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And shall we begin by reading some passages from the first epistle by Paul to the Corinthians? First Corinthians, chapter one and verses twenty six onwards. For behold your calling, brothers, how that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame them that are wise.
And God chose the weak things of the world that he mo- might put to shame the things that are strong. And the base things of the world and the things that are despised did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are, that no flesh should glory before God. But of him are you in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, both righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
Now a further passage from chapter ten of this same epistle. Chapter ten and verse one: For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant how that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat of the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.
How be it, with most of them, God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our example to the intent that we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be you idolaters, as were some of them. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to pray. Still a third passage from chapter eleven. Chapter eleven and verse twenty three: For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, how that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it and said, this is my body which is for you, this do in remembrance of me.
In like manner also the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, this do as oft as you drink it in remembrance of me. And finally, for the moment, the famous verses from chapter fifteen. Chapter fifteen, verse one: Now I made known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you received, wherein also you stand, by which also you are saved.
I make known, I say, in what words I preached it unto you, if you hold it fast, except you believed in vain. For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also receive, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he has been raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. And God give us good understanding of his holy word.
On Tuesday morning, we considered together our Christian individual spirituality, and saw how important it is that however much progress we make along the path of our individual spirituality and our seeking of God, we should from time to time come back to the gospel to make sure that our progress is indeed true progress and is according to the gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord and does not in any way detract from the unique honor and person and ministry of our Lord and does not take us away from the fundamental truth of his gospel.
Then yesterday, we considered those delightful freedoms into which the gospel of our Lord Jesus introduces us. We contemplated how glorious they are, and at the same time reminded ourselves of the lessons of history, how easily those freedoms, strange to relate, can be compromised by the people of God and then lost sight of and eventually virtually lost. Therefore, we need here too, in connection with our Christian liberties, to remember the clarion call of God's word back to the gospel, so that these glorious liberties may continue with us, and that we, by our behavior, may follow the example of the Apostle Paul, who said of one particular instance in which he was challenged to compromise the gospel, to them said he, I yielded
not for a moment, that the truth of the gospel might continue and remain even to you. We must always behave in a way that is uncompromisingly and unfudgingly, uh, sets forth the glorious truth of the gospel. Nor is this narrow-mindedness, but sheer compassion for our fellow men and women who seek God from positions of utter ignorance and are seeking him confused with many a notion that floats around our world.
Compassion itself will demand that we get a clear grasp of the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus, that we might use it to help them to come into the sunshine of the liberty of the children of God. And now in our final study, we hear again this same clarion call back to the gospel, but this time in connection with our life and activity in the church of God.
There is no other place, perhaps, in all the gamut of our spiritual experience than the public life and activity of the churches of God. No other place where we need so constantly to hear the gospel, and to come back to the gospel, and to make sure that all our activities and our experiences and behavior in the churches of God are consistent with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The church at Corinth were an unusually brilliant church, if measured by the large range of their spiritual gifts and abilities. They came behind in no gift as they waited for the coming of the Lord Jesus. But they are a very vivid reminder to us that spiritual gifts is not necessarily the same thing as godliness. And if you ask me how I know, I know it by my own experience.
Oh, my brothers and sisters, it's one thing to be gifted by God to be a teacher. It's another thing to be godly. And the Corinthian church, and now they're in glory, God bless them, won't mind me pointing to their experience to show us the gift is not necessarily grace, nor godliness either. And gift, if it lose sight of the gospel, can lead into paths of barrenness and compromise and spiritual disaster.
The interesting thing about Paul's writing to the Corinthian church is the way he goes about, first of all, exposing their mistakes, diagnosing their mistakes, and putting his, putting his finger on them. And secondly, the way he goes about correcting those mistakes. It is not that he says, my dear brothers, you can't do what you're doing. Don't you know it breaks rule number two thousand five hundred and sixty five, subsection A? No, to be sure, the Holy Apostle, uh, is not behind using his apostolic authority to lay down the law when the need requires.
