SPEAKER_00: First Corinthians chapter one, starting in verse twenty-six.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says.
SPEAKER_00: For consider your calling, brothers.
SPEAKER_00: Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.
SPEAKER_00: God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
SPEAKER_00: God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boasts in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
SPEAKER_00: And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: God, we pray and ask that you would give us spiritual eyes to understand what this passage is saying, and also, God, that you would apply these things in our own lives.
SPEAKER_00: God, we ask that you would speak during our church services.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, this morning, Lord, we want to hear from you.
SPEAKER_00: And we recognize, God, that we are a people that are dependent upon your direction, and we're dependent upon your empowerment.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, our eyes are looking at the screen, looking at the text, looking at the preacher preaching.
SPEAKER_00: But really, Lord, we're looking to you for a spiritual work this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being intimately acquainted with our stories, that we can entrust our lives to you and know that you are good and that you care for us.
SPEAKER_00: And we ask God that you would work right there.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_00: So if you happen to be picking back up with us, we are studying through what we call a book, but really it's a letter.
SPEAKER_00: This is 1 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: This book is found in your New Testament, and this was a letter that was originally written by a man named Paul, who we call the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_00: And he wrote this around 55 A.D., about 25 years after Christ's ascension to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: This is three years after Paul planted this church in the city of Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul is in another city named Ephesus, and he's writing this letter to the church in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that we've said from the very beginning is that this is a church that was a mess.
SPEAKER_00: It had all kinds of problems.
SPEAKER_00: And this letter is really Paul responding to verbal reports about what's going on in the church, as well as a letter that was written to Paul asking questions.
SPEAKER_00: And so, man, there's probably 10 or 15 different issues that Paul is addressing in this church, but the main one, the first one that Paul addresses, is factionalism.
SPEAKER_00: This church had been broken up into camps.
SPEAKER_00: And this section dealing with factionalism and divisions in the church started in chapter 1, verse 10, and it runs through chapter 4, verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this church was divided into camps over the issue of their favorite preachers.
SPEAKER_00: Who was their favorite preacher?
SPEAKER_00: And there were four: Paul, Apollos, Cephas, meaning Peter, and Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Now last week we looked at eight verses, verses 18 through 25, in which Paul was deconstructing their elevated view of the human preacher.
SPEAKER_00: He's dismantling the worldliness that they had carried over into the church.
SPEAKER_00: Corinth was a center where great speakers would come through.
SPEAKER_00: We call them the sophists.
SPEAKER_00: And they would come through and they would deliver these eloquent messages.
SPEAKER_00: And there was kind of this, you know, who's the best speaker?
SPEAKER_00: And they would kind of try to draw away fans to themselves.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and that worldly perspective on who's the best speaker got carried over into the church, and people became proud in associating with these different preachers.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul was teaching this church that the message itself was the power, not the preacher.
SPEAKER_00: The preacher could deliver the message of the cross in all simplicity because the power contained with uh was contained within the message and not the eloquence of the fancy delivery.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, um many of you are probably familiar with the um famous philosopher and scientist um Stephen Hawking.
SPEAKER_00: He died a few uh years ago, a couple years ago.
SPEAKER_00: But late in uh Stephen Hawking's life, um, he was completely debilitated.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't he couldn't communicate verbally.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he still would write books and he would communicate using um a computer device.
SPEAKER_00: And uh people still respected him.
SPEAKER_00: And so um, as Paul is saying, look, um my delivery was not with fancy language, that's kind of the picture that comes uh to mind.
SPEAKER_00: Paul was like, I didn't really um the power was not in my delivery.
SPEAKER_00: The power was not in my ability to stack one phrase on top of another phrase and really just hammer home the point.
SPEAKER_00: It was the it was the message itself.
SPEAKER_00: It was a self-contained potency.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's pushback against human wisdom was this.
SPEAKER_00: This literally pulls from last week's sermon.
