Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Invite you to turn your bibles to
First Corinthians, First Corinthians chapter one,
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where we will be resuming a series
that I started about eleven months ago when
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we looked at the first seventeen versus
of first scrinthians one. Tonight we're going
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to look at the rest of the
chapter, so verses eighteen through thirty one
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for Scrintians one, starting in verse
eighteen. Here now the word of God,
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but the word of the cross,
is folly to those who are perishing,
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but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
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For it is written I will destroy
the wisdom of the wise and the
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discernment of the discerning. I will
thwart where is the one who is wise?
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Where is this scribe? Where is
the debater of this age? Has
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Not God made foolish the wisdom of
the world? For since, in the
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wisdom of God, the world did
not know God, through wisdom it pleased
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God, through the folly of what
we preach to save those who believe,
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for Jews demands signs and Greeks seek
wisdom, but we preach Christ crucify'd a
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stumbling block to Jews and folly to
gentiles, but to those who are called
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both Jews and Greeks, Christ,
the power of God and the wisdom of
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God, for the foolishness of God
is wiser than men and the weakness of
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God is stronger than men. For
consider your calling. Brothers, not many
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of you were wise according to worldly
standards. Not many were powerful, not
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many were of noble birth. But
God chose what is foolish in the world
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to shame the wise. God shows
what is weak in the world, to
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shame the strong. God shows what
is low and despised in the world,
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even things that are not to bring
to nothing, things that are so that
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no human being might boast in the
presence of God. And because of him,
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you are in Christ, Jesus,
who became to US wisdom from God,
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righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so
that, as it is written,
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let the one who boasts boast in
the Lord Amen. Thus far, the
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reading of God's word maybe seated.
There are certain passages where I feel like
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it would be a shame for me
to actually preach, because the text just
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so powerfully speaks on its own.
In the first century, the city of
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Corinth was this thriving cosmopolitan seaport in
Greece and like in so many of our
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cities even today, Corinth was marked
by a fierce competition to climb the social
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ladder, to prove your importance to
the culture and to society, and the
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way you proved your importance was very
much the same as it is today.
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You receive a top notch education,
learning about all the latest ideas and theories
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and philosophies, or maybe you learn
to carry crowds through your charismatic persona and
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your ability to speak well in front
of people, or perhaps you earn for
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yourself great wealth through your business dealings, or maybe you find a way into
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the marble halls of power and influence. If you want to show that your
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somebody to this world, this is
how you do it, one of these
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avenues, or a variation thereof.
And it was this attitude towards worldly success
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that these new believers in Corinth,
these new Christians, it's this attitude that
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they are bringing into the Church and
it's tearing the church apart, the Church
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of Corinth. We get a glimpse
of this if we look back at versus
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ten through thirteen, and you can
see here, Paul lays it out,
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that the church has split up into
factions, sort of like fan clubs for
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boy bands. They are each following
a certain leader, a certain leader in
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the church, whether it be Paul, whether it be Apollos or Peter or
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even Jesus himself, and they're saying
this is our leader, this is our
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guy and and they're bickering with each
other, these groups, he's factions.
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They're fighting and arguing with each other
over who's the best, who's the most
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superior. I think Apollos is a
better preacher than Paul. Will Paul is
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more theological than Apollo. Sort maybe
Peter's more important for the life of the
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church. Eat however they're doing it. They are arguing that their faction,
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their group, their leader, is
more important, more theological, more sophisticated,
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more something than these other factions and
groups and people. And unfortunately this
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divisive spirit didn't die out in the
first century. It's still with us today.
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Say It's alive and well in the
church now, and it comes in
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all shapes and sizes. You've probably
seen it either in former churches. You
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know, if you as you look
back over your experience in different churches,
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different denominations, a variety of backgrounds
and to a degree, factions in churches
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are almost inevitable. Unfortunately, I'm
not a pastor here at covenant. I
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don't know the stay of the church, but I'm willing to bet there's probably
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some factions heaven here. I know
there are rink on mountain. It's almost
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inevitable, and even confessionally reformed churches
to have these factions maybe even more prone
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to it at times. So the
question is not is it going to crop
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up? The question is when?
