The Responsibility of Man - 4

Well good evening. I hope you've had a good day and hope we're ready to go tonight. We are, as your pastor mentioned a moment ago, attempting to bring the food from the kitchen to the table one more time, or actually two more times.

The trick is not to drop it on the way. We are executing that task of feeding the people of God tonight with the food that I have been given. And I do express our, Paul and I are thanks for everything. I'll say more about that tomorrow night. But my, you ruin us. You spoil us.

Treat us like a king and queen. And thank you for all of that. And certainly it's my heart's desire if we have an opportunity to come back and be with you at a future date. But I'm sort of like my old friend Jerry Bridges, used to be at our church every other year. For about the same length of time I've come in here. And last time he was with us he said, I asked him if he could come back in a couple of years.

And he said, well at this age I'm not even buying green bananas. So that's how, you just don't want to plan too far out there you understand. So sort of how I feel. But if the Lord enables me and you still want me, we would love nothing better than to come back. In a couple of years and try this once again. Well we've come a long way in our study. We are now all the way to chapter two. And your pastor mentioned you just need to stay here and go all the way through. You'd probably believe in eternal punishment by the time I got to the end of the book.

Give you a whole new slant on things like that. But this section has always been an intriguing part of God's word to me. And I'd have to confess that in years past I would read through this and it was interesting and yeah I understand the word. But how it all fit together was somewhat of a puzzle to me. And I am trying as God has enabled me to get a handle on how this fits together in following the argument of the apostle through this and trying to share that with you.

That's my goal. And it's been a real blessing to me to understand because notice that we've had this theme all the way through here of this idea of wisdom. And as I tried to state earlier that wisdom is the skillful use of knowledge.

Knowledge is the tool. Wisdom is the skill to employ that tool to bring about a desired effect or a desired end. And in our context the wisdom and also the power that is mentioned along with wisdom is not physical, natural wisdom and power.

It is the wisdom and power that is mentioned along with wisdom is not physical, natural wisdom and power. That as I've said so many times, not that puts a man on the moon but puts a sinner in heaven. This is the plan of God, the scheme of God, the wisdom of God, the mechanism by which God saves sinners and brings us in to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Paul is unfolding to us how that works. Because what has happened in Corinth at the church and all their divinity, divisions, you know, I'm a Paul, I'm a Peter, I'm an Apollos and so forth, is that they've got their eye off the ball. They are seeing the man, the physical minister who was used of God to bring the gospel to them. They're not seeing that they're really just a tool of God. Do you understand what's going on here? They're giving way too much credit to the minister.

We're gonna see that tonight. Now, we have been following this argument that this thing that Paul has come there to preach, he has characterized it not as the wisdom of man but this thing that the world calls foolishness, literally moronic silliness. In other words, the message of the cross, remember back in as we let our eyes just float back for a moment, chapter one, verse 18, the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us who are saved, it is the power of God. And that's what we've been studying through here.

Number one, how the world by its own wisdom will never come to a saving knowledge of God. Remember that central text I told you about in chapter one, verse 21? Let's read that again.

Let this sink in. This is really the heart of the whole argument here. For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. In other words, God in his wisdom ordained it so that the world, the lost world cannot in their wisdom attain to this thing. Instead, the second half of that verse, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching. And again, foolishness of preaching, not that the act of preaching is foolish, but the message, the content of the preaching is seen by the world as foolishness.

Silliness, ridiculousness. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. This is the mechanism of salvation, how it does not work and how it does work.

And we followed that through this first chapter. And we saw that even though man by nature sees this truth, the gospel, the preaching of the cross, it's called many names. In this section, nevertheless, some get it.

Some receive it. In fact, Paul, as we looked at last night says, just look around, look around the room. Not many mighty, not many noble, not many wise men, not many. Now, I didn't say not any, but not many. In other words, the church is comprised of people from all walks, all stations in life.

What made the difference? Verse 26, for you see your calling. It is the call of God. And again, we talked about that, this effectual call, the call that gets the job done. In other words, were it not for that effectual call, no one would be saved.

