"When I Came to You" (I Corinthians 2:1-8)

"When I Came to You" from I Corinthians 2:1-8 was preached by Dr. Mark McElreath at the City Baptist Church of Atlanta on August 3, 2025.

Find out more about the City Baptist Church of Atlanta at www.mycitybaptist.com.

Transcript

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Welcome to the City Pulpit. Bible messages from the pulpit ministry of the City Baptist Church in Atlanta.

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Take your Bibles with me. Let's go to the book of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. And we come back to 1 Corinthians. Paul is the human penman here, and he's writing to this church, a church he knows, a church that he loves. And a church who had great problems. And yet he's writing to them and he's trying to set some things in order. All through the book of 1 Corinthians, he's trying to set things in order and he's trying to help them. Not because Paul thinks he knows everything, and not because Paul thinks he's figured everything out. But he has a heart and he has a love for these people. And he wants to see them become the Christians that God saved them to be. And I believe as we read these words now, two millennia later, the same is true for us. The Lord wants us to become the Christians He saved us to be. And when people started hearing the message of the gospel and the began hearing the preaching of the Word of God, and people started getting saved down in the synagogue and started getting saved down in church, in house churches, and started getting saved out in the streets, and that little church started to form. And he says, When I came to you, there were certain things that I did and certain things that I preached. You know, when Paul came, there was an emphasis he was trying to make. There was a message he wanted to make sure that was driven home to these people in Corinth. And he lays that out for them here in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Well, we've come to a place. Here we are, we're in the city of Atlanta. Here we are on 10th Street. Here we are in the neighborhood of Home Park. When we came, and as we labor here, what emphasis are we going to make? What message are we going to preach? What are we going to be known for? You know, people become known for things. Churches become known for certain things. What will the City Baptist Church become known for now that we've come to this place and we're going to labor here? Let's take a look with me. If you're taking notes, would you write down a few things? Write this down. Number one, if you're taking notes. Paul says, When I came to you, I came with a declaration of the Word of God. Would you look back at verse number one? I came to you with a declaration of the Word of God. He says here, and I, brethren, and I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. Would you mark that little word testimony in verse number one? You know what that means? If he says, I brought a testimony. You know what Paul says? I'm a witness of something. I've seen something, I've experienced something from the Lord Jesus Christ. You can go back to Acts chapter 22. Paul talks about his conversion experience, how he came to know the Lord. And he's saying, I was a witness of these things. Let me ask you today, when you talk to people about the Bible and you talk to people about the Lord Jesus Christ, are you just reciting something you've heard other people say? Or are you speaking as a witness of what you have seen? If we're not careful, we'll just read spiritual things, or we'll just get on some app and hear someone for a minute or two say some flowery things about the Bible, and then we'll just parrot those back. But let me ask you this morning: have you truly had an experience with the Lord Jesus Christ? And when you speak about Christ and you speak about the Bible, do you speak as a witness of what he has done in your life? I ask you today, do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you know that you've been born again? Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior? Then you have experienced his goodness. You've experienced his salvation. And you can speak as a witness. We could put you on the witness stand and say, tell us what you know of Christ. And it would not just be, well, here's a little verse I read. And here's a little thing I heard someone else say. You'd say, Let me tell you what I know to be true about the Lord. The psalmist said, Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Have you tasted of his goodness? Have you witnessed of his goodness? Here's what Paul says in chapter 2, verse 1. He says, I, brethren, when I came to you, I came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom. You say, Well, does that mean we shouldn't talk right, Pastor? Does that mean we shouldn't be wise? No. You know what he's saying? When I spoke, I wasn't leaning on and depending on the wisdom of this world. And I wasn't leaning on and depending on the excellency of speech. I think we should speak the best we can. My children like to make fun of the way I talk. If you can't tell, I'm from around here, alright? And I say, words, you ever seen, you ever seen that round fruit that is often associated with Florida? It's a certain color and it grows on trees. What do you call that? Some people call it an orange. I call it an orange. My kids laugh when I say that. Call it an orange. The other day I was pointing out right down here we have a soft drink corporation that runs here in Atlanta. It was started here in Atlanta in 1886. Some people call it Coca-Cola. The other day I was talking to somebody, I said the Coca Cola building is right over here. They started laughing. I didn't realize I'd even done it. There might be a few words we don't say quite right. There might be a few words we don't get right. But Paul says, look, I didn't come to try to persuade you with the excellency of speech. I didn't come with the way I talk to try to make you believe something. He said, I'm coming and the power is in the word of God, and the work is going to be done as I'm declaring the word of God unto you. Skip down with me. Look down at verse number. Look down at verse number six. He says, How be it? We speak wisdom among them