Let's pray together. Our Father, how thankful we are
for this evening. And truly, Lord, we bless your
holy name. Lord, we thank you that you allow
us the blessing and the privilege to assemble ourselves together
in your presence. And Lord, that you would meet
with us Oh, how we pray, forgive us where we have thought so lightly
of your presence. Lord, would you help us tonight
to worship and forgive us, we pray for Christ's sake. Amen. I'm going to ask you to take
your Bibles and turn with me to the book of 1 Corinthians,
chapter 2. 1 Corinthians. Chapter 2. The Apostle Paul, having told the
church at Corinth something of the Lord's will and the Lord's
purpose to choose to show mercy to not those who were the so-called
wise and mighty or noble of society, but the Lord has been pleased
to show mercy to what the world considers base, foolish, weak. Now this is the way that natural
man, natural religion, natural man's religion, carnal religion,
they look at God's people as being those who truly are foolish. Now the apostle is going to speak
now to the church at Corinth and he's going to express to
them the Spirit of God moved upon
him to approach them, to come to them. And I thought that this
was so wonderful, that the Spirit of God would give us, through
the Apostle Paul, the attitude of a God-called preacher. How God's preachers approach
The people, the assembly, the preacher is one of us. We're
all us. The Lord has truly raised up
pastors. But how are pastors to come before
God's people? I stand before you this evening
recognizing I'm convinced speaking to God's people. speaking to
God's elect, speaking to those that the Lord has everlastingly
loved, and been pleased to call out of darkness, giving them
a heart to love the gospel, to love Christ, to love God's people,
to love His Word. Now listen how the Apostle Paul
begins. Verse 1 of chapter 2, he says,
And I, Brethren. Now I just want to stop, just
for a second. Brethren. Think about that. The Lord has
made us that know Him brethren. We're a family. And I, brethren,
when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech, or
of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. I came not coming with a spirit
of excellent speech, not coming trying to draw attention to myself,
and trying to impress you with my ability to be able to articulate
Great swelling words. You know when the Lord was here
in the days of His humiliation, the people understood what He
was saying. Glenda told me one time, she
said, I will tell you this. She said, there may be those
that hear you and don't agree with you, but they understand
what you're saying. I said, good. That's the best
compliment. that you could give me. They
understand what you're saying. Now, the Apostle Paul was a very
educated man. And let me just read this to
you in Acts 23 in verse 3. Listen to these, you know, who
he learned under. There was a man named Gamaliel.
He was a Pharisee. He was a doctor of the law. And
Acts 22 verse 3, this is what Paul said concerning his education. He said, I am verily a man which
am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in
this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect
manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as
ye all are this day." Paul said, I went to the best of the best,
a very educated man. It was not that Paul was not
able to be eloquent. In fact, in Acts chapter 26,
when Paul was standing before Agrippa, Paul set forth succinctly
his life before and after his conversion. I mean, Paul was
not a man that was a stutterer. He was a man that knew what he
was talking about, but he said, when I came to you, I didn't
come with excellency speech of wisdom declaring unto you the
testimony of God. His ability concerning excellency
of speech or setting forth of the world's wisdom, you know,
was not the way that the Apostle Paul declared unto them the testimony
of God. Not the testimony about God,
but what God had said. That's what he was saying. God's
testimony. Who hath believed our report? He said, when I came to you,
I told you, not trying to impress you with my ability, I told you
what God had set forth. And here's the wonder. When we
come together and we hear the gospel, this is what God Almighty
has set forth. He has set forth the truth of
God's everlasting covenant of grace. And without trying to
make anything complicated, trying to set forth the glory, of this
everlasting covenant. God Almighty, the Father, the
Son, the Father that chose a people, gave them to the Son. The Son
who in agreement to the everlasting covenant said, I will stand as
their surety. I will betroth them to myself. I will stand and answer for them
every demand of the law, every act of obedience that is required
of them, I will be their surety. And the Spirit of God from everlasting
agreed to blow as the wind And then under the preaching
of the gospel, this is what God has been pleased to bless, the
preaching of the gospel, of Almighty God's will and purpose to show
mercy. And the Spirit of God will take
that message, and when it pleases Him, He will absolutely come
to the vessels of God's mercy, and He will give them a new heart.
