The Gospel as God's Wisdom - 2

Well, good morning. It's such a pleasure and privilege to be back here with you once again.

Thank you for the invitation. The trips always get a little more difficult every year that goes by. Some of you know what I'm talking about and every day is an adventure.

I get up saying what part of me is not going to be working today. You never know. I told Paula we've been married coming up on eight years now, that marriage to me might not always be enjoyable, but I can almost promise you it won't be boring. And I think I've lived up to that end. We've had some interesting times, especially out at our ranch in Wyoming. We had a real close scare with a wildfire this past summer.

Never been through anything quite like that before and never want to go through it again. And thank the Lord our place was spared. But a lot of the ranches around us, all the pasture land was completely consumed and put them in a real crisis as far as what to do with their cattle. Nothing for them to eat now. And some of them had to go and cut barbed wire fences to let their cattle escape in front of the fire. And one rancher told me it will be a month before he can find all these cows.

He has no idea where they are. But thankfully it was no worse than it was. And we hope this year we won't have quite that kind of excitement.

We can live without that one. And I bring you greetings from our church in Olive Branch, Mississippi, Grace Bible Church. I did pastor there for some 30 years. Been retired about seven now.

And been doing things like this in the wintertime anyway since then. And then our summertime church is Organ Trail Baptist Church in the metropolis of Hartville, Wyoming, population 64. Our little church, we have 15 on a typical Sunday. The pastor and his wife have five kids.

So half of that number is him and his family. And we sort of joke, if they ever have a fight, we're going to have a church split right there in the family. But we're just thankful we've got a good place to go. And he and I have developed a close friendship. And I get to preach for him occasionally through the summer months while we're there in the area. So it's really been a great blessing to be out there in what we call God's country, a little taste of heaven there on the ranch. Well, you see we have bitten off quite a chunk here of what we're looking at over the next few days, these first two chapters of 1 Corinthians.

Actually, I think, Brother Greg, when we first talked about this, I was going to do a survey of the whole book of 1 Corinthians. What was I thinking? I got to looking at it.

No, this is not going to work. In fact, we've got our work cut out for us just these first two chapters. And this morning's message, as you see from the title, this is just sort of the introduction in the background. We're sort of setting the table for the real food that will begin tonight. So I'm doing that to sort of entice you to come back as we get into the meat of our study on Christ as the wisdom of God.

It's sort of coming at things from a little bit different angle than we typically do, as you will see if you'll stick around for that study. Let's begin by talking about the situation of Corinth itself, its geographical location. I was privileged back in the year 2016 during a time of my sabbatical from my preaching duties there in Olive Branch to go over to Athens, Greece. I have a good friend there, pastor of a Baptist church, a very small Baptist church in Athens. His name is Nico. And he and I have become good friends over the years. And he invited me to come out. And you remember the economy of Greece was just in the pits back then. And he was out of work.

He was footloose and fancy free. He said, if you can get over here, you and I can take off and we can go explore some of the places around us. So we were able to go and spend a couple of days exploring the ruins of Corinth and getting acquainted with the setting and what all was there. It was an amazing place. We almost got thrown out of there.

It's a long story I won't go into, but the Christians are still being persecuted in Corinth. Let me just put it that way. No, we had a little misunderstanding with some of the guards, apparently.

I'm not sure I'm welcome back. But anyway, we hope all of that is blown over. But anyway, quite an amazing place. It's situated on an isthmus.

If you remember from your high school geography or eighth grade geography, an isthmus is a small neck of land that connects to larger pieces. And what this is doing is connecting northern, what we call Greece today, it wasn't called that back then, but what we would call Greece today with this southern large area called the Peloponnesian Peninsula. That's up in Greece to the north and sort of the northeast of Corinth.

We drove an hour and 15 minutes to give you an idea. Not all that far is the huge city today of Athens, Greece, about six million people. They're in Corinth, nothing but ruins today. But it connected Athens up in what we would call Greece with Sparta down in the Peloponnesian Peninsula and Corinth was sort of in the middle. They were both back then in the Roman province of Achaea. So things were sort of divided up differently. You had Macedonia and Thessaly up to the north and then you had Achaea in the south and Corinth was the capital city of Achaea.

As we're going to see, it was the seat of Roman government that we'll find later in our study. Now the geographical setting is interesting in that this isthmus is only about five miles wide that connects those two pieces of what we call Greece. And if you're a sailor, you can see that if you could just somehow cut across that little neck of land, you can save yourself hundreds of miles of sailing around the south coast of Greece. What was cut off a lot of mileage plus it was very shallow, rocky and dangerous to sail around the southern side of this Peloponnesian Peninsula. So obviously if there was just a way to cut through this little isthmus, well, there is today, a little over 100 years ago, they actually dug a canal that connects the Aegean Sea over to the east with the Adriatic Sea over to the west.

