1 Corinthians chapter 2, the title of the message, Christ is the message, Jesus Christ is the message. Our Lord is the center of all true preaching, if it is of God, If it is the Holy Spirit, the message will be on Christ, it will be Christ-centered. If you want to know how to know that the Holy Spirit is among us, you'll know it by the preaching of the gospel, not by the working of miracles or speaking in tongues, but the message. When a man stands to preach, is Christ his message? If Christ is his message, you can be sure it is of the Holy Spirit. For he takes the things of Christ, our Lord said, he will take the things of mine and show them, reveal them to you.

And so Paul had visited Corinth, and he stayed there for a year and a half. When he first went there, he met Aquila and Priscilla. They were Jews, and Aquila was a tentmaker, so was Paul, so he stayed with them for a while, and he preached in the synagogues.

And then there was a big uproar over the gospel, over the message. If we were going to have an uproar, let it be over the message and nothing else, nothing else. And so Paul preaching to them was facing a lot of trouble, a lot of trouble. And the Lord spoke to Paul. He said, Paul, fear not. Don't be afraid. He is like Paul ran into a hornet's nest and and that happened everywhere he went Because if you would Go back sometime when you have time and look at the and I did this look at the culture of Corinth when he went there it was It had all all kinds of people there of different cultures and they had the goddess Aphrodite there and They had their temple prostitutes, they were sacred. And their worship services included a lot of immoral sexual activity.

This is what Paul dealt with. They were steeped in this. And then there was a population of Jews who held to the Law of Moses. So he had them on both sides. And when Paul walked into town, the Holy Spirit had made known to Paul that bonds and imprisonment waited for you in every city. So Paul knew what he was up against everywhere he went. And so he had preached to them for a year and a half, and God saved a lot of people there.

And this is the reason for this letter. There was a lot of trouble. There was a lot of trouble in the early church. It was just an infant church. and had all these cultural differences, and it was causing a lot of divisions. So Paul writes this letter to them, and he writes it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He lets them know that the gospel he preached to them was not of man, this is not another version of something else.

Like when he was at Athens, they had altars made to all these different gods and then they had an altar made to the UNKNOWN GOD. Because there's got to be one out there we haven't met yet. I like what Paul said to them in Athens. He said, This UNKNOWN GOD that this altar has been made to, I'm paraphrasing, that you've made this altar to, I'm going to preach to you. I'm going to preach Him to you. this unknown God, and He set forth a God of creation, a God of salvation, a God of glory, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so He tells the Corinthians here, He says, And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God, the gospel The gospel is the TESTIMONY of God. It's the testimony of the grace of God to sinners. It's the testimony of God of how God can be a just God and save sinners. The gospel is glad tidings, but it's also the testimony of God to us of how He is gracious and merciful and can be just and holy in Christ and yet save us. He can save us in Christ. It's the testimony of God. But Paul says here, And I, brethren, when I came to you, I did not come with excellency of speech.

They were big on oratory. They were big on that. And he says, I did not come with lofty words or polished eloquence. Because they held that in high esteem. That's not to say Paul could not use persuasive words. He was very educated. Paul was a very educated man. He was educated at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the greatest teachers of that day. He was very educated in Greek literature.

But God doesn't use that, does He? God doesn't use that. God uses a sinner whom He has broken and saved to go and tell other sinners who the Lord is and what the Lord has done for Him. That's who God uses. God doesn't need our eloquence. He doesn't need our philosophy. He doesn't need our education. God doesn't need our education. What we need is God's education. I NEED TO BE EDUCATED BY GOD, TAUGHT BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD. ALL THY CHILDREN, IT IS WRITTEN IN THE OLD TESTAMENT AND IT'S REPEATED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, ALL THY CHILDREN SHALL BE TAUGHT OF GOD. HE'S OUR TEACHER. YOU SEE, WE HAVE TO TAKE ALL OF OUR LEARNING AND JUST THROW IT IN THE TRASH.

Now I'm not talking about using bad grammar. I'm not talking about that. Henry pulled me aside one time. This is why my sermons are getting longer. I'm telling too many stories. I've got a few to tell now. When I very first started to preach, I was 22, 23 years of age. I was so young. And I preached one on a Saturday night. He'd ask us to preach and I preached on a Saturday night. He'd have two of us out of the preacher school preach and I preached. And Henry was so gracious about this. I was just a country boy.

