Keep the Main Thing The Main Thing
1 Corinthians: The Grime and Glory of the Church • Sermon • Submitted
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1 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
Introduction
Introduction
Most of you know by now that I am a bivocational pastor, which is another of saying pastoring is not my only job in life. I also work for the government.
At my government job, I used to have attached to every email that I sent out this quote from Harry S. Truman:
“You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you don’t mind who gets the credit”
That is a FACT of LIFE, right there, including in ministry.
However, if I could tweak for this morning’s sake I would probably to something along the lines of:
“You can accomplish God’s work in ministry, provided you only want Him to get the credit”
One pastor once captured this when it came to the calling of preaching the Gospel.
He said “preaching is probably the only job where you can take NO CREDIT for the successes, but still can take pretty much ALL the BLAME for the failures.”
That’s a good word.
John the Baptist had a similar word. John spent his whole life preparing for the ministry of preparing the way for arrival of Jesus.
And then finally Jesus arrives! John baptizes Him. God speaks approvingly from Heaven. The Spirit descends powerfully down to Earth. Jesus’ ministry explodes and John’s lifelong ministry instantly begins a slow methodical departure to the background.
It didn’t take long for his followers to notice it. In John 3, they come to John saying, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.”
John responds like we all should:
28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ 29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”
At the end of the day, the Christian life is about learning how to increasingly move behind Christ until He is all that is left to be seen of us by others.
THE SPIRIT OF GOD WILL ALWAYS REST BOLDLY upon such men and women.
PAUL KNEW THAT. Which is why we find him in this text trying to explain to the Corinthians this very COUNTER-CULTURAL mindset as it relates to his sharing of the Gospel.
I say COUNTER to the cultural, because oftentimes the world wants you to take the spotlight…The world’s wisdom is FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, and TIKTOK. 24 hours a day/7 days a week me on display.
However, for the last couple of weeks, Paul has been laying out the idea that everything in God is different from the way the World wants to do things. The case is no different in this morning’s text.
Spirit-Empowered Preaching never relies upon Human Wisdom or Eloquence.
Spirit-Empowered Preaching never relies upon Human Wisdom or Eloquence.
1 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
What is meant by lofty speech or wisdom?
Lofty Speech – Human Presentation; The way you say it…Can you move me with your eloquence?
Lofty Wisdom – Human Content; What you say…can you amaze me with your rhetoric and give me something that dazzles me?
ILLUSTRATION: Not sure how much you’ve paid attention to this but we are very often captive to fancy words wrapped in fancy packages. One of the reasons why disinformation and misinformation have captured such a foothold in America culture and the broader global culture is because most people who share it know that if you can package what you say and how you say it well enough, many of us will buy it even if it isn’t true or not. And most of you are probably nodding your heads and saying yes that’s very true I know plenty of my friends who are prey to that…Well I’m not talking about your friends. I’m talking about you and I’m talking about me.
MOST POLITICIANS, MANUFACTURERS, AND OTHER PEOPLE VYING for our attention have given BILLIONS of $$$ to the social media juggernauts that we frequently visit to learn where we’re from, what type of food we like, what type of posts we like or love, what videos we spend the most time watching, and what type of animal we would be after we fill out those dumb questionnaires!
And they do this all in an effort to package what they’re selling in the way we’ll hear it and in the way we’ll accept it. That’s why so many lies carry so much power in our current cultural moment.
Even, the SOCIAL MEDIA guys have invested BILLIONS of dollars on the psychology and the science of keeping you scrolling! And many of them have built an entire environment with algorithms that designed to do one thing. Show you what ever you need to see to keep you scrolling...
It’s one of the reasons why even though you have 10,000 friends you hardly ever see their posts. The posts that float to the top of your screen are the ones that the algorithms have calculated will keep you scrolling!
Why? Because in the battle for your heart, everyone is pretty thoroughly convinced that if you package it well enough, it ultimately doesn’t matter if it is RIGHT, GOOD, HEALTHY and TRUE. It still can be effective in winning your heart and capturing your undivided attention.
AND IN TO THIS CESSPOOL wades the words of Paul...
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
Paul’s words are so relevant for us today because he is basically saying that in the middle of a culture of false promises wrapped in pretty packaging, the Testimony of God (the Gospel) enters in and works fine and powerfully all by itself.
It doesn’t need any of our pretty packaging. Why? Two reasons
1. The Gospel alone carries the power to save...
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
The saving of the unbeliever is not determined by the excellencies of the speaker or the amount of human wisdom or philosophy he possesses and is able to communicate, but rather the saving of the unbeliever is only determined by the accurate, sincere, pure preaching of the Gospel alone.