Is it here now, and if it
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is, what do we do about
it? How do we respond to the
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that factionalism? And that's the question
we have to bring to our passage this
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evening, to verses eighteen through thirty
one, because Paul's point here is that
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these avenues of prestige and self importance
that we value so highly, so often
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they don't get us anything with God, they don't earn us anything before him
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and they don't bring us near to
him. It's not until you've been humbled
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by the Gospel, until you realize
that you bring so little to the table
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and that you've been given so much
in Christ Jesus, that then you can
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actually start to love and care for
and truly be one, just as Jesus
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prayed and his high priestly prayer in
John Seventeen. Lord, let them love
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each other, let them be one
as we are one. That can only
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happen if we've been humbled by the
Gospel from Paul helps us realize this and
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get at this by reminding us of
two things here tonight in this passage.
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First, he reminds us of the
means that God uses to save us.
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Let me see this, in verses
eighteen through twenty five, the means that
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God uses to save us. And
then, secondly, Paul reminds us of
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the kind of people that God chooses
to save. That's in verses twenty six
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through thirty one. So the means
God uses and the People God chooses.
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Thought that was clever. But so
first the means God uses. Look at
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me again, at verse eighteen.
Verse Eighteen, for the word of the
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Cross is folly to those who are
perishing, but to us who are being
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saved, it is a power of
God. And this is a key verse
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for the section. It's densely packed
and but Paul is going to unpack it.
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His whole argument in fact unfolds,
as it will add of this verse.
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But I just want to point out
a couple things here. That God
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saves us through a message that,
by all worldly standards, is sheer foolishness.
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As if that's not enough, he
then communicates that foolish message to us
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through the foolish act of preaching.
This is the means that God primarily uses
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to save us. Look at what
Paul says in verses twenty two and twenty
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three. For Jews demands signs and
Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ
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crucified, a stumbling block to Jews
and folly to gentiles. So Jews were
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looking for signs and wonders. They
wanted a miracle performing Messiah, someone who
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had come in with power to kick
out the Romans and establish a kingdom centered
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on Jerusalem. And the religious leaders
of the Jews, they didn't appreciate this
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rabbi who came from nowhere's Ville and
Galilee and started came in telling them that
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their righteousness wasn't all it was cracked
up to be, that they in fact
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were hypocrites who are like whitewashed tombs, and that the only hope for them
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is to believe in the lamb of
God who's taken on the sin of the
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world. Jesus was a stumbling block
to the Jews. The Messiah had come,
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the promised one, the one they
had been waiting for and expecting for
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hundreds and hundreds of years. But
then he comes and they don't like him.
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He's at cornerstone, that rock of
offense. That's the Jews. They
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were looking for signs and wonders.
The Greeks, the gentiles, on the
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other hand, they were looking for
wisdom and sophisticated dialog remember that Corinth is
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a city in Greece, central Greece, connecting north and south, southern Greece,
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and so there's trade, it's busy, it's a center of wisdom and
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learning and commerce. It's an upand
coming cosmopolitan urban area, and they are
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certain. The Greeks are arching for
wisdom, they're searching for how to do
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life well, thinking about ethics and
metaphysics and philosophy. But when Paul,
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you remember, preach the message of
the Cross on the areopagus in Athens and
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acts seventeen, his speech started off
well. He was quoting some of their
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poets. Oh, we like this
guy, we like what he has to
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say. But then Paul got to
the resurrection of the dead and immediately they
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shut him down and started an uproar
and said, oh, that's Bologny,
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that's garbage, due to their philosophical
view of the world and their ideas about
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physical things and matter, and as
a result, they rejected the resurrection.
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Why would someone want to come back
from the dead into a human physical body?
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And so again, in their search
for wisdom, they end up completely
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missing the vote, completely missing Christ, who is the wisdom of God.
