Good morning. If you will, turn
with me in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Our text will be verses 1 through
5, and I'd like to go ahead and read that. 1 Corinthians 2 verse
1, Paul writes, For I determined not to know
anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 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 should not stand in
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. For our Bible study
today, I would like for us to consider this subject, true preaching. Now, it goes without saying that
not all preaching is true preaching. Not every preacher, just because
someone says, I'm a preacher, does not mean that they preach
the truth, does not mean that they are sent of God to preach
the gospel, alright? Now, we need to understand this. We need to try what we hear,
okay? There's a verse that says, try
the spirits, whether they be of God. When a man stands and
preaches, and I'm saying this to you right now as I stand here,
try what you hear against the scriptures. Don't, literally,
don't believe me. Believe God. How many preachers
are gonna say that, honestly? Don't believe me. Believe God. Now, we need to know that we're
hearing true preaching because this is too important. There's
no greater danger in this world than to sit under false preaching
and perish, die, go stand before God believing it. We saw this
so clearly last week. In Matthew 7, our Lord said,
Enter ye in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate, and broad
is the way, which leadeth to destruction. And he said, Many
there be which go in thereat. But he said, Because straight
is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life,
eternal life, spiritual life. And he said, Few there be that
find it. This is so important. Now, here
in the first five verses here of 1 Corinthians 2, I see five
things that Paul clearly gives us that distinguish true preaching
from false preaching. And I really pray that the Lord
might bless this to us. I really do. Now look with me
again at verse 1. He said, Now, What he's saying is, I didn't
come to you preaching in a way to impress you. I didn't come
trying to blow you away. Now, Paul also told us in Galatians,
he said, do we seek to please men or God? He said, if I yet
please men, I should not be the servant of Christ. We don't do
this for our own glory. We don't do this to impress each
other. That's not why we do this. And
I'll go ahead and tell you, true preaching, it doesn't impress
us. It doesn't impress us flesh.
It doesn't. And you take any false preaching
out there. I see some on TV sometimes. There are some of these men that
have such a big following. Oh, they're so impressive. They
speak so eloquently. They dress so nice. They talk
so smoothly. We need to beware of such. True preaching does not appeal
to this flesh. It does not. Paul said in 2 Corinthians
3 verse 12, we use great plainness of speech. Why? Because we're not doing this
to be seen of men. We're not. By God's grace, we're
not doing this for our own glory. We're preaching for God's glory.
Paul said, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ. He must get all the glory. He does in salvation, doesn't
he? Well, he ought to in our preaching also. And I'll tell
you this, whenever we sit hearing a man stand and preach, we need
to ask ourselves this question, who gets the glory? It's a very
important question to ask. Now, we need to ask ourselves
that question pertaining to the message based on what was said. Who gets the glory in the message?
But it's also important who gets the glory in how we conduct this
thing. We don't come here and make a
big show, you know. So many churches, it's all about them. It's not
about God. It's not about His Word. It's
not about Christ. It's all about Him. The psalmist
said, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give
glory. I pray that as we stand and preach
that the message and how we deliver it truly gives God all the glory. Look back here at just a few
verses in chapter 1, 1 Corinthians 1 verse 26. It says, Now look
here, verse 27, to confound the wise, and God
hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things
which are mighty, and base things of the world, and things which
are despised hath God chosen." Now in the context, he's talking
about preaching. We'll look at some more of this
later, but look here, verse 28. Hath God chosen yea, and things which
are not, to bring to naught, or nothing, things that are,
that no flesh should glory in his presence? If a preacher stands
up, and he's mighty, he's wise, he's noble, we need to be where
we just need to be. I love this. Many of you, I'm
sure, have heard this, but a dear brother, Scott Richardson, used
to say this about what a preacher is. He said he's a nobody who