Alone is a key word because of my second point…
2. Trying to bolster the power of the Gospel by lacing it with other stuff empties the Gospel of its power to save
17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
Too often, we internally believe that we need the GOSPEL to be wrapped in other fancy packages to be embraced.
Wrap it in our favorite celebrity personalities and folks will embrace it.
Wrap it in our favorite political philosophies and folks will embrace it.
Wrap it in our cultural sensibilities like hyper consumerism, hyper individualism. To say it another way, make the Gospel all about the amazing things God is going to do for you and yours and nothing else and folks will embrace it.
And oftentimes when we wrap it in this fancy packages, folks do embrace it, but they end up embracing an entirely different Gospel all together. w
Whenever you try to add to the Gospel, you empty the Gospel of its power. It loses its bite like adding sugar to coffee. To preserve its life-giving power, the Gospel must paired with lofty eloquence or wisdom of this world.
This is the main reason why the Word of God takes primary authority in the church? We don’t get up on Sundays and pontificate with our own narratives. We unpack Holy Scripture because this is where the power lies. God has not given me authority to stand up here and tell everybody what I think. God has given me authority to stand up here and tell everybody what He thinks and what He has said. Anything else isn’t biblical preaching. It’s human philosophy and psychology
Spirit-Empowered Preaching always contains at its center the message of Christ Crucified
Spirit-Empowered Preaching always contains at its center the message of Christ Crucified
2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
We aren’t given authority to center human philosophies, wisdom, and eloquence in our Christian preaching. We are called to put front and center the testimony of God, the message of God.
And Paul makes no secret what he considers to be the essence of the Christian message, CHRIST CRUCIFIED. He writes to the Corinthian church that “[he] decided to know nothing among [them] except Jesus Christ and him crucified
What does it mean to preach Christ Crucified?
Let me start with what it doesn’t mean...
It does not mean preach only about His death, burial, and resurrection.
It does not mean preach only about salvation.
Paul in this letter alone speaks about:
What we eat
Sexuality
Marriage and Singleness
Spiritual Gifts
Pride
Lawsuits
Division
So, what exactly is Paul saying when he says he only came preaching Christ Crucified?
He is saying that at the center of every call and every challenge, at the center of every hope and comfort, at the center of every rebuke and every reproof that he makes is message of Jesus Christ Crucified.
Why should I ultimately have hope in a terrible broken world?
Romans 8:17–18 (ESV)
17 we are heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
Why should I ultimately have hope in a terrible broken world? Christ Crucified
Why should I stop being selfish and pursuing my own way instead of pursuing what is best for others and laying down my time, my talent, and my treasure for their sake ?
34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Why should I stop being selfish and pursuing my own way instead of pursuing what is best for others? Christ Crucified. Christ died so I too must die!
Why should I stop seeking to live like the world following its patterns and philosophies in my life?
13 For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. 14 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
Christ crucified is a message that forces us to die to the World, dying to the flesh, dying to desires…
The Corinthians had forgotten about this message and this is the reason we see the pride and worldliness creeping in, this is the reason we see the divisions creeping in.
Every day that you wake saying to yourself, “I’m following Christ” should be a day that you are dying to the World, dying to sexual immorality and fornication and pornography, dying to gossip and talking about people, dying to pride and arrogance. Every day that you wake saying to yourself, “I’m following Christ” should be a day that you are being crucified.
It is also message of remembrance
Every action, every work, every word, everything that you do should be done under the light of the cross
[APPLICATION]: If we would only live all of life in light of the cross…, the next time you say that you don’t have the patience to deal with your co-workers, or your parents, or your children, think of the patience that He displayed for you by dying in your place on the cross.
[APPLICATION]: The next time you’re tempted to engage in sex before your married or outside of your marriage. The next time you’re tempted to pay back hurt with hurt,think of the price He paid for you and your impurity on the cross.
[APPLICATION]: The next time you decide that you don’t feel like praying or reading your Word for the day, think of how he didn’t feel up to taking on the sins of the world on the cross, and yet, he did it.
Christ Crucified should be at the heart of everything we are and everything we do.
This is why the preacher’s motivation each and every Sunday (no matter the topic of the message or the text is) should be to get you back under the shadow of the cross in order that you see CHRIST CRUCIFIED in everything.
The word says that Paul had decided!
The word can also be expressed as determined or resolved. In other words, Paul is saying that he made a calculated, whole-hearted decision to preach the testimony of God and CHRIST CRUCIFIED no matter the cost!
There will always exist a temptation for us to proclaim a message of salvation that requires no crucifixion at its center.