No one would believe. Okay? So the difference maker is not man, how smart he is, how wise he is, how good he is. It's not man. The difference maker is God, the call of God.

Okay? Do we all see that very plainly here? So we're looking at sovereign grace in action, folks. We're seeing the doctrine of election played out, that those who are chosen, and notice how he uses that in verse 28. It says, so that no flesh would glory in his presence, that all the praise and glory go to God. So it is of him, as we saw in the last verses of chapter one, that we are in Christ Jesus. It's not of Paul that we're in Christ Jesus. It's not of Apollos that we're in Christ Jesus.

Do you get the logic here? It's of God. It's his doing, his working, that has placed us in Christ, and now being in Christ, we have all the praise and all the blessings he's made to us wisdom, he's made to us righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Okay, I'm re-preaching last night's sermon for y'all that weren't here, and then for those who have slept since then. Okay, that's where we were last night. Now I'm sure the topic that's really, you know, hot in your mind, the thing that you really want to hear expounded is how does this calling work?

Okay, I get it. There is this calling of God that fetches, as it were, the lost sinner, and brings them into a knowledge of these things, to embrace these things, brings them into Christ. It's God's doing that did that, but how does it work in practical terms? And that's what we begin to look at here in chapter two, and we're going to see that there is an external side to this thing, to the calling of God, and we're going to see that there's an internal aspect of this calling of God that brings about the sinner's union with Jesus Christ. Tonight, we're going to be looking at the external side of it. Tomorrow night, we'll look at the internal side. Okay, everybody clear where we're going?

This effectual call works. I pointed out several times that once you stand back and look at this, it is certainly not man somehow making his way up to God. This is what I call top-down salvation. It is God reaching down to man. In fact, you start scanning over where we've been in our study, and you just don't ever see man doing anything.

Have you noticed that? It's all of God. He's the one behind it. So where does man enter into this thing? How does this thing actually come to us in a practical way?

What is that external side? Again, would you look carefully at that central verse, chapter one, verse 21? That's the first part. You won't get to God that way, but you will this way.

What's the second half of that verse? It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Now, I'm not a smart fellow, but if God has chosen that it be by the foolishness of preaching that His elect are saved, then somebody's gonna have to go and preach. Is that a leap of logic? There's gonna be a preacher that preaches this foolishness, or what the world calls it.

Keep in mind, that's what the world labels this. Somebody is gonna have to go and proclaim this foolishness. There is a role for man, you see, in this process, especially when we're talking about the external side of this thing, someone has to go and take the gospel and preach it. And by that, I don't mean necessarily standing here in a formal sense behind the pulpit. It may be in a living room talking to a friend. It may be somebody witnessing to you on the street. It may be somebody singing the gospel. You read a book in which the gospel message, but what is being told us somehow, the gospel, this gospel, that the world calls foolishness, what he called earlier the preaching of the cross, has to reach lost man. Now, I realize this is almost like elementary school here, but of course, as always, these things have been questioned over the years. There was a time when late 1700s, you had a man named William Carey who wanted to take the gospel to India.

You probably know the story. He and his friends, John Ryland, Jr., William Fuller, these men formed a mission organization in order to raise support for Carey to go as a missionary to India. And they went and met with a group of men, and it was John Ryland's father, presumably the senior, who said after he heard their proposal that if God wants to save the Indians in India, that he can do it without any help from you or me.

Now, let that sink in. In other words, these guys believe in the sovereignty of God. They believed in election. They believed in effectual calling. But essentially, they're saying if God wants to save them, you don't have to go. He'll save them regardless. Carey then wrote a book called An Inquiry for the People of God on the Use of Means in the Conversion of the Heathen.

Let that sink in. The use of means, and that's the point, that the same God who has determined the end, the election to salvation of a number of lost people has also predestined the means. Why do you bother praying? And I think Spurgeon replied, because he predestinates the prayer, too. He has not only predestinated the end, he predestinates the means to the end, the way you get there.