SPEAKER_00: It says, God's work through his son Jesus isn't the fulfillment of the most brilliant minds getting together in a room and brainstorming salvation.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is an alien idea from God, and it renders the best human ideas as expired or inept.
SPEAKER_00: So, Paul last week he was contrasting, we saw this contrast between wisdom and folly, power and weakness.
SPEAKER_00: Those two are kind of the contrast that Paul's negotiating and going back and forth by, and he's playing with those words to drive home this point.
SPEAKER_00: And he is not um demeaning wise people, but what he's saying is that God didn't choose to use the evolution of good ideas to bring about redemption for humanity.
SPEAKER_00: That God instead determined that he would um uh work through the foolishness of preaching the cross, uh, which is totally a radical idea.
SPEAKER_00: And we know as we live in the information age and we have access to TED Talks and podcasts and amazing speakers, those people are not coming to the conclusion of the cross, right?
SPEAKER_00: That is not um the uh the zenith of uh human ideas.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul is really trying, and he's he's emphasizing this idea of the wisdom of God and how God works through the message of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He's emphasizing that because these people in their hearts they need to be separated from a cultural idol.
SPEAKER_00: They need to they need to be dealt with in their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Um the outline, the outline for this morning, verses 26 through 29, we would say is um human uh eliminating human boasting.
SPEAKER_00: Eliminating human boasting.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put this right here, make it a little bit more visible.
SPEAKER_00: And then verses 30 through 31 is boasting in Christ, and then verses 1 through 5 is proclaiming Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at this first section, verses 26 through 29, eliminating human boasting.
SPEAKER_00: For consider your calling, brothers.
SPEAKER_00: Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: Awesome, awesome phrase.
SPEAKER_00: The church demographic, the church demographic illustrated Paul's point.
SPEAKER_00: Everything we talked about last week.
SPEAKER_00: He said, if you look around your gathering, you know, imagine this church meeting in maybe a um a patron's large courtyard or a large uh somebody who had a larger space where they could host a gathering of maybe maybe 40 people at the max.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, look around this this gathering, this house church.
SPEAKER_00: What we see is that Jesus in you, Jesus in you is God's power and God's wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: You being called to have a relationship with Jesus Christ demonstrates God's power and God's wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: In our vernacular, Paul would say something like this.
SPEAKER_00: Look around the room.
SPEAKER_00: Most of you shop at Walmart and you like it.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: I love it too, brother.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul is essentially saying.
SPEAKER_00: When you look around this room, look who God called.
SPEAKER_00: Look who God called.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't bring wisdom and power to the table and therefore lend credibility and influence to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The Christian message isn't wise because a bunch of wise people found consensus.
SPEAKER_00: And the Christian message isn't influential because influential people gave it their support.
SPEAKER_00: God intentionally chose people that are simple, the foolish, the poor.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's kind of like God's God's like, okay, we're gonna expand the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna work through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is going to He's going to lead this new revelation, you know.
SPEAKER_00: The church is gonna become my body on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, let's go to the Facebook page, People of Walmart, and we'll we'll pick out.
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen that?
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm talking about, right?
SPEAKER_00: People of Walmart?
SPEAKER_00: All right, well, you gotta go look at it.
SPEAKER_00: It kind of makes fun of it.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the best, because it's just making fun of like the worst of the worst of Walmart.
SPEAKER_00: But that it's like this is God's people, right?
SPEAKER_00: God's like, I choose you because I wanted to put on display my wisdom and my power.
SPEAKER_00: I want to use that group of people.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not looking for, God's not looking for like smart people to agree with him and validate his point.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: God is okay, God is okay with using the foolish, the despised.
SPEAKER_00: I I love this one, the those of noble birth.
SPEAKER_00: I just got finished, like this last week.
SPEAKER_00: I finally finished watching uh Downton Abbey all six seasons.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
SPEAKER_00: I did.
SPEAKER_00: I don't I have no shame.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, Don, I have no shame.
SPEAKER_00: It was like an escape, you know.
