Testimony of a Preacher (Part 1 of 2)

God Called the Apostle Paul to Preach the Gospel to Unbelief believers in the first century. His mission was clear.

His approach was intentional. But what does Paul's methodology teach us about how we are to share the Gospel all these centuries later? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg points out the things Paul chose to set aside so his listeners could focus on what really matters. Please turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and as you turn there, let's just ask God to help us as we seek to study these verses together. Heavenly Father, we are about to discover in these verses truth that we want to be applied in our very discovery. We want to find that the Spirit of God works in our hearts beyond the power or influence of mere human words. Give us attentive hearts, we pray. May we listen with ears that are attuned to your voice, and may we be different as a result of what we discover, for we pray in Christ's name.

Amen. Consider how much has changed since Paul wrote these words to the Corinthian church. Two thousand years of history and all the developments of science and modern technology mean that we're not only thousands of miles from Corinth, but we're also thousands of years from Corinth. And while everything has been changing, in the minds of men, there has gone along the simultaneous thought that new is largely supplanting the old, and much of what is old is not only old but it is obsolete.

It is no longer valid. It certainly would no longer be useful to us today. That is true when we think of modes of communication, when we think of means of transportation, when we think of the benefits and blessings of medical scientific discovery. And because that is so much a part of our thinking in a vastly changing universe, it is uniquely challenging to consider the idea that while so much changes and so much that was part of Corinth would only be part of a museum today, that in the midst of all of that, the message proclaimed by Paul in Corinth would be equally valid, would be still the message that would need it to be proclaimed in Cleveland this morning. Because of the backdrop against which that notion is set, it's hard for us to actually believe that that is so. And yet, when we think along other lines, we realize that people still fall in love today the way they fell in love in Corinth. People still face their destiny the way they did so long ago.

They still fight their fears. They still wrestle with sin and with guilt. And therefore, for those timeless factors in humanity, we would, I presume, need a timeless truth to answer them. And of course, that is Paul's conviction—that although much of humanity had passed him by before he reached the streets of Corinth, still he proclaimed this truth, proclaimed it in such a way that subsequent generations would lay hold of it and proclaim it also themselves.

Paul was very clear about his mission. He was to preach the gospel, despite the fact that this wisdom and power represented in the gospel was regarded as foolish and weak by man. And Paul has wrestled with this antithesis through these verses to the end of chapter 1, this paradox. And we ought not to think of Paul as some mighty man. We ought not to think of him in terms of coming in a procession into Corinth. Rather, he's the kind of little character that would have been jeered at. People would have mocked him.

They regarded his message as absolutely stupid. Despite the fact that Paul understood that, he declares forcefully in verse 25 that the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. And then he immediately provides an illustration. He says, You want to have an illustration of this?

Don't look any further than yourselves. Brothers, he said, think of what you were when you were called. Now, in verse 1 of chapter 2, he provides a further picture of strength revealed in weakness, of wisdom conveyed in a message of apparent foolishness. And it is illustrated not only in the calling of those who were in Corinth but also in the coming of the one who was involved in their calling. And so he said, Let me give you a further illustration of the paradox. When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom. So there is one central truth that he is continuing to drive home—namely, the notion that this abiding message of the cross of Christ, regarded as foolishness in Corinth and foolishness in Cleveland, nevertheless remains the message and the only message which the church is given to proclaim, irrespective of technological advance or of scientific discovery.

Let us then consider three things. First of all, his manner, then his message, and finally, his motivation. He mentions the manner in which he came in verse 1 and also in verse 3. And I'd like for you to turn back for a moment to the book of Acts to sketch in what we probably have already forgotten—that when Paul arrived in this narrow neck of land, this intersection of the trade routes of his day, this cosmopolitan and commercial enterprising city, he had come out of a background that was represented not by what you would regard as the most encouraging circumstances. We can't take time to articulate it all, but a cursory glance at from about the fourteenth chapter of Acts of the Apostles will bear this out. And by the time he gets to Philippi in chapter 16 and verse 23, he had already had his clothes stripped off him, and he was beaten, and he had received a flogging that was enough not only to take the wind out of him but to take the skin off his back.