Why is that? Quite simply because the masses do not want to hear such a message…Remember the message of the Cross is foolishness!!!
So, the temptation will come in people urging you to ease up…to turn to human wisdom like “all roads lead to heaven” or "your truth is your truth and just because it is true for you doesn’t mean it’s true for me” or "everyone just has to follow their own hearts”
The temptation will be to turn to this wisdom so that you folks will be more accepting of your message, but when you do, the message LOSES ITS POWER!
Paul saw this as a possible temptation that, Timothy, his young son in ministry might experience which is why he warned him in...
1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
Spirit-Empowered Preaching is delivered in human weakness, fear and reverence, and complete dependency
Spirit-Empowered Preaching is delivered in human weakness, fear and reverence, and complete dependency
3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
Paul speaks as a man who has experienced tremendous suffering for the sake of Christ. Take note in Acts of his numerous beatings and imprisonments all for the sake of the Cross.
And I’m sure the Corinthians are aware of that suffering...
By the time he got to Corinth to proclaim the Gospel, he had been beaten and imprisoned in Philippi, stoned and left for dead in Lystra, rejected at Thessalonica, rejected for the most part in Athens, run out of other cities, and now was arriving in Corinth.
This was a man physically weary and I’m sure at times even psychologically weary, yet undeterred...
Even his opponents spoke of His bodily weakness:
10 For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.”
I can hear these cats saying...His letters give you the impression that he is a very imposing presence, but when you see this guy in person, he’s not all of that.
[CHARACTER] “Well, how eloquent is he? It doesn’t appear he’s the most
[ILLUSTRATION] So let’s get this, here we have this weak-looking man with sub-par eloquence delivering a message that just sounds ridiculous and goes against ALL of our ideas and opinions and philosophies. So why on Earth does anybody follow him!!!
One Word…GOD!!! It’s in weakness that God is able to use us mightily, not for the purpose of us looking good but for the purpose of Him being glorified.
The Spirit of God works most mightily in the preacher who knows His weaknesses and instead of masking them, he boasts in them that God may receive all the Glory, and that he doesn’t receive any of the Glory!
Paul also says that when He came to Corinth that he came “in fear and much trembling.”
This probably means one of two things or a combination of both:
He understood the magnitude of the call!
He was aware of the dangers surrounding him!!!
I’m inclined to believe it may be a little of both but it is mostly the 2nd explanation, “He was aware of the dangers surrounding Him”
My reason for leaning towards this explanation is because of the vision Paul experienced while in Corinth the 1st time.
9 And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, 10 for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” 11 And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
So Paul was in fear for his life, but his fear did not deter Him because even in His fear, he placed his trust in GOD!!!
If anything for Paul, it focused him…it showed him the seriousness of the calling and the ministry he had been entrusted to!!!
This thing was about life and death! Eternally and for the early church, even in their present life!!!
So, Paul, in weakness and in fear and trembling, depended solely on God to perform the work that he had been called to do! That’s where God is most clearly seen! Where we are totally dependent on Him.
Paul didn’t need to necessarily be impressive because He was speaking of God who was...
Beware of the leader who is satisfied getting credit rather than deferring it back to God!!!
The arrogant leader!!! The one who wants to be treated like a King!!!
The leader who can’t stop bragging about the size of His church!
The leader who’s looking to make a name for himself!!!
The leader more concerned about meeting quotas and numbers than discipling and shepherding souls
Any preacher who does not approach the pulpit acknowledging his weakness apart from God, and any preacher who does not approach the pulpit in fear and trembling over what God has called him to do, is one that must take heed of.
When preachers are seeking Glory of their own, they have less time to seek God’s Glory
When preachers are concentrating on their agendas, they have less time to concentrate on God’s agenda
When preachers are looking at themselves, they cannot be looking at God!!!
I’m learning this more and more every single day of my life…There is only room for 1 in this pulpit!!! And that 1 is NOT the preacher!!!
God moves most mightily in preachers when they make every effort to make themselves invisible in the pulpit so that it would almost seem like God were speaking directly to His people!!!
Spirit-Empowered Preaching is proclaimed in an unlikely power (life-generating)
Spirit-Empowered Preaching is proclaimed in an unlikely power (life-generating)
4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
When we hear this our minds typically move directly to signs and miracles, but this power Paul is describing is probably not that.
Now that is not to say that Paul isn’t performing signs. It’s just that isn’t his primary focused...