Let a man recognize if he's spiritual, the things that I write, he says, are the commandments of the Lord. Running through this whole letter of First Corinthians is the repeated technique, if I may so call it. He will say, oh, you lovely Corinthians, but you can't do that. You mustn't carry on behaving like you're behaving. Oh, really? And why not? Because what you're doing is inconsistent with the gospel, that's why.
The gospel is not some narrow legalistic rule and regulation invented to limit our enjoyment. If you compromise the gospel, you lose your liberty. In the end, you'll lose your joy. And oh, what is far worse, you'll offend the blessed Savior himself, who died that we might have a gospel. Even the most rapid survey of this epistle will illustrate that general principle.
In chapters one to four he says, you can't carry on like you're doing, forming parties and calling yourselves after the names of famous Christian leaders. Well, why can't we? That's how people do in philosophical circles. They are followers of Plato, or they are followers of Aristotle, or somebody else. Why can't we do that in Christianity and promote the truth by each having his own party? Oh, but you can't do that in Christian circles. Why? Why, it goes quite contrary to the principle of the cross of Christ.
I am of Paul indeed. Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? Well, no, of course, that would look terrible, wouldn't it? Fancy baptizing a candidate and say, I now baptize you in the name of the Lord Jesus and the Apostle Paul. Sound odd, wouldn't it? Mercifully, Christendom has never got round to that, thank the Lord. All right, if you want baptized in the name of Paul, don't call your group after the name of Paul either.
Be content to call yourselves after the only name that this allows us, the name of him who was crucified for us. Oh my dear, lovely Corinthian, but you're not so lovely when you behave like you behave now. This desperate permissiveness, permissiveness that has invaded the church at Corinth and doesn't seem to perturb you, it must be stopped. Why must it be stopped? For a whole host of reasons. But because it conflicts with the gospel. When Israel were redeemed by the Passover lamb out of Egypt, they were not set free to do as they pleased.
Forthwith and immediately they had to keep the feast of unleavened bread. So is it with the Christian gospel. It offers you with the one hand freedom from the judgments of God and the power of Satan, but requires you immediately to begin the celebration of the feast of unleavened bread, that is the feast of sincerity and truth and holiness. And you're not allowed one without the other. And thus and thus does he speak to them all the way through, and I must leave you for time's sake to search out all the references to the gospel under its various forms that Paul uses to counter the wrong practices of the church at Corinth, culminating, of course, in that famous climax as he addresses the theologians in the church.
Now, let nothing be said to diminish the importance of rigorous theological thought. We are to love the Lord our God not only with our hearts, but with our minds. We are to think. I may not have a very good brain. A Ford, so to speak, compared with your Cadillac, my brother. But if I'm not prepared to use the Ford of my little brain to love the Lord with, and to think as rigorously as I can think.
Then I am breaking the first of all the commandments. It says I must love the Lord my God with all my mind, heart, soul, and strength. It is a puzzling thing to me sometimes, when I see men and women of brilliant mind, masters of their physics, and of that super, super, super intelligence, which is the computer. Grown up adults in their secular professions and sheer baby nursery children when it comes to the knowledge of God's word.
Having not progressed in life beyond what they were taught in Sunday school, and unable to discuss even with their unregenerate colleagues, the intellectual glories of God's word. So that their colleagues get the impression that their Christian faith is a thing for the nursery, and not to be taken seriously by adult grown-up men and women who engage in serious intellectual thought in all other avenues of life. While that is so, yet here we must tread perhaps most carefully of all.
For theology, Dame theology, has shown herself to have a perverse streak all down the centuries, and can be the first sometimes to be false to the gospel, to undermine it with its extravagant theories, and in the end to forsake it. Oh, guard your thought, your theological thought, says Paul. How say some of you that there's no resurrection? For if there be no resurrection, then Christ is not risen, and we have no gospel left.