That was Philippi. God miraculously intervenes in Philippi, and he moves to Thessalonica in chapter 17. In Berea to which he moves, despite the fact that people are receiving his message with keenness, his ministry is marked by agitation. And by the time he reaches Athens and discovers a city full of idols, we're told in verse 16 that he was greatly distressed when he saw that the city was full of idols. And so he goes on to Corinth out of this background. Now, hold that kind of sketch in your mind, because it will be important in a moment or two to help us understand what he's saying. In verse 1, he tells us that in his arrival at Corinth, he was traveling light.

Traveling light. What did he have in his baggage? Well, he tells us what he didn't have, and then he tells us what he had. Two items in particular he decided to leave behind.

One, eloquence, and two, superior wisdom. If you imagine him in common parlance of the day checking in at Cleveland Hopkins, and somebody said, Do you have anything to check? And he said, No, I just have a carry-on.

And they said, Nothing at all. No, he said, I was going to bring a couple of things with me. I had a couple of cases that I would have checked. One case was marked eloquence, and the other case was marked superior wisdom, but I decided to leave them at home. We would have a fair picture of what this verse conveys. Because we need to ask the question, Is Paul saying that these factors, eloquence and superior wisdom, were missing because he was incapable of them? Is this a description of Paul incapable of doing these things, of applying this process?

The answer is no, not for a moment. Paul was as gifted and as capable as any of his day. Paul stands out as someone who represents giftedness in relationship to these things. And so what he is saying is not that he was incapable of them, but that he was unwilling to employ them.

He was unwilling to take stock of them and to use them. Now, the reason that this was significant was because the style and content of the proclaimers that were represented in the Corinthian scene was committed to both these pieces of luggage. If you couldn't be eloquent and if you couldn't be smart, then nobody wanted to listen to you. So the temptation was to draw a crowd in much the same way that is, I have to speak to you, and I see you out there, and I see some of you already nodding off, and I see some of you already leafing through your bulletins, and I see some of you doing all manner of things to one another—the challenge that is there for me is, How in the world do you speak to this group of people? Now, one of the ways to do it is to manipulate them. Make them laugh or make them cry, stir them, change them, move them, guide them.

Use all the tricks of the trade, use all the theatricals, use all natural ability, and simply attach them to yourself. Paul could have done all of that. He was more than capable of that. But he didn't. He didn't. He rejected the style and the content which was most acceptable in his day. You say to yourself, but surely that threatened the possibility of his results.

Surely you would do much better if you used the methodology of the time. Didn't he risk failure? Yes.

Wouldn't people think he was foolish and not really smart? Yes. But did that allow him to be swayed by it?

No. Now, he uses technical terms here. The word eloquence is actually the word logos, with a little bit of an adjective in front of it, but don't worry about it. It describes rational talk, the eloquent and persuasive oration of the Greek orators. It describes a kind of proclamation which is so upfront that it obscures the content of what the individual's saying.

That's what he's saying. I refused to use a mode of address that would be so in people's faces that all they could remember was the way in which I said it, and they forgot the very thing that I was called upon to say. The kind of Greek oration to which he refers is not the ability of syntax. It's not a quote concerning his ability with vocabulary. It is not that he is unable to communicate effectively. It is a decision on his part not to use the flowery junk of his day—the kind of thing that Shakespeare captures so incredibly in a number of his plays, and especially in a character which he reincarnates a number of times with different names, but he appears as the father of Ophelia in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. And you will remember that Polonius was a great orator, but he could never say what he was trying to say for stumbling over the way in which he was saying it. So, for example, when he had the responsibility to convey to the queen that her son was crazy, he somehow just couldn't get to the bottom line.

And so he goes at it like this. My liege and madam, to expostulate what majesty should be, what duty is, why day is day and night night and time is time, were nothing but to waste both night day and time. And since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.

Okay? Shakespeare writes him so that it's a joke. It's a joke in the play.