But it's not very wide. It won't let large ships through there but smaller boats are using that today but they didn't have that luxury back then. But what they did do, if your boat wasn't too big, the sailors would literally drag it out of the water with using ropes, drag it the five miles over that little neck of land from the Aegean Sea on one side to the Adriatic on the other.

Cut off a ton of miles in danger. Sometimes if the ship was too large to haul out of the water and drag it across, they would offload the cargo onto carts that they would then roll over that peninsula or isthmus, I'm sorry, to another ship on the other side. So they tried as best they could to avoid sailing around the southern side of Greece. Now what that did was make Corinth sitting in the middle of that isthmus a major thoroughfare, not only north and south, up and down through Greece but especially from one sea to the other. Trade going around the Mediterranean Sea. Remember ships in those days, you just didn't strike out in the middle of the ocean. You'd sink. You'd never make it. You wanted to stay close to shore so these ships coming around the Mediterranean Sea taking, say, grain from North Africa or fruit from Israel and circling around and headed to Rome are going to cut right through there so you have a constant stream of comers and sailors night and day traipsing through this little very strategic spot there on this isthmus.

So you get the idea. This was a little less than 100,000 people, they estimate, lived there at this time that Paul visited. But in that day, that was a big, big city. It was about the same size as Athens was.

So this is a large major city, very important city. But it was also a very immoral city. You're familiar with the Greeks loving their plays and whenever they would introduce someone from Corinth, he would come staggering on the stage as if he were drunk. That's the reputation that Corinth had. Not only drunkenness but prostitution was rampant. Strabo the historian visited there a little bit before Paul and he said in his day there were a thousand temple prostitutes plying their craft on the streets of Corinth.

Let that sink in. You say what do you mean temple prostitutes? Right outside of ancient Corinth is a mountain. It's called the Acro-Corith, the Acropolis of Corinth. Now you're probably thinking of an Acropolis like in Athens, the mountain there on which sits the Parthenon, this temple to Athena, the goddess supposedly of Athens. Well almost all these old ancient Greek cities had an Acropolis, a mountain connected with the town and Nico and I, it's sort of like you see a mountain, you've got to climb it. I was in a little better shape back then and he and I decided to climb that thing one day and it was quite a journey.

It's a pretty high spot, beautiful spot when you get to the top and you get your breath back. You're looking down on the ruins of ancient Corinth and you can look out and see that Isthmus I'm talking about, the Aegean Sea over here, the Adriatic over here, Ephesus about 240 miles to your east that way, Rome about 350 miles this way. So you see the layout of the place and there on the top of that Acropolis are the foundation stones of this ancient temple to Aphrodite. Now you may not be that familiar with the name Aphrodite, you probably know her better by her Roman name Venus. She was the goddess of sensual sexual love and these prostitutes were dedicated to her. Now before you think evil of these young women, most of them had been slave girls and some rich owner dedicated them to the service of Aphrodite.

So these poor young women never had a choice about what they were going to be, what they were going to do when they grow up. That was their life and so it was a very horrible situation and of course keep in mind that you've got a trade city with sailors coming through at night and day, dragging cargo through the streets. You have a ready made clientele for the prostitution that went on there. So there are some who say that to have relations with a prostitute in that day was thought nothing different than just going and getting a glass of water. It was that common, that prevalent and that will then explain why you see Paul later in this letter addressing some of the immorality that's going on and the admonition to flee fornication. That was not just empty words spoken into the air.

This is a huge problem. So you not only had the sort of characterization of a Corinthian as this drunk, but also to Corinthicize. They actually had a word, to Corinthicize someone meant to lead them into moral debauchery.

So you say well what, is there any equivalent today? It would be sort of like Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street and the strip in Las Vegas all rolled into one. I mean we call Las Vegas what? Sin City?

Well guess what? This was Sin City. That little town we live near, down at the bottom of our canyon a couple of miles from the ranch is the little town of Hartville. It's just this sleepy, mostly retired folks living there today, the 64, 66 when we're there. Back in the day of the old wild west a hundred years ago there were some 13 saloons there, gambling hauls and 13 brothels connected with it. I have heard tales from some of the old folks around there that will literally curl your ears and your hair of some of the stuff that went on in Hartville, some of the gunfights literally out in the street. It was the wild, wild west.

There was no law. In fact we live in Webb Canyon. I told them they shouldn't do that, but you know.