And that's what we're talking about, isn't it? When we talk about the wisdom of God in this context, as I've been saying over and over, it's not natural wisdom, it's not natural power, but it's the wisdom and power not that puts a man on the moon but puts a sinner in heaven. That's the kind of wisdom and power we're discussing in this context. And what we're looking at is the way, the mechanism. Remember, wisdom is using a fact in order to bring about a desired end. I told you the story about the man, the janitor in the defense plant that figured out how to put the big piece of, I don't want to go through the illustration again, but you remember how he did it.

Go down and get some ice. Nobody had figured out that you could use ice to put that big piece of equipment down on the concrete slab. He was able to take what he knew to reach a desired end. Nobody in their right mind in Paul's day, whether they're Jew or Greek, could have possibly envisioned that the cross was a means to bring sinners to God. You see why? To the Greeks, the cross, vanity, that's the end. That's absolute failure. That's absolute nothingness. To the Jew, it's even worse. The cross is that which brings the curse of God upon you.

Who could have envisioned that that mechanism, the cross, could bring a sinner to God? You see what's going on here? So Paul, as he begins this chapter, points out, and you notice it begins, at least in my version, with and I. In other words, it's just a continuation of the thought, the flow of logic that we've been following all the way through here.

The excellency of speech and of wisdom. Remember, we've talked about the Greek philosophers and how you had these traveling philosophers getting a following and getting paid for their services, and Paul is not getting paid. In fact, he's working. He's working with Aquila and Priscilla, making tents.

You know the story while he's there in Corinth. He's not taking money. He's not gathering a bunch of students and making them pay him. He's contrasting his ministry with this ministry.

They've seen that coming. That kind of ministry. They expect him to come and do what these traveling philosophers do.

Woo them and wow them with their logic, with their sufficiency, their excellency of speech, and so forth. And Paul says, I have eschewed all of that. I've refused to go down that line. Now Paul is an educated man. Don't make a mistake thinking this guy doesn't have much gray matter up here.

This man is a brilliant man. What he's saying is, I will not rely on my words, my slick tongue, my silvery tongue, we sometimes say. That will not be what I trust to accomplish the desired end here.

That's what he's trying to say. I'm instead coming with knowing just this. Verse two is, of course, the verse that we usually know out of this chapter. I've come to not know anything among you, save except this, Jesus Christ and him crucified. There's again a nickname for the gospel. You want a short way of defining what the gospel is?

Here it is. It's the person, Jesus Christ, and the work, him crucified, of Jesus Christ. That's the gospel. And when I came, that's all I determined to know. I'm not going to use anything else to try to win you.

You offer. I'm relying utterly on that message. The same message he has already told us in the first chapter, the world sees a silliness. That's the message that I am going to proclaim. And that's the only message I'm going to proclaim. Now that doesn't mean that every time we get up and preach, we say those words over and over again.

You can teach a parrot to sow those words. It's not merely about the cross of Christ and some text in the gospels and so forth, but it is that that is the hub of our theology. It's the hub of our preaching, that in every message we preach, we ought to be pointing men back to the cross of Jesus Christ.

That's where it's all at. It doesn't matter what part of the Bible we're preaching in. You know the old saying, I heard a story a long time ago about a young preacher that got up, preached at a meeting, and a man preached his heart out and sat down, and there was an old preacher sitting behind him, and when he was over, he turned around to the old preacher and said, well, how did I do? And the man said, well, it is a very poor sermon. And the young man said, well, what do you mean it's a very poor sermon? He said, was there something wrong with my exegesis? And he said, oh, no, you were right on target with your exegesis. Well, what about my illustrations? Oh, it's wonderful.

Wonderful illustrations. And he just kept going down the line. He said, well, if all of that was so good, well, what was wrong with my sermon? And the old man said, there was nothing of Jesus in your sermon. And the young preacher said, well, Jesus wasn't in the text. That's what Paul is saying. So whether we're preaching from Genesis or Revelation, the road leads to Jesus Christ. That's our aim in preaching this gospel.

And so Paul will say, I was with you in weakness and fear and trembling. He's hardly the orator that we would think he was. His speech, he says in his preaching, verse four, were not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit in power. Other words, he is going to rely on a message that again, the world will not by nature receive.

