Thinking about our children's dedications this weekend when I started thinking
back to my own childhood, and I remember back when I was probably near double
digits years old, a certain shaping experience that I will never forget.
And in fact, this experience is something I haven't shared with anybody, really.
I mean, Kristen knows, but I don't even think my kids know this story.
So you're welcome.
Here goes something that I don't tell people, but it serves the purpose of
my sermon, so you're about to hear something r- interesting about my
life that I never expected to share, and in fact, I tried to hide it.
My mom always tells us, or would always tell us before we left the, the home,
"Use the bathroom before we leave."
For obvious reasons, right?
You tell your kids, "Use the bathroom.
We don't wanna stop.
We can't just be stopping, looking for a bathroom all these places."
And so I, I, you know, double digits almost years old, I'm thinking,
"I, I'm pretty good at this.
I know how to use the bathroom.
I know how to hold it, so I can, I can be okay."
What I did not anticipate, though, was that my mom would take
forever to go do all the things that we were gonna do that day.
And so we ended up at the last place that I think we were supposed to go to.
It was this government complex.
I don't remember a lot, 'cause I was a lot younger back then, but I remember
at this point, nature started calling.
And I said to my mom, who had a, a, a f- a face that really suggested to, to a
kid, "Don't talk to her", but I had to go.
So I said to my mom, "Hey, uh, Mom," and I'm a little sheepish at this
point, "I, I gotta use the bathroom."
To which she said, "No.
You gotta wait.
We're almost done.
We're gonna be headed home soon.
Hold it.
You're a big boy," that kind of thing.
But I'm really feeling it, guys, and I'm just r- really, I'm not sure, you know?
I'm, I'm old enough to know how the machinery works, and I'm thinking, "I
just need her to let me go to this, uh, just let me figure this out."
So I said, "Mom, I, I really gotta go," uh to which she again replied, "No."
It was at that moment I knew I was in trouble.
I had a decision to make, and I deliberated long enough to really
not have to make the decision.
Nature made it for me.
I stood there in public with people around.
My mom was there.
My grandma was there.
All sorts of people were there, and there I stood in a puddle.
My mom was mortified.
"What ch- what are you doing?"
Like, "I told you, I had to go," and I'm, I'm mortified
because I've never done this.
You know, this is not the … I don't do this every day, Mom.
This is just, I had, I had to go.
And so there I stood, and I looked down at myself.
I was so embarrassed and ashamed.
I, this ha- again, I wasn't even double digit years old.
I was close, but I am now well into my 40s, and I remember this
as vividly as I remember last week.
This was pretty sharp, uh, uh, shaping experience for me.
And I guess if there is a happy ending, I could tell you
this, it hasn't happened since.
So I'm doing really well, at least at this point, and my hope is that
it won't happen in the future.
No guarantees, but I'm on a roll.
But the funny thing about the story is that it, it shapes you in such a way
where I, I can carry this now today.
I, I … That's only one story of many that I could tell you about
embarrassing and shameful things that have happened in my life, um,
that I'm sure will find themselves into a sermon at some point soon.
Hey, David.
It's David PO back there
The, uh, the shaping experiences that we have together are, are the kind
of things that you remember forever.
They're the things that you don't typically forget, and the reason why is
because your shaping experiences, the, the things that make you ashamed or
embarrassed, kind of go down deep into us.
And what they reveal is the things that you value.
What is important to you will show up in the things that you say, "I'm embarrassed
by that," or, "I'm concerned by that."
Uh, those things go down deep.
And what I wanna tell you is that there are some things that you, that you
value that, that you probably shouldn't value, and there are some things
that you don't value highly enough that you should value really highly.
One of the temptations that comes with being a Christian is that you might
accidentally value the wrong thing.
You might put something on a pedestal that really shouldn't be there, and you
might take something that deserves to be lifted up, and you might put it lower.
You might be tempted to be ashamed about those things.
This text that we're gonna look at this morning is gonna warn us about
being ashamed of something that we should never be ashamed about, and
then being impressed by something that we really shouldn't be impressed by.
These two things are important to us because if we don't do
these things, if we don't get
If we get them wrong, what we can end up happening, what can end up happening
to us, is that we empty the cross, empty the gr- the gospel of its power.
I trust that as a Christian, you care about certain people in your life.
You want them to know the gospel.
And your concern is that when you give the gospel to them, that they hear the
power of the gospel from your lips.
Well, what if I could tell you there's two things, two mistakes,
two errors you could make that would undermine the power of the gospel?
In fact, the scripture says it this way: you can empty the cross of its power.
How's that for a warning for all of us?
And so this morning, I'm gonna tell you something that you should never be ashamed
about, and I wanna tell you something that you should not be impressed by.
Let's take a look together.
Let's mo- move our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, starting at verse 17.
We're gonna use verse 17 to get us into verses 18, 19, and 20, where
we're gonna spend all of our time.
But verse 17's important because I, I need you to see why we're
doing verses 18, 19, and 20.
It says this, verse 17, Paul ends this section by saying, "For Christ
did not send me to baptize," which is important because in this whole section,
remember last week, Pastor PJ was saying these guys are being highlighted,
Cephas, Apollos, uh, even Jesus.
There was a Team Jesus, and Paul is saying, "Look, I, I don't know
h- how many of you I baptized.