Paul’s use of the term power to describe the message of the Christ
17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. 18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
Here is another reason why he is probably not talking about signs and miracles here. Because earlier Paul makes a contrast between signs and power:
[TEXT: 1 Corinthians 1:22-24] - For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews(because it’s not the signs they’re looking for) and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
We like the Jews sometimes liken power to signs and wonders, and therefore we, like the Jews have problems seeing the Gospel in terms of power as well.
However, the power found in the Gospel is only unlikely because we don’t cherish it as we ought.
When we consider that what we as Christians profess the Bible to be, it should not be difficult to understand it to be the power of God!!!
We profess the Bible to be God’s one and only revealed Word. THIS BOOK IS HOW GOD HAS CHOSEN TO SPEAK TO US!!!
GOD HAS CHOSEN TO REVEAL MYSTERIES ABOUT HIS NATURE, HIS PLAN, AND HIS WILL TO US THROUGH A BOOK!!!
THIS BOOK IS GOD’s PRIMARY ORDAINED MEANS TO SPEAK TO HIS PEOPLE!!!
So, in light of this understanding…that God has chosen the means by which he speaks to us to be in a book, WHAT COULD BE MORE POWERFUL THAN HEARING WHAT GOD HAS TO SAY IN THE BOOK THAT HE’S SO CHOSEN TO REVEAL HIMSELF IN!!!
THE PREACHING OF THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS IS THE POWER OF GOD BECAUSE WHEN IT IS PREACHED WITH GREAT FEAR AND TREMBLING, ACCURATELY AND COMPLETELY, IT IS AS IF GOD HIMSELF WERE TALKING TO US!!!
Have we considered that the reason we don’t see the preaching in today’s churches as the power of God is because it isn’t the power of God!!!
Maybe, IT’S OPINIONS. Maybe, IT’S ENTERTAINMENT
Life coaching and pop-psychology about how to get promotions on your job, or how to get a man or woman, or partisan attacks political parties we don’t like.
And then on the other hand,
It’s short sermons filled with style and flair, eloquence and emotion but very little gospel substance. It’s services built to stir the emotions: jokes to make you laugh, stories to make you cry, but very little authenticity and honesty before God...
It’s everything to overwhelm us with a sense of the entertainment that we have come to crave in our lives and expect in every area even our churches and our pastors...
This approach to preaching and to worship conditions us to expect from worship service two hours full of entertainment and opinions instead of expecting to hear God speak to us!!! It’s probably fun and makes us all feel good when we leave, but it is powerless!!!
Paul understood this clearly which is why he declares in verse 4, “and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom”
His wisdom was of no value to him even though Paul probably had more human wisdom than most. It wasn’t of any use to Paul because human wisdom had no power!!!
So Paul put his own human wisdom, opinions, and philosophies aside and put all of his trust in the Gospel!!! And as a result, his message came in demonstration of the Spirit and of Power!!!.
The message he preached just didn’t make a few people happy. It brought life to dead. It didn’t bring mere entertainment. It brought TRANSFORMATION
Spirit-Empowered Preaching aims to cause men to place their faith in the God and not the wisdom of men.
Spirit-Empowered Preaching aims to cause men to place their faith in the God and not the wisdom of men.
[TEXT: 1 Corinthians 2:5] that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
Here Paul is implying something that should alarm us! Look very closely at what he’s saying
Paul implies here that there is a kind of preaching that can cause men to place their faith in the wisdom of men rather than in the power of God.
THAT IS TO SAY, that a certain type of preaching can cause our faith to be placed IN MEN rather than in God!!!
What type of preaching is that?
A preaching filled with human wisdom and preacher’s opinions instead of the Word of God
A preaching characterized by its ability to entertain rather than point people to God
A preaching that does not preach Christ Crucified..
This type of preaching will ultimately draw men to the wisdom of men rather than to God!
People will come to church because of the style in which the preacher preaches
People will come to church because of the cool things they do at the church
People will come to church because of the interesting topics the preacher talks about (POLITICS, SOCIAL ACTIVISM, RACIAL PRIDE, ECONOMICS, RELATIONSHIPS,)
Preaching that focuses on man will ultimately cause us to place our faith in man
So, to combat this Paul says he preaches not with human wisdom or with eloquence (in other words seeking to draw man with his entertaining presentation). Paul says he does one thing, he pours every ounce of himself into preaching the Cross of Christ, everything carries with it the aroma of Christ Crucified
As a result, men who are drawn not him but they are drawn to God!!!
Brothers and sisters, THIS IS MY ONLY AIM!!! That I preach in such a way that your faith rests in God and not in men. This is why I do what I do the way that I do it, but brothers and sisters this should be your only aim...
THAT WE DECREASE in order that HE MAY INCREASE.
That more and more we move to the background in order that Christ might shine glorious in front of us.