So obviously his hope, his confidence is not in that, how well he can present it, how well his speech and explain it. But if they receive it, it is a demonstration. A demonstration of God's power and power here, the power persuasion, the power that causes us to trust something, to receive it, to understand it. In other words, it won't be me when it's received. Don't give credit to me.

It's not going to be my silver tongue. It's going to be the power of God that brings this message to you. So in order for this effectual call to take place, somebody's got to go preach it.

Now we've seen that elsewhere. Romans 10 says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, right? That's the general invitation, whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord. But how shall they call on him whom they have not heard, or I'm sorry, let me get my, how shall they call on him in whom they have not heard? How shall they believe on him in whom they've not heard? How shall they hear without a preacher? How will they hear the preacher unless he's been sent? Do you see the chain that involves humanity, involves man, it involves us. We are involved in this process, in the external side of it, getting the gospel into contact with those who are the lost sheep of Jesus Christ. That's our job.

That's what Carey was saying. Somebody's got to go because God, you know, it's interesting how they reason. We assume that these were raving Armenians, you know, go over there and win the world.

But you know how these guys reason? If God has his elect in every nation, people, and tongue, then he's got some elect over there in India, right? And if he does, then somebody has to take the gospel to him. That's how God's going to save them is through hearing and believing the gospel. So somebody's got to go.

That's our responsibility. God could have done it some other way. As I've pointed out, angels would be far more efficient.

Remember Cornelius, the centurion, Roman over there in Caesarea? He has a vision, or you know, this angel appears to him and says what? Does the angel come and preach the gospel?

Nope. The angel comes and tells him where he can find Peter, down the coastline in Joppa. He, go get Peter, and he will tell thee words by which thou shalt be saved.

Let that sink in. The angel's certainly smart enough to preach the gospel. But he, this job, this responsibility, God has given to you and I. So go get Peter, and he'll come and tell you words by which you shall be saved.

That, of course, is exactly what happened. And so we are to preach this message, the message of Christ on a cross, dying for sin. The power is not in the preacher. The power is in the message.

Let me reiterate that. We sometimes talk about powerful preachers and powerful preaching. We call in Romans chapter one, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation. A powerful preacher is simply someone who manages to preach this clearly and plainly without getting in the way.

Okay? That's the most powerful preacher you can have. It has nothing to do with his charisma or his oratory skills. It is his ability to just clearly lay out gospel truth, because the power is in the gospel. That's what God is going to bless, not the man necessarily who is preaching it. We have that responsibility of preachers as preachers, of preaching it as clearly and plainly and correctly as possible.

But the whole point is that God will use his word, being faithfully proclaimed, to bring his people to salvation through faith. Let me go back to chapter one one more time. I mean, we're about to wear, this page is about to fall out of my Bible.

I'm going to have to go get some scotch tape or something before this meeting is over. Chapter one, verse 21 again, same spot. Look at the second half. First half, God's not going to allow man by his own wisdom to know God, okay, in a saving way. Second half of that verse, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that belief. One of the things that struck me in studying these two chapters was the paucity of the scarcity of references to faith. I don't know if you noticed that as we've been reading through this, but this is one here in chapter one, verse 21, believing. The other one is here in our text tonight, verse five, when he says that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Those are the only two references to faith in believing in these two chapters.

To us, that ought to be front and center. Because it is important, we know that, but you understand what Paul is doing is telling and explaining how men come to faith. And the point is you cannot come to faith in a message that you haven't heard. And the only way you're going to hear this message is not through your imagination, not through your working your way up to God like a plateau trying to discover who God is. The only way you're going to hear this message is if somebody proclaims it to you.

It must be brought to you. We ought to stop, I guess. I've got here in my notes to do this, so I guess I better do it.

I don't know why. I never pay much attention to them otherwise. But that point out the place of faith in salvation.

I think you know this already, just in case you don't. Let me bring it up here, because now we come to their faith standing in the power of God. You do understand that though we are saved by faith, we are not saved for faith.

