Alright, let's turn this morning
to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. We'll be looking at verses 26
through 31. And if you'll just put a marker
there, I'm going to wait until the end of our lesson to read
the verses. We've been looking now for several
weeks at different things concerning the preaching of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. And this Corinthian church was
a church with problems. And its problems came from two
sources. It came partly because of their
Greek heritage, because of their Greek upbringing. A lot of the
people in that church were Greeks and they were, from the time
they were children, they were raised in that Greek philosophy. And the Greeks were a people
who prided themselves in wisdom. Whenever the Apostle Paul wanted
to epitomize the wisdom of man, he used the term Greeks. And
it wasn't just to the Greeks, but anybody who was like the
Greeks, who were stemmed in that worldly wisdom. And they
just prided themselves. They built libraries and studied
poetry and the sciences and philosophy. It says in the scriptures, the
Greeks seek after wisdom. And there's nothing wrong with
libraries. I'm not trying to say that. I'm just saying that
they prided themselves on their wisdom. And then their problem
secondly stemmed partly because of their Jewish influence. There
were Jews also in that church. And they looked for signs and
evidences. Their history was a history of
prophets. And these prophets were accompanied
by the power of God. They split seas by holding out
a staff. And they saw miracles performed
under Moses that that were just undeniable, the things that happened
in Egypt. We've studied those things and
all those plagues. And all of these old prophets,
the miracles of God accompanied them. And God confirmed their
calling through these things. And so these men looked for signs
and evidences. And they looked with traditional
eyes. They looked over their past heritage
and the things that they thought they could know by that and learn
by that. And then they looked with legal
eyes. They believed that righteousness was something that men could
accomplish. They felt like God had given
them this law and commanded them to keep it. And in keeping this
law, they could be saved. They could be righteous. They
could win the approval of God. And they were trying to mix all
these things. the wisdom of men and their traditional
understanding of religion. They were mixing these things
all together in the worship of God. And they were trying to
incorporate these things into the ministry of Christ and into
the lives of believing men and women. Every church has problems. Every church has problems. Every
church has a carryover of these things that people were raised
in and taught. This church is no different. We were not all raised under
the same religion. Some of us weren't raised under
religion at all. Not at all. But people who are
at the first, they see the fundamental truth of the gospel. Now, I'm
talking about believers now. At the first, they begin to see
these fundamental truths of the gospel, but they've not yet seen
the foolishness of these old ways. and of these old means. And Paul knew as a wise master
builder that the only way to deal with these kinds of problems
is to preach the gospel of Christ and establish these doctrines
of Christ. Everything needed to meet the
needs of God's people. Everything needed to motivate,
exhort, and teach God's people. Everything needed to counsel,
correct, and rebuke God's people. is found in the gospel of Jesus
Christ. If you preach the gospel, the
gospel, you declare the whole counsel of God. But this is contrary
to men's traditional upbringing. Totally contrary. It's contrary
to almost every established religion in this world. And it's contrary
to the ideas and concepts and theories of the learned, the
wise. The preaching of the gospel of
Christ goes against the grain. It just don't seem right. Isn't
that what you hear? It just don't seem right. That
can't be right. That can't be right. And so the
religious, to them, it becomes a stumbling block. And then to
the wise man, It's foolishness. And I've been at this for a long
time. I've been around it more than half my lifetime, and I
can tell you by my own experience that when men and women, educated
or religious or both, when they hear the gospel of God's sovereign
grace, they take one of these two things and sometimes both. And they take these things as
a reason for their unbelief. It just don't seem right. It
just don't seem right. And it's a stumbling block. It's
contrary to organized religion. And then secondly, it appears
as foolishness to what they call wisdom. And the reason why these
two things come to pass is because man is in darkness. He's in darkness. There's no other reason for it.
He is born in darkness. Man, according to Ephesians 4,
verse 18, has his understanding darkened, being alienated from
the life of God. He is a dead sinner, spiritually
dead. And he is alienated from the
life of God through the ignorance that is in him because of the
blindness of his heart. And let me tell you something.
You can't make a wise decision if you don't know all the truth.
