I Corinthians, 1:10-17

Well, this morning we're going to take a look at 1 Corinthians 1, 10-17, and what's interesting as I was preparing for this is, I kind of realized, and you'll forgive me for how mathematical this is, but as a ratio, last week was great. We looked at the positional truths and the foundations that are established in the first nine verses.

But then Paul comes in and he's ready to swiftly and quickly dive in and start on what will be correction on division and bad theology for the rest of the book. As we take a look at this moving forward, I hope and pray that our understanding of those things will be that yeah, there's some tough words here, there's some strong things that Paul's going to say, but also that he's doing it out of love and recognizing the position of those believers. Because we're going to see that he's not happy with them. So, just like the book of Galatians, there are some things that, as you read through this, you can kind of see that there are strong words here, but it's rooted in a position of love and a compassion like that of a loving parent, more than a strict school teacher, like we might envision that.

So let's just, starting in 1 Corinthians Let's go ahead and read through verse 17. I'll read out loud and you can follow along. He says, Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I have been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you.

Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one would say you were baptized in my name. Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void."

Alright, so I'm going to try to manage the very difficult job of advancing slides here. I don't have a lot of PowerPoint slides because I tend to be focused on the handout, but we will hopefully See how exciting that is. Exhortation. So Paul starts out here and he says to them, now I exhort you brethren.

What's interesting, I'm going to disclose something very important. At almost the end of December I finished a class on Greek and I finished something that I started three times and it was the third time that I finally completed it. So as I go through here, I might draw out some things that are in the Greek, but I do that with great humility and understanding that I have lots more to learn, but that if I find something that's useful and meaningful in any way, I will try to draw it out. But I will try not to be a Greek geek too badly, so forgive me if I get excited about certain things.

He says, you know, I exhort you. Well, exhortation has been translated here, but the Greek concept carries with it the idea that you would call someone alongside you. So when we hear exhort, we kind of think, oh, he's going to encourage them or say something. But the real idea is that you'd kind of fall in line, like if you were to imagine soldiers and somebody gets out of step or for me when I was in junior high and high school I was in the band and we had to march in the parade and when somebody gets too far out or you're going around a corner things get a little wonky the idea there is that he's calling them alongside himself he's exhorting them by saying come alongside me and stop being distracted by the earthly things. Because what's calling the Corinthians away is those distractions. The culture, the allure of status. He's saying, let me exhort you, let me call you back to the biblical, proper, heavenly focus. And he says then something really, really important. It's just one word.

But he says, now I exhort you, brethren, And so the word brethren, I think, maybe this is just me, so I want to make sure it's not just me, but I think it's really easy for us to see brethren, realize he's putting some kind of noun in his sentence, and then move on. But there's a quality to the word brethren, right? When he says brother, he's talking about family.

So I exhort you, family or brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, And that relationship element really is important because when you think about it, when you interact with your family, your behavior changes. Some people that's worse, right? Sometimes you have really stinky families, right? But when we interact with family, it changes the relationship.

And so Paul is not accidentally using the word brethren. He's talking about who we are in Christ as a collective body. that there is a closeness and a relationship between one another. So now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So he's doing it with the authority and the position of who Christ is. We've already talked at great length, I think, about the fact that authority and position and status matters. But even Paul, the most important apostle, because he's visited them several times and written them, is going to, in this case, still fall on the name of Christ as his reference, as the authority that's there. So he is exhorting them, by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree that there be no divisions among you.

How many of you have the New American Standard Version? I think that's mostly what I see at Holly Hills. Anybody got a different translation that they read out of? In the King James, I actually looked at this. Will you kindly read for us in the King James, verse 10? Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there is no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. I tend to favor the New American Standard translation for readability compared to the King James, but you cannot beat the King James translation on this. There's really some great value that is drawn out that's a better translation from the Greek.

The first one in here is that you speak the same thing. So the New American Standard says that you all agree and then you'll probably have like a footnote or some reference that says literally speak the same thing. I don't know why they decided agree was better than speak the same thing. Translationally I would just have to say that speak the same thing makes more sense. But the consequence of speaking the same thing is agreement.

Is it not? Or at least it would sound at least on the surface like agreement. I think when we start to ask questions about how people are behaving, we start to listen for those things. Are they saying the same thing? Does this person agree with me? Do they disagree? How many of you have ever been to a job interview?