Do you hear the difference? Faith itself is not something that is so wonderful. It's not something you can do that just so pleases God. The act of faith itself is not what saves. It's the object of faith that saves.

We do not save ourselves by believing. It's faith that brings us to the Savior. And faith, when you really get down to it, it's not so much a doing. It's a quitting. It's a giving up.

It's a stopping. We've been trusting in our own doing, our own works. And when we come to faith, we're giving up on ourself and we're putting our confidence in the works and the doing of another. That's what it means to believe. Here's the mystery. Faith is something you do, but it's not a work in the biblical sense.

Let me say that again. Faith is something you do. It clearly is they believe, they trust, they have faith, okay? Something you do, but it's not a work in that it contributes nothing to the salvation itself. It is the means by which you receive salvation. I know I spoke on this, I think, the last time I was with you, but again, that's been two years.

I forgive you if you don't remember and I'm not sure myself, okay? But that faith, we have this idea, it's like the eye is the receptive organ of the soul. You go to a museum, you look at the Mona Lisa. I don't know much about art. Mona Lisa doesn't look that great to me, but anyway, I do know that thing's worth a lot of money and so I appreciate it.

I have art appreciation because I appreciate the money that it's worth, okay? But in other words, when I go and look at a painting on the wall, it is through my eye, through the act of seeing that I receive the beauty of the painting. If I go to a symphony, it is my ear, the receptive organ of my soul through which I receive the music.

My ear adds nothing to the beauty of the music. It simply receives it. My friend, that's faith. Faith is the receptive organ of your soul. It's the way you receive it. It's the empty hand, said the old preachers, the empty mouth by which we come to God for filling.

It brings nothing to the party. So we're saved through faith. It's the instrument by which we receive Christ. But we are not saved for our faith, because of our faith, on account of our faith itself.

You see the distinction? It's the instrument by which we receive Christ. You won't be saved without it. You're saved through it, but you're not saved for the sake of it.

Well, chew on that a little while. That's an important thing to grasp here, because notice what's coming is we're seeing the process by which sinners come to this place of faith. Notice he's telling us that in the end, your faith stands, in verse five, not on the wisdom of man, not on oratory, not on clever speech gimmicks, but your faith is standing in the wisdom and the power of God. Again, the mechanism of the cross and the power of God's persuasion.

That's what has brought you to the point of faith in Jesus Christ. It's unnatural. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, it is an unnatural thing. The natural thing that the natural man does is not receive it.

This is an unnatural, this is a supernatural thing, if you receive it. We live in the Bible Belt, and because of that, I think to some degree, we have a warped sense of all this. We just seem to see, well, it's natural this, you're going to grow up and believe in Jesus. That's just what you do here in the Bible Belt. We just don't know, number one, we don't know how it is in the rest of the world.

It's not that way. One of my first trips down to Mexico, we were down in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec way down south, and we were heading out to a meeting back in the mountains of the Meque Indians, and there was this road we turned down. We'd been going down a highway for about a half an hour, and there were roads going back in the jungle in all directions, and then we come to one road and we take that road, and down that road, there was about three or four Christian churches. Down those other roads, there's nothing. Because you see, when the missionary first came there, the missionary went down that road.

He didn't go down those other roads. So the very fact that they had been exposed to the Gospel was an unusual thing. Shall we say it? Miraculous thing. That was not the normal case of most people. They had never heard this thing we call the Gospel. They'd had some exposure to Indian animism and some thin veneer of perverted Roman Catholicism, but that is it. As far as the Gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ that saves through faith, it was unknown down those other roads, but down this road, the missionary went. The Gospel went there. And wherever the Gospel goes, there's hope. Because that seems to indicate something, doesn't it? That God has some people down that road. Because that's His point. If He goes down that road, God has His sheep because He is ordained that they'll be saved.

How? By hearing this Gospel. And so you have hope wherever the Gospel goes. But we have this distorted view that everybody in the world has as much exposure to the Gospel as we do here in the deep Bible belt of the South. And it's just not true.