What's one man's opinion against so many? No, it's not named for me, it was named for the first law man that came in there, Truesdale Webb, because till him there was no law except the saloon keepers basically made the only rules that were there. You went to Hartville to just do whatever sinning your heart desired to do. That was its reputation. That's what went on in a place like that. That's what Corinth is.

It's that kind of place. And to that place, God sends the Apostle Paul. If you were voting for the least likely place that a church or that Christianity would be established, you'd probably pick Corinth. The most unlikely setting for a Christian church, a most unlikely setting for anybody to receive the gospel that Paul is coming there to preach.

And yet, guess what? There is a prominent flourishing church there in the city of Corinth. You can read about its establishment back in Acts 18.

Not now, do it on your own time, okay? Acts 18, I'll give you the overview. Paul comes to Corinth and meets up with a couple of Jews who have been kicked out of Rome.

Claudius made all the Jews get out of Rome at some point. You know their names, Priscilla and Aquila. This couple that Paul knew their craft, which was tent making.

We're not sure if they're actually making tents or making tarps, the material you would make a tent out of. But at any rate, this was a craft, a trade that the Apostle Paul knew. So they become his partners.

And what a unique and amazing couple they are. You see them in several points of New Testament history. And I've often used them as a illustration of the impact that a godly couple can have for the cause of Christ. So here we see them in Corinth. And Paul unites with them in their trade. And we find that he goes to the Jewish synagogue as is his custom and very quickly gets run out of the Jewish synagogue as is his custom.

They reject his assertion that Jesus is the Christ, that is the Messiah. But in the providence of God, there's a guy in that synagogue who is apparently converted to the gospel and to Christ, whose house is next door. And he invites Paul to come into his house next door to the synagogue and begin to preach. And on top of all that, the ruler of the synagogue.

You get this in your mind. You've got the synagogue here. Here's this house church. We would call it today next door where Paul is preaching. And lo and behold, the ruler of the synagogue, the head chief there, embraces Christianity, believes the gospel. So he removes himself from over here over to this house church next door.

Now, can anybody sort of anticipate that you're going to have a little collision or a little friction going on here as things develop? That's exactly what happens. It's not too long before there's an uproar.

These Jews become so incensed that they drag the new chief of the synagogue, a man named Sosthenes, they drag Paul before the Roman deputy, Gallio is his name, before his judgment seat, our text says. It's bima in the Greek. The bima is still there.

They've uncovered the bima. That's where I got in trouble with the guards. I was pretending to be Gallio, my friend. Well, we had seen this other family get up there and take pictures.

So I followed them up and Nico said, okay, act like you're Gallio. And it's about six foot high. And he's down here and I'm up here. So I'm up there like a Roman deputy. And that's when the guards start blowing their whistles and yelling at me.

And I have no idea what have I done? And they're mad. And they followed us around for about the next hour watching us like hawks. It wasn't until I got back home and happened to be watching a YouTube video about faux pas, things not to do in foreign countries. It appears in Greece this is an obscene gesture. Who would have known?

Well, anyway, that's apparently what they were all upset about. And I didn't even know what it was until I got back home. I won't tell you the meaning. You don't want to know the meaning.

But I began to say, okay, I get it now. If I ever go back, I will not. I don't know what they do when they say hi to people, how you would make that work. But be careful if you ever go to Greece.

Don't do this. But anyway, I was standing up there on this bimah, which is where Galileo would have been, the Roman deputy, the proconsul for that province, that Roman province. He's the law. And the Jews drag Paul before him. There's a stone out there before the wall that the bimahs would have been up on top where he sat. There's a stone pillar embedded in the ground out in front of that, where when they would accuse a prisoner like Paul, they would take them and tie them to that pillar, anticipating that they're going to be whipped or beaten. And that's apparently what is happening here. They drag Paul before this Roman deputy, tie him to that pillar, and they begin to accuse him before Galileo of teaching things that they don't believe, basically.

Well, guess what, folks? This is not Judea anymore. This is not a Jewish culture.

This is a Greek place with a Roman deputy, and Galileo, as he states, could care less about their theological skirmishes, their disputes about their words and their doctrines. And what happens, instead of Paul being beaten and whipped, they grab Sostenes, the new ruler of the synagogue, and beat him. We have a word for that in English. We call it irony. When there's a completely unexpected outcome, you didn't expect this to happen.

