Morning. Alright, turn to 1 Corinthians
2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and
we'll be looking at most of the verses in this chapter 1 through
16. Now this passage, we're here because this passage was laid
on my heart all last week. I thought I might have opportunity
to preach from it, but I didn't, so it's still weighing on my
heart, and so I want to preach the gospel to you this morning
from this passage in 1 Corinthians 2. And what we'll see is the
Gospel, that all of us are sinners. We all need the grace of God. And He's shown us grace in His
Son, Jesus Christ. That's the salvation that God
has provided, and we see that in the Scripture. And what we
also see is that this understanding, this Gospel understanding, whereby
we receive what God has done for us in Christ, is revealed
to us through faith by His Spirit. His Spirit makes this known to
us. And so the title this morning
is, Revealing the Testimony of God. Revealing the Testimony
of God. Because God has a testimony,
and it's got to be revealed to us, for us to hear it, to hear
what He says. And so we'll have three divisions.
First we'll see the testimony of God, and then we'll look briefly
at the messenger of God, and then we'll see the revelation
of God. Alright, so let's read verse
1, 1 Corinthians 2 verse 1. Paul says, and I, brethren, when
I came to you." So he's met these brethren and he came to them
and preached to them. And he said, when I came, I came
not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto
you the testimony of God. And that phrase jumped out at
me, the testimony of God. What is the testimony of God? Because that, this testimony
of God, is all the difference between what we hear in man-made
religion. Because religion turns men and
women to themselves. What they need to fix, what they
need to correct, what we need to do better, what we need to
stop doing and start doing, that's what religion does. It's always
looking to and boasting of the worth of man. the works of man,
the will of man. It's always appealing to something
there, something in man whereby religion gives you some assurance
that you must be a child of God. But not God. God turns you to
his salvation. God turns us away from self and
to the salvation he's provided his son and so that what we find
unlike the religion of man is that our God is sufficient and
he must be our salvation and he's able to do this and he saves
whom he will and when he will. He brings that salvation home
to the hearts of his people. He gives them a new heart. So
as Paul said when he was writing back to the Corinthians again
in the second letter, 3-5, he said, but our sufficiency. is
of God. It's of God. God's the one that
saves us. God's the one that's going to
deliver us from the bondage of sin, and hell, and death, and
every enemy. God delivers us. Our sufficiency
is of God. Alright? So then, what is the
testimony of God? What is the testimony of God?
What does God say about us? What does God say concerning
us? Well, if you look at the second verse in 1 Corinthians
2.2, you find that the testimony of God is always going to lead
us to Jesus Christ. You're always going to be led
to Jesus Christ. Look at verse 2. For I determined
not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. So the testimony of God is to
bring us to Christ. When God has his word declared,
when God has a messenger and he sends him there to preach,
he's going to preach and declare Jesus Christ. He's going to bring
us to Christ, because if man is to have any hope at all of
salvation, it's got to be provided for him, and it's provided for
him in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, in this declaration, In
this testimony of God, God makes known to us why we're being brought
to Christ. He makes known to us that we,
ourselves, are sinners. We're the ones who are weak and
foolish and have got ourselves into this mix. We're the ones
that have brought death upon ourselves. We're the ones who
have bound ourselves and tied ourselves up in the bondage of
iniquity and sin and death. And we come forth from the seed
of Adam, and so we have no other understanding. We have no other
way. We have no other light, but that light which is nothing
but the darkness of natural man, and what he thinks is right,
and what he can do. Now this foolishness, this weakness
in man, is shown to us actually in chapter one. In chapter one. And we'll just look at a few
verses, so that if we're to understand the condition of man, that he
lies in darkness, that he's utterly foolish, that he doesn't know
how to save himself or how to please God. God's going to show
us, he's going to make this known to us, our foolishness, our folly,
our iniquity and darkness and the depths of our depravity.