And because of that, I think we've lost the supernaturalness of all of this. It's just the expected thing you're going to grow up and be a Christian. That's what you do here in the Bible belt. My friend, that's just not true. Most of the time that's due to a perverted form of Christianity. We certainly have that all around us. Paul spoke in 2 Corinthians of those who came preaching another Jesus.

Remember? Those who receive another spirit. Those who proclaim another Gospel. In other words, Satan is very handy at perverting, warping the Gospel, morphing it into something that masquerades as the Gospel. Even here in the Bible belt, we know it is difficult sometimes to find a faithful Christ-centered Bible preaching church.

Oh, how thankful you ought to be for this one here. You just don't find this everywhere, even here in the Bible belt. So in other words, do you see what I'm saying? We've lost some of that. The miracle that takes place when someone believes the Gospel and receives Jesus Christ.

The natural thing to do is to view it as silliness and turn away from it. But this is the foundation. What Paul is saying is I'm not relying on my persuasive power, but on God's power to save. Let me try to illustrate this. I realize some of you are struggling with what I'm saying. Turn to Isaiah 53 a moment. Let me show you. Let me try to illustrate it by having you look over here. I say to Isaiah 53, actually the fifth servant song it's called starts back in 52, Isaiah 52 verse 13.

I'm certainly not going to try to expound this, but I just want to point out to you what's going on. It is called the servant song because notice chapter 52 verse 13 starts, Behold my servant. Each one of these five servant songs all are pointing and talking about this servant of Yahweh. I said five, there's four. Four servant songs. This is the fourth.

This is the last one. Notice he will be exalted and extolled and be very high. Nassau is the Hebrew word. He'll be lifted up. And you remember that word is almost a double entendre in the New Testament. John points it out to us.

Lift it up. Sounds real good except he points out that when Jesus uses it, it's not being lifted up, as we would say in a good way, but lifted up on a cross. He's speaking of the way he's dying. But you have this double meaning and notice that many are going to be astounded at his appearance.

Look at verse 14. His visage, he says, was so marred more than any man, his form more than the sons of man. He's going to be beaten to a pulp.

That's what he's telling you. You're going to be astonished at what he looks like. But next verse, he's going to sprinkle many nations. Many kings shall shut their mouths at him for that which they had not been told, them shall they see and that which they had not heard shall they consider.

A message is going to come to them. And now as you go into chapter 53, you have this question, who hath believed our report? To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? When we talk about the arm of God, you understand the anthropomorphic way of speaking of his power.

That's what we've been talking about, right? The power of God. To whom has the arm of God been revealed? For he shall grow up before him like a tender plant, like a root out of dry ground.

He has no form or comeness. When we, I want you to notice the pronouns here. When we, the writer is putting himself in the same class that he's talking about. When we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desiring. He's despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, we esteemed him not.

We esteemed him as a nothing, a nobody. That's the response of the natural man. But something happens. Something, as we go into verse 4, changes. Now we see, notice the same one who is placing himself into the Christ rejecters and despisers, now says, surely he has borne our griefs. Seven ways in these few verses, seven ways that he has become our substitute. Surely he has borne our griefs.

Number one, carried our sorrows. Number two, yet we esteemed him stricken and smitten of God in the flesh. We thought God was judging him, getting him. God's got him, judging him.

Well he was, but not for the reason they thought. Verse five, but he was wounded for our transgressions. Number three, he was bruised for our iniquity. Number four, the chastisement of our peace was upon him. Number five, with his stripes we are healed. Number six, and then the last one, all we like sheep have gone astray and we have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Seven times in these three verses we have the notion of substitution. Yes, he's dying. He's being judged of God. That is exactly right, but it's because of us. He's bearing our iniquities. He's bearing our sins. He's paying our debt.

You get the picture? He didn't see that before, but now the light has come on and he gets it. That's what happens in conversion. That's what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians now.

Let's go back to our text. That's the transformation that occurs in the heart of a sinner that at one point he has absolutely no use for Christ at all and then something changes. Something happens and he'll never be the same again. He sees it. 1 Corinthians used to say, if you can see it, you got it. But can you see it? It is a repeat of the miracle in John 9 where the man born blind is enabled to see.