You can't do it. You can't do it. You can't make
a wise decision unless you know the whole truth. And men cater
to the flesh. They look to the flesh and appeal
to the flesh because they're ignorant of their own nature.
God's not whatever you want Him to be. And God's not what you think
He ought to be. He said, you thought I was altogether
such a one as yourself. But He said, I'll call you to
the right thing. I'll set you straight. You thought
I was altogether such a one as yourself. And then God's not
necessarily who men say He is. God tells us who He is and what
He is in the Holy Scriptures, and He tells us what we are.
And if man has the capability to know, if he really does, men
tell me, I can read, I can perceive, I can understand. Yes, you can. You can understand. If man writes
a book on the splitting of an atom, and you study it long enough,
you can understand it. He writes a book on how to make
steel, and you go through the process, you can learn how to
make steel. You can do all those things. But you don't have any
spiritual perception. And that rule don't apply to
the wisdom of God. Now, that's what Paul's teaching
in these verses. Now, if man has that capability,
if he has the capability to know, then I can teach him. If he has
a free will, then he can be persuaded. If he has an innate knowledge
of God, then he can be reasoned with. If he has a mind that's
not hostile toward God, then he might be reformed. But man
don't have any of these things. Man's dead in trespasses and
sins. And then the other side of the
coin is that God is holy. He can't approve of, reward,
or have fellowship with anyone or anything that's not perfectly
holy. And it's just. Every transgression
must receive a due recompense of reward. God's sovereign. He's got no competition. Men
tried to sell this country, my generation, on a God who's at
war with Satan and the end is up for grabs. God has no competition. He's God. The devil is God's
devil. These rulers of the darkness,
they're God's rulers of the darkness. There's no problem with God chaining
him up. They're reserved in chains. It
tells us that in Scripture, reserved under everlasting fire. God's
sovereign. He has no competition. He rules. The Scripture said, in the armies
of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay
his hand or say unto him, what doest thou? And then God's unchangeable. He never changes. He's the same
yesterday, today, and forever. I am the Lord, he said, I change
not. And with him, James said, with him from whom all heavenly
gifts come, from the Father. There's no variableness, neither
shadow of turning. And then God is all wise. There's
nothing that He does and nothing that anybody else does that He
don't know. He's all wise. Here's man. He's fallen and depraved and
ignorant and full of darkness. Here's God. All light, all wise,
all life, all love, all just, all holy. In God is all fullness. In man is all emptiness. And man cannot by himself, of
himself, come to the living God. He can't do it. Man cannot be
brought by fleshly means to reconcile himself to God. Salvation is
of the Lord. It's not something that happened
in time because something that God overlooked or took him by
surprise. Salvation is not something that
came to pass because of some rival power declared war against
God and won the day. Salvation is that which God purposed
from the beginning. It's according to God's everlasting
purpose of grace. That's why we're here. That's
why He created man. That's why there's a universe.
That's why there's a world. It's the stage upon which God
is going to manifest His glory. And all of these things are according
to His purpose. In fact, we're told on several
occasions that our Redeemer is He which created the world, and
that the world was created not only by Him, but for Him. And
that He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. He who is the head of the church,
the federal head and representative of God's elect, is He who is
the beginning, the creator. the firstborn from the dead,
that in all things He might have the preeminence. And John tells
us that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God. And without Him was not anything
made that was made. God first ordained a Mediator,
a Savior, a substitute for sinners, and then He created the world
and put man upon it. And He rested in Christ. God
did. And salvation is of the Lord
in its conception and purpose. He saved us, Paul said, and called
us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to
His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus
before the world began. It's not according to something
you did, something you thought, something you willed. Who are
you? You were born in time. This Savior
is everlasting. He's the Creator. He was before
the foundation of the world. And He'll be here when this world
is burnt to a cinder. We're not left to our own wisdom
and imagination to invent the ways and means of reconciliation. God obtained these things. He
ordained these things from the beginning. Peter said this, he
said, you're not redeemed with corruptible things like silver
and gold. Those things were just pictures.
