Well, I cannot tell you what
a blessing it is to be with you this afternoon. I enjoy coming
up here and the messages that we are able to present. I am
overwhelmed by the reception. I'm going to be speaking from
the book of First Corinthians today in our lesson, and I'm
going to ask you a question. Have you ever been lied to? All
right. Yeah. Did you like it? No, probably didn't. Well, I'm
gonna do my dead level best never to lie to you. I want to use
the scriptures for what I have to say. What I have to say personally
doesn't mean much. What we find in the Bible means
a great deal. So we're gonna go to the book
of 1 Corinthians today. And I wanna read a few verses
here until we get down to the latter part of it. 1 Corinthians
chapter one, First Corinthians chapter one
and there, my wife and I got to travel over to Greece and
go down to where this, the city of Corinth used to be. And it
was very interesting. And yet seeing that didn't change
my view about the word of God at all about Corinth because
Corinth is like any gospel church anywhere in the world. And there
was some problems in the church at Corinth. And part of the problem
in the church at Corinth was that there were people that began
to look at the preacher with more value than they should have. And the Apostle Paul writes to
them and he says, we have one being, one person that we should
give honor to above all others, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
So he's gonna get us down to that message towards the end
of this chapter. But to begin with, he said here,
as they looked around, He said, now this I say, that every one
of you saith, I am of Paul. Now Paul was a wonderful preacher
of the gospel, and so was Apollos, and so was Peter. And then he
says, Christ, now this is the verse, I am Paul, some say I'm
of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, and I am Christ, I
am of Christ. So there was a division in the
church at Corinth over who was the most important. Now there
was a small group of them that said, about good preachers, Paul,
good preacher Apollos, good preacher Peter, but the most important
is Christ himself. We must be foundationed upon
him and not some person. Now, I don't believe there's
a preacher that doesn't like to have popularity in the sense
of getting along with people, but Paul would not trade that
for Jesus Christ being the most important. Well, he said, is
Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Is
Christ divided among different factions in this church at Corinth? And was Paul crucified for you?
Well, the answer immediately would say, absolutely not. Jesus
Christ was crucified for his people. Paul was not. But Paul
was careful to preach Christ and him crucified, but he never
would say, I was crucified for you. He said, were you baptized
in the name of Paul? Well, of course not. People in
the gospel era of the New Testament were baptized in the name of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but Paul had nothing
to do with it. In fact, he said, I am so thankful
that I baptized none of you except about four people. So he wasn't
here to do any baptisms. He was here to preach the gospel.
And as he follows down through here, he thanks God Almighty
for the privilege of preaching the Lord Jesus Christ. And in
the verse 21 of this chapter, chapter one, he says, for after
that in the wisdom of God. Now that word wisdom means the
supreme intelligence such as belongs to God. Now God has a
wisdom that's far above human wisdom. He knows the end from
the beginning. He purposed all things from the
beginning. He tells us that what he thought
he performed, he was able to do what you and I cannot do.
I had good intentions, I've had good intentions and I'll probably
have good intentions in the future, but many times I cannot carry
out my good intentions. But when God had intentions,
they are always carried out and nothing stops him from doing
what he intends to do. There was a king in the Old Testament
that got real proud of himself and real proud of his position,
and God turned him out in the field for seven years. Now, I've
had people tell me, that was just a metaphor, that was just
a figure of speech. You talk to Nebuchadnezzar about
that, he'd tell you differently. He was actually turned out into
the field for seven years, and then God gave his mind back to
him, and he shared this. There's a God in heaven, None
can stop his hand or say, what doest thou? He recognized and
realized that the God that created the heavens and the earth is
able to do everything he intends to do and nothing or anybody
can stop him from doing it. Well, here we find after that
of the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom. Now there's a big
difference between the wisdom of God and man's wisdom. Doesn't take us very long to
figure that out. Man's wisdom is so fallible. Man's wisdom
is so finite. Man's wisdom, you know, changes
all the time. We may have a doctor that tells
us, take this prescription, this will help you out. And in a year
they find out they've been giving us the wrong prescription. We
should have been taking something else. Wisdom among human beings
changes all the time. It is so fallible, so fallible,
changes. Well, we find out that the wisdom
of God does not change. The wisdom of God is really a
person. This is how he's going to demonstrate
his wisdom to us. For after that, in the wisdom
of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. So the wisdom of man,
generally speaking, is You know, I know what God said
in his word, but I have better plans. I have a better idea about
this. Our wisdom is so wrong most of
the time. Wisdom about God is wrong. Wisdom
about salvation is wrong. We need to be convinced by the
Holy Spirit of what right wisdom is. So that's what the Apostle
Paul is going to go on here and say. The Jews required a sign. This group demands this, and
that group demands that, but here we find Paul said, but we
preach Christ crucified. Now that's the message of a gospel
preacher. It's not trying to get the church
full of people. The message of a gospel preacher
is Christ and him crucified. Who is he? Where did he come
from? What did he intend to do while
he was here? Who did he do it for? Was he
successful in what he did? And you know, he is Jesus Christ
the righteous. He came down and was born of
a virgin. He was full man and full God
at the same time. He had an intention of doing
something that he knew he would be successful at. And he spent
three and a half years preaching the gospel to other folks. And
when it came time, he was taken and crucified on the cross. Why? Because God intended for his
people to be saved by Jesus Christ taking care of their sin debt.