That's our condition, right? We were born blind and yet something must open our eyes. He goes on to say that this thing that men must see to be saved is, and they call it foolishness, silliness. Starting down in verse 6, he says actually what they call silliness is actually the wisdom of God. In other words, we've been talking about the foolishness of preaching.

That means the preaching of silliness, okay? But what the world calls foolishness is in fact God's wisdom. In other words, we've not lost our marbles.

I mean that's what the world thinks. We scattered our marbles out there in left field, you know. What's really happening is we're gathering up our marbles and coming in from left field.

That's where we've been, okay? That we're seeing God's wisdom in the cross of Jesus Christ. We see the wisdom, the mechanism. Remember, wisdom is that which gets you to the desired end. Here's the mechanism of salvation that looks silly, ridiculous to the lost man, but to us it's logical, it's reasonable. When you understand what's truly going on, it makes perfect sense. So he says we do speak wisdom to you who are perfect, complete, who have come to faith.

This is wisdom. And we look at the world and we wonder why they can't get it, forgetting that there was a time that we didn't get it. It wasn't until God opened our eyes that we saw what this meant.

You understand how this is functioning? That the message must be proclaimed to us in order for us to bet our soul on this message, this method, this mechanism of salvation, to look at the cross and see more than a Roman torture state, to see it as the wisdom and the power of God that brings a lost sinner into salvation. Let me ask you, do you see that? He said the princes of this world didn't see it. Had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

That's a fascinating statement. Certainly he's talking about the powers that were there in Palestine, Pilate, especially Caiaphas, the council that held that council and said this is it, he's got to go. Of course, what had he done? He raised Lazarus from the dead. That's what pushed him over the edge.

That's it. Now he's got to go because if he doesn't go, we're going to lose our nation, we're going to lose our cushy places in this nation. And what you see is he that saves his life will lose it.

They wound up losing their nation and their cushy places. They could not see the wisdom of God and had they seen it, Paul says, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. That is a fascinating statement because sometimes this phrase, the princes of this world, speaks more than just human princes. It's speaking of Satan, the god of this world. Augustine, you may know, had a theory of the atonement. He called it the mousetrap theory, that God allowed his son, allowed Satan to be behind the conspiracy to crucify his son, which I truly believe was the case. But that in crucifying Christ, which Satan saw as victory, only winds up sealing Satan's doom. It's sort of like the old expression, you give somebody enough rope, they'll hang themselves. God allowed him to take this step against his son and in doing what he thought would destroy the kingdom of God, he destroyed and undermined his own kingdom.

He's like a spiritual version of old wicked Haman in the story of Esther who had the gallows in his backyard on which he planned to hang Mordecai and winds up getting hanged on his own gallows. That's wisdom now when you not only defeat your enemy, but you sow out with them that they defeat themselves. That's wisdom.

And that's what God did in the cross. So if you see this tonight, rejoice and I hope this is a comfort to those of us who are preachers. And I'm looking around here at some of you guys that are going to be standing up here in the coming days because if you're like me, there are times I look at myself and see myself just totally inadequate to the task. I keep wondering why would a church invite me to come.

Surely there's got to be a better option out there than this old. I don't get it. I don't understand. The only encouragement I can get is from a chapter like this that tells me I don't have to be charismatic. I don't have to be silvery tongue because that's not where the power is. What I need to be concentrating on is how clearly and plainly can I present the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's where the power is.

That's what will convert the sinner. It's bringing him into contact with that message. That is the external thing. I'm going to talk about the internal thing tomorrow night. But that gives me some hope that it really doesn't have much to do with my ability as an orator or a speaker.

That's not where the power is. Can I close tonight by reminding you of how Spurgeon got saved? You've probably heard it, but I think it's helpful. Spurgeon, my, what an orator. What a command of the English language. You read his sermons.

These are masterpieces. I read those things and I just want to go and quit, give it up. How can you possibly see yourself in the same vein as a Charles Spurgeon? They printed his sermons and published them all over the world, over here in America every week. They're reading his sermons and they are that good. They're that worth reading. Amazing.