tells everybody about somebody, capital S, who can save anybody. We're not mighty, we're not noble,
we're not wise, but he is. And we come preaching him. Look
right here in chapter one, verse 18. He said, for the preaching
of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto
us which are saved, it's the power of God. For it is written,
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing
the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the disputer of this
world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Verse
21, for after that in the wisdom of God, The world, by wisdom,
knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe." I'm here to tell us
any wisdom that we have on our own and the wisdom that religion,
the religion of this world and false preachers, the wisdom they
have is foolishness. It's foolish wisdom. It's not
true wisdom. I'm not going to read it, but
verse 30 right here tells us who wisdom is. It's Christ. And
it tells us right here, in the wisdom of God, none of us by
our wisdom knew God, but it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching. Now notice, it doesn't say foolish
preaching. False preaching is foolish preaching. But he said, by the foolishness
of preaching. Seems foolish, doesn't it, that
God would use a sinful man like me or you to stand, open His
Word, preach the gospel, and that God would use that to save
them He gives faith to believe. Seems foolish, don't it? Paul
said we're fools for Christ's sake, fools to the world, fools
to all these other preachers that have their fame and fortune
and whatnot. I'll gladly be a fool for His
sake, honestly. I pray that our preaching, every
time we gather here, whoever stands up here and opens this
word and preaches it, I pray that it truly might be for God's
glory, honestly. And back in our text here, look
at verse one again. I, brethren, when I came to you, came not
with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you
the testimony of God. You may wonder, what is preaching? Truly, what is preaching? It's
a declaration. That's it. A declaration is a
proclamation. We're proclaiming something.
We're repeating something. We're announcing something. Gabe
mentions this all the time. We're making an announcement.
God has given us a glorious announcement. Our business in standing here
to preach is simply to declare it. Declare it. We're not to
add to it. We're not to take away from it.
We're to declare it as it is. And part of the struggle is when
we're asked to preach, we have to find a message. And we pray,
Lord, give me a message. But the thing is, we're not looking
for our own message. We know what the message is.
We're just looking for a text and an outline. The message doesn't
change. Now notice, notice what the declaration
is. He said at the end of verse one,
he said, declaring unto you the testimony, the testimony of God. Now I thought about this thinking
of false religion. You know, the word testimony
is very popular in the realm of religion. People love to give
their testimonies. And it normally goes something
like this, that, well, I, well, I was here, now I'm here. Let
me tell you how I got here. Let me tell you how I got saved,
what I did, how I'm living for God. That's what the testimony
generally looks like. But I'm here to tell us that
it's a sham, it's a farce. That right there gives us all
the glory, doesn't it? It's I, I, I. Let me tell you
about myself. It's about Him. There's one testimony we need
to hear, and it's the testimony of God. Thus saith the Lord,
what does God have to say? Well, how do we declare His testimony? It's very simple. We declare
God, not man. We get up and we talk about Him.
Not about us. I looked for the words, declare
His, to see some things in the scriptures. I'll read you some.
Not the full verse, just declare His. All right? Declare His glory. Not ours. Declare His name. We've heard it every week now
for who knows how long, but there's one name whereby we must be saved.
And we're to declare His name. We're to declare His righteousness.
There's only one righteousness. If we don't have this righteousness,
we're not going to see the Lord. Our Lord said concerning the
most religious people alive, He said your righteousness must
exceed that. It must be better than that.
Christ is the only righteousness there is. Declare His righteousness. Declare His greatness. He shall
be great. He's the mighty God. There's
none good but one, and that's Him. Declare Him, His greatness,
and declare His praise. We come here to praise Him, don't
we? Lord willing, here in a few minutes, we're gonna sing some
songs of praise, and they're gonna be all about Him, and we're
gonna rejoice in Him. Now I want to show you this one.