I will be brief. Then he goes on to say, Your noble son is mad. Mad call I it, for to define true madness, what is't, but to be nothing else but mad. And then he goes on on the back end to go and clown around with the whole notion, well, again. And all that he's trying to say is Hamlet's nuts.

That's it. That's his message. Hey, queen, Hamlet is nuts. But the way in which he goes at it obscures the content of his delivery.

And that is what Paul is referring to. I did not come into Corinth, he said, and try and dance your tune. I didn't come in and play your game. I didn't come in and set up my stall and stand on my box and go at it the way you like it. I decided I wasn't doing it. And furthermore, he said, not only did I not use Logos, but I didn't use Sophos.

I didn't use Sophia. I didn't use the wisdom that they like. A tremendous statement concerning his strategy. He knew that to approach them on the basis of eloquence and superior wisdom would please them and would captivate them.

But notice this, and notice it carefully. What he knew would please and captivate, he decided not to employ. Now, doesn't that strike you as ridiculous?

It's supposed to. Because he stands against the tide of his day in doing what he did, not only in what he said but also in the way in which he said it. Again, you must understand that the notion is not that he couldn't but that he wouldn't. So what was missing from his bags? Eloquence and superior wisdom. What did he carry with him?

Well, you'll find that in verse 3. What did he check? He checked three things—weakness, fear, and much trembling. What do you have to offer today, Apostle Paul?

Well, he said, I got some weakness and some fear, and I shake a lot. Not exactly what you would call impressive, you think? I mean, I think we think of the Apostle Paul, and we read back twenty centuries of modern Evangelicalism. We think of the Apostle Paul coming to Cleveland and staying in the Ritz-Carlton, getting picked up in a limo and dropped off at the stadium, where he will proclaim to thousands, magnify the wonder of his ability, get back in the limo and go back to his hotel, where he will be ensconced in his room and will only entertain interviews by CNN and those whom his staff of reporters have determined he will meet with.

That's stupid stuff. There's nothing like that at all in Paul coming into Corinth. Paul came into Corinth obscure, apparently trivial, a strange little man. Now, when you rehearse the events that we went through—and that's why I went through them a moment ago, from Acts chapter 14 and following—you can understand why it is that he would be weak. Weak. If you'd get beaten up that much, don't you think you'd be weak?

I mean, how many times can you get thrown down the dungeon stairs? Don't you think that his body was wrecked? Read the account in Acts. They beat him for dead. He was left for dead. They said he's done in Lystra. The people gathered around him laid hands on him, the Spirit of God raised him up, but he was finished.

I'm sure there were parts of his body, if he'd stripped off for the shower and you'd looked at him, you'd say, What the world happened to you? And he would have said this, The way my knee won't straighten, I got this in Lystra when they kicked me. And the way my neck is here was from the back of the blow that came to me when they flogged us in the jail in Philippi before they put us in the stocks.

And the fact that I look as decrepit as I do is not because I like looking this way, but it is because this is the way they treated first-century evangelists. There is a correlation, loved ones, between the kickings and the power. I don't know how we get at it, but there is no question. There is a correlation between the underground church in China and their mighty power, and there is a correlation between our softness and our inability to impact this culture with the gospel. And the very things we run from are the very things that would make us, and the very things that we run after are the very things that make us an irrelevancy. Paul says, No, I didn't do it.

I didn't do it. He'd been through too much. He wasn't afraid of the context. When it says that he was there in fear, do you think he was frightened to preach?

No! He was preaching all the time. Do you think he was afraid of what people say?

Get real. Everybody had said everything. There was nothing more for them to say. What was he afraid of? I'll tell you what he was afraid of. He was afraid of the fact that when he looked at himself and saw how impoverished he was, when he looked at people and saw how great their need was, and when he looked at God and saw the calling he'd been given, he was afraid that he would intrude upon the proclamation in such a way that folks would be attached to him and would miss what God was saying. That's what he was afraid of. That's what ought to make a preacher fearful. And that is why he dumped the bags.