I, I think I baptized Crispus and Gaius, but I can't recall who else."
And what he's saying here is, "I'm not trying to build a team.
I'm not trying to b- hand out T-shirts that say, 'I'm Team Paul.'"
He says, "In fact, that's not my job.
My job is here," verse 17, "not to baptize, but to preach the gospel."
And then he says, "I'm called to preach the gospel and not with words
of eloquent wisdom, lest," here's our key phrase, "lest the cross of
Christ be emptied of its power."
Get that.
I'm called to preach the gospel, not to baptize and create teams, and I'm,
I'm called to do it in a way that is kinda plain, u- u- unadorned, in
a way that doesn't fit the cultural expectations because my fear is that
if I do what everyone wants me to do in the culture, you'll start looking at me
and thinking, "Wow, man, Paul's amazing.
He's so eloquent.
He's so, he's so powerful in his speech."
But Paul's concern is not that people think well of him.
He wants people to think well of Christ.
Furthermore, he says, "If I were to play the game of rhetorical
gamesmanship, what could happen is that I empty the cross of its power."
There's our danger that I want us to avoid.
Your concern this morning is that when you talk to your friends, your family,
your loved ones about Christ, that they hear the power of the gospel.
You want that.
I want that.
We want that.
As a church, we, we crave that.
But Paul says there's a way to share the gospel that completely undermines
it, and that's by being ashamed of it or by being impressed with something
you should not be impressed by.
So then in verses 18 through 20, Paul begins to explain why he can't preach
the way that they want him to preach.
It's suggested that the Corinthians wanted Paul to have some polish in his preaching,
to maybe present the gospel in a way that people of the day could appreciate.
Kind of a modern, uh, uh, well, an ancient TED Talk.
When you're put on the TED Talk stage, they've got 20
minutes, and they're polished.
They know exactly what they're saying.
They have images.
They have transitions.
They have all the hand gestures down.
And so the Corinthians are saying, "Paul, you could really help us out and make the
gospel look better if you would just make it look better the way you present it.
If you could follow the rules of the Sophists, if you could show some
wisdom in the way that you display the, the mes- the message of the gospel."
And Paul's saying, "I can't do that.
Here's why," verse 18.
"For the word of the cross, the gospel, is folly to those who are perishing."
In other words, it's incomprehensible.
They're not gonna listen.
Even if I were to do that, they wouldn't hear.
"But to us who are being saved," he says, "it is the power of God."
"For it is written," and here he's gonna cite Isaiah 29:14.
It's written in the, in the Book of Isaiah, this is God speaking,
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of
the discerning I will thwart."
God spoke this to Israel at a time where they were seeking the,
the protection of Egypt against a coming force from the Assyrians.
So they were looking for help from outsiders and, and God said, "I'm
actually gonna subvert everything that you're doing, and I'm gonna make
your supposed wisdom to seek the help of the Egyptians utter foolishness,
and I'm gonna thwart your plans."
Verse 20, Paul rhetorically asks, "Where is the one who is wise?
Where is the scribe?
And where is the debater of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?"
Paul's looking around and saying, "Where are these supposed experts in wisdom?
Have they led you to Christ?
Have they brought salvation to your soul?
Are they leading your loved ones to a knowledge of Jesus Christ,
or do they have empty wisdom?"
Ineffective wisdom.
These are professionals he's talking about.
These are the people who were the bee's knees of the day.
These were the eloquent rhetoricians, the wise one.
He talks about where's the wise?
The, the really wise person, the one whose wisdom is sought after.
What about the scribe, the Jewish expert in the law?
Where is he?
Has he led you to Christ?
Where is the debater of this age?
Uh, another word you could use here is philosopher, someone who's really gifted
at thinking deep and profound thoughts.
Where is the debater?
Where is the philosopher?
Where is the scribe?
And, and Paul then says with the question, "Has not God made
foolish the wisdom of the world?"
In other words, he expects a yes from you, and his point is, look,
the world's wisdom is empty.
The thing that has the power is not the presentation, even if the
presentation skills are important.
The thing that has the power is the gospel.
He doesn't want the Corinthians to fall prey to something you
and I can fall prey to today.
My guess is that for most of us in this room, you're not concerned
about being a rhetorician, which is someone who speaks really nicely.
You're not concerned about being that person at the family dinner.
You're not concerned about having to stand up in front of people and
deliver a message with the Bible and having people think, "Wow, she's
so gifted at speaking so clearly."
You're not worried about that.
But, but the Corinthians and us share some common, some common ground.
Their desire was to make the gospel look good.
That's a good desire.
You want the gospel to be attractive to people, don't you?
I mean, of course you do.
You want that.
That's a good instinct.
Their trouble, however, was that they wanted to make the gospel look good
by appealing to worldly sensibilities.
They wanted the world's value system imported and put on top
of the gospel so that people would give the gospel a hearing.
Here's where you and I might feel this.
We might be tempted to make the gospel fit the worldly expectations,
and so we'll leave out things or at least we'll get a little embarrassed
or shy about things like hell.
We'll get embarrassed or a little concerned about the fact that the,
the Savior, the Lord, the King that we proclaim was hung naked
on a cross, bloodied and bruised.
Think about that.
If you're gonna sell, sell somebody a religion, "Hey, join my religion.