Well, nobody could see that one coming. And it's not long before then Paul departs, makes his way back to Jerusalem. This is on a second missionary journey, by the way. By the way, that fact that Luke records for us is very important if you're going to understand New Testament history, if you're trying to date the events. There's not many mileposts you can tie the dating of certain events to, but this is one of them because of an inscription found up at Delphi, the Oracle of Delphi, this famous Oracle, an inscription from the Emperor Claudius regarding his good friend Gallio, who is, he states, this proconsul in Corinth and dates it according to the year of Claudius's reign, which allows us then to say that incident most certainly took place in 51 AD. That means that Paul probably came to Corinth about 50. The Jerusalem Council, which just preceded this, then was about 49 AD. That helps us understand and to counter some of the liberal argument that, well, Christianity, they really didn't believe all this stuff at the beginning. It developed over the years.

And what we're seeing is you start dating back. Remember Paul in Galatians talks about 14 years later I came to Jerusalem, apparently for the Jerusalem Council. That means he would have been converted somewhere around 35 AD, only a few years at most after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. In other words, this is not some myth that developed over several decades as the liberals would try to impress you and I with. No, from the beginning they taught these things. Paul had just had his encounter with the risen Christ when he went to preaching the gospel.

Now let's get back on target here, okay? But just an interesting thing that this fact that Gallio was the proconsul right then and there helps us then to date the book of Acts. Well, let's look at the greeting.

It's typical. Paul is introducing himself. He's called to be an apostle and he says, and Sosthenes, our brother. Where did we run into Sosthenes? Remember synagogue ruler number one got picked off by the gospel and Sosthenes was synagogue ruler number two who dragged Paul before the Roman Gallio and now Paul is introducing Sosthenes as our brother and as the traveling companion of Paul. We spoke about irony a moment ago.

Who would have seen that one coming? Now if you read commentaries and scholars on this, they say, well, Sosthenes was not all that unusual a name. This probably wasn't the same Sosthenes that we read about in Acts 18. Who are you kidding?

When you read the letters of Paul, his introduction is always himself of course and then sometimes Timothy and Silas but that's it except for right here. Here he adds Sosthenes and not in the Greek, it's not even a brother, the brother. Obviously this Sosthenes was someone they would immediately recognize and know back there in Corinth. He needed no other introduction except he is Sosthenes, our brother.

Now I realize that's not to convince a skeptic but I'm saying and some things in scripture we would say, well, these are probabilities and I would say I'm 90% certain that this Sosthenes is the same Sosthenes that we read about in Acts 18, instrumental in trying to get Paul silenced there in Corinth. And all I'm pointing out is isn't that just like the Lord? He has his elect sheep and we find those elect sheep, they get lost in strange places.

So many of the times we cannot possibly recognize and identify who they are ahead of time, can we? That ought to be an encouragement to us to never give up, never quit praying, never quit witnessing, you just never know what God might do in his grace and in his mercy. Notice that the church is called sanctified, that means set apart from something to something, cut out of the herd they say out west. They've been cut out of the herd by the gospel truth. They've been separated from the world, separated unto Christ.

They are now called saints. They are also in the same group, not just of the local church there in Corinth, but notice he goes on to say, with all of those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. This idea of being a caller on the name of the Lord is very important because it points us back to several things. Back in Romans 10, 9 you know that if we confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart God is raised from the dead and shall be saved. You know that passage we sometimes memorize if we're trying to win souls, it was one of those key verses.

We used to call it the Roman road, well that's one of the mile posts on that road. But notice that to call upon the name of the Lord is pointing us back to something Peter preached on the day of Pentecost. They're saying, you guys are just drunk, you remember?

And he said, wait a minute, it's not even nine in the morning, we're not drunk. This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. It points us back to the Old Testament and the prophecy of Joel ended, it's going to come to pass in that day that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's how Peter ends his sermon. This is the fulfillment of that.

It's happening. And so when you find New Testament writers like Peter or like Paul picking up on this phrase that identifying these people as those who call on the name of the Lord, it's obviously the same thing that Peter was preaching at Pentecost, same thing Joel was talking about in his prophecy in the Old Testament. Are you with me there? But in Joel's prophecy, it's whosoever shall call upon the name of Yahweh. The question is, did Christians believe that Jesus was divine from the beginning or was that something that grew as time went on? I would assert the very opposite that that is exactly what the apostles are talking about, that those who come to call upon the name of the Lord, Greek is of course not Yahweh, but which Lord is this? Back in 1 Corinthians, well we're in 1 Corinthians, in 1 Corinthians 12, no man can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Notice the idea here, the tight connection that this person upon whom they are calling, becoming a worshiper, a devout follower of, this person is clearly being introduced as divine. Notice that this is a church that has been blessed by God, by his grace. Now grace sometimes refers to the motivation behind the giving of something. We call grace unmerited favor, unearned, unpurchased, so forth. But grace in other places and especially here from verse 4 as you read, refers not so much to the motivation behind the giving of the thing, but to the thing itself that was given, the gift given. And in this case you'll see when he is thanking God in verse 4 for the grace that's given them, as you read on it's clear he's talking about gifts that have been showered upon this church. Notice you're enriched by him in all utterance, in all knowledge.