I'm guessing that in this room that's pretty much everybody, but if you've been to a job interview, One of the things that people do is they'll ask you questions to find out if you agree with them. If you don't agree with them, you either better have a really compelling argument or there's a good likelihood they're probably not going to hire you because the last thing they want to do is manage somebody that's going to constantly be bucking against the system, right? So we're used to seeing agreement and speaking the same thing even today in our culture, but it's an important element here that we see that Paul is calling them out on the fact that they're saying different things and they're not in agreement. And so his hope is that they would agree and his hope is that they would have no more divisions among themselves. What happens inside of a body? We're in a body, we're in Holly Hills. What happens inside of a body when People don't speak the same thing when there's disagreement. How does the body-life change?

It's divided. Okay, it's divided, for sure. And then people begin to take sides on the division. Right. And so it becomes them and us kind of thing. As opposed to being together. Yeah, the us should be everybody. It should be inclusive of everyone. What happens when division comes about is trust breaks down, communication breaks down. And the funny thing is that, having been in multiple church splits now, the thing that's funny is what starts church splits is almost always something trivial.

Not always. There's sometimes really critical issues like doctrine about salvation or whatnot. Those things exist. But here we're going to see it's shallow things. Other places it's whether or not the music is one way or the other. I mean literally people have had church splits over carpet color. We're going to get new carpet. I hope everybody's okay with it, right?

Because it's a very real thing where the flesh rears its ugly head. So Paul's concern is that that there would be unity and trust and a focus on Christ rather than all of these earthly divisions that come out. He continues on after this division among you by saying, "...but that ye may be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment." Now, he's contrasting with that but that's there. but that you be made complete.

And the you be made, and this is, I already apologize for this, but I have to call this out. In the Greek, the that you be made is in the subjunctive mood. And I know that most of you probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about the subjunctive mood. A couple months ago, I didn't think about the subjunctive mood.

But what's interesting is the Greek had this idea of relationship to reality. So if something was in the indicative mood, it was likely true, or at least the person who was speaking was stating that something was true. So that would be, a liar could still say something is true, use the indicative mood, but be lying. But the parallel to reality is tightly coupled. But the subjunctive mood is that there's possibility.

So Paul is writing to the church here in Corinth and he says, but that you might be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. So the idea was that there would be the potential of their being made complete. And so we need to, and we'll get to this in a second, but we need to ask ourselves, why is Paul talking about the potential? rather than the reality. And what could be there?

Bob's smiling on the back. It's not as subjective, but it's kind of an adjoined verb that relates to the passive impact of this joining together too, which is kind of neat because I think when you have division in church, it's mostly over the earthly existence where there's division, not from sound doctrine, right? Right. And so being made complete, it's not being made robots.

Yeah. a steeped in good sound doctrine that allows ultimately the community spirit to be complete one way or another. Yeah, and he's going to talk about what their mental context is here in just a second to kind of bring those things around. But he's concerned that they understand that there's potential for this resolution, but he's also holding them accountable to seek that out by speaking of potential here. And in that he says complete, or the New American Standard says complete, but a better translation in this case would still be the idea that something was being mended or being put back together, restored to unity. And so it's important that when we take a look at this idea of complete that we We don't think about perfection, that's sometimes a word that we would use as a synonym for complete, but instead that we see it as a restoration, a repairing of the unity through the Holy Spirit, through something the Holy Spirit is going to do to change the mind and the perspective of the believers.

The whole of the possibility is born in the idea that the believers are abiding. That's the only way that can play out. Paul is contrasting these things. So he says here that you be made complete or unified in the same mind and in the same judgment. So Paul is assigning the divisions to the flesh and he's contrasting it in alignment with a purity of mind. And let's talk about what the mind can be doing as a believer, the potential of an abiding believer's mind versus the carnal reaction for the mind. So the mind can be beholding.

If we take a look at 2 Corinthians 3.18, which of course is the next letter, This is one of my favorite verses because I think it challenges us as believers to question what our mind is focused on.

2 Corinthians 3.18 says, But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. This abiding mind is beholding the Lord. This abiding mind is thinking about things after God's. He's thinking God's thoughts after God's thoughts. The abiding mind is submitting.

So James 4.7. Take a look there. Forgive me for how slow I am turning to things. I have a new Bible, and not all the pages are as worn in as they should be.

So James 4.7, he says, Submit therefore to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. So submission and focusing on the Lord and focusing on the Lord's direction.