My founder was beaten, bloody, bruised, hung naked on a cross.
How'd you like to join?"
People look at that as utter folly, and that's exactly Paul's point.
In fact, Paul's point here is that for those of us who are Christians today, I
think he's trying to help us see there's a temptation for all of us, even way
back when, to feel a c- a certain sense of, of shame about the gospel, which is
why then he focuses and says, "Don't do that," because it is the power of God.
The gospel for us who are being saved is God's power revealed.
It's not foolishness.
It's not folly.
It's not something you should be ashamed about.
It is God's power on display.
And yet all of us know that there is a subtle temptation to let the
gospel be something shameful to us.
In fact, Paul anticipates this in Romans 1:16.
You know this passage, but let me point out to you what he starts with.
He says, "For I am not," call it out.
Ashamed.
I'm not ashamed Which tells me there was a temptation to be ashamed, right?
He says it because people were ashamed of the gospel.
He says they might be, and maybe the Romans that he's writing to, they might
be tempted to be ashamed of Christ.
He says, "But I'm not ashamed of the gospel," and he gives the reason
that we're reading this passage.
He says, "I'm not ashamed because it is the power of God."
Same, same words.
It is the power of God for salvation.
Our text in Romans, uh, 1 Corinthians 1:18 said it's the power of
God, but Paul completes it here.
It's the power of God for salvation for everybody, Greek
and Jew, man, woman, child, slave, free, Black, white, rich, poor.
Everybody is, is…
The gospel is given to everybody.
There's not a class or a category.
And, and the more you think about this, the more it makes sense here
that Paul would say this because if only the intelligent and the eloquent
could give the gospel, and consequently those who are smart enough to hear
it, they might have reason to boast about the gospel, wouldn't they?
"Well, I was smart enough to become a Christian.
This rhetorician laid out a really compelling case, and he laid out all
the scientific facts, and he gave me a really logically tight sermon, and
I was so intelligent I could discern what he said, and consequently I was
smart enough to become a Christian."
Paul wants to avoid that.
And again, part of the scandal of the cross is that the
founder of our faith was shamed.
Think about this.
We don't spend a lot of time on this in our church, and for good
reason we don't talk about this frequently, but Jesus was hung naked.
Naked.
If I were to take you and just put you in your underwear in
public, you'd be mortified, right?
Let's just be hon- That'd be, that'd be really uncomfortable.
Jesus was hung naked, and the shame that you might feel being exposed
in that way is the same kind of shame, and worse, that Jesus felt.
He wasn't just naked.
He was beaten, bloody, bruised, a crown of thorns on his head, blood, uh,
emerging from his brow, his whole body naked and exposed for all to look upon.
And what did they do?
The poor guy, he's suffering.
No, they jeered, they spat, they punched, they mocked, they added shame to the
burden of shame that he already wore.
Paul says, "For I'm not ashamed."
I'm not ashamed.
I'm not ashamed of Christ.
I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
What changed for Paul?
Well, let me suggest to you that what changed is how he saw Christ.
When I was a young man, thinking about my mom again, we had this
old car, a 1977 Datsun 710.
I don't know if you know what this car is.
You can look it up later.
It was an old car.
It wasn't a great car.
It, it rattled and knocked.
It was kind of a, it was kind of a junker.
And it had this giant hole on one of the side doors, and the side…
It was a rusted hole on the side, and I remember it very well because
when my mom would drive me to school, after I push-started it,
my mom would drive me to school.
The cold air from the morning would just come inside the car, and I would be
hitting the, in the backseat just kind of shivering as I waited to get to school.
But when we got to school, I would ask my mom, "Please, can I, can, can you
drop me off here instead of there?"
She was gonna drop me off at the front of the school, obviously.
I said, "Actually, could you put me over here in the corner where
there's a bush so you, no one can see you or me coming out of this car?"
See, I didn't have the words back then, but I think you and I can all say what
was happening in little Rod at that point was that I was feeling shame and
embarrassment about my family situation.
You know, Dad's not around, and we got this poor car.
We don't, we get food stamps and things.
People are gonna know that I'm poor.
I'm gonna be exposed.
I don't want that.
So I asked my mom to drop me off further away.
I mean, I don't know how old I was.
I was elementary school.
I remember that.
But now, fast-forward, let's call it 30 some odd years.
The same car that I look back at and I was mortified by is
a car that I'm now proud of.
Here's what changed Now that I'm older, I can put pieces together
that I couldn't put back then.
My mom worked dead-end jobs, sacrificed to put food on the table for us.
She worked long hours.
She did everything she possibly could to take care of me and my brother, including
buying this junker of a car so that she'd have a way to, to get us around.
Do you see what happened for me?
I'm able now to look at the event of having to drive around in that junker
of a car, being embarrassed by it, and now I see it as a mark of pride.
Why?
Because now I see that it symbolized my mom's love and
sacrifice for me and my brother.
Changes everything, doesn't it?
Now I'm proud of my mom.
I'm thankful for her.
I'm glad that God used her to bless me and my brother, to drive us around
in that ugly car that I can now say praise God for that Datsun 710.
The same thing can happen to Christians when we start looking at the gospel and
we say, "Well, it's, it's uncomfortable and I don't like it, and people might
get offended, and I might lose friend- friendships and family members."
Paul's saying, "Don't be ashamed about that."
