I delivered my second sermon today, with the first occuring a little over a year ago. I may not be up in our elder rotation for another year, but I hope to write another message in the next few months. The process is not something that bothers me so much from a calling standpoint, but vocationally speaking it is difficult when you are not working in ministry full time.

Considering that pastors who do this week in and week out probably develop a system that enables them to be more efficient (i.e., certain commentaries they always use, how they outline, when they study, when they start writing, how much they practice delivery, etc.); I wonder what the average time spent each week is on their sermons?

Below is the text. Due to my last minute preparation, what you read is not exactly what was preached. I do not have the audio (my apologies again).

Introduction

The last time I was up here I joked about how my procrastination and last minute preparation meant that you would either hear a really long or a really short sermon. Let me give you fair warning that this time around I feel less prepared and even more inadequate. However, my concern stems not from a desire to deliver a well crafted and lofty sermon within the expected time limit, but rather, as we will see in the text, my hope is that you will hear nothing today but Jesus Christ and him crucified.

As one of Pastor Dan’s seminary professors is fond of saying, “It is important that we as teachers dare to be boring.” That seems a little odd at first, doesn’t it? Just what does he mean by “be boring?” Certainly it is not in the dull and tedious sense, so that you are all wondering, “When is this sermon going to end?” Rather, the point he makes is that ministers should dare to BE repetitive, dare to NOT be original, dare to say the BASIC truths of the Gospel over and over and OVER again. In other words, it is better to state the fundamentals than to try to say anything new, because the source of authority from the pulpit is not rooted in the wisdom of man.

So the call to be boring is a great comfort to me as I preach, that is, RE-proclaim God’s Word to you this morning, though it says nothing about how long it will take. Maybe I can borrow some rollover minutes from Bob or David? Dan doesn’t have any to give (though he thinks he does).

Scripture Intro/Reading

The text we will look at today comes from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, my favorite group of sinners. They were also near and dear to Paul, who spent a year and a half establishing the church at Corinth during his second missionary journey (as recorded in Acts 18). Paul would return two more times and write to them a total of four letters, with First and Second Corinthians being those that have survived (though some scholars believe that the last four chapters of Second Corinthians are one of the separate letters).

While it is clear that Paul had a special love for the church in Corinth, relations were not always smooth sailing. For all the time he spent with them, Paul had good reason to expect a certain level of spiritual maturity from the Corinthian Christians. Yet his letters reveal that instead of growing during their time apart, they slid backwards in their sanctification. Paul’s list of problems with the Corinthian church is numerous: divisions, immorality, divorce, idolatry, worship disruptions, various theological questions; and, as we will focus on today, a passionate commitment to their own glory: a boasting of which was rooted in the fear that one day they may be exposed for the fakes they are.

Turn with me then, to First Corinthians, page 952 of your pew bible; our passage comes from the second chapter, immediately following Paul’s exhortations regarding his primary concern that the unity of the Corinthian church has broken down. We will read verses one through five of chapter two. We will also look later at a passage in Second Corinthians that gives an example how Paul works these principles out in his relationship with the church in Corinth.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Prayer for Illumination

This is the word of God, which contains all that is necessary to know for salvation and eternal life. Let us pray that God, by his Holy Spirit, would illuminate our hearts so that we might hear His truth this morning—clearly and with understanding.

[prayer]

Sermon Introduction

One of the magazines we subscribe to at home, rather, one of my wife’s subscriptions (which I happen to read sometimes), is Real Simple. In the December 2006 issue there was a motivational article titled, “When Being Right is Wrong.” The author, Gail Blanke, explains how constantly finding fault with others can not only be exhausting, but can also be downright destructive.

Being right about how wrong someone or something is can be pretty irresistible, especially during the holidays. It’s a trap we fall into on a daily basis. You can walk into the place where you buy your holiday plants and be right about how wrong it is to only have red poinsettias when you had specifically ordered white. You can be right about how wrong your boss is to ignore how hard you’ve worked all year. You can be right about how wrong your sister-in-law is to give you a too-small sweater for the fourth year in a row. And the thing is, you probably are right. You probably could get a bunch of people to agree with you, and you could all sit on a bench together and revel in your rightness. But then what? While you were busy being right, your whole life could float on by.