SPEAKER_00: It's just like totally different world.
SPEAKER_00: But it's like noble, that whole like that whole system of um the British aristocracy, you know, and how um these different how noble birth factors into your standing within society.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul's using kind of like that picture, and he's like, God didn't pick them.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't pick them.
SPEAKER_00: No, God's not opposed.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are brilliant, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are, some of you have been blessed with means, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're of noble birth, or maybe, you know, in our culture, like nobility in the in America would be like you're you're born into a family that already has like incredible wealth.
SPEAKER_00: And God's not opposed to you at all, right?
SPEAKER_00: But God, the the system generally, the system that God is using is that He's glorifying Himself through people that are dramatically undeserving, that the world would not pick.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a person who has means, or maybe you're brilliant, um you are fundamentally aware of your own inadequacy.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're strong intellectually and you can perform well academically, but you know your own human weakness that, man, when it comes to the standard of God and the holiness of God, we all are falling so short of that standard.
SPEAKER_00: It's just that God loves to pick out those who are nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Why does God do this?
SPEAKER_00: He there's two reasons that the text kind of gives us.
SPEAKER_00: The first is to humiliate the wise, strong, and influential.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the pride that comes with being an intellectual elite or from being powerful or being influential, the pride that comes with that position keeps you from knowing God.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It gets in the way of knowing God.
SPEAKER_00: And so the greatest thing that God could do for you, the greatest gift that God could do for you if you're in that place is to humiliate you.
SPEAKER_00: He needs to de He needs to deconstruct your pride, just like what needs to happen in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: Their pride needs to come down because God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.
SPEAKER_00: And so God has this agenda of using the weak and beggarly to demonstrate his power so that those who need to be humbled can be humbled.
SPEAKER_00: And the second thing that the text says is that he does this to remove boasting before his presence.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, this church was deeply divided over their favorite pastor.
SPEAKER_00: They were both broken up into factions, they prided themselves and patted themselves on the back because of their spiritual pedigree.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, in general, you are either foolish, weak, or despised, yet God chose you to believe an alien message about his son Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And why did he do that?
SPEAKER_00: Again, verse 29, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: In um in Ezekiel and Isaiah, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 give us the clearest picture about Satan.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought, like, where did Satan come from?
SPEAKER_00: You know, is he got is he red with a pitchfork and horns?
SPEAKER_00: Well, when you look at Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, um, the prophets are speaking about and they're rebuking human leadership, kings, the king of Tyre, but it becomes very clear that the meaning is much more than just a earthly king.
SPEAKER_00: And it it appears to refer to Lucifer, Satan, who we call Satan, who was a created angel.
SPEAKER_00: Uh there in Isaiah or Isaiah 14, or I think maybe this is one of the passages in Ezekiel 28, um, it says that he was like beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: Your beauty, uh, you're proud because of your beauty.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, I cast you to the ground, I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you.
SPEAKER_00: Satan rose up in heaven before, this is before the garden, before Adam and Eve, Satan rises up and he says, I'm going to be like the Most High.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give God a run for his money, and I am going to be like God.
SPEAKER_00: And God's response to that is to cast Satan out of heaven to earth.
SPEAKER_00: And he becomes the prince of the earth, and Satan leads a rebellion in heaven, leads a third of the angels follow him.
SPEAKER_00: Those angels become fallen angels, and we call them demons or demonic spirits, evil spirits, powers, principalities, and powers.
SPEAKER_00: And so Satan's origins are in pride.
SPEAKER_00: This is the original sin.
SPEAKER_00: Before you had Adam and Eve eating the fruit in the garden, you have Satan exalting himself and saying, I will be like the Most High.
SPEAKER_00: Sin, uh pride is the fundamental sin that destroys the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we close out this first section, Paul is saying in verse 29, God has this agenda of using these three kind of marginalized, rejected camps of people, so that no human might boast in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: The boasting, the exalting oneself is what only gets you kicked out of God's garden or God's heavenly place.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to this next section, boasting in Christ, verses thirty and thirty-one.