Now man, man, he invents things, he comes up with
ways that whereby he feels good. And so man convinces himself
that my salvation is in the things that I do. It's in the things
that I've done, right? That's what man is constantly
doing. Man is always going to some work, always going to some
doctrine, always going to some place to worship God and thinks
that it's in those things that God is pleased with us. It's
in those things that we find atonement, right? Something to
wash away our sins or to make up for our guilt and our foolishness,
right? So that's what man thinks. And
man thinks, well, I'm a sinner today and I'm bad today and I'm
cut off from God today, but I'm going to turn things around.
I'm going to start doing this and start doing that. and then
I'm going to change God's mind about me and have God be happy
with me now finally by something I've done. And that's in us all. We all have that heart. We all
have that Arminian heart thinking that there's something I do that
turns God from being angry with me to now being satisfied and
pleased with me and at ease and at peace with me in my works. But the reality is Man is wrong. Man is terribly wrong. Man, that's
not how we're saved. If that's how we were saved,
then it really wouldn't matter what religion or what we believed
as long as we were just doing our best and trying to be moral
and more religious. churches, and that's what religion
teaches you. Just be religious. Just do what we say, be religious,
put on this religious show, and God will be pleased with you.
But the reality is it's God who must intervene. It's God who
must turn us from our path of death and our path of darkness.
It's God who must take us from that and put us on the path of
His Son, Jesus Christ. All right? Isaiah 49 Verse 9
declares that we're nothing but sinners, bound up in a prison,
in darkness, cut off from the things of God, and it's Christ
and Christ alone who is appointed of God, who comes to the prison
house, opens the gate, and says, sinner, come forth, show yourself,
come into the light. So it's all of Christ, not because
we've got ourselves out of the prison, but because we are in
the prison and he's the one who calls us out and draws us forth
from the bondage of our iniquity. So we see man's depravity even
among these believers. in Corinth. We see that we're
sinners, we're just sinners in need of His grace. And it says
in verse 11, 1 Corinthians 1 verse 11, He said, For it hath been
declared unto me of you, my brethren. I'm so thankful He calls them
brethren. It's been declared to me of you, my brethren, by
them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions
among you. There's contentions, there's
divisions, and he asks, is Christ divided? So that's in our hearts,
that warring and that divisiveness and those contentions, and we
get caught up in the things of man and what one person thinks
as opposed to another. And Paul says, nope, that's not
salvation. And so we see, well, yeah, we're
still sinners, we're still in the flesh in need of His grace.
And then we learn in chapter 1, verse 18, that actually the
natural man, left to himself without the Spirit of God, thinks
that the salvation God has provided in His Son, in the cross, that's
foolishness. That's foolishness. Look at verse
18. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish
foolishness. but unto us which are saved."
It's the power of God. And so we begin to hear what
Paul is showing to us and laying out to us is that this salvation
is not the power of man, but it's the power of God. so that
Christ did the saving, Christ accomplished our redemption and
salvation, and it's by the power of God that makes it known to
us, whereby we hear and believe and receive what he's done for
us. And he repeats this same truth
again, this power of God. Look at verse 23 and 24. He says,
but we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block
and unto the Greeks foolishness. Again, he's shown, just like
he's been shown us in Romans, he's saying the same thing to
them. He's laying the same foundation out to the Corinthians. He's
shown it doesn't matter whether you're religious like the Jews,
doesn't matter whether you're wise in the things of man like
the philosophers of the Greeks and the Gentiles, doesn't matter
where you come from, every one of us is a sinner. Every one
of us is guilty before holy God. All right, verse 24, but unto
them which are called, or unto them which are thee called, Both
Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of
God. And so, what the Lord does for
us in this Gospel, in making these truths known to us, and
in declaring this over and over and over again through the preaching
of the Gospel, through the declaration of the testimony of God, it's
to continually strip us, because we go back out there and we just
build up all this fleshly works, But the Lord is stripping us
down to see it's not because I'm worth it. I haven't earned
God's favor. I'm not worth His effort or His
time. There's nothing lovely in me
or desirable in me that God should lay down His own Son to save
me. It's not by my works on anything
I've done or am doing or trying to do. Nothing. apart from me
and it's not by my will. Like I grew up here in my whole
life that it's my choice and I've got to will to believe on
Christ before he'll do anything for me. It's not at all that.