You have been marvelously blessed of God with these gifts of grace. And notice in verse 6, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you. Here's one, we're going to see several shorthand ways of talking about what we call the gospel. The word gospel obviously is one of those ways.

It's good news, okay, good tidings. But there are other ways, scripture in a shorthand way refers to what we call the gospel. Here's one of them, it's the testimony of Christ. Now let me hasten to say this is not Christ's testimony towards us, it's the testimony that God has given towards his son. It's the objective genitive for you grammar people out there.

The genitive that points to an object. It's the testimony that's given about and to Jesus Christ. That's what the gospel is, it's God's testimony regarding his son.

Here's one synonym, we're going to see many more. And so he's saying basically God has given you these things to confirm you in the truth and to keep you as he goes on till the day of Christ Jesus, till the day when Christ appears. The apocalypsis in Greek, his unveiling, his second coming. And verse 9 sort of sums it up, God is faithful by whom you were called unto the fellowship of his son. I want you to realize that we are dealing with what I would call top down theology. This is not bubble up theology. This is not you and I trying to work our way up to God or try to find something that God has for us.

This is working throughout especially this introduction and we're going to see throughout our study. It's not a description of how you found God by seeking for him and somehow coming to a knowledge of the truth. You're going to find that this is all about God reaching down to you and plucking you out of darkness, plucking you out of the world and translating you into the kingdom of his dear son as Paul would express it in Colossians. You get the picture?

You see what I mean by top down? Notice you see it right here. God is faithful. It's not that you have become faithful and now you've become Christians. That's true but the driving cause, the impetus behind all that is not you, it's God. You're where you are in Christ, joined to him, separated from the world, separated unto Christ. All of that has happened because God's faithful.

You see? He's the one who called you to the fellowship of his son. You know when we say this fellowship everybody's thinking about juice and cookies out here in the refreshments, you know?

Koinonia is the Greek term, to be in common with, to be joined to something in a real and vital way. And notice it is God who called you out of your lostness, out of your depravity, out of darkness and has joined you, brought you into this holy communion. You've been cut out of one herd and you've been placed in another corral. You've been placed in the okay corral, we could say.

You get the picture? And who's behind all that? It's God. Now let me stop here for a moment and say, man, you look at all of these wonderful things Paul is saying about this church. Brother Greg, I mean maybe we better put our application in over there if they need a pastor. You know I'd like to pastor a group like this. I think we all do pastor a group like this in one way or another because what we're going to learn is this church who has such a glowing testimony from Paul about what God has done there is all beset with problem after problem after problem. And some think this is peculiar, this is unique, this has got to be the worst church in all the New Testament about which we read.

And I think no, that's not it. It's that we know more about what's going on in this church than any other church in the New Testament. I can't think of another place that we know what's going on internally. More so than this church.

You get the picture? We know more about the inner workings and the squabbles. What we're calling 1 Corinthians is actually 2 Corinthians and what we call 2 Corinthians is actually 4 Corinthians. We know of at least, maybe there's more, at least four letters that Paul has sent this church. He mentions one in this pistol that he's written before this one. In 2 Corinthians he mentions another epistle that's not this one nor the one before it.

Anyway, he got different terms for it. But we know there's at least four letters from Paul of which God's providence only chose to put two in the canon of scripture. And we also know that there are letters coming to him from the church in Corinth.

In fact, what follows to the very last chapter of this letter, chapter 16 where you have a bunch of greetings and salutations or signing law is you can divide it in two parts. The first part has to do with what we read here. The problems about which Paul has come to learn through somebody ratting them out. Somebody squealed on them. Chloe's people. Now I don't know who Chloe was but apparently the members of her household could have been, her family could have been servants. I think more likely servants of Chloe that have come to, Paul is writing this letter by the way from Ephesus about 240 miles across the Aegean Sea from Corinth. And probably some of her servants have come to Ephesus and they are bringing him up to date with what is going on in the Corinthian church. About half of what follows is going to be Paul addressing those problems about which he's been alerted and then the last half of what follows is questions that they have written him about. So it's just from one end of the letter to the other it's a series of difficulties and problems and questions that are being raised from about this church.