The article goes on to give several examples of how we often get into arguments trying to prove to ourselves, and others, just how “right” we are. Sometimes we are right; sometimes we are not right…either way, we want to ensure that our point is heard and that others are put in their place.

I remember just the other day how I got into an argument with my wife over how I snapped at her mother. Sure, it may have sounded like snapping, but she misunderstood what I was snapping about. I wasn’t snapping “at” her, but rather it was just a general complaint made out loud. And besides, I told her, why are you bugging me about this now? Can’t you see how what I am doing is more important than me having to go explain to your mom how wrong she is to think that I snapped at her?

If you could have only seen me, and how angry I got, then you would be wondering to yourself right now how it is that I can stand here and deliver the message to you this morning. After all, isn’t my ability to preach the Gospel dependent on my reputation? I may have been right in a certain sense of the word, but during that whole argument I was looking out for myself—numero uno. D.A. Carson writes in his book, The Cross and Christian Ministry, that:

We ruefully acknowledge how self centered we are after we have had an argument with someone. Typically, we mentally conjure up a rerun of the argument, thinking up all the things we could have said, all the things we should have said. In such reruns, we always win. After an argument, have you ever conjured up a rerun in which you lost?

My passionate commitment to my own glory—the protection of my all important reputation in the pursuit of that glory—is driven by the fear that one day someone other than my family might witness, perhaps during such an argument, what a fake I really am. This was part of the problem that Paul was addressing in his letters to the Corinthians; in fact, in Second Corinthians they were seeing his waffling regarding his plans to re-visit as evidence that Paul’s accusers were right: He was being accused of being an apostolic pretender—and his argument was nothing more than “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

Why was it that Paul acted like he had no personal reputation to defend? Why did he only assert that his confidence and authority—that is, the glory of his reputation—was in the “foolishness” of “Jesus Christ and Him crucified?” Why is it that Paul, unlike myself as I argued with my wife, did not become defensive, somewhat akin to a “cornered wildcat,” arguing passionately, scrapping to ensure that people knew “I am right,” or “You are NOT right,” and all the shades of nuance in between? These are the questions we will explore today.

Sermon Body

In order for us to understand Paul’s pastoral approach to the Corinthian church, we must first know the context of the culture he was dealing with. In 9:22 of 1 Corinthians Paul says:

To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.

The idea of being “all things to all people” is offensive to our 21st century ears, isn’t it? It conjures up visions of a spineless, double-dealing, disingenuous, and deceitful smooth talker. It would have been offensive as well to the Corinthian church, because they were accusing Paul of that very thing—that he was weak; fickle; fake; lacking any real authority or power.

One of the chief reasons for this picture of Paul is that he did not use the accepted rhetoric of the times. He says in verse one of chapter two:

And I, when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.

When Paul uses words like “lofty speech,” there is little doubt that he was referring directly to the Sophists of the day. We all value education, but the Sophists were in a league of their own. Beginning shortly before the birth of Christ in the 5th century, especially in and around Athens, the term “sophist” was “applied to a group of thinkers and speakers who employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others” (from Wikipedia). They were so highly esteemed in the Greek culture that they often had students who paid tuition to learn the art of lofty public speaking! Paul, “having arrived in Corinth after his visit to Athens,” would have been “more determined than ever to preach the simple message of the cross, however offensive it might seem to some” (The Reformation Study Bible, p. 1643).

How exactly did Paul come to Corinth? In 2 Corinthians 10:10, Paul quotes his opponents as saying about him that, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.” So upon meeting Paul in person, or spending any amount of time with him, the people of Corinth would have thought to themselves, “If Paul was a real teacher, if he were a real apostle, surely he would have:

• Desired for us to know more than “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (verse two)
• Not come to us in weakness, fear and trembling, but rather in strength, confidence and steadiness (verse three)
• Used rigorous proofs and logically irrefutable arguments, rather than persuading us by demonstration (verse four)
• Given us a wisdom that we can admire instead foolishness of the cross (verse five)

In short, the Corinthians, in their Greek pride, had a sneaking suspicion that Paul was not who he said he was, and if he was; then he would “act” and “be” a certain way. These suspicions made it easy for the false prophets of the day to pick up on these perceptions and deceive the people.