SPEAKER_00: It says this And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So having stripped the Corinthians of all human basis for boasting, Paul says, God has put you in Christ, he has unified you with Christ, and you have experienced the wisdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: One of the great themes, if you if you have a concordance or you can do a Bible search, one of the greatest and most powerful phrases in the New Testament is the words in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You're located in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We call it, well, the theological term for that whole study is union with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Because you have this position in Christ, you have a great inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: And here in the text, he says that you are in him.
SPEAKER_00: Because of him, because of God the Father, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the wisdom of God, us in Christ, displaying the wisdom of God, is manifest with three words.
SPEAKER_00: Three words.
SPEAKER_00: Righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul doesn't elaborate on these massive theological terms.
SPEAKER_00: He mentions them in passing, so there's an assumption that they've got this working theological.
SPEAKER_00: Framework to understand righteousness, sanctification, redemption.
SPEAKER_00: This is a quote I pulled from one commentary.
SPEAKER_00: He says this righteousness recalls the law, right?
SPEAKER_00: So when you and I are called righteousness, it recalls the law court and speaks of vindication and acquittal.
SPEAKER_00: Holiness, or in other words, this is sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: Holiness and sanctification are the same Greek word.
SPEAKER_00: It brings to mind the temple in being set apart for God, the Levitical priesthood, the sacrifice, the fixtures in the temple, how all that stuff is holy and sanctified and set apart.
SPEAKER_00: And then we have the word redemption, and redemption it evokes the slave market and the emancipation on the analogy of Israel's deliverance from the Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, this writer is saying these three words are a jumping-off point of these beautiful pictures.
SPEAKER_00: The courtroom, you have the temple, and then you have the picture of the slave redeemed.
SPEAKER_00: And this is how God is demonstrating in your life his wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: He's putting on display through your life how wise he is to take a person who maybe would be considered foolish, not the sharpest pencil in the can.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And yet he's taken you and he's saying, You're righteous, you're set apart and sanctified, you're redeemed.
SPEAKER_00: This brings glory to God.
SPEAKER_00: To close out, this thought, in verse 31, he says, All of this, your lowly pedigree, God's choosing you and demonstrating his wisdom in you, it is done so that any boasting that is done will be boasting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Boasting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You're not boasting in your own wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: You're not boasting in your strength.
SPEAKER_00: You're not boasting in your influence or your noble pedigree.
SPEAKER_00: You're not boasting in your pastor.
SPEAKER_00: No, you're boasting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is pulled, he says, as it is written.
SPEAKER_00: This is pulled from Jeremiah 20 9, 23 and 24.
SPEAKER_00: And man, I I appreciate Paul quoting this passage because this is eloquent.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament, he says, Thus says the Lord, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: Let not the mighty man boast in his might.
SPEAKER_00: Let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and he knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.
SPEAKER_00: For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The invitation of Jeremiah 9.
SPEAKER_00: And I like it, it's kind of like how we in our web age, you have like a hyperlink that you can click on a web page and it takes you to another page, right?
SPEAKER_00: So when Paul says in the text, in verse 31, he says, as it is written, he who boasts, let him boast in the Lord, it's like he's hyperlinking over to Jeremiah 9.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, hey, hey, go meditate on Jeremiah 9 for a little while.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jeremiah 9 is like this beautiful wedding invitation that just says, Come and know the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Wrap yourself in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Allow, just meditate on who God is and how he wants to just display his wisdom in you.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to make known his steadfast love in your life, his justice, his righteousness on the earth, you're his trophy.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to display through you how wise and how powerful he is.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing that there are arrogant Christians.
SPEAKER_00: Somehow in the process, they found, this church found a foothold for their pride.
SPEAKER_00: It was kind of like, it was like, oh, look, you know, I really received from Peter.
SPEAKER_00: He really had some significant things.