And he pulled me aside and he said, John, he said, you know, good grammar offends no one. He said, bad grammar will always offend someone because he pointed out there was five or six, you know, it was a congregation of 400. There were several English teachers in there. And he said, good grammar offends no one, bad grammar will always offend someone. He said, so we, you know, we work on, we work on our grammar. And the next week he had one of the teachers come in and we started a grammar course. And I think that was due to me.

But anyway, Paul was an educated man, but he did not come into town using this eloquent speech. In fact, some of them said he wasn't a good speaker. But now Paul didn't use a lot of his formal education when he spoke to people. He just spoke to them plainly the gospel of the grace of God. Paul was not a salesman. Paul was not a politician. Paul was a preacher. Paul was an ambassador of Christ, sinner of Christ to that pagan, pagan, pagan city to save some sinners just by the simple preaching of the gospel.

Just tell him the truth. Just tell him the truth. That's what he was. He was an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ and he made a deliberate decision. He says, And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellence of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God, for I determined.

And every preacher of the gospel must determine this. WE MUST DETERMINE THAT CHRIST IS OUR MESSAGE. AND IF THEY'RE CALLED OF GOD, CHRIST IS THE MESSAGE. AND THEY ARE DETERMINED TO PREACH IT. TO PREACH CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED. TO PREACH THE PERSON AND WORK OF JESUS CHRIST IN ALL HIS GLORY AS MUCH AS GOD ENABLES THEM TO DO SO. HE'S THE MESSAGE.

PAUL REFUSED TO USE RHETORIC You know, rhetoric is the art of persuasive speaking. It's using impressive language with very little or with no substance. You gotta listen. Somebody, someone who can speak eloquently and be able to use the language can persuade you You're thinking, boy, that was a beautiful, wasn't that beautiful? And he said, what'd he say? He's like, well, I don't know, but it was beautiful. I don't know, but it was beautiful.

He says, Paul said, I didn't come to you that way. I didn't come to you with excellency of speech. I didn't come to you with philosophy. I came to you with the gospel, the gospel. Paul did not change his message to suit his crowd. It was the SAME MESSAGE no matter who he was speaking to. If he was speaking to some educated Greeks, or if he was speaking to Jews, or if he was speaking to just a common people, the MESSAGE WAS THE SAME, and HIS METHOD WAS THE SAME. PREACHING! PREACHING!

You know, preaching has been relegated in most places to the scrappy. It's the last thing on the list. I had been, when I was younger, much younger, before I heard the gospel, I had been to places where there was singing and singing and singing, which really ended up being alright because the man had nothing to say anyway, so you might as well just sing. But it was all about, you know, there was so much singing that there was no time for preaching, but the guy who preached didn't preach anyway, so it didn't really matter.

You know, Paul said over in the first chapter, he said, The Jews require sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But Paul remained committed to just doing this, preaching. Just what I'm doing this morning, preaching. Preaching Christ, holding up Christ. Christ said, If I be lifted up, not only when He was lifted up on the cross, but lifted up in the pulpit every week. If I be lifted up, I'll draw all men, all types of men, men and women to me. And Paul, look here at his singular focus here in verse 2. For I DETERMINE NOT TO KNOW ANYTHING AMONG YOU, SAVE JESUS CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED.

Now, Paul's not being rude. He's not being rude. He's not saying, I'm not interested in anything you have to say. What he's saying here is this. He's saying that everything that I have to say to you and that you and I have to talk about is going to be centered on Jesus Christ. He's going to be the center of the conversation. He's going to be the center of our conversation. He's going to be the central focus of my preaching. It's going to be Christ.

The heart of every sermon I mean the very core of preaching is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We cannot get past that. We can't get past that because God won't bless it. God will not bless any preaching that is not centered on Christ, that does not come from Him, that does not surround Him, that's not full of Him. Because everything we need to know is in Christ. Everything I need to know, you need to know, is found in Jesus Christ. Everything. We don't know Christ as much as we think we do.

I realized that when I studied. You know, David said this one time. David said, Lord, I'm like a beast before you. He said, I'm just like a dumb beast. You think you know something, and then all of a sudden the Lord opens up something else to you, and you're thinking, Wow, I just...