Amazing gifts, right? If you've studied him, you know what I'm saying is true. But how was the prince of preachers, they called him. How was he converted? What kind of an orator was used of God to convert him? Let me read you the story here.

This is Spurgeon's own testimony. Sometimes I think I might have been in darkness and despair until now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning while I was going to a certain place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a side street and came to a little primitive Methodist chapel. And in that chapel there may have been a dozen or 15 people. I had heard of the primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made people's heads ache. But that did not matter to me. I wanted to know how I might be saved.

And if they could tell me that, I did not care how much they made my head ache. The minister did not come that morning. He was snowed up, I suppose. And at the last, a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker or a tailor or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. Now it is well that preachers should be instructed, but this man was really stupid.

That gives me some hope, okay? This guy was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was, Look unto me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth, out of Isaiah 45-22. He did not even pronounce the words rightly.

But that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus, My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, Look. Now looking don't take a deal of pains.

It ain't lifting your foot or your finger. It is just look. Well, a man needing to go to college to learn to look, you may be the biggest fool and yet you can look. A man needn't be worth a thousand a year to be able to look. Anyone can look. Even a child can look. But then the text says, Look unto me.

Ah, said he in his broad Essex accent. Many of ye are looking to yourselves. But it's no use looking there.

You'll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the Father. No, look to him by and by. Jesus Christ says, Look unto me. Some say we must wait for the spirits working.

You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, Look unto me.

Then the good man followed up his text in this way. Look unto me. I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto me. I am hanging on the cross. Look unto me.

I am dead and buried. Look unto me. I rise again. Look unto me. I ascend to heaven. Look unto me.

I am sitting at the Father's right hand. Oh, poor sinner, look unto me. Look unto me. And when he had gone to about that length and managed to spend out 10 minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether. And then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me as if he knew all my heart, he said, Young man, you look very miserable. Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before.

However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, And you always will be miserable, miserable in life, miserable in death, if you don't obey my text. But if you obey now this moment, you will be saved. And then lifted up his hands, he shouted as only a primitive Methodist could do, Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look, look, look.

You have nothing to do but to look and live. I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said. I did not take much notice of it. I was so possessed with that one thought, like it's when the brazen serpent was lifted up and the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me. I had been waiting to do 50 things, but when I heard that word, look, what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh, I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. And when then the cloud was gone, the darkness was rolled away, in that moment I saw the sun. I could have risen that instant and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of Christ and the simple faith which looks alone to him. Oh, that somebody had told me this before, trust Christ and you shall be saved.

That gives me some hope. A man that couldn't even pronounce the words right, go for about 10 minutes and run out of things to say, and yet that was the man that God used to save the prince of preachers. Do you see the power is not in the preacher? The power is in the message, the message of the cross, and the invitation is to look. That's that receptive organ, to hear the hearing of faith, to receive it and to believe it and to bet your life on it. Bet the farm on Jesus Christ. If you don't know him tonight, may Spurgeon's testimony turn out to be your testimony.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for what we see here in these words that in your purposes, in your wisdom, you have ordained that sinners be saved in a particular way. And it is through the gospel message coming to them that they will hear it, receive it, and believe it. So, Father, we pray that we would be faithful at our part in all of this, that as we have received mercy, we would be about the mission of proclaiming Christ to others round about us, that they too might receive mercy. May we be faithful in being clear, as this man was who spoke to Spurgeon about the need of the sinner around us, and that, Father, we don't set him on the path of legalism performing this or that work or this or that task, but we may urge him to look to Christ alone, that all he needs is in him.

And, oh, as they used to say, if we can see it, we got it. Thank you, Father, that we can see it. We who know you tonight, thank you that you worked in us to reveal your son to us, or else we too would have turned away and had no use for the crucified Son of God. What a miracle that you have done in our hearts. What an unnatural thing that we cleave unto Christ, Christ crucified, as our hope of reaching heaven. Thank you for showing us your wisdom in that cross. In the name of Christ, I pray. Amen.