So I'm simply saying I don't think this church necessarily was any worse than any other church in the New Testament. We simply know more information about what was going on there. Well what have Chloe's people squealed to Paul about? It's division. Division. Factions. And it has to do with dividing over prominent personalities. Have you ever heard of such a thing in the church?

Yeah we still have that kind of thing going on today don't we? In this case it's some are saying I'm of Paul, others I'm of Apollo. Now remember Apollo, Paul had been over in Ephesus at one point as he's going home from Corinth and after he leaves this guy named Apollo shows up who Aquila and Priscilla, remember the couple?

We read that they teach Apollo more perfectly the things of God. He is from Alexandria in Egypt, a great sinner of Greek learning. He's apparently very eloquent, very polished. Remember Paul? What's the wrap on Paul?

His letters they say are waiting. His bodily presence is weak and contemptible. Again I remind you tradition says Paul was four foot eleven and bald headed.

I find that very attractive myself but most people for some unknown reason don't, okay? So Paul was not this overpowering bombastic personality that could just like shooting cannons at you. His letters yeah, a lot of meat, a lot of weight there but apparently his speaking was not near shall we say up to par with what the Greeks were expecting.

We'll talk about more about that tonight as we get into the next section. But Apollos was, Apollos was a polished orator and so you find some I'm of Paul, others saying I'm of Apollos. Some of Cephas that's an Aramaic form of Peter means both what Peter means in Greek and Cephas in Aramaic both mean rock. We call him Rocky today. We're followers of Rocky, okay? And then others said well we're just of Christ. They sound like the real holy folks there and there is a possibility some suggest that maybe they understood that we're not supposed to be dividing like this.

I don't find that to be likely and I come to that conclusion because of some of the rhetorical questions that Paul asks. Notice as you see this going on in verse 12 and some saying I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas, I'm of Christ. First question is Christ divided? In other words I've got to ask myself here reading between the lines why would Paul say that?

What would prompt him to say that? Unless these who are saying we are of Christ are saying we're of Christ in a way these guys aren't. And so they are dividing if you will the person of Christ and the blessings that come from Christ. He has some blessings for this group but he has special blessings for us because we are of Christ.

I would understand that's almost got to be the reasoning that's behind this. Secondly the observation in that it seems to be that they're basing this division upon the fact of who baptized them of all things. The person who was responsible for their baptism. Notice how Paul also then be asked was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul? Why would you say that unless they are somehow deriving some spiritual significance, some spiritual blessing from the fact that it was that guy who baptized me. I've run into a few of those out there that brag about where they were baptized. Who baptized them? You know it was Owen brother you know the big name he's the one that baptized me. Somehow they are somehow thinking that there's some spiritual significance in the fact of who was the human agent responsible for their baptism.

That's what all appearances are pointing to. In other words when they're saying I'm of Paul they are sort of implying well I follow Paul. I'm Paul's disciple. Another saying I'm of Apollo. I follow Apollo.

Others I'm of Cephas. I'm following Peter. Another saying well we're just following Christ. That there is some benefit, some spiritual blessing that has come to them through the agent of their baptism. Now think about that if it's not obvious but I hope from looking at the questions that have arisen in the mind of Paul and that he's expressing to the church that's almost got to be what's going on.