Turn with me to Psalm 66. This is beautiful. Psalm 66,
verse 16. Psalm 66, verse 16. It says, come and hear all ye
that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul. If I have a testimony, that's
it. Declare what he hath done for
my soul. Not what I've done. All I've
done is sin against God. That's all I've done. That's
all I know how to do in this wicked flesh. I'm here to tell
you what he's done for my soul. declared the salvation that he
has accomplished by himself, the only high priest who sat
down because he made satisfaction, he obtained eternal redemption,
he perfected us forever. I'm here to declare him and what
he's done by himself, and we're to declare it. If we're gonna
be a true preacher of the gospel, we're gonna declare it boldly,
we're gonna declare it unapologetically and without compromise. There's
one true message. And true preaching declares just
that. Now look back in our text, 1 Corinthians 2. Verse 1 again, and I, brethren,
when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or
of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God, for I determined
not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's the message. You want
to hear the gospel preached? Here it is. Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. Who He is and what He's done. Well, who is He? He's the Son
of God. He's God's anointed. He's the
Messiah. He's the Savior, the Redeemer,
the Holy One of Israel. He's our substitute. He's the Word, as John told us
in John 1, who was made flesh and dwelt among us. He said,
we beheld His glory, full of grace and truth. God manifests
in the flesh, that's who He is. And I love reading about Him.
Here's a couple things the scriptures say about Him as He walked this
earth. It says He went about doing good. Everywhere He went,
every single day, He went about doing good, something we can't
do. I love how it says that he was
speaking on one occasion and the men wondered, they marveled
at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. Wouldn't you
love to have been there? Oh my. It also says he taught
or he spoke as one having authority, not as the scribes. Why? Because he's God. That's who
he is. What has he done? What has He
accomplished? Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
The cross. The cross was the greatest accomplishment
this world has ever seen. You remember on the Mount of
Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah were discussing with Him the
things, the deceased, that He should accomplish. That's what
it says, at Jerusalem. The death that He should accomplish.
We don't think of death as an accomplishment, do we? The men
who stood there crucifying Him, they certainly didn't see an
accomplishment. They said He saved others. Himself, He cannot
save. And that's exactly right. He said in John chapter 10, he
said, no man taketh my life from me. That's what it looked like,
didn't it? He said, I lay it down in myself. I lay it down
myself. He said, I've received this commandment
from my father, the power to lay it down, the power to take
it again. He said, I lay down my life for my sheep. We didn't
take it from him. Yet we by wicked hands crucified
and slayed him, but that was God who did that. That was the
accomplishment of the salvation of his people. He went on to
say in John chapter 10, he said, I give unto them eternal life.
All my sheep for whom I laid down my life, I've given them
eternal life, and they shall never perish. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Look back here
in 1 Corinthians 1 verse 21 again. It says, For after that, in the
wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God
by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For
the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.
And I'll tell you, they're looking for something other than the
message of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's what he's saying.
Now look at verse 22. The Jews require a sign, the
Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. unto the Jews a stumbling block,
and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom
of God, Like I said, the gospel is foolishness to us until God
reveals it to us, until the arm of the Lord Christ is revealed
to us, until we need Him, we see Him as He is, and we need
Him, we believe on Him, we hope in Him. Christ Crucified is the
singular message of this book. Say, it's a long book. It is. And there's one message in it.
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Paul summed it up well in Colossians
3.11. He said, Christ is all. Christ is all. What do you need?
Christ is all. How's God gonna supply all I
need? All our needs? Through Christ. He's all. I love
this. Psalm 130 verse 7 says, Let Israel
hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy. Do you need
mercy? And with Him is plenteous redemption,
more than you could ever need. It's in Him. Only in Him. How
are we going to be accepted before God? In Him. In the Beloved. Only in Him. Verse 2 again, it
says, Now, determination means to be resolved, to be determined.