I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
It's God's power to save us.
In fact, that's the whole-- that's my whole first point here.
You're not, you should not be ashamed of the gospel because it's God's power.
This is God's power for you and toward you.
It is God's gift to you.
Jesus, the one who loved and sacrificed for you, is the one who calls you to
be His own, and He did it effectively.
The power of God displayed on the cross for you, which is the whole
reason we should not be ashamed.
It is God's power.
This, this is the power of God to save the lost
You and I know what it is to love people and want them to know this gospel, right?
We, we do.
I assume that about everybody here.
The power of God to save them will not lie in your rhetorical persuasion.
No matter how gifted you are, no matter how intelligent you are, you're never
gonna bring something to the table that's gonna make them say, "You know what?
I hated Christ, but because y- you are so smart, you have a doctorate and you're so
smart," or, "Because, you know, you smiled so big, now I wanna become a Christian."
It's the gospel.
It's the gospel that does the work.
It's the gospel that does the heavy lifting.
The gospel is effective to save the lost.
It is God's power to do that.
So if you wanna see people saved, you have to connect the pieces.
The gospel's the way that's gonna happen
Which means then family, church family
Uh, I don't assume that everybody in this room has the
ability to even articulate it.
In fact, I, I would assume that for a lot of Christians, if I pressed you and
I said, "Hey, I need you to share the gospel with this person right here," I
think y- you might be able to work your way through it, but I think you might be
uncomfortable, maybe a little fearful.
You might even say, "Well, I don't, I don't know the words, Pastor, and
I'm not sure about the Bible verses."
And just go for it, just do it.
You might struggle.
So I'm gonna encourage you, if you, if I, if I were to give you the opportunity
and you struggled to communicate the gospel, I wanna encourage you, learn it.
You could use Evangelism Explosion, you could use Chapter 9 of Partners, which is
the, our home- our homemade system here that you could use, the training manual.
Uh, you could use Evangelism Explosion.
There's so many different training programs.
I just need you to know how to communicate the gospel.
I need you to know how to do this.
Because if you don't, you lack the very thing that people need from you.
They need you to know.
Earlier this week, Kristen was diagnosed with this thing called osteoarthritis.
Have you heard of this thing before?
Lots of people have it.
Uh, her big toe is hurting, so I guess the bones are rubbing together, and now she's,
she limps, and it's getting inflamed, and so i- it sent us on a mission.
Uh, we started doing all the research, checking out the AIs to
say what supplements can we take.
You know, is there w- uh, can she swallow an essential oil that heals her?
Is there something like that?
Uh, is there anything, like a snake oil, that could help her?
You know, we, we looked at, I looked at peptides, and I found out that
the peptides that can help her are currently not being offered right now
because of the government sanctions.
So BP15- 157's off the table, uh, BPC 157.
I, I was looking at all the things, and I found out it's
not even called osteoarthritis.
All the cool kids call it OA.
That's another thing I learned.
I started going down the rabbit hole why?
Because I love my wife, and I want to help mitigate her pain.
And it's just a little pain.
It's a little, you know, big toe pain with OA.
But I care enough about her pain and her suffering to say,
"How can we alleviate this?
What can we do about this?"
You care about the pain and the suffering of your lost friends,
family, loved ones, your grandkids.
You care about their pain and suffering here and now.
If you were to see one of them injured or hur- heart, uh, hurt
in some way, you would do what you could to alleviate that pain.
And yet for many of us, alleviating the pain of their eternal damnation, we just
get really nervous and scared about that.
We get really … And I understand that.
I, I heard this week, someone said it like this: "The lost are going to spend
eternity in eternal conscious torment."
And you're gonna be uncomfortable for five minutes in a conversation.
That's the trade I think we should make.
That's true, guys, right?
If we're honest, maybe it's not shame that, that someone's gonna go to hell.
It's not shame that Christ is the only way to salvation.
We might feel shame that, well, we don't wanna hurt people's feelings, and
hurting people's feelings is, is, is a violation of our public code of ethics.
One of our highest values, especially here in the Christianized North Texas
setting, is niceness, except on the road.
Besides that, it's niceness.
Road is whatever you want it to be, I guess.
Everywhere else, it's cultural.
Now, you hold the door open for people, and you say, "Yes, sir," and "Yes,
ma'am," and "please" and "thank you."
I mean, that's…
We li- we swim in that culture, and praise God for it.
I'm not mad about that at all.
But it's that same cultural value that can make us really resistant to
say, "Guys, you know, I need to let you know that the Gospel teaches that
you're a sinner, and that apart from Christ, you are on your way to hell,
where God will judge you, pour out his damnation upon you for eternity."
It's hard to look someone in the eye and say that.
I feel, I feel nervous just telling you that.
So I get it.
The asha- the shame that we might be tempted to feel, we
have to be willing to do this.
So all I'm gonna say here is you gotta know the Gospel, and I, I
would encourage you, start somewhere.
Start somewhere.
Doesn't have to be like you're preaching like Billy Graham or, or,
uh, or, uh, Greg Laurie in a stadium.
Maybe start at home.
We had child dedications this weekend, and maybe a child dedication
is what you need to be reminded.
I could just start at home with my family, my grandkids, my husband, my wife.
I'm just gonna start there.
I'm gonna practice with them.