The knowledge of God is incomprehensible. The knowledge of Christ is incomprehensible. We can never go on to anything else because we can never exhaust Christ. You know, to exhaust the knowledge of Christ, you have to exhaust the wisdom of God, because He's the wisdom of God, and God's wisdom is infinite, unmeasurable.

And if Jesus Christ is not our message, then we've missed both our calling and the message itself. But here, listen, if Jesus Christ is not our message, We were never called to preach. If Christ is not my messiah, I was never called to preach. To preach the gospel is a calling. But here's one of the sad things.

Every Yeho out there can just say, Well, you know, the Lord called me to preach. A man said that to me years ago. He said, The Lord called me to preach. This is an Armenian. He said, and I said to him, here's what I said to him. No, he didn't. No, he did not call you to preach. And he was so, he was shocked. He was surprised. He's like, how can you say that?

How can you say the Lord didn't call me to preach? And I said, because you don't have the message. You don't believe the gospel. And of course, we parted ways. We parted ways, but I was honest with Him. I was honest with Him. God didn't call you to preach.

You've got to have the message first. You've got to believe the gospel first. You've got to believe THE gospel, not another gospel. It's THE gospel. Then God calls a man to preach after He has revealed Himself to that man and saved that man and that man knows He knows Christ. Now you've got something to say. I don't have anything to say if I don't know the Lord. I don't believe the gospel. I have nothing to say to you that God's going to bless.

Don't be fooled. Don't be fooled by churches, so-called, that have large congregations. Don't be fooled by that. Jim Jones had a pretty good-sized congregation and they all drank the Kool-Aid and died. So don't ever judge a man's ministry by the size of the congregation. You'll be fooled. You'll be fooled.

And then Paul says here in verse 3, and this shows Paul's humility. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. This is how Paul came into town. He didn't come into town as a coward. That doesn't mean that. He didn't come into town that way. But I think he says, I was with you in much weakness. They knew him. They got to know Paul. Paul was a sickly man. Paul was not a healthy man. Paul was a sickly man.

And I think here in much fear, much trembling, I think that has more to do with the gospel he's preaching. HANDLING THE GOSPEL OF GOD'S GLORY. A MAN WHO DOES NOT TREMBLE, WHO HANDLES THE GOSPEL OF GOD'S GLORY, HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HE'S DOING. GOD HASN'T CALLED HIM EITHER. GOD HASN'T CALLED HIM. I TELL YOU, WHEN YOU REALIZE, AND WHEN I REALIZE THAT WHAT I'M HANDLING RIGHT NOW IS THE GOSPEL OF GOD'S GLORY, THAT IS IMPRESSED UPON ME RIGHT NOW, FOR I AM IN MY LIFE, THAT IS IMPRESSED UPON ME RIGHT NOW MORE THAN ANYTHING.

I WAS THINKING JUST THIS PAST WEEK, JUST THE OTHER DAY, I WAS THINKING, WHO AM I? THESE ARE MY THOUGHTS I'M GIVING YOU. WHO AM I? LORD, WHO AM I? I WAS JUST A BOY GROWING UP ON A FARM IN WEST VIRGINIA, High school education became a machinist? Who am I that you would call and use to preach the gospel of your glory? Who am I that you would put over your sheep as an under shepherd? Oh, if you all knew, really knew me, you'd be saying that too. You'd be saying, Lord, who is he that you put him here?

But God's pleased to use sinners. He's pleased to use cracked clay pots. Paul said, we have this treasure of the gospel of the glory of God in earthen vessels. I NOT ONLY HAVE IT, BUT YOU WHO BELIEVE, YOU HAVE THAT TREASURE IN YOU! Christ is in you, you who believe. Jesus Christ is in you right now. The HOPE OF GLORY is in you. Now THAT WILL MAKE YOU HUMBLE! That ought to make every one of us HUMBLE, and it will, God's It will humble you when you realize that God saved you, that God chose you, that God loved you, that God has prepared a kingdom for you and He's coming back for you.

I'm coming back to get you. One at a time, until He comes and it's all over, but one at a time, here and there, God comes and gets His child. When that child is ripe for the picking, when that child is ripe for glory, when that child has run the race, He said, I'll come and get you. And we've seen that several times here. The Lord comes and gets This one and this one. Let me tell you something, I'm getting a little more off my message, but maybe this is the message.