That's what it means. I'm resolved to preach Christ
crucified and nothing else. And we must be. This is very
important. We must be. We're warned about being led
astray from the message, the simplicity that's in Christ Jesus. Now, thank the Lord this determination
doesn't depend on us. Thank the Lord, because my determination
is not much. That I could give you so many
examples where I'm determined not to do something again, it
doesn't take long, and there I am again. And when it comes
to the gospel. We're not sufficient for these
things. Paul said, who's sufficient for these things? You think if
anybody was, it was Paul. He said, I'm not. He said, our
sufficiency is of God. All our sufficiency. And all
I can say to that is, by God's grace, as long as we're asked
to come here, stand here, and preach God's word, by His grace
and by His grace alone, will we be determined not to know
anything, not to preach anything, but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I pray He'll keep us that
way. Keep us preaching Him. Verse three says, and I was with
you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. True preaching
or preaching is a fearful responsibility. It's a high calling, the highest
calling there is. And it's a fearful calling. I
don't know of anything more fearful in this life. Seriously. He said,
I was with you in weakness. Now, this is something that the
religion in this world, false preaching and false preachers
know nothing about because they don't know their weakness. What's
our weakness? Our sin. Our sin nature. It doesn't get better. As a believer, as a preacher,
as an apostle, Paul said, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver
me from the body of this death? He was weak. weak in His flesh. And if we're going to preach,
we must be weak. Paul said, I'm nothing less than
the least chief of sinners. That's why preaching is so humbling,
because God's people and God's preachers know ourselves to be
weak, absolutely, totally weak. We're so unworthy to call upon
the Lord to come where He's promised to meet, to open His word, to
worship Him, to call upon Him to... We're just unworthy, aren't
we? We're just unworthy. But I'm
here to tell us we have strength. Do you know that? Christ is our
strength. Paul said, when I'm weak, I'm
strong. How? In Christ. He's our strength. You know, popular verse, Philippians
4.13, I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
Very popular verse. And almost every time I hear
someone out in the world mention that verse, the focus of it is,
I can do. You know, you get down, well,
I can do. I can do. I can do nothing. The focus of
that verse is Christ which strengtheneth me. With him, nothing's impossible.
I can do all things through him who is my strength. Only through
him. He's all our strength. Paul said
in verse three, I was with you in weakness and in fear. Now I know that the religion
of this world The false preachers especially, they fear men. And really, all of us by nature
do just that, we fear men. But when it comes to preaching
especially, a false preacher fears losing the praise of men. You read about it. Our Lord tells
us about the Pharisees, the religious, the preachers, the things that
they feared. They feared men. They desired the praise of men.
They wanted to be called rabbi. They wanted to have the chief
seat in the synagogue. They're afraid of losing all of that.
You look at the churches in our day. They're so rich, so famous,
they don't want to lose it. They don't fear God. They preach about God and say
the name Jesus and church and salvation and grace, but they
don't know God. No fear of God. We must fear
Him and only Him. Again, what did Paul say? Do
we seek to please men or God? God and God alone. I pray that's
the case. We fear displeasing our Lord.
We fear lying on Him, handling His Word deceitfully. We fear
not giving God all the glory, don't we? It's a fearful thing to get up
here, open God's Word, and preach. Because this is in the sight
of God. You can turn if you want. I'm going to turn and read it.
2 Corinthians 2, verse 17. Paul said, for we are not as
many which corrupt the Word of God, but as of sincerity, but
as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ. He said,
this is in the sight of God, and we speak in Christ, or of
Christ. We're preaching Christ. And back
in our text, verse three, he said, I was with you in weakness,
and in fear, and in much trembling. If we don't tremble when we stand
to preach God's Word, we don't need to stand and preach God's
Word. And I say that trembling, begging that the Lord has given
me this spirit, because I don't want to stand here and do it
if it's not according to His Word. I really don't. There's
nothing more fearful. I'm being honest with you. We're commanded to serve the
Lord with fear. It's the only way to serve the
Lord. And rejoice with trembling. And God must produce this in
us. He must produce the fear, He must produce the trembling,
and I pray He has and He will. We're here to worship Him. We're
here to reverence Him. This needs to be done in a way
that reverences Him, ascribes all greatness and glory to Him,
and it is. And I'm so thankful it's so.