Why would that matter? How is how in the world is the instrument the human agent of your baptism how is that rubbing off on you in such a way as to give you a leg up over other Christians who were not baptized by the person you were? And Paul as he is almost abhors the notion that they're saying this that some are saying I am of Paul and he goes into this list here I'm so thankful I only baptized a handful of you and you notice these names you go back and read the account in Acts 18 you'll read some of these people's names as the early converts there in the church of Corinth that Paul is saying I yeah I baptized this one and oh yeah I baptized the house of Stephanus but besides that I don't know I don't remember I don't care because Christ didn't send me to baptize he sent me to preach the gospel. That's the job I can leave that job to somebody else. My concern is to preach the gospel. Okay how do we apply what's going on here? I'm sort of thinking this may be the beginning of the era that we find throughout church history of baptismal regeneration that if you look and by the way I ran into all the time down in Mississippi the church of Christ the Campbellites we call them down there who believe in baptismal regeneration you got to be baptized the right way by the right person in the right church you got to be baptized they say for the remission of sins if you're not being baptized to get your sins forgiven then you're not truly properly baptized if you're not baptized by one of their ministers you're not properly baptized you're not saved because the only saving baptism is the one they do and if it doesn't happen in their church you're not saved that's the doctrine that is certainly espoused in our area of the south probably here in North Carolina as well that there is this magical thing a sacramental thing it's very close to Roman Catholicism isn't it where baptism the sprinkling of infants is looked at as a magical right and it's got to be done by the magic man the priest he's got to be the one who sprinkles the water and it's got to be done within the authority of the Roman Catholic Church or that child is not baptized and somehow magically applying sprinkling to that infant removes original sin according to Roman Catholic doctrine it's interesting how close those two ideas are same thing really so this may well be the beginning of that era that's still with us today that somehow there is something saving about baptism itself my friend several lessons we can learn from this if we don't keep the gospel of Jesus Christ what Paul calls here the preaching of the cross the cross of Christ if we do not keep that central dead center in our thinking in our theology if we remove that from the heart of what true Christianity is all about something else will inevitably flow in and fill that vacuum something like this now keep in mind there's nothing wrong about baptism don't hear me say it's a wonderful it's you're commanded to do it okay but is it the saving thing is it the central thing is it the heart of the gospel if it were I can't imagine Paul saying well I don't even remember who I baptized I didn't come to baptize I came to preach the gospel why would you say that if baptism is the saving thing you understand if this is the heart if this is the bullseye of what gospel truth is all about it's not that we in any way undermine or undervalue the meaning of what baptism is or whether we should be baptized of course I mean we're Baptist we believe that I had an interesting phone call in my early days in Wyoming I was pastoring a little Baptist Church in Evanston Wyoming and a lady called me up late one night Saturday night I always get those calls late Saturday night you know and she called me up and she's a young mother had a baby and wanted me to baptize her baby okay where do you start I realized that this lady knew absolutely nothing about where baptism fits into the grand scheme of things she just knew she needed to have her baby baptized so I begin this explanation of well you have to understand we believe that baptism is for those who profess faith in Christ those who believe the gospel and have put their trust and she interrupts me and she says but you are Baptist aren't you it's not like going down here to a store it has roofing on the sign and you go and I need my roof fixed oh we don't do roofs well why do you have a sign up there says roofing if you don't do roofs that was her conception if I need to get baptism done well who where do I go well here's a church got Baptist out there on the front sign obviously they're the ones to go to if you need a baby baptized no not not exactly again all of this misconception about the role and place of baptism but what my first observation you remove the cross of Christ from the heart from the center of what we're all about something else will take its place it will rush in to fill that void and here in the Corinthian church it apparently is the ordinance of baptism the second observation is that this illustrates what I would call confusing the instrumental calls with the efficient calls misunderstanding who is exactly doing the saving here who is it that saves is it baptism that saves is it the baptizer keep in mind if there's something salvific about baptism then the person doing the baptism becomes supremely important doesn't he because he then has a role in your salvation if baptism in any way grants you this blessing that you wouldn't have otherwise then he becomes part of the process you understand you are confusing that which is the instrument from that which is the real cause and that is happened regarding baptism throughout church history it would be like going down to your restaurant and I think I've used this illustration before one of here but man they all run together in my mind and I've slept since then you probably have two so I think it's safe to repeat this but it's like going down to your favorite restaurant and you have this waitress down there you just love her she's a wonderful waitress and you just go and you begin to rave about the waitress we love this restaurant because of the waitress and you say wait a minute wait a minute don't you realize that the waitress she didn't build the restaurant she didn't buy the food she's not back there in the kitchen cooking the food she's simply the visible person you see bringing you the food you see she's the instrument she happens to be the one who sets the food on the table in front of could have been somebody else to have done that didn't take anybody supremely important Paul will speak of that in first Corinthians 4 1 about him and Apollo he says that we're just servants we're just stewards of the mystery of God a steward is somebody who's had responsibilities some obligation placed in his hand and he's to deliver it to somebody else that's what we are we're just stewards we preachers of the gospel we should have the easiest job on earth we're just taking what's been given to us and passing along to you right that's it big whoopee whether I'm up here or brother Greg's up here brother Mike's up but who cares we're just waiters we're delivering the food it's the food that is the important thing not who brought it to your table now let me hasten to say I have my favorite preachers you probably have your favorite preachers there are some men who are gifted in such ways that speaks to our particular personality and our play I get that but at the