It's entirely by the grace and the mercy of God. And so He does
this stripping to bring us to what we see in verse 29, 1 Corinthians
1 29, that no flesh should glory in His presence. And that's what
God is bringing us to do, to have nothing to boast in of ourselves,
to not trust in ourselves, to not have any confidence in this
flesh. give up and to say, Lord, I don't know what to do with
him. My best isn't doing it. It's
not cutting it. I'm not pleasing you in the things
that I do. So no flesh, so to leave us broken
before God. And we're told in Romans 9, 16,
Romans 9, 16, so then it's not of him that willeth. Take your
free will and throw that garbage out because we don't have a free
will. We're bound up in prison, in death, and in darkness. So
it's not of him that willeth, thankfully, because our will
would never choose Christ. And it's not of him that runneth.
It's not by your works and what you're out there doing. and not
doing and serving and what you're trying to do to please God. It's
not of him that runneth, but it's of God that showeth mercy. Turn over to John 5. John 5. We looked at this, but we'll
look at a couple, we saw this this morning, but we'll look
at a couple other verses as well. In John 5, verse 40, Christ told
them, speaking of the will of man, here's the will of man on
display for us all to see. Well, what will man do when he's
face to face with Jesus Christ in the flesh? What would I do? Well, he shows it to us, exactly
what we do. As religious as we all are in
our upbringing and everything that we've done growing up and
what we've learned and heard, this is what we do, just like
the Jews here. He said, John 5, 40, and ye will
not come to me that ye might have life. That's the free will
of man, which isn't free, it's just bound. We won't come to
Christ that we might have life, because we think we've already
found it in the things that we're doing or not doing. But the testimony
of God says in John 5, 23 and 24, it's, here's what God says
we should do. All men should honor the Son
even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son
honoreth not the Father which hath sent him. And verily, verily,
he says, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth
on him that sent me, that one has everlasting life, and shall
not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. Okay then. That's Him that hears
and Him that believes. So what's the problem? Can I
do that? Can I hear God and can I just
believe Him then? Is this what I have to do now?
Is that how I'm going to earn my salvation? No, Christ tells
us. Turn over to John 3. John 3,
because we'll look at it there. John 3, 19. Christ tells us This is the condemnation, here's
the problem of man, that light is coming to the world. Jesus
Christ is that light. He's coming to the world and
men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were
evil. For everyone that doeth evil
hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds
should be reproved. So the religious man, the natural
man and woman, they don't come to the light of Christ. They
don't hear and they don't believe and they don't want to hear and
they don't want to believe because they're happy and content in
their own religious service and what they're doing because they
feel good. They figured it out and made
it good enough so that they can at least get some sleep at night
and not worry about it until the day they're on their deathbed
and then they might get afraid. then it may be too late. All
right, but verse 21, verse 21, but he that doeth truth cometh
to the light that his deeds may be made manifest that they are
wrought in God. So you that hear and that do
believe, you that honor the Son, you that reverence the Son, have
nothing to boast in because that hearing and that believing isn't
of the product and the work of your flesh. It was wrought in
you by the Spirit of God. It's His work in you. It's all
his works, so we boast in and praise God. We don't boast in
our works. Alright? And that's why it says
there in John 3, look up at verse 5, this is why Christ said to
Nicodemus, and he says it to us here now today, verily, verily,
I say unto you, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit,
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. can't even see it, let
alone enter it, except ye be born again. And he tells us why,
because that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that
which is born of the spirit is spirit. So this flesh is never
going to do something spiritual. and that which is spiritual will
never do that which is flesh. If it's of Christ, it's righteous
and holy before God. If it's of the flesh, it's just
wicked and it just produces death and brings forth that which is
smelly and stinky before God and he's not pleased with it.
Alright, so the testimony of God declares to us that all of
us are sinners. That's the testimony of God.
We're all sinners. We all are guilty of sin, and
we're all condemned before God. And the testimony of God is that
we must be born again. And it's God who makes us born
again. So it's not according to our works. It's not according
to our worth. It's not according to our will.