How do we do these things? How do we give all glory to Him? How do we reverence Him? We preach
the gospel. I've heard it said, I've not
been to many false churches over the years, but the ones I have
been to, and I hear this said, it's not, this is not the focus
of the service. You have so many different things,
and the kids play games, and you run here, you run there,
and you, it's just a show. We're here to worship God, and
we do so by preaching Christ. We do so by preaching His word.
It's no wonder Paul said, woe is unto me if I preach not the
gospel. So Christ didn't send me to baptize,
but to preach the gospel, preach Christ. That's our calling, is
to preach Christ. I look here back in our text
in verse four. He said, my speech and my preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration
of the spirit and of power. What makes preaching powerful? You ever leave and you think,
oh man, that was so powerful. Oh, it just blessed my heart
so much. What makes it that way? Is it the preacher? Is it how
he talked and the way he went about and his enticing words
and his wisdom? Is that it? We know better, don't
we? It's the Spirit and Power of
God. If we're going to receive a blessing
when one of us foolish men gets up here and preaches the gospel
by God's grace, the only way we're going to be blessed by
it or think, man, I needed that, I enjoyed that, is by the Spirit
and Power of God. He said right here, true preaching
is done, how? By the demonstration of the Spirit
and of power. It must be of God. And that's what I mean by true
preaching, is preaching that is of God. God preaching, doing
it through His chosen vessel. That's what He said about Paul.
He said, He's a chosen vessel unto me. Clay pots, that's what
we are. Preaching is not a man's work.
God calls men to the work, but it's God's work, not ours. We preach the gospel. We don't
try to wrestle folks down and get them to make a profession.
You agree with that? Not at all. That's not what we do. We preach
the gospel and we wait. We sit down. We pray. We wait
on the Lord to make it effectual to whom He will. And He will
make it effectual to whom He will. He must call us by His
gospel. Paul told us this in 2 Thessalonians
2, 13 and 14 about thanking God for His brethren whom God has
called by our gospel. He must. He must do it. He must
give us ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. God must do it. It's so,
when we stand here to preach, we're relying on the Spirit of
God, and when we sit here and hear, we're relying on the Spirit
of God. It takes the power of God to
give us faith to believe it, every time. Now, this is why
it matters so much that we're hearing true preaching. And that is because true preaching,
the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified,
is the means to true faith. I'll quote it, but in Romans
10, it says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved. How then shall we call on him
in whom we have not believed? How shall we believe in him of
whom we have not heard? And how shall we hear without
a preacher? But I'm so glad it doesn't stop there. It says,
and how shall a man preach? See, not everyone that preaches
is a true preacher. How shall a man preach except
he be sent? And then it goes on to say, faith
cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. God uses
the preaching of his gospel to save them, to impart faith in
them whom he's purposed to believe on him. Hear and your soul shall
live. We gotta hear. We need God to
speak to us. Now, I must acknowledge this
fact that a lot of people And I just know it because I hear
it talked about. A lot of people have faith in their faith. I
don't want to have faith in my faith. My faith is not worth
mentioning ever. You know, we'll say sometimes,
well, so-and-so, man, they're strong in the faith. Only by God's grace.
He giveth more grace. He is the one who increases our
faith. He gives the faith and He increases our faith. That's
why the disciples prayed, Lord, increase our faith. You must.
I'm not strong in the faith. I'm weak. Our faith must be of the power
of God, and I pray that it is. I want to show you one more thing
and I'll close. Turn over to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Our faith either stands in the
wisdom of men, either a man convinced us to do this or do that. convinced
us of what we believe, or the Spirit and power of God convicted
us and has given us faith in Christ. Look here, 2 Corinthians
4 verse 5 says, For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus
the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake, for
God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath
shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, verse 7. But
we have this treasure, this preaching of the gospel, he said, we have
this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power
may be of God and not of us. Told you at the start of the
message and I'll tell you as I close, it's not about us. Preaching
is not of us. Our faith to believe on Christ,
come here and worship Him, it's not of us. I pray that our faith
truly stands in the power of God and that we truly believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. All right, you're
dismissed.