And I'll tell you what will happen. It will be just like Lydia. She was listening to the things
that Paul was saying. She was out there by the riverside,
a bunch of women out there, they were having a prayer meeting.
And Lydia said before she was converted, she worshipped God
in the way she understood Him to be. And Paul was preaching. And Almighty God moved upon that
woman in power, and the Spirit of the Lord says, and the Lord
opened her heart. And she attended to the words
that were spoken of Paul. She believed God. That's how
God saves sinners. Under the preaching of the gospel,
he calls them out of darkness. So, what Paul told them, he said,
he didn't come before them presenting himself as one with great rhetorical
skills, ability of human reasoning, and one that announced and preached
and declared, you know, the things that, you know, would set and
puff himself up. But he said, I've come to just
tell you what God has to say. This is the power of God. Not my ability. I can't say it
in a way that will make you believe. I cannot do that. I told you
about me reading a passage of scripture to a fellow in Louisiana
one time. And I thought, I'm going to read
this passage of scripture and there's no way in the world,
you know what I'm going to turn to, 2 Thessalonians 2. 13, I thought, I'm going to read
this to you, Larry, and you're going to understand it. You're
going to believe this. We're bound to give thanks all the
way to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because
God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification
of the Spirit, the Spirit setting you apart, and belief of the
truth. God set you apart for Himself.
And God's going to give you a new heart. God chose you to salvation
and he's going to save you. And he said, I don't, I don't,
I don't believe that. Almighty God blesses his word. He doesn't bless men trying to
impress other men. Preach the Word. That's what
Paul told Timothy. Timothy, preach the Word. Preach the Word. Verse 2, For
I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. Paul said, by the grace of God,
I have determined not to know, now here's what to know means,
to not turn my eyes toward or pay attention to anything else. Someone might come, and I've
had this happen often, and they will want to start talking about
something religious. And they'll want to get on an
issue, and this is what I'll tell them. Now listen, what you're
wanting to debate or talk about is not the issue. That's not
the issue. And it doesn't really matter
if we come to some semblance of an agreement or a disagreement. It's still not the issue. This
is the only issue. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. What do you mean? Jesus Christ, the Savior, Messiah,
and Him crucified entails everything that Almighty God has ever purposed
in the salvation of His elect. God in human flesh, the God-man
mediator, came into this world For one reason, to seek and to
save His people. Seek and to save that which is
lost. Call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from
their sins. By the grace of God, this was
Paul's resolution. To preach, declare nothing else,
but Jesus Christ and Him finishing the work. Him paying the debt,
Him putting away the sins of His people. That is the message
of every needy sinner. That's the message that they
need to see, that they need to see of their impotency, their
helplessness. That carnal heart with which
they were born, God Almighty is going to have to just give
that man a new heart. The carnal heart will never believe. I must hear Him. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The gospel. That was the message
from heaven. Whenever the Lord Jesus came
into this world, He was born of a virgin. The angels came,
and this is what it says, Luke 2, 9 and 11, And lo, the angel
of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round
about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto
them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day
In the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. This
is the message from heaven. The Savior has come. This gospel
was the message that the Lord preached. Matthew 4.23, and Jesus
went about Galilee teaching in the synagogues and preaching
the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of sicknesses
and all manner of disease among the people. I think to myself,
this is what the Lord preached. Are we going to try to improve
on that? This is the message that the Lord commissioned His
disciples to preach. Mark 16.15, He said unto them,
Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
The Lord is going to save His own. Sometimes I think we know
that God has an elect. We know that. We know that Almighty
God is going to save His people. But there's times that I think
that we feel that if we're not careful, We're going to say something
and we're going to, you know, make it appear as though that
somebody's, you know, gotten saved that wasn't one of God's
elect. Let me say this right now. There's not a person in
this room that doesn't know what I believe about God's sovereignty.
That Almighty God has a people and Christ died for His people.
That's who He died for. The Spirit of God is going to
call out the elect only. But listen, let me tell you something.
Whosoever will. Let Him come. Let Him come. If He wills, it's because God
gave Him a new heart. God made Him willing in the day
of His power. But I'm going to tell you something.