end of the day the credit does not go to the waitress she's just delivering the food and hopefully not messing up the order and she's not sampling it on the way out of the kitchen say I think this needs a little more salt or I they ordered this I think they'd like this better that's not her job her job is to bring you the order and set it down in front of you that's the gospel minister's job to take what has been committed to him and pass it along to you what could be easier the hard part is doing that without me messing it up in the process that's the hard part doing it accurately correctly preaching it truthfully so we're just waitresses waiters don't confuse the instrument with the food okay that's second observation third observation is then confusing cause and effect that baptism is not the cause of salvation it's the effect of salvation Peter will say over in first Peter three verse 21 he calls baptism the anti some translations say the answer of a good conscience towards God my King James reads that way and Greek people who know Greek far better than I have argued about what exactly that means whatever it means it's clear that what Pete is expressing is that baptism is the response not cause it's sort of like thunder and lightning the thunder you hear didn't cause the lightning the lightning caused the thunder they may be closely associated they may be separated by several seconds but it's always the lightning that causes the response right the answer the answer of a good conscience towards God how some versions read the NIV I particularly like it because some Greek scholars say a better translation would be the pledge of a good conscience towards God and that conjures up in my mind something I saw when my son in law Eric came to the United States he was originally from Mexico a citizen of Mexico and my daughter going down on our mission trips fell in love with this guy Eric down in Mexico see young ladies there's other reasons to go on mission trips besides what's out there in front and anyway Eric had to go through all the process first of all of getting a fiance visa to be able to come up to the states in preparation for the wedding and then after they were wed he kept working on his citizenship and finally the day came where we went down to Oxford Mississippi which is where the federal district court is and a judge swore in about 30 including Eric who are now citizens of the United States after they have taken their oath of citizenship and you know the first thing he had them do after he had them take that oath they said the pledge of allegiance to the American flag do you see the logic here this is the response to a new condition it's not the cause saying the elite pledge of allegiance is not going to make you a citizen but it's what citizens do it's the effect of the cause and so it is in Christianity that our baptism is the answer the response the pledge to what God has done for us in our hearts in our lives so again those eras that keep popping out through human history eras about baptism but especially eras about mistaking the visible thing we see like baptism for the invisible work of God the work of the Spirit of God and we're going to see that as we continue in our study is you know we don't see it happening right I see the effects of it but I don't see hey there's the Holy Spirit working right there if I say that it's only because I see the effects of what the Holy Spirit is doing I never see it directly I see the response to it and so it is about so many things in the Christian life professions of faith are like that we certainly need to profess our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that is clear to confess him before one another but I was raised in a system in rural northeast Texas out in the country that walking down the aisle was when you got saved this is what saves you in fact we had a colloquialism I heard some of the old men talking about their sons well he hadn't walked the aisle yet it's like the magic carpet to meet with the magic man and pray the magic words and bingo you're saved I still remember one of my good friends in Houston his son went forward in an evangelistic meeting and the evangelist was down in the front meeting him with him and he looked up at my friend and gave him a thumbs up unfortunately that young man hadn't been inside a church I don't know ever since but he did the right thing you know he did the right of the magic walk and the magic words and the magic man my friend I believe there needs to be a public confession of faith I believe that's what baptism is that is the way you scripturally profess that's the answer that's the pledge in this case of a citizen of heaven to their king this is it this is my response baptism won't make me a Christian but it's what Christians should do and were to be baptized because Christ commanded it of course we have the one that's been accostals they say well you got to get baptized in the name of Jesus only do y'all have that around here say wait a minute wasn't it Jesus who said baptized in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit how aren't I baptizing according to his authority when I baptized with that formula where did that formula came from came right out of the mouth of Jesus do you get the picture but it's the response it's not the reality the reality is we're going to see is when you come to faith in Jesus Christ when you trust him when you lay hold of what he did for sinners in his cross their own Calvary when you trust the meaning of his resurrection that this is God's validation that he is the Messiah and he's done everything necessary for your and my salvation and you put your trust in this Redeemer in this Savior there's where salvation takes place baptism is the clap of thunder that follows the visible mark the miserable sign that that has what has happened to me well this is just setting the table getting things ready for the real food to start tonight okay this is just window dressing and yet in the window dressing there are some very important truths we need to keep in mind the reason I would take you back to the history of all of this is to remind you this is not some fairy tale these were real people living in real places the people named in our scripture actually lived Galilee galio actually served as the procreator there at that time let's pray father forgive us when we take good things and put them in the place of the best things and we thereby pervert your message father we pray that you might cause us to always make the main thing the main thing Lord whatever we're dealing with that we come back dead sinner to the truth of the saving work of your son and of his work for us on Calvary's cross as we would sing let us not trust ourselves to the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus name let us not be guilty of making divisions over things that are not important over Lord outward visible things rather than inward spiritual reality may we be careful father to preserve the unity in the union of your people your church let us father not be contentious because inevitably behind that there is the motive that I'm better than you I'm in this class rather than your class save us from that save us father from sin and from Satan but especially save us from ourselves father help us as we continue this study I pray that everything might redound to the praise and glory of Jesus your son in his name I ask it amen.