God's family and glory is far more important than our family on this earth. We want to keep them here, don't we? Don't we? We want to keep our loved ones here, the ones we fellowship with, the ones in our family that believe, we want to keep them with us. We would love to keep them with us, but listen, God's family being gathered together is more important than your family of flesh. Because the family of flesh is going to be dissolved, but God's family is not going to be dissolved.

GOD'S FAMILY IS GOING TO BE JOINED TOGETHER WITH HIM IN GLORY. AND THAT'S WHAT HE'S DOING. HE'S GATHERING HIS FAMILY IN. AND IT'S HUMBLING TO THINK THAT GOD WOULD CALL ME TO PREACH, THAT GOD WOULD CALL YOU TO BE HIS CHILD. NOW ARE WE THE SONS OF GOD. IT DOES NOT YET APPEAR WHAT WE SHALL BE, BUT WE DO KNOW WHEN HE SHALL APPEAR WE SHALL BE JUST LIKE HIM. Whatever that is. But Paul tells us here in verse 4 the power behind his preaching.

The power behind his preaching, he says, "...and my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom." This has nothing to do with man. Man did not have a hand in this. This message was not designed by any man. THE MESSAGE I GAVE TO YOU, PREACHED TO YOU, IS OF GOD. IT'S OF GOD. Well, you would think that would make our ears lean forward. I mean, God speaking to me?

Paul's preaching was not shaped by worldly methods. His message was not humanly designed. His words were not manipulative. He didn't use persuasive tricks like they do now. My, the tricks that are used to get people to come down to the front, to feel the pews, the tricks that are used to feel the pews. I'm not trying to feel pews.

I'm trying to preach the gospel of God's glory. The salvation is of God. If anyone here is saved, and I believe there are some here saved, and if there are some here who are not saved, and if you're going to be saved, then God's going to do it. I'm not going to persuade you into accepting Jesus as your personal Savior. I'm not going to try to get you to come down to the front.

I am going to tell you to look to the Lord Jesus Christ. I'll tell you that. I will tell you this, seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He's near. I will tell you that because that's the Word of God. But I'm not going to use tricks so we can have a full house. We're going to preach the Gospel. Paul rejected the idea that sinners could be persuaded into salvation by human wisdom.

I've experienced this. I've experienced before I heard the gospel, I experienced the altar call. Most of you know what that is. Those of you raised up under the gospel, you really don't know. You haven't been in an Armenian church. But I have been at the end of a service, and then one or two of the men or women, they'll get out of their seat, and they'll go back to talk to somebody.

There's one particular man in my mind, young man, back then, my age, I was 20 years old. His name was Jake. And I remember they did this, sanded on him like buzzards on a carcass. And they talked to him and talked to him and talked, then they finally got him to cry. Then once they got him to crying, I knew they had him. And then they talked him into coming down front. Then they all walked down to the front with him, all down to the altar.

That man went away more lost than when he came in. Christ said to those Pharisees, you compass sea and land to make one proselyte. And when you have made one proselyte, you have made that person, that proselyte, two-fold. THE CHILD OF HELL. HE WAS BORN LOST, AND NOW YOU'VE GIVEN HIM A FALSE REFUGE. YOU'VE GIVEN HIM A FALSE REFUGE. I DON'T NEED TO HEAR YOU, I'M ALRIGHT. I'VE ACCEPTED JESUS AS MY PERSONAL SAVIOR, I'M FINE. NO, THAT'S DANGEROUS. THAT'S DEADLY, IT'S DEADLY. YOU MAKE THEM TWO-FOLDED CHILDREN OF HELL. Paul and everyone who preaches the gospel depend entirely upon the Holy Spirit to save sinners. To save sinners.

Someone asked me one time about baptizing a person. And I said, Well, let that person come to me and talk to me. I said, Tell them to come to me and talk to me. And that person never did come to me and talk to me. I wasn't gonna baptize this person because this other person wanted me to baptize that person. No, I said, you let this person come and talk to me. And this person believes, I'll baptize him. But the person never came to talk to me.