Such was the situation that the Corinthians found themselves in after Paul’s absence. This had a huge bearing on Paul’s pastoral approach to the Corinthian church. However, we must first also know some things about Paul before we can understand and apply what he means by “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

Paul says back in 1 Corinthians 1:17 that he was not sent to preach the gospel “with words of eloquent wisdom.” And yet, we know from Paul’s letters that he was not only a shrewd thinker, but he had a command of written language. We need only turn to chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians to see one of the most famous examples: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal…Love is patient and kind…and so on.

As for Paul’s speaking abilities, we see that in the Book of Acts 14:12, that at Lystra Paul was called Hermes, the Greek god of communication, “because he was the chief speaker.” Later in his missionary journeys, we see Paul demonstrating the very same skills that the Corinthians demanded when he visited Thessalonica:

And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. (Acts 17:2-4)

And not only was Paul persuasive, but he was also highly adaptable. Quoting again from D.A. Carson’s book:

We would be entirely mistaken if we concluded on the basis of [1 Corinthians 2:1-5] that Paul was insensitive to cultural peculiarities among the diverse groups he evangelized, and therefore we need not bother with such niceties ourselves. In fact, Paul was astonishingly flexible. This point can be demonstrated by appealing [again] to the Book of Acts and comparing, say, Paul’s sermon in Pisidian Antioch in a Jewish synagogue (Acts 13:13-41) with his sermon in the Areopagus in Athens, in a decidedly pagan context (Acts 17:16-31).

So we see then that Paul was able to brilliantly adapt to the sophist culture in Corinth and preach the gospel in such a way as to throw off any of the intellectual persuasiveness or lofty speech that might take away from the message of God’s grace in Jesus Christ—that while we were yet sinners, dead in our trespasses, completely unable to save ourselves, totally without any merit of our own, not even our wisdom or status can save us; Christ died for us. However, Paul’s flexibility does not fully explain how he was able to withstand all of the accusations that were made against him. After all, Paul is pretty much the one person (other than Jesus) who we view as being “right” and certainly worthy of defending himself, his reputation and his own glory.

What I mean is, given how deeply and instinctively our desire for our own glory runs in the warp and woof (the fiber) of our hearts, how was Paul was able to counteract it? Or, more accurately and Presbyterian-ly, how does this tendency get countered? How does it get rooted out? The answer, which we will examine next, is found simply in “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

Look with me for a moment at 2 Corinthians 1. In the interim between the two letters, the divisions in the church had grown wider, and so Paul visited Corinth again. It did not go well; we don’t know all the gory details, but apparently he was strongly opposed or deeply offended by someone in the church. After leaving, Paul sent a stern letter rebuking the church and calling for repentance. The accusations of being weak in character and lacking integrity continued when Paul delayed his plans to visit Corinth for a third time. Beginning in 1:12 Paul says:

For our boast is this: the testimony of our conscience is that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and acknowledge and I hope you will fully acknowledge—just as you did on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you. (1:12-14)

Once again, Paul is boasting not in his speaking ability or intellectual capacity, but rather he is boasting about the triumph of God’s grace working in him and through him. He then goes on, through the end of the chapter and into chapter two, explain the rationale for his change of plans, how much he dearly loved them, how—even though he had been wronged—his desire was for Christ-like repentance and reconciliation to take place; so that the Gospel might be glorified.

This passage goes back to what we read in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, in that Paul sees this “conflict” as an opportunity to show the people in Corinth how the logic of “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” works out in real life. Verse 2, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” But what exactly does Paul mean by “Jesus Christ and Him crucified?”

I think that John Piper sums it up well when he says in a sermon on this same passage:

…that whatever else [Paul] knew, whatever else he spoke about, and whatever else he did, he would know it and say it and do it in relation to Christ crucified…He will not let the cross become a historical relic. He puts it at the center of his everyday work and relationships. He makes tents in the shadow of the cross. He preaches in the shadow of the cross. He disputes with opponents in the shadow of the cross. He eats and drinks and sleeps Christ crucified.