And then also Romans 12.2, the renewed mind in Christ.

So Romans 12.2, where he says, "...and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." So we have this principle of beholding and the principle of submission to what the Lord is revealing in the beholding, as well as this renewing of our mind so that when we think we can recognize what is the spiritually rooted thought versus the carnal thought. and we can have discernment.

Now, what is happening in this church in Corinth that they're not seeing these things? They're being really, really dragged deeply into this discussion of who's being baptized by who, or who's following this guy or that guy, and it's all about earthly concerns, which is not a beholding perspective. The Lord has, based on chapters 12, 13, and 14, or chapters 12 and 14 predominantly, we see that the Lord has been revealing things, but that's not at the forefront of their mind. They're not submitting to what the Lord has been revealing to the Church. And then looking at the principle of the renewed mind, they're ignoring the fact that they have the mind of Christ, which they're told in the next chapter.

In 2.16 it says, but we have the mind of Christ. they don't seem to care about that. Even though it's the mind of Christ, their priority isn't there. So, after addressing their mind, he then asks them, or focuses them on He focuses them on the same judgment.

So let's talk about judgment. This is one of my favorite topics inside of church politics, because usually judgment... How many of you have been told, don't judge? Right? Don't judge. And there are various applications of judgment, and we need to have careful discernment when we say judgment. Do we get to judge anybody's salvation as believers? No. Do we get to squash everyone's liberty all the time? In judgment?

No. But there are discernible behaviors. When we get to chapter 5, Paul is going to call the whole church out on ignoring a pretty disgusting sexual sin. Somebody in Corinth must have gotten the don't judge me thing going really popular. So when this kid is having a gross relationship with his father's wife, they didn't judge him.

But in this case, Paul is talking about the idea of abiding believers. If I'm an abiding believer and I come alongside you and I'm looking at judgment in light of careful doctrine, I'm judging careful doctrine, if the Holy Spirit's working in you and the Holy Spirit's working in me, are we going to come together disagreeing and leave disagreeing? Or are we going to be unified? And Paul's calling out this idea of unity because the Spirit is moving in these believers and the Spirit is bringing together what was divided before. Because they have the mind of Christ and because they have the ability to discern and have judgment, again, in the right context judgment, rather than legalism or things of that sort. So Paul is not encouraging legalism in this case. but he's expecting consistent results.

Now do you think, let's just ask this this way, do you think that Paul had seen the Holy Spirit remove division? Paul had experienced great division when he and Barnabas split over John Mark. That was a really big deal. And Paul held on to his position and then recanted it because the Holy Spirit changed his heart and mind. That's Paul the Apostle. We think of him as being this giant of the faith, and yet the Lord humbled him and changed his position on John Mark. But the Lord also had to change John Mark's attitude and behavior. So Paul and the Holy Spirit changed minds and changed judgments. But it was critical that this church body have an understanding, because what he's going to explain the division being about is so Juvenile. So he's going to tackle that next here. So, they are to have the same mind and the same judgment.

And then verse 11, For I have been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. We'll keep going past that, but for now that gives us our context for verse 11.

So he's been informed concerning you by Chloe's people, and we really don't know who Chloe is per se. We don't have a lot of information. This is the only place that Chloe seems to be referred to in the New Testament. But clearly there was a word-of-mouth communication here that was outside of the letter that the Church in Corinth had written. because the idea that he's calling out a subgroup there is of significance.

So he's been informed that there are quarrels among you, and I love that word quarrels because it's one of those things where it just already sets a context that shows how small the issue is. They're quarreling. It's not a fight. It's not a big thing, it's a quarrel.

Another translation for the word quarrel might be to have the church's striving or strife between believers. Obviously, striving is not a biblical, spirit-motivated behavior. But quarrels reflect a personal investment into a problem. So you personally are involved with your opinion against someone else's opinion, in most cases, and you're cantankerous about it.

Isn't that awesome? Those sound like people that you want to spend a lot of time with. Let's go hang out with the quarrelers. So there's this division, they don't have the same mind, they don't have the same judgment, and they're quarreling, and then in verse 12, He's going to clarify specifically what he means by quarreling here, and that is that each one of you is saying, I'm of Paul, and I have Apollos, and I have Cephas, and I have Christ. So what he's going to get into, and I've got up here on the overhead, I better explain this.