That's why he went to the cross. He wasn't a criminal. He may
have been accused of being a criminal by the Romans or the Jews, but
he was not a criminal. He was the most righteous one.
to ever walk the face of the earth. So here we have the righteous
son of God crucified, and in so doing, he died for the sins
of his people. When he died for the sins of
his people, he was taken off of the cross, put into a tomb. Three days later, the church
is waiting. Did he really do what he said
he would do? And the answer is yes. How do
we know he did what he said he would do? He came out of that
tomb victorious. God raised him from the dead,
the Father, the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead, and he said
this about himself, no man takes my life from me. I lay it down
on myself that I might take it up again. So he raised himself
from the tomb victorious. Now he's telling all of his people,
all of his saints, all the church, he's telling them, I have put
away sin forever. I've taken care of the sin debt.
And the church rejoices in that. Now, we may go through life for
a long season, and then we hear the gospel of God's free grace
in Christ Jesus, and he gives us a new heart, and we're able
to believe that. But up until that point, we use
our own human wisdom about God. And we say, well, you know, I
was christened. I was baptized when I was young.
I joined a church. And it always starts with that
one word, word, one letter word. I, I, I did. I did. But you know what? When people are saved, they say,
God did something for me. God saved me by his grace. I'm sorry, can you hear me? I'll try to be louder. In verse 23, but we preach Christ
crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks foolishness. This group says, you know what?
I just don't believe it. I just don't believe it. And
another group says, you know, that wasn't necessary. I'm pretty
good on my own. I'll do all right. So to this
group of unbelievers, it wasn't necessary. And to this group,
oh, that wasn't necessary. Well, as we follow that down,
but when unto them that are called, now here's the absolute necessity
that we find in the Bible that God Almighty calls us. You know, when I was a young
man, I had my parents call me. I had the preacher call me. We
used to get, do you remember landlines? Everybody's got a
cell phone now. I was in a home the other day,
had a landline. It was almost a mystery. Kids today don't know
what they are. They don't know what the buttons
are for. They don't know what the dial's for. But we had landlines,
and we had local calls, and we had long-distance calls. No,
we paid quite a bit for the long-distance calls. But most of the time,
they were pretty important calls. Well, my mother and my father
and the preacher that we had made a local call on me. They
said all kinds of things to get me out of my pew and come forward. Well, as an 11 year old boy,
I did that. I made a decision for Jesus,
but it was only a local call. There was no wisdom in it. There
was no call. Now, when God allowed me to hear
the gospel of his free and sovereign grace and call me, it was a long
distance call. It was from heaven. I remember
we had a neighbor named Mr. King, and he had a grandson that
was about my age, and we had lots of acreage to run around
on. And he was able to whistle with his fingers. Now, I've never
been able to whistle with my fingers. but he could whistle
with his fingers and that noise would be carried for two miles,
it seemed like. And as soon as Bobby King, my
friend heard it, instantly he got up and headed home. He knew
that was the call to go home. Well, it was a personal call,
didn't affect me. I was sorry to see him go, but
we had the call of individual call. Now that's what Paul is
mentioning here. He says, but unto them which are called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom
of God. So this changes things for us. We find out that there is a wisdom
that is given to his people that we didn't have by nature, and
that wisdom is a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. because the
foolishness of God is wiser than men. Now that's an interesting
statement, the foolishness of God, and yet we find God has
never been foolish. He's just using it as something
to measure by. The foolishness of God is wiser
than men, that's no doubt. the God of heaven, he is wiser
than every man that has ever been. He's wiser than Solomon. You know, the Bible tells us
that there was no man like Solomon. And there was a lady, a queen
of the south that came up there and she had heard about Solomon's
wisdom. And she came up to watch him
and see him and talk to him. And her comment was, What I've
heard, not half has been told. You are so much wiser than I
ever thought. So, we have someone wiser than
that. We have the Lord Jesus. He says
that God Almighty, He's wiser than men. The weakness of God
is stronger than men. For ye shall see your calling,
brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many
mighty, not many noble are called. but God has chosen. Now that's
such an important truth that we find in the scripture that
God is involved in the choosing. He sits on his throne high and
lifted up and he knows all things and has marked it out from eternity.
