Effectively, a compromise that the Lord is searching us and saying, "You know, money has a greater hold on your life than you think it does." And that we go through the same process. Well, I'm certainly willing to give the Lord everything, yes, but when the Lord comes to claim some of the stuff you theoretically gave Him, then you put a wall around it and you want to save it. Like the text says, what we're about to look at, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it.” You're like, "No, I wasn't meaning that." And it's not just money, it's also time and energy. Yes, I'm theoretically willing to evangelize, but not this Saturday afternoon.

So there's a larger issue here in terms of the way we look at our lives at stake, far “more than a building.” So I have to stop right now and just make an immediate application to you who are listening to me this morning. Could it be that there are some people here today just like Zacchaeus, and just like the rich young ruler. For you, you are not yet converted. You're not yet born again. And a primary, if not the primary reason, is the hold that money and worldly success is having on your soul, and that the only way you're ever gonna be saved is that the chains of money and possessions and earthly pleasures be shattered by the power of the Holy Spirit. Is it actually possible that there could be some rich young ruler types here that Jesus is wanting to do a searching work on your soul so that you can be forgiven of your sins and spend eternity with God in heaven? I'm urging you to look to Christ, the only Savior there is, as it says in 2 Corinthians 8:9, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor." So that you, through your poverty, through his poverty might become rich. Jesus' poverty, his ultimate poverty is his death on the cross. All of his possessions were gambled away, taken from him. He gave everything he had so that you might spend eternity with hm in heaven. All you need to do is trust in him for the forgiveness of your sins and you'll have eternal life.

Now, concerning money, this is a call to all of us. I believe the overall majority of those that came today already are born again, but could it be that there are still those invisible chains around your heart, around your soul concerning money? And I wanna ask you to turn to Matthew 16, the text that you heard read this morning. We’re gonna be looking briefly at verses 24 to 26. Could it be that we easily say to the Lord, "All that I am, all that I have, all of my gifts, everything concerning me is yours, Lord." But we've actually found it harder to live that out then we thought it ever would be, and that the day-to-day death, the kind of dying it takes to really grow as a disciple is the hardest thing we've ever faced in our lives. It is for me. And look at verses 24 through 26, in Matthew 16, "Then Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good would it be for a man if he should gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul, or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?"

So this text just stands over me every day of my life and just searches me, it searches my heart. What does it mean for me to deny myself? What does it mean for me to take up my cross and follow Jesus? Like all living creatures, I am, down to the fiber of my being, down to the cellular level, committed to my own survival. I wanna fight to stay alive. And not only that, I wanna fight to be happy and to be pleased, it's the way it is for all creatures. We all have that fight, and this is the very thing Jesus is calling on us to give up, to give that up and be willing to die. These verses speak of a desire to save our lives. This means, I think, to protect them, to put a wall of protection around our lives, to spare ourselves and our things, the things that are valuable to us, the people that are valuable, to spare these things. This is the very thing God the Father didn't do. “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all.” He didn't spare that which was most valuable to Him, but we do, and we've got this sense of sparing or protecting our lives.

Satan spoke of God putting a hedge around Job and all of his possessions, and I think we actually would like to do that. We would like to build a wall of protection around ourselves, our lives, our loved ones, our possessions, and not have anything taken from us. We live in fear that something valuable or precious will be taken from us, but Christ calls on us to do more than just be willing to give it up. He's saying, "Stop saving your life, but learn to lose your life for My sake and for the Gospel." And with this comes both a warning and a promise. Look at verse 25, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." Now, it says, if we wanna save our lives, Jesus said, we'll lose it. Ultimately, this refers to salvation issues. If because of your desire to save your worldly life, you don't come to Christ, you will eternally lose your life in hell.

Jesus said to people like that, I'm talking about the unconverted for whom money and possessions is stopping them from faith in Christ, he says, "What good would it be for you if you should gain the whole world and forfeit your soul, or what would you give on judgment day in exchange for your soul? Of all your worldly possessions, if you still have them, which you won't, but if you still have them on that day to give, which would you hold back to save your soul? And the whole world isn't worth the value of your soul. So, obviously, to lose your life eternally in hell, that's the greatest threat. But there's threats for us Christians, too.

It's easy for us having come to a legitimate faith in Christ, having really truly been justified of all of our sins to become gradually as we go on in our Christian lives, more and more fearful of giving things up that are important to us. We can become hardened in our hearts in certain areas. We can start to save our lives by protecting our time and our energy and our money from things that are sacrificial, and we pull back and we wanna put a wall and wanna save. What that means is, we come less and less useful to God, less and less intimate with Christ. We'll be losing our souls, vitality. Losing our soul's fruitfulness because of a self-protection tendency we all have. All right, so that's the warning. What about the promise? “Whoever loses his life for my sake and for the Gospel,” he says in another account, “will find it.”

And ultimately, I'm saying it's going to be the positive more than the negative that's gonna drive you. That beyond a narrow life of self-protection and stinginess and materialism, if you can break through that membrane by faith, you break through that wall, there is a rich life of freedom on the other side, you'll actually find your life, and we're told Christ is your life in Colossians, when Christ who is your life, you will find Christ in a whole new way, if you can just be set free from love of money. It's rich a promise. You will step into a life of open-handed generosity, not just with money, but with your time and energy to give to needs as they come, rather than protect, protect, protect. And it's a beautiful world.

I think about John Wesley and what he learned about money, and he's a role model concerning this. He was raised in circumstances of poverty. He got a great education and then got a position at Oxford as a fellow at Oxford, kind of a low level teacher, and he made 30 pounds a year, which in the mis was a good amount of money for a single man. And he spent money on frivolous things and on necessities as well, and that's just how he was living, it's kind of a normal life. Until one day, a chambermaid came to talk to him about something, and it was a very cold night, and she was wearing a very, very thin shawl to protect her from the elements as she turned to go. Well, that day, John Wesley had bought some pictures for his room. And as she went, he felt moved out of mercy and compassion to give her some money to buy a coat, and he reached in his pocket, all that was left was a few coins that were change from his buying of the pictures and he couldn't, he didn't have anywhere near enough to buy her a coat. And he felt the Holy Spirit pressing him concerning the pictures on the wall, which he said were basically “the blood of that chambermaid.”

He also had another experience around that time in which he went to debtor’s, a debtor’s prison, and there were people in debtor's prison then that you could owe just a few shillings and if you couldn't pay you'd be there until you pay the debt. Catch 22, you can't work to earn any money so how are you ever gonna get out? And he knew that with a couple of coins in his pocket, he gets this person and that person and that woman free. And so from then on, he never saw money the same way. His money was given to him to bless others, not for himself, that's what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. And so what happened was his income kept going up, he kept living at that same 30-pound level. So the next year he made 36 pounds, spent 28 on himself, gave the rest away, up until at the end of his life because of his books that he was writing and all that sort of stuff, he was making 1400 pounds a year, lived on 28, he gave the rest away. And he gave it away quickly.

Well, what kind of freedom does that bring... Well, it brings this kind of freedom, he owned a house that was given to him by inheritance. He was living in that house. He was away from it. A messenger came breathlessly, telling him, the house had burned to the ground, and he said to John Wesley, your house has burned to the ground. He said, "That's not my house. That's the Lord's house. I just was staying in it temporarily until I come into my eternal dwelling. The Lord chose to burn His house. What's that to me? One less responsibility I have to look after." I'm like, Wow. Would I have had that kind of reaction? I tell you right now, no. That would not have been me, but I would wish it would be. “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it,” but if you can somehow find a way to lose your life, you will save it and come into a life of freedom like that.

My final text is Philippians 3, turn there to Philippians 3. So Paul basically learned how to lose his life, it meant how to die. I wanna learn how to die, “to take up your cross” means “to die.” Paul's greatest desire was to learn how to die for Christ. On the Damascus Road, Paul had seen the resurrected, glorified Christ, and it had saved his soul, and he received full forgiveness of sins at once... Based on the gift of righteousness by faith in Christ. Look at Philippians 3:9, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” I can't say it enough, what you do with your money will not effectively save your soul. You cannot use money to pay for your sins. Only faith in Christ will do that. There is a righteousness that comes from God and it's by faith. But what was the effect in Paul's life? He counted everything in his life a loss. He just wrote loss over everything, he was a money-making machine in service to a money-making machine, and as Caiaphas, all those guys were making huge money on religion, and Paul was their tool. And he was going to be a very wealthy, powerful man — gave all that up, considered it a loss.

And he says in Verse 10 and 11, "I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death. And so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” I wanna learn how to die like Jesus did. I wanna learn how to deny myself every day like Jesus did. I wanna live for the glory of God and for the benefit of others, even though. And I know my flesh is absolutely wired to be fanatically committed to selfishness, I wanna be free from all that. I wanna find the life that is truly life, that's what Paul wanted, too, and he hadn't quite attained it yet, he'd begun. He said, "What I want, I wanna know how to die. I wanna learn how to die like Jesus." And he was learning in 1 Corinthians 15:31, he said to the Corinthians, "I die daily. I mean, that brothers, I die every day." It was a lifetime lesson, but it wasn't for negativity, it was so that he could know the power of Christ's resurrection flowing through him. It was “die so he could live.”