that are perfect. He's not talking about someone of sinless perfection. He's talking about a mature Christian. He's saying, I'm speaking wisdom to those who are spiritually mature, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that came to naught. He's saying, look, you're either going to depend on the wisdom and the words of this world and the princes, the leadership of this world, or you're going to fully depend upon the word of God. When you speak to people about the Lord, do you say, you know, I've just got to have the best argument. I just got to have the most apologetically sound response. And then I'll speak to people. No. Don't. Then you'll never do it. Then you'll never be ready. Just give them the word of God. What did Paul say? He said, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Not the wisdom of words is the power of God unto salvation. Not the excellency of speech is the power of God unto salvation. Just give the word of God. You know what the book of Hebrews says? The word of God is what? Quick and what? Powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. It's going to cut better than your argument. It's going to cut better than your persuasion. Oh, just declare the word of God. Would you hold your place with me and go to the book of Acts? Acts chapter 18. Hold your place in 1 Corinthians 2. And let's go to Acts chapter 18 because we are given the account of Paul coming to Corinth. And in Acts chapter 18, it tells us in verse number 1, after these things, Paul departed from Athens and he came to Corinth. Here he is. He's on his missionary journeys, preaching the word of God. He comes to Corinth. Skip down with me, please. In verse number 4, it says, And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. Two key words in verse 4 are the word reasoned and the words persuaded. Maybe you'd read those and you'd think, well, look, Pastor, he's trying to make persuasive arguments. I think we should be persuasive in the way we talk. But he says here, he's reasoned with them and he's persuading. These words have the sense of making one's case with confidence. When you speak to people about the Lord and you wield the Word of God, do you speak with confidence? Or in the back of your mind are you always thinking, I don't really fully believe this. Why should I expect someone else to? Paul could speak with boldness and he could speak with authority. Why? Because he was the great Paul the Apostle? Oh, he could, look, if anyone could lean on credentials, Paul could lean on credentials. But he could speak with boldness and he could speak with authority because the message which he spoke was boldness and authority. Why should we go out on a Saturday morning at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, knock on someone's door and tell them about the Lord Jesus Christ? You say, they say, I don't want to talk to anybody. You sell that, are we selling insurance? Are we selling security systems? Are we selling an air conditioner? No, we're not selling any of that. But we've been commissioned. We're not on commission. We've been commissioned. And we're bringing a message on the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we can speak with boldness because we bring the truth. We are speaking the truth from the word of God. And Paul here, go down with me. He's in Corinth. Skip all the way down to verse number five. It says, and when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in the Spirit and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ. What is he preaching? Jesus is Christ. What are we preaching? Jesus is Christ. We preach the same message Paul did. He didn't try to set them, he didn't try to get into some minutiae about little things and this and that. He just got to the point of, are you going to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved? And sometimes we've just got to cut through all the fat and get to the meat and just preach Christ. There's a lot of side things we could preach, and there's things I think you need to have an answer for on creation and things such as that. And people want to have apologetics answers. I understand that. I want to have answers. But we could talk about issues all day long and never get to Jesus Christ. Preaching Christ. Look now with me, verse 6. It says that when they opposed themselves and blasphemed, he shook his raiment and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads. I'm clean from henceforth. I will go to the Gentiles. Look at verse 8. Or verse 7. And he departed thence and entered into a certain man's house named Justice, one that worshipped God, whose house joined hard to the synagogue. And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house, and many of the Corinthians. I like that. He believed on the Lord with all his house. This chief ruler of the synagogue gets saved, his whole house gets saved. Look at the end of verse 8. It says, and many of the Corinthians. And then look at this last part. He says, Hearing, believed, and were baptized. Now make note of that order because that's not there out of randomness. Many of the Corinthians, hearing, believed, were baptized. That's the order which God works. We hear the gospel. We believe with the heart. Then we're baptized. Baptism's not a part of salvation. Baptism is just a part of obedience after we get saved. But how shall they hear, Paul said in Romans chapter 10, except they have a preacher. Not just this preacher. You can be a preacher out on this street corner. You can be a preacher in your workplace. You can be a preacher in the schoolhouse, in your classroom. You can be a preacher in your dorm room. You're bringing the message, you're declaring the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And they heard and they believed. That's how God works. And Paul says, When I came to you, you know what I did? I just declared the word of God. I was a witness among you. Look down with me. Go back to our passage. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Paul says, When I came to you, I came with a declaration of the Word of God. Would you make note of a second thing? In verse 2 of 1 Corinthians 2, he says, For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. Would you mark a second thing here? He came, first of all, the declaration of the Word of God. Secondly, he came with a determination to only know Christ. A determination to only know Christ. He says, I determined. That means there was a conscious choice about how he would preach. And then he says, not to know anything save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, not leaving biblical understanding behind. But trusting in no other foundational pillar than the preaching of the cross. No other foundational pillar than the preaching of the cross. He says, when I come to Corinth, here's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to preach Jesus and preach Him crucified. What are we going to build this church on? What are we going to build the ministries of this church on? We're going to build it on the preaching of the cross of Christ crucified. What are we going to do when we go into Washington Park? We're just going to preach Christ. What are we going to do when we go into Bankhead and Vine City? We're going to preach Christ. What are we going to do when we get out to Bolton and call your hills and call your heights? We're just going to preach Christ crucified. That's what we're going to build the whole ministry on. There's a story many years ago. Back in 1984, the first time Steve Jobs was with Apple, he was working on a groundbreaking product called the Macintosh. This was going to change the entire computer industry. And it came out, it was a great hit, and reporters began to come to Steve Jobs and say, What kind of market research did you do to find out what people wanted in the Macintosh? And what kind of what kind of focus groups did you do? And tell us about the market research. And Steve Jobs is often his curt and short and sometimes brash where he was. He looked at the reporters and he said, Did Alexander Graham Bell do market research before he invented the telephone? He's also quoted as saying, customers don't know what they want until we show them what they want. You know what the point is? He said, I didn't have to go out and figure out what they wanted. I'm going to come up with what they want and give it to them. Here's the point. We don't have to come into this neighborhood and into this city and say, let's find out what this city and what this neighborhood needs. Let's find out, do they need they need a closed closet? Then we'll have a closed closet. They need a food bank, we'll have a food bank. They need a school, let's start a school. They need tutors, let's have tutors. Maybe we can come up with all the things that this neighborhood needs according to the world's wisdom and say, let's just fill that gap. When the Bible has already told us what they need. We don't have to do focus groups, we don't have to do surveys, we don't have to do market research. We already know what they need, and it's the preaching of the cross and Christ crucified. So what are we going to do? You say, Well, Pastor, we're starting a school. Absolutely. And you know what we're going to do there? We're going to preach Christ crucified. One day, I had calls just this past week. People asking, Do you have a food bank? Are you going to have a food bank? I said, We don't have a food bank. Maybe one day we will. I don't know. But if we do, and we do it, we're going to preach Christ crucified when we do it. Nothing is going to take away from the message of the gospel. There's enough steeples in this city. Preaching lots of other things. One of them at least has got to preach the gospel and get outside these walls and preach it where we go. He says, I've determined to know nothing but Christ crucified. I've got a friend, his name is Pastor Derek Moreland. He's the pastor of the Temple Baptist Church in Powell, Tennessee. For 15 years he labored in Oxford, England. And he went there many years ago. And his pastor, who was my pastor, Pastor Sexton, told him, I don't want you going out and debating with all these professors at Oxford, debating with all these students. He said, I just want you to preach the gospel. He told him, he said, if you go out and try to debate with them, you're going to lose. He said, just the power is in the gospel. Pastor Morland told me, he said, we took this verse, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse number 2. I have determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He said, we took that as our church's verse because we were going to go into this intellectual capital and just preach the gospel. And you know what? When you begin doing that, would you look back with me in 1 Corinthians chapter 1? You know what it begins to sound like? Look at verse number 18 in 1 Corinthians 1. The preaching of the cross is to them that perish, it's what? Foolishness. We go down on this campus and we preach the gospel. We talk to people. Speak of Christ crucified. And to many of them, you know what it is? It's foolishness. And to the world and the carnal mind, it is foolishness. There's people no doubt you've spoken to about the Lord. And they've said, this is you're a fool, and that's foolishness. And you know what? I'll take that. I have no problem with that. You know why? Because when they reject me, they're really not rejecting me. They're just rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ. By the way, he's a rejected Savior. And when we follow Christ, we should expect to be rejected. We should expect to be turned from. We should expect it to cause an issue. The world turned against Christ who had done no wrong, had committed no sin. Why would we not expect to be rejected and be thought a fool if we're preaching the truth? Now, again, he talks about here the foolishness of preaching, actually, in verse 21. I'm not talking about foolish preaching. I've heard my fair share of foolish preaching. But he's talking about the preaching of the cross. And often they'll say, that's foolishness. That's okay. I'm going to keep standing with the word of God and let the world say what it will. Because we've come with a declaration of the word of God. We've come determining to know nothing but Jesus Christ. And would you make note of a third thing? Look down with me, please. He says. All the way down in verse 3, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, he says, I was with you in weakness and in fear. And