It says, I am of Mrs. Barnes. So when I was a little boy, Mrs. Barnes was my Sunday school teacher. And we had a day one Sunday where Mrs. Barnes asked us if we had become Christians and I remember saying no and being suddenly really concerned because she's like if you haven't you're going to go to hell and hell seemed like maybe not the real estate investment I wanted for the eternity. I responded and we went out of the classroom. And I don't remember if anybody else was in the classroom, because all I can think of is the rest of the kids were left alone. But we went out of the classroom and she talked to me about the gospel. And I prayed my little prayer. And if I were to be as little as the Corinthians, then I would have said, I am with Mrs. Barnes, because she is the one that preached the gospel to me as a little boy in Sunday school.

So Paul here has raised up this I would say now famous, at least amongst Christians, this issue of who do people follow. But his focus is interestingly on some people that the Corinthians would have called on again for their status. So I'm of Paul, and of course Paul had been to Corinth, and so people knew Paul. They knew he was an apostle. They knew miracles had been done by him. So, hey, thumbs up. I follow this guy. He's pretty cool. I'm of Apollos. So Apollos came through Corinth after Paul did. But Paul knew of Apollos. I'm of Cephas, or Peter, as he's also known. You might have heard of him. But Cephas, or, and this is the last one, and I of Christ. Now that's the craziest thing.

Why would you not be just of Christ? To us, as believers now, in the New Testament era, with the New Testament, we will go, of course you're of Christ. But today, what do we do instead? If it's not Paul and Peter and Cephas and Apollos, I'm sorry, Peter or Cephas or Apollos, who do we label ourselves with? In this room it's a lot easier because this is a Bible Church group. But in a lot of groups there will be denominational affiliations. Oh, I am a Presbyterian, or I follow Joel Osteen, or Joyce Meyers, or Alt MacArthur.

Oh yeah, okay. That makes me want to go on a rabbit trail. But yeah, so people will follow Ray Comfort, various people, they gravitate towards this name. Now, there's a practical quality to this. Why do people gravitate toward these labels and these affiliations?

What does it tell you if I say I follow John MacArthur? Which I don't. But what would it tell you if I did? making you feel good or just finding something that's more comfortable from a human understanding perspective. It's not out of a throne of grace. It's something that somehow has to replace sound biblical thought. Yeah, it can replace sound biblical doctrine. The reason I asked the question had to do with the idea that sometimes we like labels because it gives us a handle that I can tell you, oh, if I tell you I follow Joel Osteen or John MacArthur or any label, John Piper, another one, that tells you something about the doctrine that that person believes and probably what I kind of align with at some level or another. Now here's the funny thing.

What was the gospel and the message taught by Paul versus Apollos versus Peter? At this early stage, it's very clear that they're all teaching the same gospel. They're all teaching the same message. And it's even more ridiculous that somebody would say any of those things when they could say the last one, which is I am of Christ. the most important label that you could affiliate yourself with. So this label thing is part of the division principle that he's going to expound on over time, but when we look at these divisions and we look at these names and we look at the people involved here, they don't want the credit Peter doesn't want you to be all excited about being a follower of Peter. Who does Peter point to?

He points to Christ. So the Holy Spirit woos us at the point of salvation towards Christ. We respond in faith and we're saved. And who does Christ point us to? He points us to the Father. Nowhere is there a lot of attention on Paul or Peter or Verne or anybody that is, you know, Mike Doyle, doesn't matter.

We still even see that today where you have churches that follow the works of the Holy Spirit. They're all about the Spirit. Yeah, well the Corinthians would definitely fit in today in the charismatic movement. The charismatic movement is all about the Spirit and the emotion of the Spirit and tongues and all the stuff. As opposed to what the Bible says that the Holy Spirit is always pointing to Christ.

Yep. And when we get into chapter two, we're going to see how the Spirit is engaging the believer to focus us on heavenly things, to focus our thoughts and our form from a deep knowledge of us, a deeper understanding of God, whom he has obviously an infinite and personal relationship with the Father and the Son. So yeah, there's going to be this depth that's there, but it's ignored in today's Charismatic or Pentecostal movements. I know, because I used to do it. So we have this division. They have these people that are clamoring for labels, because in the Corinthian culture that was popular.

And then in 13, he asks, has Christ been divided? It's literally, did they part out Jesus in the Greek? Did they part out Jesus? No. Of course it's a rhetorical question. The quarreling is obviously one of those things where we see the flesh borne out.