Because he knew that if he gave them what they wanted, they may buy it at that price, and having bought it at that discounted level, it would be an irrelevancy to them as they face the future. So here he is. He's run down. He's a sorry sight. He's not the kind of individual that you expect to put face to face with people who admired strength and creativity and oratory and philosophy. Can you imagine introducing him to a group of people at the prayer breakfast in Washington DC?

We bring the president, and we bring all the powerful and the mighty, who, because of their high estimation of themselves, believe that the only person they would ever be prepared to listen to is someone who is very powerful, very mighty, very eloquent, and very wise. And in we trot this little converted Jew, who can neither stand up straight nor chooses to take them on at their own game. People have said, Away with this wee character! He's not the kind of thing we like! Give us what we want! And Paul faced the challenge in his day, and we faced the challenge in the day.

The culture cries out, Give us what we want! And the challenge of the Scriptures is whether we're gonna give what the Bible says they need. That was his manner. What of his message? Well, he tells us. He said that he made a resolve.

The word is actually an important word. Some have suggested that his resolve is unique to Corinth. I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except this, as opposed to other places. And those of you who are Bible students over the years know that one of the classic interpretations is that he moves from Acts 17, where he's been in Athens, and he's been quoting poets and quoting literature and doing all that stuff, and there hasn't been that great of a response to the gospel, apparently. So he decides to bag that as an approach, and he comes into Corinth, and he says, No, I'm resolving to do it differently.

I think that's an absolutely crazy interpretation of the Bible. I don't believe that he was doing anything differently except employing the methodology that is a distinction between when you walk down to a group of fishermen by the coast in the northeast of Scotland, and you seek to engage them in conversation, you're going to approach them in a very different way than you're going to engage a group of people in conversation down on Coventry Avenue in the Heights. If you're smart, you are at any rate. You tailor your approach. And that's exactly what he was doing. When he goes into Athens, he employs a strategy for Athens. He says, These guys are intellects, so he goes at their level. And he quotes their poets.

But he doesn't rely upon that as his strategy. It's merely a door of opportunity. The difficulty comes when the door of opportunity that we create by means of our methodology transcends our message. The only reason he swung the door open was so that he could say the same thing in Athens as he was saying in Corinth. What was he saying? He was proclaiming the testimony of God. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg, part one of a message called Testimony of a Preacher. Our study today is a reminder that the message of the Bible is what our world needs. That's why we teach directly from the scriptures every day on this program. You'll often hear me talk about our mission, which is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance. Our conviction is that when God's word is spoken, we will be able to teach it. Our conviction is that when God's word is taught, God's spirit works to convert unbelievers, turning them into followers of Christ. He also uses his word to establish those who already believe more deeply in their faith. And the teaching of the scriptures strengthens pastors and church members so they can commit themselves to the work of the gospel in their community. This is a mission we are passionate about.

It's one we'd love for you to be part of. You can do that by becoming a Truth Partner. Truth Partners are listeners like you who pray for Truth for Life and who give a monthly donation to help cover the cost of producing and distributing these daily messages. When you become a Truth Partner today or when you make a one-time donation, we want to say thank you by sending you a colorfully illustrated children's book titled The God Contest when you request it. This is a picture book that cleverly retells the story of Elijah and his challenge to the people of his day to believe in the one true God.

You might be familiar with the story from the book of 1 Kings. The book The God Contest introduces young school-aged children to Elijah and his contest calling for people to choose between the false god Baal and the true God of Israel. Ultimately, the story points to Jesus and invites young children to make a choice of their own. We were thrilled as we came across this book because of its faithfulness to scripture. The God Contest does a terrific job of introducing this Old Testament story in a way that's biblically solid and also entertaining. Most importantly, it invites you and your child to have a gospel conversation. You can request your copy of the book The God Contest when you sign up to become a Truth Partner or when you make a one-time donation. Visit us online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapine. Be sure to listen tomorrow as Alistair explains why we must never settle for anything less than the one true gospel message. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.