God must do the saving, and God does it. So those who hear God's
testimony, they do the will of God. by the power of God working
in them, not this flesh. It ain't this flesh doing it.
And the power of God is to make us believe, to make us to hear
by giving us the ear of faith, and He reveals His testimony,
He reveals Christ to the faith which He has given. So we see
how it's all the Lord. So salvation, we see that salvation
is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe on Him. That's to honor
Him. And that honors the Father. And
the Father is pleased with that. And that's what He works in His
children. That's what He works in them.
Alright? So this brings us to the next point. which will be
a little more brief, but it's the messenger of God. So, we
saw how God isn't flattering to the sinner. God isn't flattering
to the hearer. Well, in a like manner, He's
not flattering to the messenger either. There's nothing special
or better about me than you. We're all sinners. We're all
sinners and guilty and in need of God's grace. And so, look
at what Paul says concerning himself here back in 1 Corinthians
2. We'll start in verse 1 again.
He said, And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with
excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony
of God. Look at verse 3. And I was with
you in weakness, and in fear and in much trembling, and my
speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's
wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that
your faith, your believing should not stand in the wisdom of men,
but in the power of God." So there we see again, the Lord
is reminding us, He's showing us, He's telling us, it's by
my power. You that really believe, my son,
and you that have no confidence in the flesh and are resting
in Christ and His work, that's the power of God, not your flesh,
not my flesh. It's not our flesh that makes
us believe, it's not the flesh that helps me in preaching. It's in spite of these things
that God reveals this to the heart and makes known what he's
done for us in Christ. And so salvation isn't in the
works of the flesh because God isn't pleased with the works
of the flesh. He really is no respecter of
persons. We've got nothing to boast in
before one another. God's no respecter of persons. And so salvation, it's not in
the church that we go to, it's not in the denomination, it's
not in our doctrine, it's not in our works and our doing. It's
not, you know, God doesn't use us because of something that
we've done or something that we're avoiding. It certainly
isn't from our lineage, as the Jews taught, and it's not because
we're moral people. And yet, you see how the mind
drifts towards that and believes that. What God does reveal to
us and what He does show us is that salvation is in Christ and
in Christ alone. We've got to know Him. We've
got to know him personally. that He really is our Lord and
our Savior. Now, He'll teach us the truth
of that. We're going to know who this
Christ is. But knowing doctrine and understanding
things like election and His limited atonement, that is dying
just for a specific people and how God saves, just knowing about
those things, that isn't salvation. That doesn't teach us, or rather
that doesn't give us salvation or earn for us any right with
God. The only right that we have before
God is what Christ has earned for us and done for us. And He'll
make that known to us through teaching and through doctrine,
through His gospel and revealing His testimony so that we'll know,
oh, OK, it's not my will. It's not my choice. I didn't
accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I believe He is the
Lord and Savior and that He died for me because God has revealed
it to me. Show me I'm a sinner. Show me
I'm unable to believe. Show me that I can't do anything
except He do it in me and work this in me. So that when I stand
before men and declare what Christ has done for me, I'm not talking
about what I've done for Christ or what I've done for Jesus.
I'm talking about what Jesus Christ has done for me. in spite
of the fact that I don't deserve it. So it's a difference between
the flesh and what the Spirit of God does in us. So through
Paul's weakness and through the foolishness that we saw here
laid out for us in chapters 1 and 2, God's showing us that it doesn't
matter who he sends. He can send anyone. And it doesn't
matter to whom he sends them. It just matters when it's the
time of love. determined by God to have mercy
on sinners. He's able to work that salvation. He's able to turn the heart and
to give you a new heart. He's able to create in you the
new man as it pleases Him, whereby in the new man you hear of this
faith and you believe. It's all the work of God. It's
all His power. And so, we're all ready. You that are His people, whether
you believe Him now, today, or not, you that are redeemed sinners,
you're redeemed because Christ already redeemed you. You already
shed His blood for His people. And in the time of love, when
God has determined and purposed it, you will hear and you will
believe. And you'll rest in Him. You'll
trust His work. Though your faith be as small
as a mustard seed, as tiny as a little mustard seed, nothing
to boast in, but you will believe Him, and you won't trust your
works. You'll be trusting the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
because, and I'm thankful for this, God never looks to the
sinner. He doesn't look to you for salvation. He's looking to His Son. And
everything you do, any good work that you do, is all because of
Christ. It was all brought in you by
Christ because of the faithful work of Jesus Christ. We were
yet enemies in darkness and not even a thought in Our parents all the way back
then, we were nothing in ourselves, but we were in the mind and the
thoughts of God, and so Christ did that for us. So God is able
to teach sinners, and he's able to use the weakest of means.