Now, in the morning, as I'm reading a biography to my kids, a small biography of John Bunyan is in a set of small biographies written by John Piper put together and Bunyan... John Bunyan was a Puritan preacher of Pilgrim's Progress, lived in the 17th century. He was persecuted though, not like Paul, or not like some of the other great martyrs, but he was imprisoned for preaching without a license, and that imprisonment was extremely difficult for him. He said, “the separation of me from my wife and my children (including a blind daughter, yet who he loved dearly) was like the plucking of my flesh from my bones,” and he could have gotten out any day if he just pledged and committed himself never to preach again and he could not do that.

Well, once when he was in prison, he was meditating on what Paul said about being in prison in Asia. He said in 2 Corinthians 1:9, "In our hearts, we felt the sentence of death. But this happened so that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead." So he meditated on that sentence of death and being raised from the dead, and he said this, "By the Scripture, I was made to see that if ever I would suffer rightly, I must first pass a sentence of death upon everything that can be properly called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyment, and all is dead to me and myself is dead to them." The second was to live upon God that is invisible. That's what it means to find your life, to live upon God, that is invisible. As Paul said in another place, "The way not to faint is to look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

Now friends, I'm just saying for myself, this is the hardest thing that I have to do every day as a Christian, is to learn how to die to me. It is the hardest thing for all of you who are disciples of Christ as well. To live continually upon God who is invisible and not upon what you can order from Amazon, or watch from Netflix, or buy at Walmart, that shopping therapy is not going to satisfy, but only the God who is invisible will truly satisfy.

So this brings me to “More Than a Building.” You can see now why we use that language. This is far bigger than the raising of the funds, which I believe will come in, and the building will be refurbished. I'm well aware that the refurbishment of this building is not at the highest level of Christian giving. I would say that clearly. I believe that sending money to reach unreached people, groups with missions is the highest calling, I think the alleviation of physical suffering among the poor and needy is a higher calling than the refurbishment of our building. And if you feel convinced to make high levels of sacrifice financially as a result of this sermon, your own meditations on Scripture and give very sacrificially and generously to those things, the advance of the Gospel and the relief of the poor, I will say, "Praise God," and not give a penny to More Than a Building, I'll say, "Praise God, do it. Praise God, do it.'

But you should keep in mind that money only ever buys physical things, money actually doesn't reach unreached people groups. What money does is it pays for the missionaries for them to have a place to live and food to eat and gas in their cars while they do it. I've received money from the Christmas offering when we were missionaries in Japan. That's what money did. You couldn't buy a soul. Be very suspicious. It's like if you give $1,000, we can save a thousand souls. We're not making any promises like that. Money, all it ever does is buy physical things.

Furthermore, this building is merely a tool for the Gospel, that's all it is, it's a base of operations. And when you have in missions a base of operations, it needs to line up with the surrounding culture. So the base of operations we used in Japan, that missionary used in Tokyo, would be very different than the base of operations in the Sudan. It just has to do with the surrounding culture. And so our desire is to have a reasonably attractive space like this Welcome Center in many parts of this building, and I think it's worthwhile. Now, you should know, you're not children, you should know that the money that you give toward this will go to buy things that if the Lord doesn't return in our lifetime will some day get old and need to be repaired, and some future generation will have to listen to a sermon just like the... Sorry, get to listen to a sermon just like this, and will raise money to replace the things we're about to buy.

But my question is, what happens in the meantime spiritually here? What lives are reached? What people are disciple? What prayer meetings? What one-on-one discipleship meetings are happening? What Bible studies are gonna go on in that attractive space? That's what's in my mind. So yes, this campaign is more, much more than about a building. It's about giving of ourselves fully to God and to Christ, to follow Him at great cost in every area of our lives with all of the temporary resources that we have for the rest of our lives.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to study Your Word. We thank you for the things that it teaches us. And Father, I pray that You would enable us to learn how to die. It's the hardest thing that there is for us to give ourselves as living sacrifices day after day. And so, Father, I pray that You would free us up. Lord, I do pray that the money to refurbish our building will come in and come in well, but I pray that that would just be the beginning of a whole pattern of giving, a whole new layer or level of sacrificial giving toward the poor and needy and toward the advance of the Gospel, even to the ends of the earth, given through First Baptist Church at levels we've never given before. And we pray in Jesus name. Amen.

So turn in your Bibles to the text that you just heard or read, 1 Corinthians Chapter 1. we're looking this morning at the end of this marvelous chapter, verses 26-31. A number of years ago I watched an episode of a program that was popular at that time, called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and I actually feel like I'm confessing sin to you that I watched the show.

I'm not saying how many episodes I watched, but I did watch at least one. And the show was set up to take the viewers into the mansions and the daily lives of the beautiful people, the jet set, the elite, the creme de la creme of our generations. You could see their lavish provisions, their stunning Real Estate, scenic vistas, overpowering architecture of their mansions of the wealthiest people in the world.  And like voyeurs, you could stand on the outside looking in, and just basically covet, I guess. The show eventually morphed into a spinoff on VH1 called The Fabulous life of ... So that was the same thing. Jay-Z and Beyoncé. I don't know how you pronounce that. Sorry. (I'm going to become smaller and smaller in your estimation, that's part of the goal of the whole sermon). But whoever they are… And I'm not pronouncing any more famous names.

Just looking at their lavish lives, their VIP treatment. Everywhere they go, they're treated like royalty. And my wife I just recently and were in England, we went to the outskirts of Buckingham Palace. The British do that with the Royal Family. They're interesting over here too, Royal weddings are incredibly fascinating to Americans and British people alike, the movers and shakers. Every generation has had those people, the ones that everyone wants to know and be seen with. When they walk by, everyone pulls out at this point, their smart phones and takes photos. And these are people whose decisions are shaping the age and the era in which we live, and their patterns of consumption soar far beyond anything that we could ever achieve in our lives. We've had our own royalty, not just the royal family, but we've had our wealthy folks. I've been to the mansions in Newport, where the robber barons of the late nineteenth century had their summer cottages, so they called them, and were able to sail their yachts there, in Rhode Island.

Many of you I'm sure I've been to the Biltmore Estate of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and seen... I don't know, the golden bathtubs or whatever it is, that are in Biltmore. Well they... Those people existed in Paul's day, as well. The noble classes, the ruling elites, the overwhelmingly rich, the famous, the scholars, the philosophers who are world renowned, and people had come from all of the world to sit at the feet of the Greek philosophers and learn wisdom from them. Now, in this section of Scripture, Paul makes it plain that God purposely did not choose many of such people for his church. Now, this runs directly contrary to the wisdom of the world, the world's wisdom is seen in trusting human capability, human power. So human personality, human wealth human ingenuity human politics human military force, human power to build human empires, is the story of the world, the history of the world. The Corinthian church, though, converted to Christ by the gospel, was still thinking in a worldly way, about all these things.

And this is seen in their divisions and factions. They were breaking into subgroups one saying, "I follow Paul", another "I follow Apollos" another, "I follow Peter." And their whole way of thinking about great leaders, and sitting at their feet was very worldly. They were thinking, as the phrases in the text today, according to the flesh. They had a mind according to the flesh. We're going to talk about that phrase, it's worldly thinking. And Paul has to correct them, as a shepherd of their souls, he has to correct this whole faulty way of thinking and he has to correct ours as well, he has to show them that God's whole way of dealing with sinful humanity and redemptive history is to slaughter our pride, everything he has done, literally from before the foundation of the world, until the end of the world will be to slaughter human pride. It's devilish, this pride of ours, this arrogance, it's devilish. And He, in order to save us, must make us lowly and meek and submissive to His infinite greatness, so that we will not continue to imitate the devil in his arrogance, who was so filled with self love, he was so impressed by what he was, that he thought to raise himself up higher and higher and topple God from His heavenly throne.

And when he was thrown down to the Earth, He then recruited the human race to join him in a similar arrogant upswing to, topple God from His throne. It's the nature of our rebellion. So 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, Paul is showing how God saves sinners in ways that seem foolish and weak and shameful. And he does this in three steps, and we're looking this morning at the second of the three steps, the first is to look at Christ, and him crucified. Foolishness to the Greeks. A stumbling block to the Jews, initially offensive, it levels human pride. The second step in his progressive argument to show how God is about slaying human pride and doing things that make no sense to us and our fleshly thinking. Is the church itself, the Corinthian church. It's made up of unimpressive people, who are not the best and the brightest. They were not the Movers and Shakers, they were not the beautiful people, they did not live the lifestyles of the rich and famous, instead, they were those generally despised by people like that.

Paul's overall goal here, is to teach Corinthians to think about God and themselves according to true divine heavenly wisdom, and not according to the fleshly wisdom they've been thinking. The third step, we'll see next time I preach in 1 Corinthians, and chapter 2 is to look at himself, the preacher. And he's just not impressive. And his presentation wasn't impressive. He was with them in weakness and fear much trembling, and he didn't use wise and persuasive words, he just preached the gospel. And so that's going to be the third of the three humbling steps.

So let's look this morning at verse 26, God's wisdom in calling not many movers and shakers. Paul asked the Corinthians to consider their own condition. Verse 26: "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called, not many of you were wise by human standards, not many influential, not many of noble birth." Actually, in the Greek, the verse 26 begins with the command "See." So he wants them to see themselves.

John Calvin said at the beginning of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consist in two parts: The knowledge of God and of ourselves." Faith is the eyesight of the soul, by which we can rightly see both. We can see the greatness and majesty of God and you can finally rightly look at yourself. And so that's what he's calling them do in verse 26. Now turn your gaze on yourself for just a moment, look at yourself. But it's a humbling gaze. Faith humbles us about ourselves. He wants them to think of themselves with sober judgment, he's not trying to humiliate them. And God's strategy was not to choose the best and the brightest from every generation. That phrase, "the best and the brightest", came into the American vocabulary during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. He was filling his cabinet posts and his administration positions with young experts in every fields, and that phrase came in, "the best and the brightest."