I don't know who the Lord's sheep are. And so I go into all the
world and we preach the gospel to every man. There is a Many,
many things, obviously, that we could say concerning the Lord. But this is the only message
that God is going to preach, to bless, to the salvation. Paul
said in Romans 1.15, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach
the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed
of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, also to the Greek.
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith. For it is written, the just shall live by faith. Everything else that is preached
except Jesus Christ and Him crucified, which is this, salvation by grace,
through faith in Christ, apart from any work on man's part,
anything else that is preached is going to be men doing and
being what Job told his so-called friends they were. Here's what
Job... You know, Job had three friends,
and buddy, they gave him some of the worst advice you ever
heard in your life. This is what Job had to say. In Job 16.2,
he said, "...miserable or troublesome comforters are ye all." 13.4 he said, but ye are forgers of
lies. Ye are all physicians of no value. All men that declare anything
other than salvation by grace apart from any works on man's
part. Anybody that preaches anything
other than free and sovereign grace, the Spirit of God moved
on Job to say, you're forgers of lies. You're all physicians
of no value. You're not helping anybody. Paul said in verse 3, And I was
with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. The scripture
records that the Apostle Paul did have an infirmity in his
body. It's pretty apparent. Listen
to this, 2 Corinthians 10. For his letters, say they, are
weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence weak and his
speech contemptible. This is what a lot of people
were saying about the Apostle Paul. He says his letters are
energetic and powerful, but his personal appearance is feeble,
sickly. I was reading a little bit of
a history on the Apostle Paul just from accounts, I guess,
that was given. It said that Paul was probably
four foot ten, something like that, four foot eleven. He was
under five feet. Had a very, very large nose, probably stooped
over there. His appearance was not like what
we would think. I think back when they did the
movie, The Ten Commandments, and Moses was played by Charlton
Heston. That's how we think all of the
people were. And the scripture says concerning
the Lord, there was no beauty in Him. There was nothing about
Him that we would desire. Nothing. Paul says, I was with
you in weakness and fear and trembling. Even Paul himself
said concerning himself, he said this, you know, Galatians 4,
13-14, he says, You know how through infirmity of the flesh
I preached the gospel unto you at the first in my temptation, which was in my flesh. And you
despised me not, nor rejected, but received me as an angel of
God, even as Christ Jesus." Here's what Paul was saying. He said,
through the infirmity in my flesh, he said, I preach the gospel
unto you in my temptation. And I looked that up to find
out what was he saying. I preached to you in my temptation. He was talking about a bodily
infirmity. I don't know if this was what
he was talking about when he said, I besought the Lord thrice.
to remove this thorn in the flesh. I don't know. Maybe that's what
it was. The Spirit of God was not pleased to tell us what it
was, so we don't know. But whatever it was, it appears
as though Paul had it. But he said, in my temptation,
that is, concerning this bodily infirmity that he had, in my
trial, or that enticement in me, whatever that infirmity was,
that enticement to sin, that is, to tempt him to doubt the
Lord's promise that I'll never leave you and I'll never forsake
you. He said that bodily infirmity, you know how we get sick and
immediately we just, you know, we want help and we want it fixed
and we want it now. And we're going to go. We're
going to go to a doctor. And it just, when we have an infirmity, Paul
said it was a temptation. It was that which tempted me
to not believe God, to not trust the Lord in the midst of that
temptation. But though I know that according
to the Scriptures, Paul was physically weak, the weakness that he speaks
of here is not bodily weakness. But what it was, was the consciousness
of his own feebleness and his insufficiency, putting no confidence
in himself. Let me ask you, you that believe,
don't you feel that? I mean, think of the weakness. We were singing that song. Bless
the Lord, O my soul, all that is within me. Bless His holy
name. And while we were singing that song, I thought to myself,
Lord, I want to do this. And how I see myself so frail,
so weak, so unable. Lord, forgive me. Lord, I'm singing
these words and I can't even... seem to enter in. I want to. I want to. I was with you in
weakness and fear and much trembling. To one that has called out one
of his own, to the Lord himself who's called out one of his own,
Those people then realize the weightiness and the older we
get, the more we realize we're getting closer to that time. I mean, I don't know when any
of us are going to die. Three score and 10, that's 70. Some of us are almost there.