I'm gonna talk about the Gospel more.
I'm gonna be more intent to share Christ with people that I live with.
I wanna be good at sharing the Gospel.
It's the only message that can save.
And by the way, because it's God's power, your weakness is actually
an asset and not a liability.
And in fact, Paul says it in 2 Corinthians 12:9-12.
He says, uh, h- God's…
And when I'm weak, His power is made perfect in my weakness.
Your weakness, your inability, your ignorance, your fear, all of that,
your trembling, that's, that's actually a favor and it works for you.
Because now God can step in and say, "I'm gonna use you anyway."
God used a donkey to communicate to somebody
He can use you.
He's using me.
Normally, you have a stallion in the pulpit.
Today, you got a donkey.
God's still using us.
God's still working, right?
And you're still hearing me.
God can use you.
Don't be ashamed of that 'cause God's power to save the lost,
and it's also what saved you.
Don't forget the Gospel saved you.
If I could give you the microphone this morning and say, "Tell me about who
you were before you were a Christian," I bet a lot of you would have some
really awesome stories, wouldn't you?
Oh, man, let me tell you.
I was this.
I used to live this way.
God, I could-- I, I have a list a mile long of reasons why I
shouldn't even be a Christian.
I told you guys, my dad wasn't in the home.
He was in prison.
And my mom, she was a single mom, so she was working hard.
And this, I had this weird upbringing where, I mean, I hadn't-- I didn't-- I
didn't have things working in my favor.
I didn't have thing, anything working in my favor, and yet God saved me.
I didn't deserve it.
I didn't earn it.
God just gave me people that sh- t- told me the Gospel, loved
me enough to tell me the truth.
And the people that I'm s- that I was saved by, the people that worked on me,
were not rock, like rocket scientists.
They weren't these hotshot preachers who had a radio ministry.
They were people like us, normal people with nine-to-five jobs.
They weren't ministry people.
They served at the church, and God used them to bring me to salvation.
Think about the people that God used to bring you to salvation.
And it wasn't their skill, was it?
It was God's power through the Gospel.
Don't be ashamed of this.
Don't allow yourself to be fearful or to cower or to kowtow to a world that says,
well, your Gospel isn't attractive enough.
It's not wise enough.
It's, you know, you got a crucified Messiah who was hung naked on a cross.
It's, it's en vogue today for atheists and opponents of the faith
to call Christianity a death cult.
You guys love death, and you're all about death, and you guys look forward
to dying so you can be with Jesus.
It's a weird culture, weird religion.
Okay, okay, say what you will.
Say what you will.
But I'm gonna side with Jesus.
I'm not ashamed.
I'm not ashamed of the Gospel.
It's the power of God for salvation You gotta trust God's power.
It's what saved you, it's what's gonna save others, so why ever tamper with it?
Why ever let the gospel be something that causes shame?
Well, I think there's a lot of reasons, but the, one of the most
important reasons here is gonna be listed in these next verses.
Let me just briefly summarize for us where we're, where we're going with this,
and then I'll give you my point here.
Notice again, we're gonna look at the second part of cha- uh, of verse 18.
We looked at the second part, or part B of verse 18.
We're gonna look at part A now.
"For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing."
The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing.
Now we know why the gospel is incomprehensible to unbelievers,
because they're perishing.
Uh, we might use the term they are depraved.
They are unable to receive it because they're in a state of destruction.
They're in a state of lostness.
It's impossible for them to hear it the way they need to hear it.
He says, "But for us who are being saved, it is the power of God."
He goes again, "For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of
the wise, and the discerning of the discerning I will thwart.'"
Which tells us there's an expiration date on all worldly wisdom.
You go to the market, you look for, you look for your fruit.
You start looking at the fruit, you start feeling it.
If you see black spots on the fruit, you say, "I'm gonna skip that."
The expiration date is sooner than, than, than, uh, sooner away than further.
The expiration date for the world's wisdom is black.
It is perishing.
And so he says, God's, God is against it.
He has judged it.
God is gonna ensure that the world's wisdom perishes.
So he says, "Where is the one who is wise?
Where is the scribe?
Where is the debater of this age?
Has God not, has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?"
The world's wisdom is perishing, and yet the world's system and the world's ways
of doing things is attractive to us.
We have to be able to admit this.
Even though it's attractive, we have to be able to say, "I need to resist the
way the world shapes me and causes me to want the things that the world offers."
Why?
Well, 'cause I, I, I wanna care about things that are really important, things
that are eternal, and not things that are gonna last for just a few minutes.
So point number two, I don't only want you to not be ashamed of the gospel, I don't
want you to be impressed by the world.
Paul is saying the world is, the, the world's wisdom, passing away.
The world's system, it's going to be destroyed.
The world's wisdom, God has decreed it, He's judged against it.
It's not going to last, therefore you need to keep your eyes peeled and
make sure that your eyes are on the cross and not what the world is doing
In the little epistle of John
Little epistle of Johnny says the world is passing away along
with its desires But whoever does the will of God abides forever.
Earlier this week, there were two times, two times something happened on Preston
Road that hadn't happened to me before.
I was driving down Preston, I forget what day of the week it was, but I saw
this brand spanking new Rolls-Royce, and it was I think an SUV style.
I, I can't…
It was, it was one of the bigger ones.
It wasn't the normal one.