They were the Whiz Kids of policy. And president Eisenhower been an older previous generation, JFK represented new young leaders, and so they were the best and the brightest. And so, he is assembling his team of geniuses to help run the country. Paul wants the Corinthians to look honestly at themselves and to realize that they were not that. They were commoners. Perhaps even below average in life achievement, in intelligence and in human influence, political influence. So look at yourselves when you were called. Now, this word "called", we mentioned it last time, very significant theologically, it has to do with the sovereign drawing, the calling of God, of sinners, out of darkness into light. The sovereign activity of Almighty God, King on his throne, and saving sinners like us, he calls us. Romans 8:29-30, he speaks of this sovereign calling of God and salvation. It says there "For those whom God for new, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined, He also called. And those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He also glorified."

So step by step, he works in the elect to bring them from darkness to eternal glory, and the calling is part of His sovereign plan. Now, the calling on in the life of an elect person begins the moment they're born. Everything they hear, every experience that they have is divinely orchestrated eventually to bring that individual to faith in Christ, God is very wise in this, and he's preparing them to come to faith in Christ. But here, Paul, I think, is meaning, especially that last step, when they heard the Gospel preached, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, who is crucified for sinners like you and me, and He was buried on the third day, He was raised to life. That Gospel…They heard it, and then, the secret sovereign power the of Holy Spirit of God, reached within their souls, and transformed them, took out the heart of stone, gave them a heart of flesh. He changed their entire perspective by sovereign grace. They were called. The God, as it says in Romans 4, "who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were." The sovereign calling.

What Was Your Life Circumstance When You Were Called?

So think of what you were at that moment, what was your life circumstance? That last decisive step. Did God call you because you were so awesome? Did God call because you were so spectacular? So bright and shiny? Not at all. Actually, He specifically chose you in part, it seems Corinthians, because you are not all that. He actually wanted his church made up for the most part of people who were despised in the world. That's what the text is saying. Now, many of you have had the experience on the playground of being chosen or maybe not chosen for the kickball team. Alright? Usually what happened when I was going to school is you would have the two best kickball players stand as Team, A Team B and then they would alternate and pick on down until every spot was filled. You know exactly… Some of you are already cringing, because you know where I'm going, the one thing you don't want is to be the last person chosen on the kickball team. Because it meant that you stunk at kickball. And so that's humiliating.

But here, God seems to be choosing his church the exact opposite way from the way we would do it. He's not looking at capabilities. He's not looking at life achievement. He's actually putting his church together very differently than the way we would do it. He was not choosing the powers that be, but those things that are not, the text says. And so look... He goes through a list of what God didn't choose. He says "Not many of you are wise by human standards." or literally, the Greek is "according to the flesh." It's a very important phrase theologically. The flesh here, means "according to that worldly perspective," that worldly way of thinking, that he's fighting against in this whole chapter. That human perspective, the Corinthians were not wise according to human standards. No one was traveling from all over Greece to come and sit at their feet and listen to their wisdom. No one is writing down the pearls that came from their mouths. They just weren't all that. They were just average people leading average intellectual lives.

Paul also had some other phrases. Not many were powerful, not many of noble birds. So the powerful here might refer to physical strength. As Jeremiah 9, that we'll get to in a moment, says, "Let not the strong man boast of his strength." So it could be that, but probably more likely, just influence in the community, like political strength, power, power. The Corinthians were not the policy shapers of their age, they didn't set the policies, there in Corinth. Their opinions carried very little weight, no one was asking them to weigh in on the hottest issues of the day. They were not the Movers and Shakers, they were the moved and the shaken. When Gallio, the proconsul there in Corinth, made his policies, they followed and submitted or they were deemed criminals. So they were not the policy makers.

Neither were they of noble birth. That referred to their status in society. No one was writing down their heritage, their coat of arms, their great great grandfather was so and so and their great grandfather was so and so, and on down to their father, etcetera. No one cared about their genealogy. No one cared about their ancestors or how influential they were.

They were not the moneyed class, they didn't have buying power to bribe officials or startup capital for companies or employment so that they could employ all kinds of poor people. They weren't those kind of people. Not at all, they were the poor, uninfluential people. Commoners.

The Difference Between “Not Many” and “Not Any”

Now, there's an eternity of difference. Just one letter in the English, but an eternity of difference between not many and not any. It is not true that there are not any wise influential, wealthy, noble birth, believers in Christ, that is not true. Even there in Corinth, Crispus the synagogue ruler believed in his household as part of the church. Stephanus and Gaius had households. And that was pretty significant, and so there were some wealthy people there, in the church. Worldwide, and throughout church history, there have always been some that were among the great geniuses of their age, that were also genuine believers in Christ.

I think about Augustine, whose writings would take a lifetime to study, the depth of his thinking is almost incalculable. John Calvin was training to be a lawyer when he was converted, brilliant mind. Apostle Paul himself, he was recognized as a very brilliant individual, so much so that at one point, one of his judges said, "Your great learning is driving you insane." So clearly an educated individual. Think about Blaze Pascal, the 17th Century French philosopher, mathematician, brilliant, lover of Jesus Christ. We were talking this morning, one church member and I, about Isaac Newton. Big question mark on him, brilliant guy, one of the greatest scientists of all time.  He believed in the deity of Christ, but didn't believe in the Trinity. So interesting. Don't know about him. But Isaac Newton was one of the best and the brightest of his generation. You've got some Kings like Charlemagne, perhaps, or Good King Wenceslas who were genuinely believers, it seems, and used their positions of power to serve Christ. But there are not many.

Heads of states like Abraham Kuyper, who is, I think, a Dutch prime minister and a strong believer in Christ and used his position for the glory of God. Wealthy people, some like RG Le Tourneu gave a reverse tithe, he kept 10% of what he made and gave 90% away to the Christian causes. A very wealthy individual. Selina Hastings known as the countess of Huntington, used her money and her influence in British society to do countless good works. Evangelical works. Was a patron, and friend of George Whitfield. Then there's William Wilberforce, who as a member of Parliament, but also a member of the ruling aristocratic class who used his power and his influence to end the British slave trade. So we're not going to say "Not any," just "Not many." And so those that actually were among the best and the brightest of their generation, even they were slain, their pride was slaughtered by the gospel, and they recognized that everything they had they got from God.

And it still, their own intellect is as nothing like a candle to the sun of the intellect of God. They're humbled by it. So percentage-wise, worldwide, not many. And so I would say, overall, in the entire world population, there are not many Christians. Jesus said, "Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it, but small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." So already, genuine Christians, are not many population-wise, but even of those, a very small percentage are the movers and shakers, the best and the brightest, the brilliant, not many at all.

Now, why? Why? Well, it's because this was God's intention. God did this on purpose. It was God's action in electing the foolish things. Look at verse 27, "God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." This is a strong statement of sovereign election. The end of 1 Corinthians 1 is one of the strongest passages on the of doctrine of sovereign election, for salvation, you'll find in the Bible. God chose those who would be saved. He assembles His church as He sees fit. He's going to say it straight out in verse 30. Look down at verse 30 and there's a strong statement there. Don't miss it.

Verse 30, "It is because of Him," referring to God, "It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus." That's about as clear as you'll ever get it said. If you are a Christian today, it's because of God, God's sovereign election that is working in your life, so it's not an accident. This makeup of not many is not an accident. And your salvation is not an accident. It's not by your unaided free will, like one day you up and decided to become a Christian. Jesus said to His apostles, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear much fruit."

Now, I do believe we choose Christ. I just think we choose Him after He has chosen us, and as a consequence of Him choosing us. Just like it says in 1 John, "We love because He first loved us." So also we choose Christ because He first chose us. That's what this is teaching. Even more amazing, that the Scripture teaches us that God made this choice before the foundation of the world. In Ephesians 1:4-6, it says, "For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ."

So before the foundation of the world, by sovereign election, He chose us. He did not choose based on any foreseen righteousness on our part, like God saw... It’s not like he looked down through the corridors of time, and saw that someday you would believe in Him, or someday you would be righteous, and on that basis, He chose. The Scripture teaches exactly the opposite. As a matter of fact, it says that he chose before you were born, so that you couldn't boast. He teaches us in Romans 9:11-12, speaking about Jacob and Esau, "Yet before the twins were born or had done anything, good or bad, in order that God's purpose in election might stand..." What is God's purpose? "Not by works, but by Him who calls." That's God's purpose, so that when we get to Heaven, we'll realize it was not by works, but by Him, God, who calls. So that's God's purpose in choosing us before the foundation of the world.

Not “Unconditional Election” but Sovereign Election

Now, I would here say that it's not good to speak of "unconditional election." I think that's not a good phrase. I told you that I would offend every one of you at some point in these sermons in Corinthians, so now I get to offend the five-point Calvinists who love the TULIP acronym, and the U stands for unconditional election. I think it is not a good term. It implies that God, willy-nilly, for no reason at all, just chooses. I don't think that's true. God is a very rational being. He has His reasons for everything.

I would prefer, instead, "sovereign election," that God chooses based on His own reasons. I think there's at least two indications this is true. God wants some people around the throne from every tribe, language, people, and nation, so says Revelation Seven. So the fact that you are from this tribe, or this language, or nation matters, because none of those are going to slip through the cracks, and, "Oh, I guess there weren't any representatives from that tribe or that language." So God sovereignly elected some from every tribe, every language, every people.