Some of us just passed it. Some of us, you know, it might
seem like a long time, but I tell you what, it doesn't take long
to get here. But the Scripture sets forth that Paul realized
something of his weakness and his fear and reverence before
God. He said that he felt in himself
so incapable. so unworthy because of the weightiness
of the calling. Listen to this, 2 Corinthians
2.16, to the one we're the saver of death unto death, to the other
the saver of life unto life. Who is sufficient for these things?
You know what he said? He said, we're preaching the
gospel, and some hear it, and to some the message is death,
They don't believe it. It's death to them. I don't believe
that. I don't believe that God chose
the people. I don't believe that God elected. I don't believe
that Lord Jesus Christ died only for the elect. I don't believe
that. I believe I got to do something, be saved. I believe it's up to
me. I believe I make the final choice.
So the message you're preaching is death. But it's only unto
death to you that don't believe. It's death unto death. And to
others, it's life unto eternal life. A believer hears the gospel
and he realizes this is the truth. This is real. The Spirit of God
blesses it to his heart and he says, that's my hope right there.
That's what I believe right there. So Paul was deeply concerned
preaching the truth of the gospel. It wasn't a frivolous thing with
him. It was weighty, it was weighty. I, in a few days, it's Wednesday,
Saturday morning, I'm scheduled to preach at the conference there
at Don's. And it just tears me all to pieces
on what am I going to preach. I think I know, but I've already
looked at something Carl already and changed my mind three or
four times. I don't know. And knowing, knowing, the Lord's
promised, I'm not going to leave you, I'm not going to forsake
you. Up until this moment right here, He's never forsaken us
one time. But do you know it does not eliminate
the feeling of weakness, frailty, and fear? Paul said in the last two verses
for tonight, in my speech, in my preaching, was not with enticing
words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and
of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men,
but in the power of God. Paul said concerning my speech
and my preaching, now you know you're thinking, okay, speech
and preaching, aren't those the same thing? Well, obviously they
were different. because he used two different
words here. What he's saying is this. His speech, that is
the thought or the matter of what I was saying. My speech
means what I'm talking about. And he said in his preaching
was the actual proclamation of what he was talking about. He
said, so I've got a subject here. This is my speech. And my preaching
is the setting forth. So my, he said, my speech and
my preaching was not with enticing words. Persuadableness is what he's
talking about. This is what he's saying. Enticing
words are words by which somebody is trying to come to you and
influence you. Or to move your passion, the
passion of your mind, by arguments that have no heavenly or divine
foundation. Somebody trying to come and convince
you of something that you're not believing. Enticing words,
now look at it. He said, my speech and my preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom. So whatever somebody
is saying, these enticing words of man's wisdom, it's not the
gospel, it's not the truth. But he said, the way I came in
my speech and my preaching was in demonstration of the Spirit
and of power. Here's what he means. He said,
I preached that which the Spirit of God had taught me. Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. And he said, I waited on the
Lord to do what only the Lord can do. Save a sinner. Trying to convince something
to someone using man's wisdom is not the way. We preach Christ. Those that the Lord is pleased
to call out of spiritual darkness, He's going to call them. That,
that, that's the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. You
try to convince somebody of something that they don't believe. They
don't believe you. But if the Spirit of God gives
a man or woman a new heart, they'll believe God. When God makes them
willing in the day of God's power, that's the demonstration of the
Spirit and power. And the reason Paul preached
that way, he said that your faith should not stand or be in the
wisdom of men, but in the power of God. God's people are convinced
that God taught them. If I can talk you into something,
somebody else can talk you out of it. But if God teaches you
something, nobody can talk you out of it. If faith be found
in that which cannot be backed up, if your faith is found in
something that you can't back up with the Word of God, then
that's the faith and the wisdom of men. And that human wisdom
is going to end up in eternal damnation, I can tell you right
now. The faith of God's elect The faith of God's elect is foreign
to the natural man. Scripture says, all men have
not faith. Faith must be given. It's a gift
of God. Philippians 1.29, for unto you
it's given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but
also to suffer for His sake. The foundation of truth is the
Holy Scriptures. And where the power of God is
beheld, you're going to find a regenerated sinner agreeing
with God as God Almighty has revealed Himself to be in these
scriptures to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray that
God bless these words to our heart. For Christ's sake, Amen.