SPEAKER_00: God spoke through that man's life.
SPEAKER_00: I'm on his team.
SPEAKER_00: And then the heart got caught up in that.
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, I'm more spiritual because God spoke to me through Peter.
SPEAKER_00: And then this other camp is like, oh no, I'm more spiritually adept because Paul the Apostle is the one who baptized me, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And then you got this other camp who's just like, oh, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: You're all immature because I just follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have any relationships with any human beings, you know?
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts are just, we're wicked, we're prone towards these things that we can just kind of like these footholds for pride.
SPEAKER_00: Where we want to just kind of exalt ourselves amongst our fellow men and just kind of have some sense of significance because we're not finding our significance in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They started to take credit for the changes in their life.
SPEAKER_00: They began to think that God chose them because he needed someone smart on his team.
SPEAKER_00: You know, poor God.
SPEAKER_00: He needs me to help him out.
SPEAKER_00: Not only is pride utterly foolish and inappropriate, pride is a plug that keeps a person from receiving all of the grace that God has for them.
SPEAKER_00: Because again, God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a broken, broken fire hydrant, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where the cap's turned off and the knob on the top is turned and there's just water gushing out of it, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's there, it's just it's available, it's gushing out.
SPEAKER_00: But when we have a disposition and an attitude of pride, we're stepping out from that pouring out grace.
SPEAKER_00: We're not receiving it.
SPEAKER_00: It's there, it's available, but because of the condition of our heart, we cannot receive the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so we need humility.
SPEAKER_00: We need humility.
SPEAKER_00: Let's close with these five verses proclaiming Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says this, and I, when I came to you, brothers, I did not proclaim to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
SPEAKER_00: And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: When you're raising kids, and many of you will have that opportunity, you talk a lot about manners, right?
SPEAKER_00: Or if you work in the field of maybe psychiatry or psychology, you talk about mannerisms.
SPEAKER_00: In these five verses, Paul is primarily giving a description of his manners as a preacher.
SPEAKER_00: Here are my mannerisms as I was amongst you.
SPEAKER_00: This is what ties us back to verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: A couple of weeks ago we looked at this verse where Paul told this church, Christ didn't 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.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul says, again, he's been explaining himself and how he does it.
SPEAKER_00: And he has these five verses that are very autobiographical, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about how he did ministry.
SPEAKER_00: When I came to you, I didn't come to proclaim the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: He's not using eloquent wisdom or preaching.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the question is why?
SPEAKER_00: Why, Paul?
SPEAKER_00: He answers.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 2, he tells us why.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't what he wanted to just keep everybody right on track.
SPEAKER_00: We want, I want you to know Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know Jesus and him crucified.
SPEAKER_00: Then in verse 3, he takes you back to his mannerisms.
SPEAKER_00: And he says this, his mannerisms, he's in weakness.
SPEAKER_00: He was with them in fear and much trembling, and he didn't deliver a message in plausible words of wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: Man, that's how Paul felt.
SPEAKER_00: If Paul was going to describe, here was my preaching, I was I was terrified.
SPEAKER_00: I was weak.
SPEAKER_00: I was literally trembling.
SPEAKER_00: My knees were knocking together, my hands were quivering as I ministered to you.
SPEAKER_00: He did all of that, he says, because I want you to know the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: He says, this is how I did ministry.
SPEAKER_00: It was, do you see the butt in the middle of verse uh but the butt in the middle of verse 4?
SPEAKER_00: But in demonstration of the spirit and of power.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to characterize Paul's preaching, it was a demonstration of the spirit and the power.
SPEAKER_00: God is not looking for you to be some like crazy rock star.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, when you get into the second epistle, God allows us to suffer because he wants to demonstrate through your life his power.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to put on display how powerful he is and the work of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Did you see when Marvin came up here and he was introducing the service?
SPEAKER_00: And he got, you know, he introduced it, but then there was this little selaw, there was this little pause, and then he said, How something like, How are you guys all doing?