And here in this text, it seems that God intentionally chooses, for the most part, those that are rejected by the world. It's not an accident. God's ways are not our ways, friends. As Isaiah 55 says very plainly, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, says the Lord. As the Heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." Or again, as it says at the end of Romans 11, "Oh, the depths of the riches, and the wisdom, and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable His judgments and His paths, beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from Him and through Him…" and I like to say, "Back to Him" "are all things. To Him, be the glory forever."

So I think that's what it is. God's ways are not... You can't track Him. You think about, like in the Old West, there would be somebody that was a really good expert tracker. They could track even horses hoofs on hard rock. They knew how to follow. They could trace out where someone had gone, skillful trackers. What he's saying is, that the most skillful human tracker can't trace God's paths. We don't know where He's been and we can't tell where He's going, except that He tells us directly, in big picture. And so we wouldn't have done it this way. And I think He's doing all this, so that we realize all of our achievements, and all of our capabilities, our intelligence, our wealth, all of it came from Him. What do you have that you didn't receive? And if you did receive it, why would you ever boast as though you did not? You got to realize everything you have is someday going to go back to Him, because He gave it, and so there's this humbling work.

And we should not think that God, if He had only tweaked the message, if He could have fixed the message, it'd be more popular among the wealthy, and more popular among the movers and shakers. It’s not like He needs to fix the message. See, now you're starting to meddle in the things of God. You know, we tend to think that way on campus. "If the star quarterback could come to Christ, think what influence he would have." Or the president of the student body, "If she would come to Christ, what influence she could have." Or the Nobel Prize winners, "If one of them would just be converted, what influence they could have." We want to give God advice, "Would you just convert a lot of these people, God?" And then everybody would follow after. But that's exactly the kind of thinking that God, through Paul, is trying to slay here. The Gospel is for the humble and lowly, little children, poor outcasts.

Do you remember in John 7, Jesus' brothers want to give Him some advice on being Messiah? The arrogance, it's amazing. Jesus wasn't going up to the feast in John Seven. His brothers are surprised, so they go to Jesus in John 7:3-5 to give Him some advice. I picture one of them putting his arm around Jesus, say, "Can I just give you some advice here? I mean, you're really good at this whole miracle thing. I don't know how you do it. It's amazing. But no one who does miracles like this stays hidden. Jesus, this makes no sense. Go up to Jerusalem, where everyone is, and put on a show." John 7:5, "For even His brothers did not believe in Him." It's a display of unbelief to try to give God that kind of advice. You don't put an arm around God and give Him some advice on how He could manage His affairs better. "If only He could win the best and the brightest, then everyone would follow along." God knows what He's doing.

There's a clear example of this in Judges chapter 7. Do you remember the story of Gideon? When the Midianites were ravaging the land, God raised up Gideon, who was not an impressive individual. And it was time for Gideon to raise an army, and then God comes to Gideon. Do you remember what He tells him? "Gideon, you have too many men" here. I mean, that's got to be a first in military history. "Gideon, your army's too big. Send some of them home." But He says, specifically, in Judges 7, why? In order that the Israelites might not boast against me that their military power won this battle. Send them home. Two thirds of them went home, 22000 who trembled and were afraid of battle. So they went home, leaving a smaller number. But then God came a second time to Gideon and said, "You still have too many men, so we're going to divide them up in an interesting way. We're going to watch how they drink water. And the ones that lap water like a dog, we'll hold on to them." 300 of them. Now, don't think they're like the 300 Spartans, the mightiest warriors. No, they are 300 guys who lapped water like a dog.

And what was their job going to be in the battle? They're going to not hold a sword in their hand. They're going to hold a torch, and a lantern, and a trumpet, and they're going to break the torch, and shout, and blow a trumpet, and then the Midianites will kill themselves. So you could go to these heroes after the battle and say,

"What did you do? First of all, how did you get chosen?"

"I lapped water like a dog."

"Really?"

"But I was the best dog lapper of all the 300. I was number one."

"Really? Well, what did you do after that in the battle?"

"I smashed a jar, and held a torch, and blew a trumpet."

"Well, but how about how many Midianites did you kill?"

"None."

That whole thing is a picture, as in the day of Midian's defeat. Isaiah 9 says, "You have broken the yoke that burdens and the bar across our shoulders, for unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given." Isaiah 9 says that our salvation, just like that Midianite victory. What did we do? And we got humbled. So in verse 27-29 God shames and nullifies the arrogance of man. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things, the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him. This was done purposely. He doesn't need to improve the message, so it plays better in the halls of power. It's exactly what He wanted to do.

And the negative message here, is He wants to shame and nullify. That's His goal. He wants to shame human pride and nullify it, so that in the end, no one will boast before Him. Why? What does that mean? First and foremost, that we will realize, even if we were pure as light and didn't need an atoning sacrifice, we are still just creatures and He is the Creator. And so just as the holy angels, who have never sinned, cover their faces and their feet, and tremble before Him, because they're creatures and He is infinitely above them as Creator, so will we be humbled, but even more. We weren't pure. We rebelled. We were rebels. We sinned against this Holy God, and we have been redeemed by the blood of His Son, and so we should be doubly humble in His presence.

So God, in order to achieve that, shows the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. He rejects the ruminations of Plato, and Aristotle, and Socrates. He's not going that direction. He's going to choose you, Corinthians. He's going to choose us. And in this way, He's going to shame them, if they will not repent. Now, again, it's not "not any." There could be some of those great philosophers that could be won to Christ, so Paul did go to Mars Hill and some of them were interested. But in general, He's trying to shame them and they will... Their shaming is incomplete now. They're not ashamed. They're proud, and they're doing well, and they're succeeding, but they will be shamed in the end on Judgment Day, when millions, hundreds of millions of what they would have called nobodies, (God wouldn't call them that, but they would have called them nobodies), are going into glory, and they themselves are excluded, because of their sins. So God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. He chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the Earth." The meek are those that are humble and lowly. They're not the fighting warrior types. They're the types that the Nazi tyrants loved, those that just kneeled down before the tyrant's sword and they get decapitated. Tyrants like the Nazis love those types. The Vikings, when they used to go up and down the coastlines marauding, they loved the monasteries, a lot of gold, not a lot of warriors. Special breed of man that was clad in linen garments and died very easily. In Japan, the Shoguns absolutely despised the Christians. They thought nothing of them, because they were a warrior class and the Christians just died like nothing. They just wilted and died. They did not respect... The Nazis, the Vikings, the Shoguns did not respect this kind of thing, but God is going to give to those meek Christians, the Earth, when all is said and done. And those mighty, godless empire builders will be shamed on Judgment Day, when they end up with nothing.

So God assembles the Church of Christ as He sees fit. Look again in Verse 30, "It is because of Him, [because of God], that you are in Christ Jesus." This is the basis of all of your praise. When you've come together on Sunday morning, we worship. When you praise Him on Monday morning, tomorrow morning, when you praise Him, you can say, "God, I am a Christian because of you. It is because of you that I believe in Jesus." As he says in Romans 6:17, "Thanks be to God that you obey the Gospel. Thank God you obey. Thank God you believe. Thank God you repented. Thank God He chose you. " "It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus." That's what it's teaching here.

Now, God does that by the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit. Look again at 1 Corinthians 2:14. I'm going to probably have you look at that verse \ just about every week. But there it says, "The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot accept them, because they're spiritually discerned." But if you're a Christian, that whole thing is turned around. You are a person with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit has come into your life, and therefore, you do indeed accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. They are no longer foolishness to you, but they have been revealed as wisdom and power to you. That's how you see the cross. And you can understand them, because you've been healed from your mental confusion, the darkness of the mind and heart that was the essence of our sin. You've been healed from all that by the sovereign power of the Spirit, and now you have the mind of Christ, and you can see the cross properly. Thanks be to God.

Now, God's ultimate purpose in all this has to do with eternity. Look at Verse 30-31, "It is because of Him that you were in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord."

Now, the Holy Spirit sovereignly works in our hearts, and changes us, and draws us by the hearing of the Gospel, by the hearing of the Word, like you're hearing it right now, draws us into the Kingdom. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus. And the Spirit makes you think about Christ differently, so you then realize who Jesus is to you, and Jesus has become for you, your righteousness. That's the Gospel. That's justification. Jesus is your righteousness, not your own obedience to the law or any of your good works. Jesus' obedience to the law is your righteousness. Jesus' achievement of perfect righteousness before the Father has become yours. Jesus has become for you righteousness. Not only that, He has become for you sanctification. He is your holiness, not just your positional standing of righteousness, but your progressive growth into holiness is Jesus. To God be the glory. And He also has become your redemption, not just the beginning redemption that you have stepped into, but the final vindication on Judgment Day, of all your sins redeemed.

Now, He does all this, as it is written, "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." Putting it simply and very humanly, God doesn't want to spend eternity listening to you or me boast about ourselves. "I'm not listening to that. I'm going to save you in such a way that you will be completely humbled when all is said and done." And God's very wise about this. And he quotes... Paul reaches for the quote in Jeremiah 9:23-24.

"Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, let not the strong man boast of his strength, let not the rich man boast of his wealth, but let him who boasts, boast in this, that he knows and understands Me, that I'm a God who forgives sins. I am merciful, let him who boasts, boast in Me, in that I show him mercy." God does all of this for the praise of His glorious grace, so that we'll boast in Him. Now, what does this mean to boast? God has given your mind the ability to analyze from lesser to greater, from things that are low to things that are exalted. And we have a hierarchy of greatness, of excellence, and we speak, when something hits a trigger level, we speak and we start to praise that thing, we start to boast in it. Our problem is fundamentally we think very highly of ourselves, we think we are excellent, and so we boast in ourselves, or we'll boast similarly another humans and their achievements. God wants us to boast, and He wants us to speak words of praise and greatness of God.

A number of months ago I preached at Southern Seminary, and I was preaching a message. Afterwards I went out to eat with Dr. Mohler, President of Southern Seminary, and Greg Willis, a good friend of mine who's a professor of Church History there. And we went to a restaurant, ate lunch, and then after that went to a popsicle boutique, one of these high-end popsicle places, and we got gourmet popsicles. And then oddly drove to a cemetery to eat them. But Dr. Mohler has a sense of history and he just loves Cave Hill Cemetery, and we went there, and there is the grave of one of the founders of Southern Seminary, James P. Boyce. So we stood there eating popsicles and talking. And I don't know, maybe there's just an interesting wisdom there to realize some day we're all going to die. And it's especially poignant in that just diagonally across from there is Mohammad Ali's cemetery with the words, "Our service to others is the rent we pay for our room in heaven." Pure works righteousness. And I thought Ali was the quintessential self-boasting athlete, he actually led the way in saying, "I am the greatest." And so many athletes have followed. I think before that there was at least an effort at false humility. But after that, all the gloves are off with many, not all, but many just, "I am the greatest. I'm the greatest."

But here's the thing, death just has the power to humble us all, and everything, every attribute we have is temporary, all of it, all of our intelligence, all of our skill, all of our money, all of our physical strength, is going to go away and we are all going to die someday. And so, someday if I know that I'm dying, and I'm on my death bed, I'm lying there and my days or my hours are coming to an end and I'm aware of it, not always the case, most people actually don't die aware that they're about to die. But if I am on my death bed, and maybe my family's with me, at that point I will not be thinking about anything except this, Christ is my righteousness, by faith, not by works, Christ is my righteousness. I will not be thinking about sanctification, I'll not be thinking about infinite journeys anymore, I'll be thinking about this, I was forgiven by faith, I was justified by faith in Christ, that's it. And anything that I achieved, any good works, it's only by the grace of God, but it really will not be on my mind at that point, I'll be trusting in Christ's death and resurrection alone for my forgiveness.

Applications. First, just meditate on this whole thing and just ask yourself the question, "Why does God hate human boasting so much?" There's something sick about human boasting, something twisted. Imagine a vain movie star who goes to some spectacular scenery, like the Grand Canyons of the Alps, and hires somebody to hold a big mirror in front of him or her, and they spend the whole time looking at themselves. Or somebody who takes a selfie facing the wrong direction, the Grand Canyon's that way, but so enamored with what their own face looks like. Something's off there. I've been thinking about all these illustrations at this very point, I tried some out on my kids this morning, their needle didn't move much, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Imagine an art expert who works as a curator of a museum, and has for a weekend a Rembrandt to put a new frame on and all that, invites all his friends over and one of them is a new painter who's taking painting lessons at the local library, and has brought his newest oil painting of a nice pastoral scene with a couple of cows, and a wooden fence. And so, there side by side is a Rembrandt and this oil painting, and the entire group spends the entire time praising the little oil painting that was done by the art student. You're like, "Something is off in your estimation." You are surrounded every moment by infinite greatness, the display of God's greatness in creation, and then as we read in Scripture, the even greater display of His greatness and redemption, so you ought to boast in God and not in anything else. So I tend to think the best way to look at this is therapy. God is healing us from a twisted perspective so that we will spend eternity boasting in God. God's not weak, He's not insecure, He doesn't need an ego trip, it's that we're sick and He wants to heal us. And He heals us, as John Piper once said, not by making much of us, but by enabling us to make much of Him for all eternity.

So when you think about that, just think about how God has humbled you in salvation by choosing you before you were born, from before the foundation of the world, not based on anything He saw in you, positively. And how He saved you before you were born, two centuries before, or two millennia before you were born, by having Jesus die for your sins, and He did all of the work for you. And then you were justified by simply believing and not by any work so that no one can boast, just by grace, and that this faith that you have is not of yourselves, it's a gift of God. Ephesians 2:9, so that no one can boast, and then you begin, you roll up your sleeves and start trying to live the Christian life.

Friends, how's it going? How are you doing? "Oh Pastor, we're doing great. I had a phenomenal week, I was perfect this week." Can you imagine someone saying that? So now we're in the sanctification thing, and oh, how humbling it is. And for decades we battled indwelling sin and don't do very well, and God keeps forgiving, and forgiving, and covering, and forgiving, and covering. And then finally we die, and in an instant He glorifies you and makes you just like Jesus. And you're like, "Lord, why didn't you do that when I was converted? I would have had such an awesome life." Don't give advice to God. He knows exactly what He's doing, He's humbling, humbling, humbling, humbling, and humbling you, so that you'll spend eternity boasting in the Lord.

So practically, whenever you're tempted to boast in yourself or some other human achievement, stop. Boast in the Lord. Say something great about Jesus. Say something great. Next time you're in a conflict with your spouse, not that you ever have them or that I ever have them ever, but if that should ever happen, realize how much of it is based on your arrogance and your pride, and just boast in the Lord at that point, don't be prideful, don't be angry and prideful. And in terms of the gospel, let me just say something to you who are on the outside, you came in here and you are not yet converted, this gospel is for you. Yes, it's meant to humble you, but boy, it's also meant to exalt you and to bring you to Heaven and make you glorious. So I'm just appealing to you, while there's time turn away from yourself, turn away from your good works, turn away from everything you're clinging to, and trust in Christ and you will be forgiven of all of your sins. And for you evangelists, which should be all of you who are converted, as you share the gospel, do it as a form of worship. Just worship Jesus in front of some unbelievers this week, just talk about how great He is, and see what God will do.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we are mindful of how arrogant we are. We are very, very proud people. And we need that pride to be leveled. I pray that You would the use Word of God to level our pride, just level it, God. Forgive us for continuing to build these towers of Babel about how great we are. Forgive us. Because it says in Isaiah 2, "Every lofty thing will be leveled, and the pride of man brought low, the Lord alone will be exalted in that day." Oh God, help the Lord alone be exalted now in our hearts. Oh God, I pray for lost people that you have brought here sovereignly, that they would turn away from their own achievements and their trusting in their money, and then their intelligence, that they would turn away and that they would trust in Christ and Him crucified as their only hope. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

I'd like to ask that you turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 1. We continue to make our way through this incredible book. Three times in these first two chapters, it is made plain that the cross is foolishness to those on the outside. We saw it last week in verse 18 of chapter 1. "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." And in this text, this morning, verse 23-24, "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the Power of God and the wisdom of God." In the next chapter in chapter 2, verse 14, it says, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

Since the very beginning of Christianity, the church has had to endure the mockery of the unbelieving world concerning our message. This goes even before the time of the apostles. It goes to the very circumstances of our Lord's crucifixion, when the Romans wrapped Jesus up with a purple robe and wove together a crown of thorns, and smashed it on his head and then knelt down in front of him, the Roman soldiers, and praised Him and worshipped him as King. They were mocking him. They did not know who He was. And when He was up on the cross, the citizenship there, the Jewish citizenship of Jerusalem came by and mocked Him the leaders mocked Him and "He saved others… but he can’t save himself…Let Him come down now from the cross and we will believe in Him." They mocked him that very day.

And in that song we sang earlier, "Ashamed, I hear my own mocking voice cry out among the scoffers." We also were of the same disposition. We're no better than those people. The world has this kind of mocking reaction to Christ and to the things of God. And we see that in every generation, also when the best and the brightest of that generation lead out in mocking Christianity, and it's very intimidating. The intelligentsia, the cultured elite in every generation, have generally mocked Christianity and Christians and the world's laughter can be very painful to endure and it can actually throw us back a bit. To be back on our heels, "Could we be wrong, could Christianity be wrong. Is it actually worthy of scorn? Am I weird? Is there something wrong with me that I'm a Christian?" The mocking has been going on a long time. In the ancient catacombs of Rome, there is found a mocking cartoon done by some unbeliever, of a man on a cross with a donkey's head. And someone else bowing down and worshipping. Felix worships his God, mocking the idea of God on the cross.

Ancient, it's been around a long time. And in every generation, the brilliant ones use satire and mockery to lay low Christianity. I mentioned Voltaire last week, the French philosopher, skeptic writer, moralist lived during the last half of the 1700s in around the time of Ben Franklin, the American Revolution around that time. He had nothing but scorn and mockery for the established church there in France. He was speaking of the second coming of Christ, He said, "Why had not Christ kept His promise to come in a cloud with power and great glory, to establish the kingdom of God before that generation should pass away? What had detained him? Was the fog too thick?" I can just hear the laughter. People just laughing and mocking.

Thomas Jefferson same thing. He was talking about the Trinity, he said, "There's nothing I can do for an idea I can't conceptualize. Ridicule is the only weapon that can be used against unintelligible propositions like the trinity, ideas must be distinct before reason can act on them, and no man ever had a distinct idea of the Trinity. It is the mere abracadabra of the charlatans calling themselves the priests of Jesus." Thomas Jefferson. Best and the brightest.