Back to the gospel. So for a moment or two now, I want to take some examples of this in somewhat more detail. And I come to chapters one to four, where the fundamental aspect of the gospel, as Paul spells it out here, is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, when we think at this level, we must be careful to recognize the special intention of these theological terms.
The death of Christ is one way of referring to his work. The cross of Christ is another way of referring to his work. And the terms in strict thought are not interchangeable. When we think of the death of Christ, we are thinking of certain aspects of his sacrifice. When we talk of his cross, we think of other aspects. What then is the point of the cross of Christ? Granted that Christ had to die for my sins that I might be forgiven, why had his death to take the form of the cross?
Since, as we all know, to die on a felon's cross was the very last disgrace, insufferable scandal for a human being to undergo. Why the cross? And why the tremendous emphasis in the preaching of the gospel on the cross? When Paul and his fellow apostles knew that to preach the cross was a guaranteed way to offend the Jews, and was calculated to make the Greeks think that the gospel was folly.
But we preach it nonetheless, says Paul. It wasn't because he was unskilled in the, uh, uh, in the science of communications. And had you tried to tell Paul, look here, our modern congregations don't like hearing of crosses, you know, soft pedal it, my dear man, otherwise you'll lose your congregation. Isn't user friendly. Paul will reply, by contrast, I am determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified.
What's the point of that element in the gospel? It is, as you know, deliberate on the part of God. God is intent on saving men, but to save them, he must cure human beings of that fundamental perversity that has shown up in the human character, to go for independence of God, to take an independent stance, and instead of man's confidence being in God, in utter dependence upon God, man has constantly taken even the good things that God has given us and transferred his basic confidence from God to them.
God had to complain of it through Jeremiah. Let not the rich man glory in his riches. There's nothing wrong in riches. But if we transfer our confidence from God to those riches, then we have perverted man's true relationship to God and the universe. There's nothing wrong in wisdom, but alas for the human tendency to leave off trusting God and being dependent upon him simply because we feel that our wisdom is so sufficient, and we put our f- our trust in our wisdom, and we'll call Almighty God himself to the bar of our wisdom, and if he can satisfy our wisdom, we're prepared to listen to him.
But if he doesn't meet the requirements of our wisdom, then we decide that God is inadequate. An utter perversity of the faculty that God has given us. Let not the mighty man glory in his might. It is God that gives us our power. But if we allow our fancied power to detract from our dependence upon God. Then our power has become weakness indeed. And this is what man has done.
It is therefore the deliberate strategy of God in the gospel to break that foolish independence. How will he do it? God's answer was the cross itself. That seeming exhibition of weakness and folly on the part of God. Now the cross, in the first place, exposed man's weakness and folly, as Paul remarks over the crucified Christ. The wisdom of God, but none, said he, of the rulers of this world understood or knew it.
For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. All while ignoramus as they were. When men with their vaunted political wisdom and expediency and calculated strategies that were deemed good wisdom and political know-how. Took the very wisdom of God, the Son of God, and the Creator of the universe, and nailed him to a cross. How the resurrection of the crucified Jesus has exposed the utter bankruptcy of human wisdom, of human religion, of human power.
He showed man in his independence of God to be a fool and an utter ignoramus. The mangled body of Jesus Christ on the cross says another thing. See here, the penalty that man's sin deserves, the consequence of human sin, even physically, it made a wreck of that holy body.
That's what sin is. That's where independence of God will lead. And see this wonder. How would you break this perverse streak in the human heart? This independence of God, this supposed human self-sufficiency. He will devise a way of salvation that holds out the love of God. While we were sinners, while we were rebels, while we were ungodly, even then did God love us.
And when we had nothing to contribute to our salvation and are powerless to save us, we may look to the only place where salvation is to be found. We may look to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ, God's son upon the cross, as the desperate and dying Israelites looked to the serpent on the pole. This message is continued on the other side. As their only possible means of salvation, and it humbles my pride.