So I saw this Rolls-Royce, and I do what all of you do when
you see a really nice car.
I tried to catch up so I could see who was driving it.
I was trying to get up close, like, "Oh, who's, who's in there?"
But then I realized the windows were tinted, so that I couldn't
even see who was in there.
I'm thinking, "Why would you do that?
I know you're driving the car 'cause you want us to look at you,
so now I wanna look at you, and you won't let me see who you are."
So I gave up pretty quickly.
But that's really cool.
That's a…
I mean, that's a cool car.
I took a picture of it and I sent it to my family, 'cause I thought, "Look at this.
This car is worth double what our house is worth."
How's that?
That's kinda fun.
I was, I was impressed by it.
I was just like, man, 'cause I know how much goes into making them.
They're, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it's all
bespoke, and all the cool things.
So I, I admire the, the craftsmanship, I won't lie.
A few days later, maybe not, not two days later, I'm driving down Preston Road,
and again, I saw another Rolls-Royce.
I'm thinking, "Who lives here?
Who's…
Who, who am I driving next to?"
Maybe it was yours, I don't know.
I should go look in the parking lot.
Maybe you're here this morning.
And I'm just thinking, "That's, that's cool.
That's a cool car."
I, I mean, I'm, I'm impr- again, it was a…
I don't know what kind it was.
Don't ask me, 'cause I don't know the model numbers.
But I just know those cars are pricey.
And then after the second one rolled by, I thought, "Okay, the Lord checked me.
It's not gonna last forever."
It's a cool car, and I, I still admire it, but that car is
not gonna be an eternal car.
Maybe it lasts 100 years, 'cause they're a Rolls and they'll last a,
a while if they're taken care of.
But it's not an eternal car.
It's a temporary car.
And the Rolls is a good image for what b- for what the world's wisdom is like.
Has a lot of glitz, has a lot of glamour.
Has even a lot of power in this world, but it's not gonna translate to the next one.
Having a Rolls-Royce does not make you more attractive to God.
Doesn't give you more credit before the Lord.
Doesn't give you more rewards before the Lord.
It doesn't take away necessarily, either.
But the, the thing itself, the object of our affection and our being impressed
is not worth saying, "Oh, I, I, I should, I should use a Rolls-Royce."
In fact, if we wanna promote our next w- sermon series,
let's bring a Rolls-Royce here.
Let's tell people that if they come to our church they can
drive in Pastor PJ's Rolls-Royce.
That might get people to start showing up.
They might think we're a different kinda church.
It's the wrong message.
The idea is that we can get so impressed by these things, but they
have such a short shel- shelf life.
That's the way with worldly wisdom.
It, it's beautiful for a little bit, but it's got a short shelf
life, and it does not last.
And that's really the point Paul's making here.
You ought to not be impressed, because first of all, the world is perishing.
The Rolls-Royce is gonna rust, fade.
The tires are gonna get deflated.
The engine's gonna stop working.
It's not gonna be valuable.
It's not gonna, it's not gonna last you.
You're not gonna stand before Christ and say, "Lord-" Here's my rolls.
Never gonna say that.
I'm sorry.
But what you will have if you are in Christ, you will say, "Lord, these
are the people that I've loved.
Here's the…
I, I'm here because of Christ, obviously.
That's the only reason I'm here, but here are the people that I've loved.
Here are the ways that I've served by grace through faith.
Here's the way that you've empowered me to serve.
Here's the, here's the talent you gave me, Lord, and now here's five more."
That, that's something that you can, I mean, in a, in a
non-proud sense, boast about.
But the world is perishing.
The things that are here are perishing.
The things that we have, our homes, our cars, our devices, they're perishing.
Here, of course, Paul is not talking about our stuff.
He is talking about people, which when you think about it then, should
reframe the way that you see the lost.
We often think of people who look, you know, attractive and
presentable, and they're tall.
They're powerful people.
You might be intimidated by them
But I think Paul would say you ought to have compassion for them
because maybe they're doing great in this life, but this is all, this
is as good as it gets for them.
St- instead of letting them intimidate you, maybe you should look at
them with compassion and say, "I don't care what your status is.
I don't care what your, I don't care what your, your bank account says."
I need you to know the gospel.
It's probably not what you struggle with a lot of the times.
I think what you're gonna be struggling with is the people in
your house, your neighbors, your friends, people that you work with,
a- and you're concerned about them.
Um, the fact that they are in the process of perishing does not escape you.
You know this.
What we need to let scripture do with that then is to motivate and compel
us to say, "I, I can't sit back.
I have to do something, something."
I don't wanna be impressed by their GPA or their, their education.
I don't wanna be impressed by their clothes.
I don't wanna be impressed by the things that they bring to the table.
I wanna be-- I wanna see them the way God sees them, as those who
will stand before Him someday.
They're perishing.
Oh, Lord, help us to do something
Verse 19, we should not be impressed because God has judged
their wisdom to be foolishness.
What is presently wise and accepted now, God has decreed
will be judged foolishness later.
Why?
Why is that the case?
Well, I, I, have a connection here.
In fact, I'm just gonna give you my next, my next sub point.
The world's wisdom is transient.
Thi- think about this with me.
The world's wisdom actually has a lot of good to it.
Uh, the world can write great books about how to build habits, and
the world can write great books about how to grow your business.