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And just like with the Jews and
just like with the Greeks, this message
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today is still often counted as foolishness, as nonsense, is garbage. Every
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Christmas and Easter it seems like someone
else is trying to debunk the truth of
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Christianity, writing another book, discovering
yet another false gospel. Someone else is
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trying to undermine Christianity. But in
a way, in a way, I
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get it. It makes sense because
just think about if you're a Christian here
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this evening and and you're believing the
Gospel. What what is that? What
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are what is this body of truth
that we are believing? We actually sang
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it with the apostles creed earlier but
we are believing that God became man,
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was born into this world as a
baby, lived a perfect sinless life for
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thirty three years, never getting upset
unjustly at his brothers and sisters, never
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raising his voice to his mother or
father, living perfectly in this world,
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and then going through all that only
to die a shameful criminal death on a
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Roman Cross, unjustly, be treated, unjustly, tried, betrayed by his
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friends. Doing that for your sin, to pay the penalty that your sin
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deserves, and then three days later
he rises from the grave, a grave
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which was sealed with the stone and
guarded by Roman soldiers. When you put
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it like that, just it's sort
of like, for a moment putting off
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your Christian mindset and just looking at
it with from how the perspective of how
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the world must see it. It's
it seems far fetched. Stringing all that
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together, on top of the fact
that this was this Jesus, was someone
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who had been prophesied for thousands of
years beforehand that he would come, it
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sounds like, ah, that's really
a stretch to believe that. So on
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a purely human level it does sound
kind of crazy. It's not terribly sophisticated
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or intellectual. It's it's history,
it's a story, and that's why Paul
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puts these pointed questions to the Corinthians
in verse twenty. Where is the one
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who is wise? Where is the
scribe? Where are is the debater of
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this age? It's like Paul is
saying to the Corinthians, why are you,
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guys, bringing in this view of
the world, the way the world
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thinks and acts? Why you bring
that into the church? Look around you.
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Do you see the topnotch elite philosopher
here in your midst? Do you
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see the elite scholar of Jewish law? Do you see the world class orator,
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rhetorician in your midst? He Sang
this to the Corinthians and it's like,
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and he's a rhetorical questions. The
obvious answer that he's expecting to hear
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back as no, they're not here, he's saying. And so we have
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to ask question. Why not?
It's because the world sees Christianity, sees
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this faith that we hold as foolish
as putting a bunty stupid. Why would
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you be so gullible as to believe
that? And so this is a mindset
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that's causing the divisions and strife and
tensions like we want to be like them.
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And Paul saying why? Because that
mindset undermines the Christian faith that you
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hold and that you believe in its
entirety. So Paul goes on and answers
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his own question in verse Twenty One. For since, in the wisdom of
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God, the world did not know
God. Through wisdom, it please God,
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through the folly of what we preach, to save those who believe.
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So, in the world's way of
thinking, Christianity is foolish precisely because it
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doesn't let you say I can somehow
earn my way to God, climb my
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way to God, on my own
merits, my own achievements, my own
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accomplishments. Instead, the message of
Christianity is a simple faith, a simple
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childlike faith. Even in this simple, foolish message, I am a sinner.
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Jesus came to save sinners. I
need to trust Jesus. J Packer
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sums up even more simply. God
Saves Sinners. That's it, when you
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boil it all down. That's the
heart of what we believe. That's so
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simple a little child can believe it. So these great minds, the elite
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they're looking down on this. Again, Paul is saying, why would you
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bring in that mindset into the church? And yet this word of the cross,
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the good news of the life,
death and resurrection of Jesus, this
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foolish message is a power of God
as well to those who believe, Paul
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says in Verse Twenty Four. Look
at Verse Twenty Four with me. But
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to those who are called both Jews
and Greeks, Christ the power of God
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and the wisdom of God. So
if you're a Christians night, this is
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what your hope is in, this
is what you're anchored to. And if
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this is the case, we have
no more reason to think highly of ourselves.
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We have no cause to think of
ourselves as superior to any other group
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in the church, any other person
in the church. All the ways that
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we might be superior to some Group
of Christians or to other people in the
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church, those are the very ways
that God doesn't consider when he looks at
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us, because he doesn't look at
you based on your own achievements, your
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own merits. He looks at you
because of Christ. And this is why
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he's saying Christ is our wisdom,
Christ is the power of God, he
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is what matters. He is what
sets US apart, be wise and powerful
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in him. This is what he's
talking about. What matters is the cross
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and whether you're trusting in it.
So that's the first point in the means
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that God uses to save us.
And then, secondly, Paul reminds us
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of the people that God chooses to
save. So people God chooses. Look
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at me again, at Verse Twenty
Six. For consider your calling. Brothers,
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not many of you are wise according
to worldly standards. Not many were
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powerful, not many were of noble
birth. So to reinforce but what he
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had just said about this foolish message
that's at the heart of what we believe,
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Paul goes on. It's it's like
he's being personal. Now he obviously
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knew personally the people that he was
writing to, because this is this is
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it. He's not calling them dumb
or stupid, but this is something that
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you need to have a personal relationship
but the writer for it to come across
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well, because it is. It
can be shameful. You're not very wise
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according to worldly standards. Now many
of you are powerful, not many of
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you were of noble birth, and
others your average common, simple ordinary.