in much trembling. These would seem to be detriments to the work Paul was trying to do. Weakness? Fear? Much trembling? How is anything going to be done in Corinth if we're weak? And we're fearing. And there's trembling. I guess we're going to have to depend upon the Word of God. I guess we're going to have to depend upon the working of the Holy Spirit. You know why sometimes God brings the fearing and the trembling and the weakness? So we don't lean upon the wisdom of words and excellency of speech and the wisdom of this world. So that the only thing we can lean upon is the power of the word of God. He says in verse number four, My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the power of God. Would you write that down? That's the third thing. First of all, there was a declaration of the Word of God. Secondly, there was a determination to know only Christ. Thirdly, he came with a demonstration of the power of God. You know what happens when the power of God, when God works in a person's heart, and God shows them that they're a sinner and they need to be saved. You realize, you realize that's a miracle every time that happens. It's a miracle. Someone who the Bible says we are born dead in our trespasses and sin. We're dead spiritually. You know, no one was born a Christian. I talk to people sometimes. They say, look, I was born a Christian. I say, No, no. One's born a Christian. We're all born dead spiritually. You might have been born into a Christian home. You might have been born into a home of people that went to church, but you were not born a Christian. You were dead. And Jesus said, you know, go with me to John chapter 3. Jesus is talking to someone in John 3. He's talking to Nicodemus. It says in John 3, 1, there was a man, the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. If you went and you saw Nicodemus, you would have said, This man is very spiritual. He knows the Bible. He has been in synagogue. His family's been in synagogue. He's been around religion his whole life. And yet he comes to Jesus, and what does Jesus say to him? Verse 3, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. There must be spiritual birth. And you may say, I've always known about God. My family always told me about God. I've always been a Christian. No, you haven't. I'll quote the words of Jesus. You must be born again. He says it again in verse 7, marvel not that I said unto you, you must be born again. He says in verse 8, the wind bloweth where it listeth. And thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. You've been physically born, but you must be born spiritually. That's a demonstration of the power of God. That's what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Look with me, please. In verse number 5, he says, or verse 4, my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Verse 5, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. If I got up today and I was the greatest orator you'd ever heard, made the greatest speech you've ever heard, you thought no one has spoken like that person. And there's some kind of frenzy or some kind of emotion, and you act on emotion. And maybe you pray a prayer, you come forward and you sign a card and you say, boy, that was just stirring. Sometimes people hear music and they're stirred with emotion. They come forward and they do something that kind of looks spiritual. But there was no real demonstration, as he says here, of the power of God. And he says, I want to lean on the power of God and of his spirit, because otherwise your faith or so-called faith is standing in the wisdom of men. Did you make a decision one day just because it was some emotional thing? Well, everyone else is doing this, I'll do it. Did you just pray a prayer? Look, or have you truly put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone for your soul's salvation? That's what I'm asking you. Did the word of God break through? Did he convict you of sin and show you you need to be saved? Well, if you are, then move forward in that boldness. Move forward with the assurance of that. But if you haven't, today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to come and truly be born again. Today is the day to come and be saved by a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Look what he says. That your faith should not stand. Verse 5, in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. You know what that also means? If you've come and you've accepted Christ, it's a demonstration of the power of God, then you're not going to lose it either. If it's eternal life, if you've received eternal life, then you've got it, you're not going to lose it. If you could lose it, then it wasn't eternal life. It was just partial life. It was a little life. No. Eternal life is something we can't lose. And if it's based on the power of God, that means it's not based on your power. It's not based on another man's power. He said in John chapter 10, I've got them in my hand, and no man shall pluck them out of my father's hand. Once you get it, you're not going to lose it. You can't get out, nobody else can get you out. Because it's in the power of God. Let me ask you this morning. When I came to you, I came with a declaration of the Word of God. The Word of God's been brought forth. The Word of God's come to you. There's a determination here to know nothing else but Christ. I'm not asking you to lean on anything else. I'm not asking you to lean on experience. I'm not asking you to lean on argument. I'm not asking you to lean on some persuasive, some persuasive oratory. Have you put your faith and trust alone in the Word of God? And has there been a demonstration of the Spirit and of His power working in your heart to save you? If not, I beg you come today and be saved. Christian, I encourage you, go forth in power. You know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior? Go forth and declare the Word of God. Go forth and determine to know nothing else but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And just walk in His power. Walk in the power of the Spirit. If we would unleash the Word of God on this city, we would be amazed at what God can do. Let's be that church. And let's do that right here.

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