But Paul's answer is to go to Christ. He does that a lot, so we shouldn't be surprised. But Paul's answer is going and focusing specifically on Christ. He hones in on the critical quality of the work of Christ. The work of Christ was singular. It is between God and His Son, and it has no ability to be parted out. Can you divide Christ's work on the cross?

Can you sanction it as 50% for the Jews and 50% for the Gentiles? No, it is clearly focused specifically, and we're the beneficiaries of it, but we don't get to claim any of the glory of it. So Paul doesn't want them to try to divide up Christ and label up subsections of Christianity in that way. He asks next, Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

I have done something, and I have two footnotes, and I want to make sure I emphasize the snot out of this, lest I be misquoted. But in the first bad heretical quote, it is a writing of 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4. It says that Paul died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. Paul is saying, is that the gospel you heard? Did I die for you?

No. And then the second piece of heresy, and again this is heresy so I'm not actually teaching this, that were you baptized in the name of the Father, the Paul, and the Holy Spirit? You've got to have the definite article in there, right? We weren't baptized in the name of the Father, the Paul, and the Holy Spirit. We were baptized into the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We need to have this, and Paul doesn't even get it. He's really wondering why these children have abandoned their reason. If you lost your senses, this doesn't make any sense at all. It's easily identifiable as heresy.

But it does beg the question that we need to ask and answer for ourselves, and that is, why is our faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ? What happens if we don't have faith in the person of Jesus Christ, or we don't have faith in the work of Jesus Christ? Who's the person of Jesus Christ? Why is he important as a person, as a being?

Anybody want to take a stab at that? I've just given two examples of heresy, so you already have a low bar. Jack? He's the Redeemer, okay. The personhood of Jesus, there's a theological term called the hypostatic union. The hypostatic union is a word used to describe that Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. He embodied both characteristics. That's why his mother had to be Mary and his father had to be God.

In him, the personhood of Christ was the only one that could have paid for our sins, to be the Redeemer. Right, Jack? If Jesus was only man, would he have been an adequate sacrifice? No. But the work of Jesus Christ is important. Atheists believe that Jesus was on the earth. Many of them. Some of them would argue that they don't think he was on the earth, but they'd have a hard time proving that based on historical evidence, right? But they don't believe in the person of who Jesus Christ was, they just believe that he was an entity. And they don't believe in the works that he did, because they didn't believe that there was a need for salvation. So you need to have faith in the person and works of Jesus Christ, because he's the one who was crucified for us, and he's the one in whom we were baptized.

So Paul draws this out as a very sharp and strong contrast to show the error of their ways. So Randy, I mean, Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians and also in Galatians repeatedly to say, you know, for I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Absolutely. That's this simplistic and whole message, isn't it? Yeah. Well, it's really, really important though. If Paul comes in and all he is preaching is Jesus Christ, and someone walks away with some other message, what does that tell us about that person that walked away with a different message? It tells you that they're not listening. It tells you that they're not paying attention. Paul is definitely a clear communicator. He wouldn't have walked away with anything but Christ. He preached Christ.

Now, in verses 13, 14, and 15, I'm sorry, verses 14, 15, and 16, he's going to focus in briefly on people that he baptized in 14 and 16, and then in 15 he's going to give us a nugget. So we're not going to spend too much time tracking down all the people that he lists here. We're going to focus in on the doctrine that he's focused on. He says in 14, I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one would say you were baptized in my name. Just in case they're still dumb as a bag of rocks, he's going to reiterate he does not want to be associated with their baptism in reflection of the idea that who baptized you is what matters. Who were we baptized into when we're baptized? The Son. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Not Paul.

And then in 16, now I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other. So let us ask, actually, an important question. I baptized both of my daughters. I co-baptized Abigail with my dad. Kelsey, my sister-in-law, and my daughter Evelyn. I did by myself, if I recall correctly. I don't say that with any bragging, okay? It mattered to me as a family member that I got to participate in because I love them and I got to rejoice in that.

But does my baptizing them physically do anything for me? I have yet to hear my daughters ever boldly proclaim that they are of Randy. They're embarrassed to say that they're my daughter sometimes, but there's certainly not, in this case, any significance to the fact that I did the baptizing. I was just an agent.