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Yeah, that's that's us, that's
me, and he's making this as a
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general observation over the Corinthian Church and
he's telling them to think about this,
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the station of life that God has
put them in, and it wouldn't take
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very long to realize the truth of
what he's saying. And not many of
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them were wise or powerful or strong
or noble. But then the question again
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comes back. Well, why?
Why did God choose to do it this
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way? Why did he choose these
people as opposed to the rich, the
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powerful, the elite, those who
have influenced, the visionary leaders who could
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lead the church with charisma and force
of personality? Wouldn't that have been far
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more effective if those people were the
ones that God has chosen as Christians?
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And just think about that from my
let's just think about that for a moment.
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Why did God choose the people he
did? Because, I mean,
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you look at fortune, five hundred
companies, the revenue they generate, that,
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the intellectual leadership they have, the
research teams that they can assemble,
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just the force. Think about what
if that was directed towards the Church?
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Couldn't the Great Commission be fulfilled far
faster? Couldn't far more resources be assembled.
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If we had several Bill Gates,
you know, who were Christians and
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donating to the church, couldn't we
had couldn't we be able to help far
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more people if it was these kinds
of people who God had chosen instead of
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the unwise, the non powerful,
the simple? Why? Why? Will
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Paul gives us the answer in verses
twenty seven through twenty nine. The God
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shows what is foolish in the world
to shame the wise. God shows what
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is weak in the world, to
shame the strong. God shows what is
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low and despise in the world,
even things that are not to bring to
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nothing, things that are why?
So that no one may boast and the
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presence of God. The same exact
reason why God chose Gideon, the coward
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hiding out in a wine press from
the miny nights, and gave him three
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hundred men to go up against this
vast army of midian nights. It's why
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God chose the Little Shepherd Boy David, he was only fourteen, sixteen,
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teenager, to strike down the mighty
giant Goliath, who had slain so many
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from his youth. The reason why
God chooses people like you and like me
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to be in his church to be
his saints, to call his own,
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because we know who we are.
We know that we don't bring much to
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the table. So the victory has
to come from God if the church is
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to advance, and even forget that, if the church is to stand against
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the gates of hell, the attacks
of the gates of hell, it has
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to be God's power, it has
to be God's wisdom, it has to
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be the sheer force of who God
is doing the work, because we're not
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capable of it. We're so inept. We're like the church in Corinth.
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Or we're like that story of the
the Scottish castaway on an island who was
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there for ten years and then was
eventually rescued and the ship, the sailors
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that found him, saw that he'd
built a little hut on the beach.
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There's a little sign over it that
said Second Presbyterian Church, and they asked
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him why is why is this the
Second Presbyterian Church? Said Oh, I
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left the first one that I built
on this deserted island. And so we
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that's us. That's us. If
it was up to us, the whole
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thing that come crashing down like a
house of cards, but it's not.
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It's built on the Rock, on
Christ Jesus, animated by the spirit of
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God, aiming for the glory of
God. That's what ensures its success.
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God chooses the week, the foolish, the nothings, so he might get
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all the glory. And he's chosen
us because he's strong, because he's wise,
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because he's so sovereign, he can
strike straight blows with crooked sticks like
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us. That's the power of our
God, and because he's chosen us,
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Paul says, our identity is no
longer tied to who we are, to
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our accomplishments, to our merit.
It's tied to Christ. He gets to
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this and versus thirty and thirty one, because of him. You are in
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Christ Jesus, who became to US
wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and
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redemption. Everything that's necessary, everything
that's important, everything we need, we
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have through Christ Jesus. None of
it comes from ourselves. Why? So?
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That, as is written, but
the one who boasts boasts, and
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the Lord Paul here quotes Jeer My
hundred twenty four. Everything positive about us,
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every good habit you have, every
act of love and service you evidence
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towards your brothers, and sisters here
at Covenant. All of that is due
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to the work of Christ in you
again. Otherwise, we would just be
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butting heads and clashing all the time, and that means that we can't boast
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in ourselves. Our accomplishments are wisdom. Let the one who boasts tonight boast
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in the Lord. Let's pray