It doesn't matter to him because it all glorifies him. As weak
and foolish and stumbling as we are, God is pleased to save
weak, poor, wretched, humble sinners. so that we know more
clearly, more precisely that it really is the grace of God
that saves me, in spite of me. Alright? Every breath we take,
we don't even deserve it. Every step that we take in health,
and as we go through the day, it's undeserved by us, right?
And so the Lord shows us this In the scriptures, right, just
for a few of them, we saw, we see how the Lord used Gideon,
right, to defeat the Midians, who were trying, who had the
rule over Israel. He defeated the Midians with just 300 men.
He sent everybody else home so that it was very clear and apparent
that God did this. It's the power of God. He took
that false prophet Balaam and he rebuked him with an ass, right? A donkey. Animals don't speak,
but he used a donkey to speak to that false prophet and rebuke
him and bring him to shame, right? And we know of Samson who was
a strong man, a mighty man, but he slew 1,000 people, 1,000 men
with the jawbone of an ass. And you say, well, that sounds
silly. How can somebody do that? Well, it's meant to sound silly
to show us that God is able to do that which is impossible with
man. Not to mention, it's a picture
of what you see here today, that God just takes the jawbone of
an ass. It doesn't matter, we're just
weak sinners, and God is able to take that testimony and bring
it home to your hearts. He's able to save his people
and deliver them from the bondage of their prison to know that
Christ is salvation and they believe him. Right? Because that, Christ said, that
which is highly esteemed among men, that which we honor and
glory in and think this is amazing, If we had a beautiful building,
stone with statues and tapestries and ornate, we'd be happy to
invite people to come here. But God has you inviting people
to this place all to see the power of God and God is able
to bring his people here because that which is highly esteemed
among men is abomination with God. So that's the testimony
of God. And that brings us to our final
point, the revelation of God, where we see that the weakness
of man and men is that we hear, in spite of that, it's the work
and the power of God. So how? How is this the power
of God? How does God save his people
then? I alluded to it earlier, but
in spite of us, before we knew anything, before we did anything,
before we earned any favor with God, having done neither good
nor evil, we weren't even born or around, not even conceived
in our mother's womb, Christ came. Christ was sent of God. God the Father gave His Son. God the Father spared not His
Son. by sending him to the cross,
that perfect man, that holy man, that man who fulfilled all the
righteousness of God and kept the law of God perfectly in the
flesh, just like you and me, but he was without sin, and he
worked righteousness, and he who had nothing to be ashamed
of before God, willingly went up to the cross on behalf of
his people as their substitute, as their surety, to take that
debt of righteousness that we owe, and he paid that off in
full by the debt of himself. He bore his people before the
Father, he hid them in himself, and the wrath of God was poured
out upon Jesus Christ as an ark, and we were hidden inside that
ark. Though we deserve that wrath, Christ took the wrath of God,
and it was poured out on Him. And Christ, crying out to the
Father, obtained eternal redemption and righteousness forever for
His people, so that even now we are the righteousness of God
in Christ. His blood was shed that you would
not shed your blood under the judgment and wrath of God. but
that when you die, you have nothing to fear, you that trust Christ,
because your sin has been put away, and you stand faultless
before the throne of God, thanks to Christ. You'll stand before
him in the robe of righteousness, before that one who gave you
that righteousness, and he'll receive you and say, well done,
thou good and faithful servant. Enter into thy rest. And we'll
say, Lord, it was all you. You did all this work. You obtained
this and you earned this favor for me with God. You're my very
righteousness. And they'll say, it's all yours.