Because what is baptism for? What do we do baptism for? It's a public testimony of the fact that we're identified with Christ, that we were buried and resurrected, or died buried, resurrected, ascended, and seated in the heavenlies with Him, that our position is with Him. It's an outward testimony of those things, but it is not something that saves us. And in fact, just to follow that rabbit trail just a little bit, because I had somebody ask me in the last couple months about baptism as a part of salvation, if Paul, thought that baptism brought salvation, or was part of salvation, was required for salvation. He is the biggest jerk.

Because he came in preaching the gospel, right? He came in preaching the gospel, and then, if you needed to be saved through the process of believing and then being baptized, he didn't baptize. He came into Corinth preaching the gospel. Alright, you're saved. Awesome. and didn't go further and baptize those people. He left that to be an organic function of what the body was doing inside of the church. This is what the Spirit is doing in the church. They're being led to be baptized. You know how to get wet, right?

That's a ceremony as a testimony of what the Lord has done, not a saving work. Otherwise, Paul's a jerk. Right here is the testimony of Paul being a jerk if you have to be saved through baptism. But he's not a jerk, and we're not saved through baptism. So we'll continue on here in verse 17. He says, For Christ did not send me to baptize. Because again, baptism isn't related to salvation, right? So now we have it both in action and in word that baptism was not Paul's focus. Christ sent him instead, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void.

So let's ask an important question here with this idea. We've said the gospel a few times. Let's just really reiterate it and make sure we have it. What is the gospel? If you have to say the gospel, where are you going to send people or where are you going to quote from? Okay, 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4. And since we're in 1 Corinthians, you can follow me or I'll turn there myself.

He says, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. That tells us much about the person and the work of Christ in a very succinct, one little sentence there.

Christ had to be adequate as a sacrifice. So he had to be fully God and fully man, or else the sacrifice didn't matter. And he had to do it according to the scriptures, which outlined that he had to be fully God and fully man. And he did it all according to the scriptures, so that if you believe it, you're not believing in just a really nice guy that did some nice things for people that he didn't know. That's what the secular world tells us about Jesus. How many of you heard that Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha all taught the same thing? That we should just love one another? It makes me want to vomit in my mouth just saying that. That's as bad as the heresies, as I said a few minutes ago.

But here we have this really critical issue of the gospel, that Paul is very concerned about their salvation. So Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, that Christ came and fulfilled the demands that God had for righteousness. But then he says here in this next part, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would be made void.

Cleverness could also be translated as philosophy. The idea of philosophical speech. The Corinthians loved a good orator. So that would be awesome. Let's hear the guy who can speak the fanciest and present this so that we feel like we're slightly dumber than we were when we came in the room because we didn't get it right off.

Paul writes to the Colossians in Colossians 4.6 that they should speak with grace as though seasoned with salt.

But that is an entirely different principle than right here where we see that grace in your speech is okay, but philosophy and highfalutin thoughts is not okay. Paul is not alright with the idea that there be this cleverness of speech. So why is it that we don't want cleverness of speech? Focus on us, not on Christ. Okay, that would be focus on us and not on Christ. That's an important element of it. Any other thoughts?

What happens if we have cleverness of speech? You're trying to deceive somebody. You could be deceptive, also very important. Another element that's really important, how many of you have gone to listen to someone speak and when you walked away you were pretty sure that you didn't understand 90% of what just came out of their mouths? You got the the's and the and's and then after that you were hoes.

Bob goes and speaks professionally in medical conferences, and I'm sure he uses phenomenal technical vocabulary to communicate precisely ideas. But if he were to get up here in front of us and blow our minds with a bunch of medical vocabulary, I'm a software developer. I can talk about computer stuff and be nerdy all day long, but I'm not medically trained and I would probably get lost pretty quick. Just like if I were to just start just gushing about AVPs and other technological babble that I have to deal with at work every day, you would not be impressed. You'd just be bored and be sad that I was opening my mouth about diameter and mobile telephone protocols.

However, how many of you are satisfied as a believer that your brothers and sisters can be five years old, or four years old, or ten years old, because you know the gospel is so simple that their minds can take it and they can walk by faith. To me, that's very satisfying. I find great comfort knowing that the gospel is simple enough that a child can believe it. There is no cleverness in speech if all you present when you present the gospel is what Paul wrote. So he's concerned that they would be thinking like a Greek, that they'd be thinking like the culture around them, and be sucked into this cleverness. But then he says, so that the cross of Christ would be made void.