Mark Twain a century later was obsessed with the Bible and with mocking it. It was like almost his central life work. Mark Twain said, "If Christ had really been God, he could have proved it since nothing's impossible with God. When God wants to prove that the sun and the moon may be depended upon to do their daily work, day and night, he has no difficulty about it. It's only when He apparently wants to prove a future life beyond the grave to us that His invention fails and He comes up against a problem that is beyond the reach of His alleged omnipotence. He can't seem to convince the world that we can live after death, that Christ rose from the dead." Well he couldn't convince Mark Twain anyway.

Thomas Edison inventor of the light bulb and a thousand other patentable inventions. Brilliant practical scientist, had no patience for Christianity, he said "Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind or merciful or loving. If God made me the fabled God of the three qualities mercy, kindness, and love. He also made the fish I catch and eat, and where do his mercy, kindness and love for that fish come in? No, nature made us, nature did it all. Not the gods of the religions, I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul, I am an aggregate of cells as for instance New York City is an aggregate of individuals. Will New York City go to Heaven? No all this talk of existence beyond the grave is wrong. It is born in the imagination of men."

Even in our generation, Steve Jobs, who recently died… He was the CEO of Apple and inventor of the iPhones and iPads that have shaped the experience of people all over the world in our generation, one of the most influential people in the world. He was raised in a church-going Lutheran family. But in 1968 when he was 13 years old, he saw a photograph in an issue of Life Magazine, a cover photograph of a pair of starving children in Africa, in Biafra. And he was understandably deeply troubled by this photo and went to his Lutheran pastor for an explanation. And in that conversation with the pastor, Jobs held up a finger, and he said to the pastor, "Did God know I would hold up this finger before I did? The pastor rightly said, "Yes, God knows everything."

Then Jobs produced the Life magazine photo, "Well, does God know about this? And did he... And does He know what's going to happen to these children? Well the pastor at this point simply said, "Steve, I know you don't understand, but yes, God knows about this." But the pastor at that time gave no biblical explanation of the problem of evil, or how the cross of Christ is God's answer to the problem of evil, he just said, it's beyond your ability to understand. And so this young brilliant searching soul, Steve Jobs, announced he could never have anything to do with worshipping such a god, and he never went back to church again. Now, Jobs pursued spirituality, Buddhism, gurus, hallucinogenic drugs, right to the end of his life, there was a guru by his bedside. He didn't mock Jesus, he sought to live after a moralistic Jesus that he could understand, not the one of the Bible.

I could multiply stories of amazingly brilliant men and women who reject biblical Christianity. You know what I'm talking about. Late night talk show hosts, make a living mocking Christianity and Christians. It's on the internet, it's everywhere. It's especially hard on the college campus. I remember shortly after I came to Christ at MIT, I took a Bible class at MIT. I mean, you might say, "What were you thinking? What did you expect?" But me and some of my friends from crew, from Campus Crusade for Christ thought we would go ahead and take it. We ended up calling it blasphemy and heresy 101.  I actually went on to take blasphemy and heresy 102 as well. There were two Bible classes, two consecutive semesters. You were like, "What, did you hope the second class would be better than the first?" I don't know, I think I was hoping to evangelize the professor. But the college campus can be very intimidating.

Some time ago, I came across a quote by a Princeton Philosophy professor. Guy named Richard Rorty, openly declared to Christian parents of evangelical kids, his commitment to mock their faith and to change their kids. "We try to arrange things, so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists, will leave college with views more like our own. But we do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization. So we're going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly, worthy of mockery rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist in our Liberal Arts education. Liberal means free, a free exchange of ideas. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours. I think those students are actually lucky to find themselves under the benevolent dictatorship of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents." But please send us the tuition money. So for us Christians it can be very distressing to find the cultured elite, the best and the brightest, mocking Christianity. In every generation, it is the case.

Now, the Apostle Paul had to face that mockery in his day, and he's writing out of that context here to the Corinthians. He endured it in Acts 17 before he came to Corinth he was in Athens, and he preached there on Mars Hill. A select group of Epicureans and stoic philosophers assembled there to hear him preach the gospel. And so he made the case, he preached Christ and him crucified and resurrected. And they mocked him at the beginning, they said, "What is this babbler trying to say?" And they mocked him at the end, some of them sneered but others did say "We'd like to hear you again on this topic." But that's the kind of mockery. Now Paul addresses this mockery, this foolishness that the world sees of Christianity of the cross here in the text we're looking at today, look again, at verses 22-25, "The Jews demand a miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the Power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength."

Let's begin in the middle of verse 23, "We preach Christ crucified." So here we're asking back in verse 18. What is the message of the cross? The testimony about God. What is he talking about here? Paul says, "We preach Christ crucified." Well this is the center of the gospel, which God ordained for the salvation of the world and it centers on the person of Christ, we preach Christ. What does that mean? Well, Christ, the word means Anointed One, the Messiah. It's the Greek word for the anointed one, and Paul said Jews demand miraculous signs. Judaism is a supernatural religion. It's a religion birthed in the supernatural, in the interference so to speak of God into this world miraculously.

It's a religion-based not just on miracles, but also on miraculous predictions of the future. Miraculous prophecies and the Christ, the coming Son of David was a prophesied figure, a miraculously predicted figure. So we preach that this predicted figure, Christ has come, that God has fulfilled centuries of prophecies in this person of Christ, we preach Christ. Moses, the founder of the national religion of the Jews was a miraculous figure himself.

He had been predicted 400 years before that to Abraham in Genesis 15, that Abraham's descendants would be strangers in a country not their own, they would be enslaved and mistreated 400 years. "But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions." Genesis 15. So Moses had been predicted though not specifically by name, that there would be a deliverer, someone had to lead them out. And so Moses was predicted and when he came, he did signs, and wonders, miraculous signs and wonders to establish his credibility and so that the people would follow him. He was a miraculous, a wonder working figure. His staff turned into a serpent, he put his hand in his cloak and it came out leprous then he put it back in and it was healed again. But even more he predicted, and then God used him to perform 10 miraculous plagues on Egypt, and then he led them through the Red Sea. He was a wonder working leader, a miraculous leader. He fed them with manna from heaven, and with water that came out of a rock. These were miracles. Now, the next great leader in Jewish history was King David, and David had it in his heart to build a permanent residence for the Ark of the Covenant. It had been in a tent. He wanted to build a temple.

God basically said "You're not going to build a house for me, I'm going to build a house for you." And then he made what's known as the Davidic covenant, a promise to David, 1 Chronicles 17:11-14, "I will raise up your offspring to succeed you… I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever; his throne will be established forever." the Son of David, the descendant of David. And that's who the Jews were waiting for, and when the Jews were expelled out of the Promised Land because of their sins and their idolatries, the prophets had warned that it would happen. But then the time came, there was the diaspora, the spreading of the Jews all around that region of the world and their desire, their interest in the Messiah, the Christ intensified. They wanted the Christ to come, they were expecting the Christ to come. So in Jesus's day, especially under the total domination of the Roman Empire. The Jews were eager for the Christ to come. You see this again and again, like in John's Gospel, the Samaritan woman remember her? And she said toward the end of that interaction with Jesus, "I know that Messiah called Christ is coming and when He comes, He will explain everything to us."

A few chapters later, in John's gospel in John 7:27 they said, "When the Christ comes no one will know where he is from." Well, whether that's true or not, they're expecting the Christ to come. In that same chapter, and it says of the crowd, "Many in the crowd put their faith in him." Because of his miracles, they said "when the Christ comes, will he do more miraculous signs than this man?" So you see they're expecting, they're waiting for the Christ to come. So he was a figure of prophecy, and Paul says "We preach Christ. We preached that the one that the Jews had been waiting for centuries, has now come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. At the right time, God fulfilled these predictions, these prophecies by sending His son. The very first thing we learn about Jesus in the New Testament is amazingly in a genealogy. Study the genealogies, it's how the New Testament begins. The best genealogy to memorize, and you say Pastor, "Why would I memorize a genealogy?" I'm not saying it's the first thing you should memorize, but the best genealogy to memorize is Matthew 1:1 cause it's really short.

"A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, son of Abraham," says it all. So the first thing said about Jesus in the New Testament is he is the fulfillment of the prediction, the long-awaited Jesus has come now, the Messiah has come. He is the Son of David. Now, Jesus was more however, than just the Son of David, and that's what the Jews could not accept, they were not ready for it. But Mary understood, the virgin Mary, when the angel Gabriel announced to her that she would give birth to the Son of David, He told her more than that though. Gabriel said "The Holy Spirit will come upon you. And the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born of you will be called the Son of God." Wow, that's a lot for a teenage girl to ponder. It says that Mary treasured these things up in her heart and pondered them, but he was the Son of David. Yes, fully human, but he was also the Son of God, fully God.

Now, in the course of time, when he was about 30 years old, he began his public ministry and the Holy Spirit came on him and empowered him to do miraculous signs and wonders, a river of them. And as a matter of fact, no one in the history of the Bible, or in the history of the Church has ever done anywhere near as many miracles as Jesus did.

A river of miracles were done through Jesus, such as Matthew 4:24. "News about him spread all over Syria and people brought to him, all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon possessed, the epileptics and the paralytics, and He healed them." We have absolutely no idea how many miracles that is. As a matter of fact, John, at the end of his gospel, said that if all the stories about the miracles were written, the whole world couldn't contain the books that would be written. But the central reason why Jesus came was to die on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. That's why God sent him, above any other reason.