They were just pictures of redemption. And you took those things from
your vain conversation that you received by tradition from your
fathers. He said, but you're redeemed
with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot who verily, listen now, was foreordained
before the foundation of the world and was manifest in these
last times for you who by Him do believe in God. God created
this world by His Son and for His Son, and He turned the whole
thing over to Him. And He was the first to trust
in Christ. And trusting in Him, He rested
from all His works. Salvation is of the Lord in its
conception and purpose, and salvation is of the Lord in its accomplishment.
He who was appointed as our Savior He was also our justifier, our
reconciler, our redeemer. And we're saved and justified
and reconciled and redeemed. I can't stand to hear men talk
about a redeemer who can't redeem. If he can't redeem, he's not
the redeemer. Huh? That's like saying a carpenter
hates wood, can't work with wood. It's stupid. If we have a Redeemer,
it's because He redeemed. If we have a Savior, it's because
He saves. One who tries to save in Cain
is no Savior. And if salvation was not fully
accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ, then God must relinquish
His Godhead. He can't go on being God. If
salvation was not fully accomplished by Jesus Christ, then all men
are damned forever. Jesus Christ did what He came
to do. He accomplished what the Father
sent Him to do. And He, by His unbroken and loving
obedience, becomes the end of the law for righteousness. God
is holy and He is righteous. And He cannot approve of anything
that is not. And we can't produce one. We can't go two minutes
without evil thoughts. I can't stand it when people
start talking in their self-righteous way, like that rich young ruler. All these things that I've done
from my youth up. Well, you didn't do any such
thing. You're just like everybody else. You're just a religious
hypocrite. Righteousness is in Christ. Acceptance
is in Christ. He accomplished what the Father
sent Him to do. He accomplished the righteousness
of God for His elect. And having satisfied God's justice
and righteousness, He was raised from the dead and carried into
glory where He took full possession of the saints' inheritance and
sits there, as I guarantor, He raised us up together with Him. And we're seated together with
Him in the heavens. It's of the Lord in its conception
and purpose. And it's of the Lord in its accomplishment
by the person and work of Christ. And salvation is of the Lord
in its application. It's of Him. People say, well,
God can save sinners any way He wants to. I suppose that's
a true statement. Now, how does He want to? Huh? Tell me that. How does He want
to? Well, the Scripture says it pleased
Him through the foolishness of preaching to save them. That's
how God wants to. That which God purposed and which
Christ accomplished should be applied and made known in hearts
and minds of all His elect to them chosen of God in Christ,
Ephesians 1, 3, and 4. To them predestinated unto the
adoption of children, Ephesians 1, 5. To them made accepted in
the blood, verse 6. To them redeemed through His
blood, having forgiveness of sin. To them He hath abounded. Not to the world. To them hath
He abounded in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto
them the mystery of His will. To them. in whom also we have obtained
an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of him
who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will,
that we should be to the praise of the glory of his grace who
first trusted in Christ, whom ye also trusted after ye heard
the word of truth." And what is that word of truth?
That the Father has sent Him. He accomplished all that the
Father sent Him to do. Now let me close by reading to
you our lesson over in 1 Corinthians 1. Verse 26, For you see your calling,
brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh Not many
mighty, not many noble are called, but God hath chosen the foolish
things of the world 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. Yea, and things which are not
to bring to naught things that are, that no flesh should glory
in his presence." Now here's the lesson. But of Him." Of who? Of God. Of Him. Are you in Christ
Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness,
and sanctification, and redemption? That according as it is written,
he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. Let him glory in
the Lord. The Lord told that paralyzed
man who laid there all those years at the Pool of Bethesda,
He said, take up your bed and walk. You reckon that man run
back into town and said, let me tell you what I did. I picked
up my bed. I bet you he didn't. I bet you
he said, come see a man who commanded me to rise up and walk. And I
was able to rise up and walk. Let he that glorieth, glory in
the Lord. And when God saves sinners, that's
what they do. They glory in the Lord. My friend, God has and shall
yet do all which He has purposed to do. And it's God's purpose
through the preaching of the Gospel to call out His elect,
give them faith in Christ, and preserve them through the preaching
of the Gospel of His dear Son. and all of this empowered by
the Holy Spirit of God. May God be pleased to do that
very thing in our hearts today. Thank you.