My wisdom contributed nothing, my power contributes nothing. And as a bankrupt sinner, my only hope is the cross of Christ. The cross of Christ is God's deliberate strategy, therefore. The sad thing was that in the activities of the church in Corinth, believers though they were, or were supposed to be. Now they've got beyond the gospel, if you please. I say, it's a dangerous position to get into. And their church politics had now taken the form of forming groups after famous preachers, and boosting the one against the other, and introducing party spirits, and I am a Paul.
And were perpetuating the very false attitude that the cross was designed to smash. They were glorying in the techniques of Greek oratory. Instead of getting on in a manful way and preaching the gospel in direct, manful, straightforward fashion, they were tricking it out with all the entertainment value of Greek oratorical contests. And said that that was the way to capture the people.
Soft pedal the cross. And of course, it was having disastrous effects. Now, to get the Lord's people to come and listen to the word of God, oh, you've got to put a better show on than you could get on the, uh, down at the local, uh, theater, when the orators gave demonstration exhibitions of their communication skills. Wow. We can get better down in the theatre than we can get in the assembly. We're not coming out to listen there, not unless you bring a super duper preacher. And they were coming to wait on super duper preachers.
Instead of coming to wait on God. For you can have the very best preacher under the sun. But if your faith is in him ultimately, then he can preach his heart out and you won't get much. Because unless God's Holy Spirit simultaneously opens your heart and mind to understand and receive, you will not get to know God any further. God is a person, and unless he chooses to reveal himself, we don't get to know.
And the only one that can reveal God to us is God's Holy Spirit. Oh, how we need get g- need to get back to this message that the cross is designed to promote. In church, we come not to wait on the fa- famous and the great preacher. We come to wait on God, with the presidency of the Holy Spirit in the church, that our expectation be from the Lord. Thus does Paul rebuke them. I can't help thinking at this stage of the famous story in the Old Testament of David and Goliath.
You know the background. Israel coming out of Egypt knew the glorious experience of the might and power of God. And when at last they arrived in the Promised Land, their nation was organized as a theocracy, direct dependent upon God. The nation from time to time went astray, and they got themselves in all kind of bondages, but when they did so, they cried to the Lord, and the Lord, faithful to his people, raised up deliverers, you'll see, until the next time they went astray. Well, eventually they got tired of that.
I suppose it was a bit nerve-wracking, isn't it, if you've got an Ammonite coming up the road, or a Midianite with his camel breathing down your neck to wait on the Lord to raise up a deliverer is a little bit sort of a nail-biting, uh, you know, sets the old nerves, doesn't it? So they came to Samuel, and they said, Samuel, there's no good old boy, Samuel, with due respect, uh, having to wait on God every time. I mean, you give us a king, you see, and then we'll have him institutionally installed, and when the Ammonites come, we shall just have to call him out, you see, that's what kings are for. Samuel was upset, so was God, but in his mercy, he determined to teach them a lesson.
You want a king, do you? You think that's better than waiting on me? What kind of a king would you like, my dear folks, says he? What about this chap here? And God presented them with Saul. Now, Saul was a man. Wow. Hmm. Head and shoulders above all the rest, all the brawn. A man. Said God, would you, uh, like him as your king? Ah, they did that. Yeah, yes, yes, God. Now you're, now you're talking, God. A big man like that, that will do very well. Thank you very much. We'll install him as king. You better not forget to keep on trusting me, said God, but there you are, you're gonna have your big man.
And for a time, things went well. Old Saul, he frightened the whole neighborhood and got the tribes of Israel bowing to his rule. Until one day, there came out of the ranks of the Philistines a Goliath. Oh. Oh. If Saul was a big man, what would he do with this? This was a mountain of a man. That's the trouble with being dependent on big men. You're safe until there comes a bigger man. Now, Saul didn't know what to do.