SPEAKER_00: Or there I there was just this like little rest that he had.
SPEAKER_00: And I looked at it and I was like, that is that is the work of the spirit in a man's life.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: That was the sensitivity of Marvin, because Marvin's usually like really charismatic, right?
SPEAKER_00: But and he's up here and he's like, let's go, let's go for church.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he's like our greatest cheerleader.
SPEAKER_00: But there was this like, there was this like little little pause, and it was just it struck me, and I was like, Yeah, that's that's the spirit working in in Marvin this morning.
SPEAKER_00: It's the spirit when he's hyped.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's encouraging to me.
SPEAKER_00: But I looked at that and I was like, yep, the Holy Spirit can do that too.
SPEAKER_00: He can do like the little calm moment, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um let's uh let's let's look at some application um quickly here.
SPEAKER_00: Three things.
SPEAKER_00: Um, first, first of all, that's not the first one.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first one.
SPEAKER_00: First is um consider your calling.
SPEAKER_00: And why do I say that?
SPEAKER_00: Why do I say consider your calling?
SPEAKER_00: Because literally, that's what the verse says.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says to them, consider your calling brothers.
SPEAKER_00: So when there's like an instruction in the text, that should be an instruction that we follow, right?
SPEAKER_00: So consider your calling.
SPEAKER_00: You probably are either foolish, weak, or despised.
SPEAKER_00: And if you aren't any of these three, then you are in a family primarily composed of those three categories.
SPEAKER_00: So look, if you're not one of the three, don't be like, oh yeah, you know, God, I'm the I'm like in the minority.
SPEAKER_00: No, you're with us.
SPEAKER_00: You're kind of guilty by association.
SPEAKER_00: As you think about this, let the Spirit of God author humility in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Allow the Holy Spirit to shape and mold your heart into a place of humility.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the grace of God is poured out upon your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's how God's gonna pour grace into you, is as you embrace humility.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul told the church, and I would tell you this week, consider your calling.
SPEAKER_00: Consider your calling.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing is this we're given three causative statements that are that where in the English we have the phrase so that.
SPEAKER_00: This means that there's a cause and effect that f there's the effect that follows the so that.
SPEAKER_00: The first is this in verse 29 no human being might boast.
SPEAKER_00: That's the effect that to take place.
SPEAKER_00: The second is to boast in the Lord, and the third is let your faith rest in the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: If we were to reduce Paul's reasoning here down to his desired outcome, it would be these three things.
SPEAKER_00: Stop boasting in humans, start boasting in God, place your faith in his power.
SPEAKER_00: That is the effect.
SPEAKER_00: Like, as Paul's like, because some of this is like a little bit technical, or maybe you like it because it's like very logical.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just there's like one thing progresses to the next thing.
SPEAKER_00: But but this is the effect that Paul wants it to have.
SPEAKER_00: Examine your life.
SPEAKER_00: Am I boasting in anything?
SPEAKER_00: Like, even if it doesn't come out of my mouth, am I am I priding myself in anything that I shouldn't be priding myself?
SPEAKER_00: Am I adequately boasting in God?
SPEAKER_00: And am I placing my faith in his power, recognizing, like embracing the weakness that I have?
SPEAKER_00: The third thing is this this morning, if you have been listening, you ought to have.
SPEAKER_00: You have been set free from an imposed standard based on intellectual prowess, human strength, or financial pedigree.
SPEAKER_00: In addition to that, we see that it is okay to be weak and fearful.
SPEAKER_00: This this text, as you read it, it should just give you a sense of liberty.
SPEAKER_00: That it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: It is okay that maybe you are not the sharpest pencil in the can.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're not as strong as you wish you were.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're embarrassed about your financial place.
SPEAKER_00: And this text comes along and says, You're called by God.
SPEAKER_00: You represent the called of God.
SPEAKER_00: Like God chose you.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't choose you because the smart people bailed out.