John the Baptist, the forerunner to Jesus, the last of the old covenant Jewish prophets, pointed to Jesus and said, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." Incredibly important statement. Effectively, John was saying this one, this man, is the Son of God, and He has come to be the fulfillment of the animal sacrificial system. All of those animal sacrifices that were the center of the Jewish religion, have been fulfilled in this man, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

You remember the lessons of the animal sacrificial system? Number one: All sin deserves the death penalty. Without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sins, that's lesson number one. Lesson number two: The death penalty can be paid by a substitute, so that the guilt can be transferred off the people and put on the substitute and the substitute dies the bloody death they deserved to die, and they go free. The third lesson of the animal sacrificial system is, the substitute cannot be an animal. The endless repetition shows it's just symbolic. The table was set for the true substitute, the true atoning sacrifice, and that's Jesus. "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world." And that substitution of Jesus at the cross is the essence of the message of the cross. As Isaiah the prophet had predicted so clearly seven centuries before, in Isaiah 53:5-6, "He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."

Those two verses are the clearest in all the Bible, including the New Testament, on substitutionary atonement. That Jesus, by dying under the wrath of God in our place, has taken away our penalty and freed us from guilt and hell, and given us eternal life. That's the message of the cross. That's what the Jews found to be a stumbling block, and that's what the Greeks said was foolishness.

Now, why did Paul preach it? So we covered, "We preach Christ," that's the message. Why did he preach it? He went from place to place; everywhere he went, if there was a Jewish synagogue, he would go there first. Said in Romans chapter one, to the Jews first, then to the Gentiles. So he'd go there and he would try to reason with them on Sabbath days, from the Scripture, trying to prove that Jesus was the Christ.

He also went out in the Gentile market places and he would explain and reason with them and try to prove that this Christ was their Savior as well, not just for the Jews, but also for Gentiles. Why did he do that? Well, because God has willed that sinners, like you and me, be made right by hearing a preached message and believing it in our hearts, and that's it. Not by works, but by hearing, with faith, are our sins forgiven. That's the way that God has always justified, or made right, sinners with Him. Not by works, but by hearing a promise with faith. As it says in Romans 3:23-25, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely, that is forgiven of their sins and made right with God, justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, or a propitiation, through faith in His blood."

That's how sinners are made right with God. And so that faith comes not by doing any good works. It says later in that same chapter, Romans 3:28, "We maintain that a person is justified by faith and not by works of the law." Now, Romans 10:17 tells us later, in that book of Romans, "Faith comes by hearing the message, and the message is heard through the Word of Christ." So it's times just like this, in which the gospel is simply and clearly proclaimed, that people hear and believe. That's how it happens. Now, Paul says earlier than that, Romans 10:8-10, he says, "‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved."

As he says a few verses later, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." But then he asks a series of important questions. I'm asking the question, why did Paul preach Christ? This is why: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, but he said, "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in someone they've never heard of? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach, unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’" That's Paul's personal life mission. That we should take the message of the gospel to those who have not yet heard or not yet believed. That's why he preached it.

So, verse 23, "We preach Christ crucified." But neither Jews nor Greeks naturally were disposed to receive such a message. So look at verse 22, "Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom." That's what they were ready for. So he was preaching to a hostile audience everywhere he went. Now, the Jews demand miraculous signs because their religion, as I said, is a supernatural religion. God birthed the Jewish nation through a miracle done by an elderly couple, a man who was 100 years old and a woman, a barren wife, who was 90 years old and they, together, had a miracle baby named Isaac. And so the Jewish nation was birthed through supernatural power. God also did signs and wonders, as I mentioned, through Moses, in delivering them out of bondage to Egypt, a miraculous religion. And again and again, God raised up prophets, many of whom, not all of whom, but many of whom did miracles. All of them did miracles in predicting the future. But some of them, like Elijah and Elisha, also did signs and wonders.

So when Jesus came, making amazing claims about himself, the Jews demanded to see miracles so that he should prove himself. Now, as I said, Jesus did more miracles than could ever be cataloged or written about. But they still demanded more; it was never enough! Day after day, they came and wanted more miracles. Matthew 12:38-40, it says, "Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law came to him and said, ‘Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you.’" This is after all those healings. This is after feeding the 5,000. This is after all of the things he'd done. "We want to see a miraculous sign from you." Jesus said, "A wicked and adulterous generation asked for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." So the miraculous sign the Jews were demanding is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's it, that's the sign to the nation. The resurrection.

Now, the miracles were, and still are valid evidences, on which we can base our faith in Him that he's the Son of God. John 14:11, Jesus said, "Believe me when I say to you, that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves." John 14:11. So they are a valid basis for faith. Now, the apostles, when they would go out and preach, they would occasionally do miracles as well. Not anywhere near as many as Jesus, but they did them. Paul healed some people. As a matter of fact, some handkerchiefs were taken from Paul to a sick person, the sick person was made well. Now, I'm not advocating that today, not at all. I mean, you can see this kind of stuff on TV. But it actually happened back in Paul's days. The things that mark an apostle, signs and wonders, were done among you with great perseverance. So Paul did miracles, so did they all, but still, it's never enough. They're always demanding more miraculous signs.

You remember the greatest miracle in Jesus's life, not counting his own resurrection, was the resurrection of Lazarus from the grave. Remember? He'd been dead for four days, now he's alive. He had quite a story to tell. I'd want to ask him questions about those four days, so would you, I know you would. He probably had no memory, I'm thinking he had no memory of those four days, because then he would be filled with misery. "Why am I back here?" But he had a job to do and that was to testify to the greatness of Jesus in his life. But you know what the Jews did? Instead of believing in Jesus, they conspired to kill, not only Jesus, but now Lazarus too. Let's kill him.

Jews demand miraculous signs and the Greeks are looking for wisdom. By that, Paul means a polished system of philosophy, with rhetorical public speaking experts, that went around from place to place, they were called the Sophists, and they would get money for preaching polished, high-sounding philosophies. And the Greeks loved this kind of thing, it was their entertainment and they would pay well if the guy was good. So that's what the Greeks are looking for, they're not looking for somebody like me. But what both Jewish skeptics and Greek skeptics did not realize is that Christ crucified is the infinite answer to both. Jesus is the greatest display of power there has ever been on planet Earth. He is also the greatest display of wisdom there ever has been on planet earth.

Now, Jewish rejection was based on the fact that the cross was a stumbling block. Do you see that? Look at verse 23, "We preach Christ crucified: A stumbling block to the Jews." A "scandalon" in the Greek. Scandalized by this.

The message of the cross was deeply offensive to the Jews of Jesus's day and of Paul's day. So much so that Paul would frequently start, inadvertently start riots, almost everywhere he preached. His Jewish opponents got so violent in Jerusalem that they were throwing off their cloaks and kicking up dust in the air with their eagerness to kill this man. Earlier, a number of them took an oath not to eat again until they had assassinated Paul. Now that's a high level of commitment, because they hated his message so much.

The Incarnation Was Offensive

Why? Well first, the incarnation itself was offensive. The Jews believed in one God and only one God, the Shema, "Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, there is one God and only one God." But Jesus claimed to be that one God. He claimed to be the son of the eternal God, and he openly said in John 10:30, "I and the Father are one." And when the Jews heard this, they picked up stones to stone him. Jesus said, "I've shown you many great miracles signs from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?" "We're not stoning you for any of these… but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God." That's offensive; that's a scandalon; that's a stumbling block to us.

Not only that, they were told, they were instructed in their law, what to do with even a wonder-working prophet who predicted things that actually came true, but told Israel to worship another God. This is in Deuteronomy 13. If any a dreamer or prophet comes and he's working miracles, but he's telling you to worship gods, gods neither you nor your fathers have known, then you must kill him. God is testing you to see whether you love him with all your heart. That's Deuteronomy 13:1-5. But Jesus wasn't preaching another god, he was preaching to be the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Son of God, and that was deeply offensive, but even worse, by far, was the idea of a crucified messiah.

The Crucified Messiah Was Offensive

That their messiah, their Son of David, could end up dead on a Roman cross, was infinitely offensive to them. It was a stumbling block more than we can possibly imagine. They were waiting for a Son of David who would destroy the Romans, throw off the Roman yoke and set up a kingdom from sea to shining sea. Psalm 72:8-11 is their scriptural support among any verses. Listen to this, "He will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. The desert tribes will bow down before him and his enemies will lick the dust. All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him." They were waiting for that. And oh, how sick they were of the Romans. So when Jesus rides in with a triumphal entry and they're cheering and saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David," what is it they're expecting? They're expecting the revolution is imminent. Instead, that same week, Jesus was crucified, he was dead on a Roman cross.

And this was so offensive to them. You remember how Pontius Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened over the head of Jesus on the cross, This is Jesus, the "King of the Jews." And he had it written in three languages, so that everyone could get his message. Do you remember the Jewish leaders came to Pilate said, "Take it down, it's offensive. Do not write, ‘King of the Jews,’ but, this man claimed to be the King of the Jews." Pilate said, "What I have written, I have written." Interesting guy, Pilate. That's another sermon for another day. But they were so offended that this, the King of the Jews, could actually be dead on a Roman cross. And the clearest proof of all was a statement in Deuteronomy 21:22-23, "If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse."