The world can write great books a- about worldly wisdom and how to,
how to have a better marriage even.
There's some really interesting and helpful things out there.
But Paul, when he says this, "Where is the wise?
Where is the scribe?
Where is the debater of this age?"
All worldly wisdom is fixed and focused on your life here and now.
And at the end of the day, worldly wisdom is essentially this, it's egocentric.
It's about you.
You're the judge, you're the jury, you're the executioner.
Worldly wisdom starts and ends with human observation, human knowledge,
human intuition, and guess what?
You're the judge of this.
You get to decide, "Do I wanna receive this wisdom or do I wanna reject it?"
When you buy that parenting book from Barnes & Noble and it says, "Well,
here's five ways to handle your kids."
And it tells you, "Well, make sure that there's structure, and make
sure you feed them a healthy diet, and make sure that they get exercise
every day, they get sunlight, and make sure they get their shoes off outside
'cause that's gonna help them ground.
Make sure you don't give them any red number 40 or n- yellow number five."
They're gonna give you some great worldly wisdom, but notice what's not in that book
is how to make sure they're right with the Lord, how to make sure that they don't
gain the world and forfeit their soul.
Rare is it gonna be that a parenting book says that, and if you're gonna read
that, it's because it's in the Christian bookstore I went to Barnes & Noble
recently and I saw this book large display for a well-known author whose point
essentially is this: don't fear man.
It's not what it's called.
Her book is called something different, but her point is don't fear man.
Don't let people control the way that you live because you, you need to do
your own life, you need to live and be authentic to yourself, all those things.
You could agree with the first part, couldn't you?
Don't fear man.
W- amen.
Absolutely, I would agree with that.
I might even amen that if I read that in her book.
But she never anchors it.
She never says, "Hey, don't do it that way because you have a God who's watching.
You have a God whose opinion matters far more than your neighbor's.
You have a God to whom you will give account to someday."
Or, "You have a God who has died and secured your soul for all eternity.
You are loved, you're accepted, you're, you are adopted into the family.
You have nothing to fear.
Don't fear man.
Be bold because your, your God has called you to this task."
She's never gonna say that.
No worldly book is ever gonna say, "Hey, live in this way
because it brings glory to God."
One of my favorite worldly books is called Atomic Habits.
Uh, this is by James Clear, and I'm not necessarily endorsing it.
Just gonna use it as an example.
He gives you a whole structure for how to build great habits.
Not bad.
It's great information.
I, I've benefited from it personally and I find it to be helpful, but if you think
about what h- what his logic is, he says, "Okay, build good habits, reach your
goals, be successful, you'll be happy.
You're gonna have…
A- all your life's gonna be better.
Your marriage is gonna be better, you'll be better at work, you'll be a better
parent, uh, you'll be a better spouse.
Everything about your life is gonna get…
You're gonna lose 10 pounds because of great habits."
The world's wisdom sits on top right here, the, the what to and the how to.
God's wisdom goes down to the very bottom and says, "Why?
Why do th- why do these things matter?"
And the world just assumes that you have an answer to that.
God's wisdom says, "It's all about me."
Christocentric wisdom.
God's wisdom is about Jesus.
It takes us back to him.
The world's wisdom can't du- can't do that.
It won't do that.
That's outside their realm of competency.
Paul says, "Where are these guys?
Are they gonna lead you to Christ?"
Is worldly wisdom ever going to find itself saying, "Look, you need to
repent and put your faith in Jesus"?
Probably not.
It's not that, not the kind of books that they write
God has determined to make foolish the wisdom of the world.
World's wisdom is all about you, which is why it makes little to no sense to say,
"Should we adjust our message, Paul, to make it more attractive to the world?
How about we present the gospel this way?
What if we tell people, 'Look, you can live your best life now
if you just take this gospel.
Take this pill, it's gonna make your life better.
You'll be wealthier, healthier, happier.
You'll look more attractive to all of your friends.
You'll play pickleball better on the weekends.
Just take this gospel.'"
And you're not surprised that some people actually take that direction, right?
This is, this is, this is some churches.
We can't do that.
We won't do that.
Uh, scripture tells us we can't do something like that.
We can't, we can't make the message more attractive.
We can't make it something that it's not.
In fact, the whole reason is because the, the message itself is self-denial.
The message itself is take up your cross, die to yourself, live to the Lord.
That's not gonna sell.
No one's gonna buy a book that says, "Come follow us, die with Christ."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in his book, The Cost of Discipleship,
he said, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
No one who is in the world system finds that attractive at all.
It's not gonna be, "Oh, sign me up."
Now let me, let me just, let me add a slight balance to this for you, okay?
I want us to be unashamed of the gospel, to say it like it
is, to share the whole thing.
I don't want you to be impressed by the world and to start softening it or shaping
it to make it more palatable to the world.
However, there is a, there's a place in between where there is
wisdom and shrewdness in the way that you talk about the gospel.
There's timing, there's tone.
There's all sorts of things that matter when it comes to sharing the gospel.
Your words matter.
Your presentation matters.
But it's not what ultimately matters.
What ultimately matters is the power of God through the gospel.
So when it comes to the world's wisdom- I don't want you to kowtow.
I don't want you to fall prey to what they're doing.
Because at the end of the day, really, it's not about you.
It's not about you.