And how many of you use the word void a lot? Anyone? No? In software development, we use the word void a lot, as it turns out. Because when you have a function or a piece of code that returns nothing, you have to say it returns void. And I have a little example up there. But void means nothing. It means to have emptiness or to be lacking definition or quality.

So the consequence that Paul is concerned with is that the crossed cross of Christ would be void because the gospel is confused. You know I was thinking when you were talking about this that part of the Corinthians problem was it was so simple that they couldn't get their head around how simple it was and so they had to in their minds make it more complicated and more difficult because that was sort of their M.O. in how they dealt with things.

It was very difficult, I think, for them, they were educated, they were sophisticated, to just accept this very simple gospel. It was very hard. The funny thing is that that's how I would, if I were to cut off the very front of your sentence, I could put another word in there and it would be the same, and that is precisely how seminary was. When I went to seminary, Nothing was simple. We could say the gospel. Everybody had to be able to say an approximation of the gospel in their own words. But then you had to complicate it quickly.

You've got to make sure that you look smart. Ah, I will throw in some more theological vocabulary and make sure that everybody's slightly more befuddled than they were before, because then you'll know I went to seminary. Only the reality of the matter is that if you walk away having been at least theoretically instructed on how to teach people, you should be able to explain it to a five-year-old just as much as to anyone of any older age. And that is what I found has actually been most exciting about being at Holly Hills, is that while there's a deep love for theological truth, it's not wrapped in a bunch of theological vocabulary that we all have to learn so that we can be smart and good enough because we understand that the gospel is a simple gospel. That the cross is so critical that we need to understand it like a child.

And so Paul, as he's addressing these believers here, he's hitting them with the very critical issue that if you don't preach the gospel properly, you miss the cross, you miss Jesus, and you go to hell. He cares. That's his job. He's the Apostle Paul. He's supposed to go out and preach the gospel. He's kind of passionate about this topic. You want to get him started? Ask him about the gospel. Ask him about Jesus. Who's this Jesus guy? And I bet you, you can't avoid the gospel message like a giant neon sign because that's who Paul is.

And yet these people are complicating it, and he doesn't want that to be tolerable inside of this group. He wants there to be no division. He wants there to be simplicity and focus, and the same mind and the same judgment, so that when the gospel is shared, It's clear. So the last question I've got on here is really an important one that I think wraps up this section.

And that is, how do we share the gospel to avoid cleverness and having it return... I don't want it to return void, that's a typo. And having it not return void. So I missed a not in there, so if you've got a pen or pencil, please put not in there and I'll try to correct it on the internet. So how do we present the gospel so that we're not clever and that the cross is not returned void?

What do we do? Keep it simple. Okay, we keep it simple for sure. I'm asking I'm asking because it wasn't until I was well into my adulthood and after seminary that somebody said such a simple thing that changed my whole perspective on the presentation of the Gospel. So I'm going to share this with you. Hopefully it's useful and you will find benefit in it.

And that is that when you present the Gospel, the recommendation is that you go over the Scriptures so they know that they're sinners. If they don't know they're sinners, they don't know that they need to be saved. They know 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4 that Christ died on the cross, was buried and resurrected again according to the scriptures on the third day.

And then let them pray a self-formed prayer of salvation. Not the copy-paste version that I was given when I was a little boy. but ask them to pray. Because when they pray, you'll know right away whether or not they understood the message. Because they'll be praying, Dear Jesus, I pray that you would make me a better person. Okay, that's not the gospel. But if they pray a prayer that reflects the truth of the gospel, then you know they got it. If not, then you may want to talk through a few more details with them.

But that's how you avoid the cleverness, is you use the scriptures, you make it simple, and you make it So that when they pray, the Holy Spirit moves in them, and the last act of the flesh, before it's crucified with Christ on the cross, is the prayer that Jesus would be the Lord of their life, through the work that He did on the cross.

That was the second bell. We should close. Any other thoughts or questions before I close us in prayer? Things you wish I didn't say? There's always those. All right. Heavenly Father, we come before you and we ask that you would just focus our hearts and minds on things above the rest of the day and implant in us a desire for unity and a desire for having the mind of Christ and the same judgment. And Lord, I do pray that we would continue to grow together, and that the idea of quarrels would be something that we can chuckle about. But we walk in unity as a body together, and we treasure and steward one another as brethren and as a body. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.