We don't persuade people into getting saved. We don't persuade people into getting saved. We preach Christ, and the Holy Spirit just commands life. He gives faith, and He gives understanding. And then all of a sudden, you know what? I believe. I believe. And then they'll ask me, will you baptize me? I believe. I believe. And I'll tell you this, when somebody does believe, they will do what the Lord said. They will do it. They will follow the command of their, now listen, their Lord. Their Lord. Talk about accepting Jesus as your personal Savior. Where's the Lordship at? Where's the Lordship of Christ at? Where's the bowing to Christ? Where's it at?

So Paul says his responsibility is to preach the gospel and depend on the Holy Spirit to save. And he says this in verse 5, that your faith, and this is why I preach like I preach, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. If preaching is built on human wisdom and entertainment and emotionalism and personalities, it will produce a response, but it will not produce salvation. You'll still be lost. The goal in preaching is to preach and proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ.

And that's the only preaching the Holy Spirit will honor. That's the only one. And Paul, I'm going to close this. That's the reason, this is the reason, if you look in the bulletin, I gave you my conclusion because I knew I wasn't going to get to it. That's why I wrote it in the bulletin, because I'm not going to get to that.

But I do know this, that the true wisdom in the preaching of the gospel is of God. To believe is of God. Faith is a gift of God. It's the POWER of God. It's not a human decision. Let me make this as clear as I can. Salvation is not a human decision we make. It's just the power of God saving you. Saving you without asking you if He can.

How many times have I seen this over the years, other who preach the Gospels, people who have sat on the Gospel for years and all of a sudden, I mean just all of a sudden they have this saving interest in Christ. Lord save me. They have a real saving interest in Christ and they want the Lord to save them. And they confess Christ by baptism and they confess Christ with their life and with their mouth the rest of their life. The rest of their life. You will become a walking epistle of Christ. You will.

And Paul says this, and let me just read these scriptures. Verse 6, Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, that is, mature. I'm speaking the wisdom of God, the gospel, among you who've been here for years. And you understand what I'm saying. I'm not standing here trying to say, Do you understand? I KNOW you understand. I know you understand what I'm saying, but the wisdom that you're hearing is not man's wisdom, it's the wisdom of God, it's from above.

It's from above. It's not of this world, he said, nor of the princes of this world that come to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the gospel is a mystery, until God reveals the gospel to you, then it's not a mystery no more. There's a lot of things we don't know.

BUT HOW GOD SAVES SINNERS IS NOT A MYSTERY TO YOU NO MORE. WHO GOD IS IS NOT A MYSTERY TO YOU NO MORE. You don't see God as like the Jews, they just saw Him basically as HOLY and STRICT and the LAW WAS DEMANDING DO THIS OR DON'T DO THAT. We see not only the holiness of God, the justice of God, we see the mercy and grace of God to us in Jesus Christ.

And that mystery was hidden for years, hidden types and pictures. You know that for 4,000 years, the Gentile world sat in darkness. God gave the types of pictures and all that pertained to Christ to that nation called Israel, the Jews. And then after Christ was crucified, it's gone throughout the world. It has gone throughout the world and you and I are a product. We are a product of God's mercy and God's grace and the preaching of the gospel. God sent the gospel to you.

And he says here in verse 8, None of the princes of this world knew. They did not know who Christ was. They didn't understand the wisdom of God in the gospel. He said, if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. They wouldn't have crucified Him, they would have bowed to Him. That's what they would have done. They would have bowed to Him, they wouldn't have crucified Him. None of the disciples crucified the Lord. The ones who crucified Him was those Jews that hated Him in the Greeks, the religion, and the world. They all crucified Him. But if they had known who He was, they wouldn't have done that. They would have loved Him, just like you love Him. But Paul said, I'm determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Now, I don't know how much longer God will allow me to preach here, but until then, THE MESSAGE IS CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED. THE MESSAGE IS GOING TO BE CENTERED AROUND THE SUBSTITUTIONARY CHARACTER AND WORK OF JESUS CHRIST. THAT'S WHERE IT'S GOING TO BE CENTERED AROUND. THAT'S GOING TO BE THE CORE OF THE MESSAGE HERE UNTIL THE LORD TAKES ME HOME. AND I HOPE AND PRAY HE RAISES UP ANOTHER ONE AND KEEPS THE GOSPEL HERE FOR GENERATIONS TO COME. I HOPE SO. All right.