The issue that they have is not with you, they have it with their Lord.
You don't need to be afraid.
You don't need to be concerned that you don't have the education, the
wisdom, the, the sch- the scholarship.
You don't have to be afraid that you don't have the prominence, you
don't have a, a podcast platform, uh, you're not well-spoken.
I'm not educated enough.
I don't have enough of the gifts that God has got me.
Who cares?
God can use anybody to save anybody.
In fact, I was reminded about a story, uh, back on a Sunday, a cold Sunday,
where a blizzard went through a town.
This young man was on his way to church, and because the blizzard was growing more
and increasingly tumultuous, he had to stop into this primitive Baptist church.
And so he walks in there, where he sees about a dozen people.
They waited a few minutes to see if the minister would show
up, and the minister doesn't.
He snowed in.
And so one of their deacons gets up.
He's an older man, and the young man says about him that he was
probably a shoemaker, a tailor, or something of that sort.
He judged him as being a, a poor, a poor man.
Well, this guy gets up, and he reads Isaiah 45:22, which says
this: "Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth."
The young man says he read it a few times, and he had, he
didn't have much to say about it.
He spoke for a few minutes, and then he was done.
Didn't have a lot to say.
He said he pronounced words wrongly.
But after he ran out of material
The, the man in the pulpit looked up, pointed to the boy and said,
"Young man, you look miserable.
Look to Jesus Christ"
And the young man said, "Okay."
He did.
He did look to Jesus Christ that day.
He credits this as being the day when he actually did put his faith in Christ.
That was it for him.
I mean, just notice that this guy didn't say anything remarkable.
He didn't have a platform.
He didn't have a podcast.
He didn't have a TED Talk.
He had nothing remarkable to say.
In fact, the, the young man said he s- he spoke words incorrectly.
He's the opposite of eloquent.
He was uneloquent, diseloquent, anti-eloquent
That young boy was Charles Spurgeon, well-known preacher from the 19th
century, probably the most well-known.
Massive platform, massive skills, ma- I mean, just God used him remarkably.
And what's so fascinating is that God used a nobody from nowhere, who
said basically nothing, to save him.
If God can use him, and God can use me, and God can use Pastor
Stallion, He can use you, can't He?
He can use all of us.
He can use every single one of us in this room if we would be willing to simply
open our mouths and do the dirty work of saying, "I, I need to tell you something."
Your pastor's burden is that we become a congregation who knows
the gospel and spreads the gospel.
We understand this is a hard and high calling because it puts a lot of risk
on the line for you, particularly with your closest relationships.
We get it.
We're in the same place.
But the greater risk is that we don't open our mouths because we're afraid
or we're ashamed, when God might be intending to use you to bring
people to faith that He would not ordinarily or otherwise have done.
Don't be ashamed, Christians.
Don't be ashamed, Compass.
Open your mouth.
Be faithful, and don't be impressed by the glitz and glamour.
Don't let the Louis Vuitton belts or the nice clothes or the
really nice car dissuade you.
Don't let the fact that you might lose the relationship turn you off.
The thing that's gonna make you move and keep going is the love for that
person and a love for your Lord.
I'm hoping that this season for us, as we make our way through Corinthians,
encourages us to put greater trust in the Lord, to seek after the lost by
your efforts, by our efforts together.
These activities that we're d- we're gonna do, in fact, we have more than this.
The, the Compass at the Park, we've got, uh, upcoming evangelistic
events that are coming.
Why?
But because w- our mission is to make disciples.
We're here for that.
You're an evangelical because we believe the gospel's necessary
for everybody to be saved.
We have work to do.
Never be ashamed of the gospel.
Never be ashamed of it.
Be bold about your witness in Christ.
And please, don't be too impressed with the world's system.
Don't be too impressed.
It's not gonna be around for long.
You're gonna outlast it.
The glory that God will give to you will be far better, far longer lasting than
any glitz and glamour this world has.
Let's pray.
God, our church desperately needs to grow in this grace.
We want to be the kind of people who don't shy away from saying what's
true to people, not because we wanna be annoying or, or to be vitriolic or
to be angry, but because we love them
Lord, help us
There's so many reasons why we don't open our mouths.
Shame is only one of them, Lord.
We pray as a congregation that you would forgive us.
For those of us in this room who might feel the sting and the
pain of not evangelizing the way that we want to, not sharing the
gospel, forgive us for that failure
Lord, we confess that we are afraid, we're fickle, we're motivated one
day, we're demotivated the next
Lord, we're yours.
We're your problem, Father.
Please help us.
We know the right thing, Lord.
It's not for lack of knowledge that we confess these things.
It's honestly, Lord, a, a lack of obedience.
We're afraid to obey in this area, intimidated.
There's shame.
Forgive us for this, Lord.
As a congregation, we need you to help us be faithful in this area.
And for those of us in this room, Lord, who are faithful, we pray, please
let them be all the more faithful.
And pray for those of us who need more strength in this.
Do good to this church by helping us to be bold about what is true.
Not brash, not offensive by our tone, our temperament, or our tenor, help
us to be winsome with an offensive message, and to be okay, Lord, if it
should be your will that some people reject us, disdain us, mock us.
Let us be okay with suffering the shame of the world if it means
enjoying the smile of our Lord
We ask all this in Jesus' name.
Amen.