Big man though he was. His big manism philosophy now failed him, of course. David volunteered to go. Well, my boy, said he, if you're determined to go, ha ha, it doesn't seem to me very, very sensible, but if you're determined to go, you're only a youth and, uh, no experience and qualification in this kind of thing. But I tell you what, David, my boy, take my armor. Ah, fool. If David had taken Saul's sword, he wouldn't have got within yards of Goliath. Goliath had a spear like a telegraph post. Just say. Imagine David coming up with Goliath, with Saul's sword.
Excuse me, let me get a bit nearer. Goliath would have spewed him. David didn't take Saul's armor, but by deliberate strategy, he took five small stones, a staff and a swift. And when Goliath saw David coming with a staff, Goliath was absolutely enraged, and his filis and the staff went up and down. You come to me with a little tiny stick, like a man would use to drive a dog out of his backyard.
You coming to me, you are the great single combat hero warrior that the world ever produced. Oh, he was enraged. And as they stood taunting each other, David declared his strategy. I'm coming to you, he says, and I'm going to defeat you and take your head off anyway, be warned, but uh... My choice of weapons is deliberate, Goliath. If I came to you with weapons like yours, suppose only I could conquer you. The conclusion the people of God would reach is that, well, it was a better man won. What use would that be?
I'm coming you with to you with these ridiculously silly little weak and uh crude weapons. That Israel may know. I come to you in the name of the Lord, whose armies you have defined, defied. That when the victory is won, Israel may learn its lesson and not trust in big men anymore, but learn to trust in the living God. The deliberate strategy of weak weapons, that God's power might be made known.
My time is done. Oh, how I would like to say all the other things. I'm coming round to Sam Robinson's view, but I shall have to come again. But my brothers, even this short survey shows us, doesn't it, that it is dangerous in the church, in its activities, in its methods, and it's in its evangelism, to get away from the gospel and to forget the very principles of the cross of Christ.
God help us understand what his strategy of the cross is. God give us the courage to be loyal to that cross and its principles. And to say with Paul, I am determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. Yes, there is a deeper wisdom to be had among those who are mature. But to come at that deeper wisdom, we shall still have to remember the principle of the cross. If we would learn God's holy word, if in the church we must, we shall are to sense the riches and the glory and the wealth of our divine inheritance, and together make progress in the knowledge of our infinitely wonderful God, and enjoy those things that eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither have they entered into the heart of man.
Then we must listen to the terms upon which God reveals them. But God has revealed them to us through his spirit. For the spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. I was at a conference way in Japan some years ago, marveling at the work that God has done through his servants in that country, and I was at a Christian camp, and one of the speakers was a physicist. He came from America, and in the interval I got the opportunity of a lifetime, you see, actually to get a, an a real physicist on two legs to whom I could put my questions.
And, you know, a little amateur interest in physics. The wonderful thing was that when I started to put my questions, he smiled benignly and said that that was a silly question. I mean, that was a silly question to ask about that particular field of physics. I was delighted, uh, you'll see, because he now said, now this is the way you want to go about, uh, investigating it, you see? And I had a whole physicist who had done the research himself, you'll see, tell me both the questions to ask and the answers that I could, um, get. Marvelous. And the things of God, how shall I know them? Sometimes I don't know even the sensible questions to ask. Ah, but God has given us his spirit.
He searches all things in the deep things of God, and those marvelous things that I have not seen and human imagination could never have invented. These things God stands ready to reveal to us in the church, but it will be through God's spirit. Let us honor all the preachers and teachers we can get our hands on. Let us make sure that our ultimate confidence is not in them, but in God. That when we meet in church, we come not to hear a preacher, however great, we come to wait on the living God, who by his spirit will reveal himself to us.
So may God bless his word. Bless you, my brothers and sisters, in your church fellowships from wherever you come. Fill your heart with the glory of his grace, and strengthen you to witness effectively to the world by the preaching of the cross of Christ.