He's the one that does the choosing. I've had people say, did you
choose Jesus? Not until he chose me. Do you
love Jesus? Not until I knew he loved me.
Did you follow Jesus? Not until he called me. We go
through the mechanics of it, but there's no reality in it.
Well, God has chosen the foolish things of the world, the base
things of the world, the things which are despised, hath God
chosen, yea, the things which are not to bring to naught the
things that are. And this is the reason for all of this, that
no flesh would glory in his presence. He doesn't want the church bragging
on what they did. I've had people almost tell me,
they go into their closet and tell, God, let me tell you what
I did for you today. Well, that's nonsense. If God doesn't know what we did,
then we're worshiping a wrong God. And for us to go into a
closet and brag on what we did for God is just not right. We brag on him who saved us by
his grace. We brag on Christ Jesus the Lord
who lift us out of a horrible pit. We brag on him, not on our
works. No flesh should glory in his
presence. He said, that's absolutely not going to be. I will not have
people bragging about what they did to do their salvation in
my presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus,
who of God is made unto us wisdom. Now, everything that we have
is brought out in this verse of scripture. God demonstrated
the greatest wisdom in the person of Christ Jesus. He reveals to
us the wisdom of God, how to deal with sin and justice at
the same time. God's wisdom is so perfect. He has the ability of dealing
with sin and forgiving his people at the same time. You know, the
Bible tells us that if the soul that sinneth, it should die. If we sin, The penalty is death. We have a death penalty hanging
over us. Only one can change that, but he has to pay for our
sin debt. He's the one that has to pay
for it. We're unable to. So he paid for our sin debt in
the person Christ Jesus. Now he is right and just to forgive
us of our sins and to put us in a straight line for eternity
with him. God chose that no person could
bring in what he did and no person could bring what they did. We
find that this Lord Jesus did something that nobody else did
or could do as a result of being in him and he being the wisdom
of God to be in him. is the most important thing.
For of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom. He's our wisdom. And then as
a result of that, he gives us righteousness, sanctification
and redemption. Now I know those are three big
words. I used to worry about them all the time. The only thing
that I do now is I say, thank God for all the good things you
did for me. Because you took care of every
issue. that there was possible between me and God. When we read
about righteousness, the book of Isaiah tells us, or excuse
me, the book of Jeremiah. Nope, Isaiah, excuse me, Isaiah
64. Our righteousness, righteousnesses
are as filthy rags. Now that's what we have. His
righteousness is perfect. And that means the ability to
come into the presence of God. He gives perfect righteousness. He is our righteousness. And
in Him, we are as if we had never sinned. Totally forgiven. We find that he gives us what
is called a robe of righteousness. He imputes to his people true
righteousness, not works righteousness, but true righteousness, the righteousness
of Christ is imputed to us. The book of Jeremiah again says
with regard to the Lord Jesus Christ, he said, he shall be
called the Lord our righteousness. That's another name for the Lord
Jesus is he is our righteousness. So those three things, he's our
righteousness, he is our sanctification, he is our savior. We find out
that this is above everything that we could ever think of on
our own. We have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ. And as he brings out, wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. The Lord willing,
the next time we get together, I'd like to say a few words about
sanctification because it is a real misunderstood word. I
had someone tell me that they're working out their sanctification.
Well, the Bible tells me Christ is my sanctification. And if
I'm sanctifying myself, I will brag about it. If he sanctifies
me, I'll brag on him. All right, we're gonna stop there
today, and Brother Mike is gonna bring us another song, but before
we do, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Gracious Father in heaven,
we're so thankful that you are the all and in all to your people. Though there were those who were
broken there in the church at Corinth, following this man,
that man, there were a few that were following Christ, and that's
who the Apostle Paul wanted to point out to these folks that
were going after other insignificant characters. Lord, we're thankful
that you call your people. And it's a long distance call.
It's an effectual call. It's a life changing call. It's
a new heart call. that God does for his people.
And as a result, we have that robe of righteousness imputed
to us. We have a standing with God that
we did not have by nature. And we can say, I have a savior
who is the Lord, our righteousness. Bless us, Lord, for Jesus' sake.
And in his name we pray, amen. Mike, if you'll come at this
time.