So there's no way, in the Jewish mindset, that the Son of David, the ultimate blessed one of God, could be ultimately cursed by God. Made no sense, so that's a done deal, he's not the Messiah. Well, how did Paul work it out? Paul was bothered by this, wasn't he? Saul of Tarsus, he was deeply offended by this, you remember? And he had it in his mind, he had to destroy this religion of Christianity. And so he's on the road to Damascus, you know the story. Suddenly, a blinding light flashed around him and a voice came from heaven.

"Saul, Saul. Why do you persecute me?" "who are you, Lord?" He asked. "I am Jesus." Those words changed everything for Paul. Everything. Changed everything for the world. "I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. Now, get up and go into the city and you'll be told what you must do." He was blinded, literally blinded, by that brilliant light. But some things were very clear. First of all, Jesus was alive, so therefore he had risen from the dead. He's in glory, therefore he is Lord. And he didn't kill him, though he was persecuting him. He had work for him to do. But what about that whole curse thing?

And I don't know when the Holy Spirit instructed him about the cross and made it no longer a stumbling block, but now the wisdom of God, but somewhere in there, he came to understand how it is that Jesus could be both the blessed one of God, and still a curse from God. And so he wrote about it in Galatians 3:13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’" So Jesus took our curse. We deserved to die under the wrath of God. Jesus stood in our place, the lightning rod, and took the lightning strike for us, that we might not be cursed. So that's, to the Jews, a stumbling block.

To the Greeks, the cross is foolishness. Made no sense why a sublime spirit being like God, the God of Plato and Aristotle and Socrates would take on a human body. They were trying to get up out of the body and get into a spiritual realm. Why would God do that? And even worse, if He did that, He would be very famous, I think. He would be the glorious king of the world. Instead, he gets born in some obscure place to some Jewish peasant girl and then it doesn't go well for him, he actually ends up arrested and dead like a slave on a Roman cross.

Really hard to believe. And even beyond that, you're telling me that if I as a Greek believe in this Jewish carpenter, my sins will be saved before a Jewish God? Doesn't make much sense, seems pretty foolish to me. So, the audience is set against this message and friends, it's still true today. When we go out this week to share the Gospel, you're going to meet the same kinds of reactions, foolishness worthy of mockery or that's offensive to me. What you're sharing is offensive. You're going to meet the same responses and this is the answer.

Now, your outline says, "The cross is the power and wisdom of God," but the text actually... Got the outline wrong, sorry. "Christ is the power and the wisdom of God." To some degree in this text, they seem to be one and the same. The Cross and Christ are united.

Look at verse 23,24, "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles." Verse 24, "But to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God." The sovereign calling of God is everything here. God has the power to call you out of darkness into light. He has the power to take out your heart of stone through the Holy Spirit and give you a heart of flesh. He has the power to give eyes, give the eyes of your heart light so that you can see the truth. That's the calling of God to the called, to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks.

Now, there are two calls in the gospel one of them is external, it's heard through sound. You've been hearing that since you've heard me preaching today, your ear drums vibrate. That's the external call. That goes on all over the world. That's the external call only though. That doesn't save your soul. Jesus said, "Many are called, but few are chosen." This is referring to, I think the internal call of the Holy Spirit of God. And the thing that's so powerful about that is God has the power to call things into existence, that didn't exist a moment before. Remember at creation, God says, "Let there be light." He says the word light before there is light and then there is light. God says, "Let the waters on the earth be gathered together in one place and let dry ground appear and behold it's so."

God had the power to say to a barren couple, Abraham and Sarah, "Be pregnant Sarah. A year from now, Sarah, you will hold a son and Abraham will be the father." One year from now. Paul talking about that in Romans 4:17, speaks about "the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were." So before God calls you the cross is foolishness or a stumbling block. But then when He calls you, when He says to Lazarus, "Lazarus come forth," then suddenly there's life, and there is light and there is power. The Holy Spirit of God does that. Look again at 1 Corinthians 2:14, the next chapter. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." So I took that verse and turned it around. Let's turn it around. The person with the Spirit does accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are no longer foolishness to him, but have become wisdom. The cross of Christ is no longer weakness or a stumbling block, but it has become the power of God to save their souls.

So the Spirit enables a person to understand the cross of Christ and see it spiritually for what it really is. And notice that the called are from both Jews and Greeks. There are, I don't know what, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Jews who believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God. Called the Messianic Jews are some of the most delightful people you'll ever meet. And there are Greeks too, that's all of us non Jews, literally hundreds of millions of those, who believe that Jesus actually is the Son of God, and is their Savior. We are the called of God, and to us, the cross has become the power of God for our salvation, and wisdom of God.

And finally in verse 25, we see the superiority of God's wisdom and power. "For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." That's better than the ESV translation that says, "Wiser than man…" "Stronger than man…" It's in the genitive form, so it's the man's what? It's ellipsis, it leaves a word out. So I think the NIV does a good job translating here. "The foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom [that of man] and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." So even the tiniest bit of God's wisdom, even what we might think of as foolishness, is still wiser than anything we'd ever do.

Jesus said, "Consider how the lilies grow. They don't labor or spin. …not even Solomon in all his splendor is dressed like one of these." Have you ever picked a wild flower, and just looked at it? I did it some time ago with a violet, little purple flower. And I studied it for a long time. I don't know what I was hoping to learn, but I was doing what Jesus said. "Consider the lilies of the field." I was just looking at it and I said, "This is a wonderful, marvelous creation of God." It's just a piece of foolishness from God. It's here today, and tomorrow is thrown in the fire. And you could say, "God, do you realize people are going to heaven and hell every day? There's big things going on here in the world God, and you're making a little flower." Yes, God does that kind of thing. He's causing flowers to grow all over the world, He loves them and He just makes them pretty. Even the smallest bit of God's foolishness is wiser than anything we could do. All we do is observe and study, and use things. God made them. But this foolishness here isn't talking about the wild flower. It's talking about the cross. That which seems to be foolishness to us actually is infinite wisdom. That which seems to be weak, is actually the most powerful thing that has ever been.

Applications. First, if you're not yet a Christian, I'm delighted you're here I prayed that you would come this morning. You overcame a battle probably to get up and keep the promise to your friend, or to walk in here. I prayed that God would help you do that. I remember that battle when I was 19, a junior at MIT, I had that battle. It was hard. So I'm praising God that you're here. It could be that in the call of the Gospel, that external thing you've been hearing, that God has moved something in your heart and that you actually are beginning to see the cross of Christ differently than you've ever seen before. Friends, that's how salvation happens, that's exactly how it occurs. Don't wait to call on the name of the Lord. In your heart cry out and say, "Oh God, save me from my sins through Jesus. I want to trust in Christ as my Lord and Savior, and He will save you. Because everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

Now, if you're a Christian, I'm delighted you're here. I'm not just delighted for non-Christians. I'm glad you're here because we're not done being saved either. The cross is still the power of God for our salvation as well. So start with this: Be confident that God is going to vindicate the cross at the end of time. You're not on the wrong side of this thing. The mockery of the world will fade away like the crackling of thorns in a fire. The proverb says that the fool's laughter is like the crackling of thorns in a fire. It's nothing. And then it will be gone. And Christ... The wisdom of Christ at the cross and the power of God and the cross will be vindicated on Judgment Day. So, don't be intimidated by the really shrewd, clever, funny, talk show host type people or professors that mock our religion. It cannot be mocked.

Secondly, see the wisdom of God and humbling pride at the cross, and be more humble than you are. I'm not done being humbled yet. I can't believe how strong my pride is. The cross needs to keep slaying my pride and yours too. So be humbled by the cross.

Thirdly, trust in the power of God, to finish saving you. The cross isn't done with you yet. And so He who began a good work in you, by calling you out of darkness into light, He will complete it, until the day of Christ Jesus. He will not stop saving you by the power of the cross. Be confident of that. No one can snatch you out of the Father's hand, or out of Jesus's hand.

Fourthly, speak the message of Christ and him crucified, to people who are set against it. Don't be intimidated, don't be afraid. They may mock you they may become angry at you. More likely they'll be indifferent and say, "That's good for you. I've got my own thing." But persevere. Let's speak the message of the cross this week to someone here in the Durham area, the Raleigh area. Let's speak Christ... And let's trust in it and not be ashamed.

Fifth, the message of the cross teaches us that God's ways are different, than ours, and that God sometimes offends us by what he does. John the Baptist was tempted to be offended at the cross. Jesus said, "Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me." The things that God does are sometimes difficult for us to accept. So if you're going through suffering, affliction, you're having a financial trouble, a medical problem, you've been praying and God is not doing what you want. Just understand that God's ways are not your ways, God is working a higher purpose in your life, trust in His wisdom. Trust in His power even though it's perhaps initially offensive to you, what he's doing.

And then finally, understand that this message of the cross is for the whole world. Not just for us here in the Raleigh/Durham area. Let's be a missions church, a church that's committed to taking the message of the gospel to those who have never heard the name of Christ.

Close with me in prayer. Father, We thank you for the time that we've had to study this incredible passage. We thank you for all the things that we've learned in it. And we ask Lord, that You would please sustain and strengthen each of us to see the message and the truth of the cross. That it's not foolishness, but actual perfect wisdom. It's not weakness, but actually it's perfect power. Lord, we thank You for the way that the Word of God teaches us the truth. Help us, O Lord by the Spirit to see it working in our lives. God I pray, give us a heart of compassion to the lost that surround us in the college campus, in the workplace, in our neighborhoods, just people we meet here in the triangle area. Help us to share this message of the cross with them in Jesus name, Amen.