And the effect this has on him is make him a man of broken-hearted love, so out of step with this glory-seeking world that he can only be explained by the power of God.

What Paul understood by “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” was that we are united with Christ in both life and death. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul understood that because his life was hid with Christ, he was free to live in Christ. This is what enabled Paul to sacrifice his reputation for the Corinthians, without having to fear the consequences. Only the Gospel of “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” can explain Paul’s actions.

So what? So what does this mean for me, you may be asking yourselves? I mean, we know that Jesus, because he was God, was a perfect example of loving sacrifice. After all, he gave up the riches and glory of heaven to become a sin bearing servant. And it seems that the Apostle Paul did a pretty good job of modeling that behavior, too. But come on, I am certainly no Paul, and this is not the church in Corinth we are dealing with. There are some pretty bad people in my life and I have been hurt beyond what you can imagine. I don’t know if I could ever forgive them, let alone look like the fool in front of them. What does “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” really mean for me? There are three areas for application relative to those questions that I would like us to consider as we close.

The first application is that we are vindicated. We are freed from defensiveness because our reputation has already been vindicated by Jesus Christ. That is, like Paul’s example, we are free from needing to insulate and protect and defend our reputation. We are free from the fear that we may be exposed as “fakes” because our reputation is already proven. Our confidence, authority and “authentication” are hidden in Christ.

The second application is that we are commissioned. Having been freed from our defensiveness, we are freed for offensiveness. To put it in warfare terms, we are called to be on the offensive. As Paul demonstrates in the course of his ministry with the Corinthians, we may take the Christ-like initiative to sacrifice our reputations for the sake of the Gospel.

The third application is that we are equipped after the mind and model of Christ. That is, we are “freed from defensiveness” and “freed for offensiveness” only in view of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. As Paul demonstrated time and again, because our reputation is hid with Christ, we know also, that the other’s reputation is hid in Christ (this is literally and presently true of Christian brothers; but is, in fact, foundationally true even of “unbelievers”—not, of course, in a salvation way, but the basis of our compassion and our patience with unbelievers is not our fellowship with them in Christ, but in the fact that the hope and glory of their reputation is also rooted in Jesus Christ and Him crucified).

On these three bases alone—vindicated, commissioned and equipped—we can grant forgiveness to our accusers: On the basis of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, we can freely, confidently, hope filled-ly grant forgiveness to believer and unbeliever alike to see the peace, wholeness and restoration of Christ displayed. We do not have to fear that people will find out that we are fakes, because you know what? They’re right. But the good news is that our “authenticity” is clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Sermon Conclusion

In closing, while Scripture is not without its offensive examples—Paul calling the Galatians idiots, or Jesus chasing the money-changers out of the temple—too often I think that our evangelical approach is to go on the attack, seize political power, stand in judgment, arrogantly and powerfully condemn sin; all because we have the confidence that we are right and others are wrong. Not that are not right and able to do these things, but we must remember we do them only after the mind and model of Jesus Christ. Like the church in Corinth, we embrace the Gospel at first, but over time we let worldly philosophies seep in and water down the message into a non-Gospel.

The question we must ask ourselves is the same one that the article in Real Simple magazine asks: what is it that we are committed to? The world’s answer (according to the article) is that we should be committed to finding “fulfillment in not finding fault.” The rhetorical question raised by the world is something smaller. “Isn’t it better to just get along? It’s so much easier, when you think about it, than spending all that energy on being right.

The deeper question for the Christian is: are we committed to our own glory, our own rightness, or; are we committed to something bigger, something that requires more of us, in fact, not just our reputations, but our very lives? Like Paul demonstrated throughout his ministry—an example that was patterned after the mind and model of Jesus Christ—are we willing to die to self, take up our cross and follow Jesus wherever and whatever; for the sake of God’s glory and not our own? Are we willing to die so that Christ may gain? Are we willing to lose the battle to win the war? Am I willing to let go of my pride and admit to my wife when I am wrong for snapping (instead of passionately defending my own glory over even the slightest offense), so that the peace and wholeness of Christ might be displayed. Are we, by God’s grace and humble reliance on him, committed to Jesus Christ and Him crucified?

Closing Prayer

[prayer]

[hymn - Take My Life, and Let It Be #585]