I did it for you. I love you. Come into your home. Enter into your rest. And we'll
rejoice and be glad. in him forevermore. So he is
our righteousness. Right? And so Paul, when he was
talking to the Romans, again we're seeing the similarity here,
but go back to Romans 1, 1 16 and 17. I know I've shown you
this a lot, but it really is sweet. And Paul is telling the
Romans what he would later tell the Corinthians, right? Because
Romans seems to have been written before Corinth, the letter to
the Corinthians. He was telling them, and actually
I think in verse 15 he said, I'm ready. I am ready to preach
the gospel to you that are in Rome also. And he said, just
as he's saying to the Corinthians, for I am not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ. For it is the power of God unto
salvation to everyone that believeth to the Jew first and also to
the Greek. For therein is the righteousness
of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, that
just shall live by faith." And so what we're seeing there over
and over again reaffirmed to you that this is revealed to
us by the Spirit of God. He's the one that gives you faith,
He's the one that reveals this faith to you. He reveals the
faithfulness of Christ to you. And think about it, when Paul
says it's the hearing of faith, right? So God gives us faith,
and God causes us to hear faith, that is to hear the faithfulness
of Christ, See and behold the faithful work of Christ and what
He's done for us, and by faith we believe that He did this work
and that He did this work for me, for me. He did it to put
away my sin. You that believe Him, you that
hear, believe, believe, rest in it. He's revealing it to you. He's giving that to you by His
power. And so He reveals that light
and life in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ. Now look back there
in 1 Corinthians 2. 1 Corinthians 2. And that's what Paul is showing.
Pick up in verse 7. This is exactly what Paul is
saying here in 1 Corinthians 2. He says, verse 7, but we speak
the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which
God ordained before the world unto our glory." See, all the
works were done, God already determined. He chose a people,
He put that people in Christ, and He sent Christ who came and
laid down His life to put away the sins of His people forever.
He redeemed them and obtained for them eternal redemption,
right? And this was all in the mind
of God. It was all done. The works were finished before
the foundation of the world, but it's a mystery to natural
man. Natural man doesn't understand
it. Natural man doesn't receive it, so those that do understand
it, and those that do receive it, do so by the power of God,
by God the Spirit revealing it to you and giving it to you,
all right? Verse 8, which none of the princes of this world
knew, for had they known it, they would not have crucified
the Lord of glory. But as it is written, I have
not seen. nor he or her neither have entered
into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them
that love him." Right? Man's wisdom doesn't comprehend
or understand the blessings that God has for his people in the
Lord Jesus Christ. So, we don't understand it until
God makes us born again, giving us his Spirit, making us alive
unto spiritual things to understand and to know what God has freely
given to us in his Son, Jesus Christ. Look at verse 10, but
God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit, for the spirit
searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God. And so Paul
is saying just that. We need a new birth. We need
to be born again because it's by the Spirit that we have life,
it's by the Spirit that we receive life and understand it and know
what God's accomplished for us in His Son Christ. Skip down
to verse 12. Now, is what he says, now we
have received, not the Spirit of the world, not that Spirit
of Antichrist that boasts in its own works and what it's doing
for for God and in religion, right, but hates God, but we've
received the spirit which is of God that we might know the
things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, right? If you believe this, if God has
shown you that this is the truth, This will be your testimony too.