SPEAKER_00: No, he said, This is my plan to choose you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, our culture and our world is rough if you are not intellectually smart, strong, and financially established.
SPEAKER_00: But God's kingdom, he prides himself.
SPEAKER_00: He loves displaying his power by choosing those that are weak and those that are fearful.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I say this every week, but again, we encounter this theme in the text that God wants to put on display his power through you.
SPEAKER_00: Your limitations and your handicaps are the perfect setup for God to shine.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you're playing um volleyball, I love volleyball, but um when you're playing volleyball, you get three strikes on each side of the net.
SPEAKER_00: And so, like the first strike usually kind of gets the ball from not being out of bounds or kind of gets it into the air.
SPEAKER_00: And then you'll have the second person will do what?
SPEAKER_00: They'll set it up, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's a setup so that the last person, the third person can strike the ball and hammer it strategically onto the other person's side where there's no way that they have a chance of reaching it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Your our our weakness is is the setup, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's the setup for God's glorious moment.
SPEAKER_00: And and and this is not like an eschatological thing where it's like this is gonna someday happen when you die, although it will.
SPEAKER_00: Or when there's like a rapture or the end of the age comes, whatever that will look like, right?
SPEAKER_00: It will happen then.
SPEAKER_00: But this is the pattern of God on a weekly basis.
SPEAKER_00: So my fourth application that's not here is this week, as you feel your weaknesses creep up, know that that might be that second strike on the volleyball court.
SPEAKER_00: That is that setup of God so that he can demonstrate his power in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Embrace that moment.
SPEAKER_00: Say, God, I give you my weakness.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for letting me see it.
SPEAKER_00: I give you my life so that you can work in and through my weakness.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Um let's let's bow, we'll pray.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the communion elements.
SPEAKER_00: So, um as a pastor, um, so as a pastor, um, I'm not completely set in how we do church.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know how we're saved, and I know a lot of things, but some things I'm changing, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm learning.
SPEAKER_00: And as I've been going through 1 Corinthians 11, the way that 1 Corinthians 11 is written, as Paul talks to the church about communion, he says to them, as you gather.
SPEAKER_00: And um, and I was struck by that phrasing a couple of months ago, and the more I wrestled with it, I felt like what Paul was telling this church, he was almost assuming that they were taking communion in their gatherings regularly.
SPEAKER_00: It really looks like that to me.
SPEAKER_00: So there's always this question of like how often should we take communion?
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so what I'm gonna be doing is I'm gonna make communion available every Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but but so this morning we're gonna take it together like we did last week.
SPEAKER_00: Um but regularly what we will do is we'll have the elements um spread out.
SPEAKER_00: There will be some probably on a small table over here, and then some probably over there somehow in the back, so that not everybody has to kind of come up at one time.
SPEAKER_00: And um and and we'll sing the last song.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to take the elements, you can on your own.
SPEAKER_00: So um we'll probably incorporate a second song just to give a little bit more time for that.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to make the elements um uh a regul a more regular thing in our gathering.
SPEAKER_00: And I just I've been convinced of that as I've read the text more.
SPEAKER_00: I think that that's what Paul meant.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh there's definitely no harm in taking uh the communion elements more often.
SPEAKER_00: So um let's let's pray uh to close uh the sermon, and then um as we're singing, we'll take, you'll come up, get them up here, and uh we'll take together.
SPEAKER_00: We'll partake together.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we um we thank you for your word and um that that your word uh delivers uh so much truth and uh it's truth that we love.
SPEAKER_00: We love the fact that we're loved, God.
SPEAKER_00: We're desperate to be a loved people.
SPEAKER_00: We're so vulnerable, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We're we're so we're growing in our awareness of how messed up we are and how messed up the people around us are, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And and and then we come to your word and it just says that you love us, you pick out the weak, and you pick out the poor, and you're like you want to display your glory and your power and your wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God.
SPEAKER_00: Would you just um bless us, Lord, as a church, work in our lives this week that you would display your glory.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.