You'll speak and declare the testimony of God. You won't speak
according to man's religion and what man says is salvation. You'll
speak according to what God shows us and declares to us is salvation. Not in the words which man's
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing
spiritual things with spiritual. But a natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God. They'll hear this gospel and
say, no, it can't be. God isn't looking at, he's got
to be looking at our works. It's got to have something to
do with something that man does, something that he says or practices
or does or keeps. It's got to be somehow tied to
my works. That's foolishness. What Christ
has done just to preach grace and just to speak of Christ and
declare what Christ has done and the glory of God in Christ,
that's foolishness. I can't believe that. I can't
receive it. That's the natural man. That's what man thinks when
they hear the gospel. Four, they are foolishness unto
him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually
discerned. And so that's why we must be
born again. We must be made alive to spiritual
things which can only come by the Spirit giving you life because
of the faithful work of Christ which He's accomplished. All
those gifts, all those spiritual blessings are yours in the Lord
Jesus Christ. He's obtained that eternal redemption
for you. And so, Paul is speaking of the
revelation of the testimony of God. that every one of us is
sinners, but that God has provided eternal redemption and salvation
in his Son, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, sent to take away
the sin of the world, that is, His people throughout the world,
Jew and Gentile, doesn't matter, whoever God chose, that's who
Christ shed His blood for. And they shall hear and be brought
in under the gospel, under the blood and righteousness of Christ
and made righteous. And we shall know what God has
done for us, because He doesn't leave us in darkness. He gives
His Spirit, sends that gospel, and by the Spirit we hear and
we believe and receive what God has done for us in his son Jesus
Christ. Alright, so this is the gospel
and it declares God's salvation in Christ, apart from my works
and your works. And Paul would return to this
I speak of this a lot, you know, this is the salvation. I don't
know what else to say to you, but what God has done for us
in Christ. And Paul returned to this same
topic over and over and over again, the salvation of God in
Christ. Look at 2 Corinthians 4, 2 Corinthians 4, and go to
verse 5. And he said, for we, I'll give
you, 2 Corinthians 4-5, for we preach not ourselves. We're not here preaching flesh
to you. We're not here preaching, you
guys need to clean up and do better. And you need to stop
this and start that. That's not, that's not salvation. That's not salvation. but we
preach Christ Jesus the Lord in ourselves, your servants,
for Jesus' sake. We're lifting up Christ. For
God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined
in our hearts. God who created the heaven and
the earth and all things that therein are, you and me included,
he's shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He's revealing
salvation to us in Christ, in the face of Christ. But we have
this treasure, this gospel treasure in earthen vessels, that the
excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. We've got
nothing to boast of. And God shows us our weakness
and our infirmity over and over again. And when we get proud
and puffed up and lifted up in our hearts and our minds and
exalt ourselves over one another, the Lord is able, and He does.
He brings us low because His grace is sufficient, and He shows
us our sin, and He shows us our need of Him again and again,
and He gently, graciously, kindly brings us back to Christ and
feeds us the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
feed upon Him. So brethren, that there is the
testimony of God, which Paul delighted to preach to his hearers,
and I have the delight to preach it to you that this is the testimony
of God. We're all sinners, but thanks
be to God for His unspeakable gift in His Son, Jesus Christ.
He's freely provided to put away our sin and to give us this inheritance
in Him. So whatever troubles you go through
in this life, These are nothing compared to the glory that shall
follow, that is ours even now in the Lord Jesus Christ. So
I pray that the Lord will bless that word to your heart and keep
you in Him, looking to Him. All right. Gracious Lord, we
thank you, Father, for the testimony that you've given, and that by
your Spirit you reveal these things to us, and that by your
Spirit you keep us. walking before you in faith,
not in the flesh, but in the faith which you've given to us
in your Son, Jesus Christ. We thank you, Lord, for this
glorious Word. Keep us ever looking to Christ.
And Lord, when we find ourselves having opportunity to speak to
others, help us, Lord, to just simply plainly glorify the Lord
Jesus Christ. Glorify you that we would honor
the Father by honoring the Son, by proclaiming salvation accomplished
in Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God. Lord, we thank you for
this. Lord, we pray for our brethren.
Lord, that you would heal those that are sick, those that are
weary and faithful, and anxious about many things and troubled
about many things, Lord, that you would have mercy. Lord, remember
that we are but flesh. Remember, Lord, that we have
need continually of your mercy, of your power and your grace,
and that you would be merciful and gracious to us, and that
you would reveal your power in us, turning our hearts from self
and from this flesh and from the pursuits and love of this
world unto that which pleases you in your Son, Jesus Christ,
or that which you've ordained in your Son before the foundation
of the world that we should walk in. We pray this in the name
of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.