The Wisdom and Folly of God and Men (Part 3)

The Preaching of His Word
2 Corinthians 2:1-5
Sermon Summary

How can we faithfully and compellingly present the gospel in a culture like ours? Image is everything; just ask the advertisers. If you want to get someone to “make a decision,” to buy into something, you must sell it with beautiful people having a wonderful time. You must have a big name, a celebrity endorsing your product. Go light on content, heavy on slogans and branding. People are sensuous, appeal to their felt needs. How can we compellingly package the gospel in such a culture?

There’s much we can learn from the Apostle Paul in Corinth.

When Paul walked into Corinth he walked into a culture that bore some similarities to our own. They were a prosperous people. Corinth was a center of trade and commerce. They were a cosmopolitan people. The city was full of many different races, creeds, and trades. They were a sensual people. The great landmark in Corinth was the Acrocorinth, a hill of almost 2000 feet tall. And at the top was a temple devoted to the Greek goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of erotic love. Every night the temple prostitutes would make their way into the city and perform their so called “religious” service. The Corinthians loved to be entertained. The boasted of the Isthmian games, which were popular athletic competitions. People would gather and listen to the rhetoricians, the highly trained speakers of day wax eloquently on all manner of topics as they wooed the audience and brought them through emotional highs and lows. It was the television, or the theatre of the day.

Into this culture walked the Apostle Paul with the gospel. How did he package it? How did he sell it to them? The answer may surprise you. In fact, it may look very weak and foolish. We read about in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5:

“(1) And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. (2) For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. (3) I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, (4) and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, (5) so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.”

Paul was committed to the simple proclamation of a message that appeared foolish, and he did it in a rather unimpressive way, by Corinthian standards. He simply centered upon the cross and depended upon the Spirit, and that’s what we should do as well.

1. Be Centered Upon The Cross

First, we should be centered upon the cross. That’s verses 1-2: “And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”

Paul determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Does this mean he did not have much to say? Not at all. If we are going to talk about Jesus Christ and him crucified we must talk about who Jesus is and tell people about the deity of Christ. We must know something of why he was crucified, which means telling others about the justice of God, the sinfulness of man, the reality of judgment, the satisfaction made in the atonement. We must call people to believe, explaining the true nature biblical repentance and faith. The gospel is no impoverished message.

When Paul says he resolved to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified, he doesn’t mean that there’s all this stuff in the Bible, but I’m just going to preach John 3:16 with the same three points every week. He means that there are all these things out in the world, in the culture, that people think are of supreme importance, and if I got up and waxed eloquently about them I could draw large crowds. But instead, I resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It looks foolish, but it’s the power of God.

At the heart of Paul’s preaching was not a preoccupation people’s perceived needs, but their real need—the gospel. Corinth was a place where if you could get up and give great speeches on what people thought were the important topics of the day they would come in droves to listen. Paul wouldn’t do that, and neither should we. We must stay focused on the cross.

On any given Sunday, people may gather in churches—people who do not know the Lord—who think that their greatest need is to have a better marriage or bigger balance in their checkbook. Our temptation may be each week to simply give them advice rather than a cross. That doesn’t mean that we don’t address those issues, but we do it in a cross centered way. For the person concerned about their marriage we may ask along with James, “What is the source of conflict and quarrels among you? Is it not the passions that wage war in your members?” You don’t get what you want, and so you fight. Now the issue is sin, and we can talk about Jesus and his cross. Why are you in so much debt? Is it possible you cannot control your spending, that you want things you do not have? We have now come to issues of greed, covetousness, idolatry, sin. And so we can move to the gospel.

The point is this. The world is full of talking heads. At any given moment in our culture we can turn on the television and find a buffet of experts and journalists sitting around tables giving their thoughts on the issues of the day. And the Bible certainly does not forbid us to have opinions about such things and to engage such topics. But always in a gospel centered way. When a person comes into the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, or encounters a Christian at the place of work, they shouldn’t just find another talking head. They should encounter the very God of the Bible in the person of his Son, Jesus. We must stay centered upon the cross.

2. Be Dependent Upon The Spirit

But we must also stay dependent upon the Spirit. That’s verses 3-5: “(3) I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, (4) and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, (5) so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.”

Let’s be clear about what his doesn’t mean. This is not condoning laziness or sinfulness, or implying that God does not gift us with abilities to use for his glory. We don’t find the person who can’t balance a checkbook to oversee the church’s finances. We don’t find someone who knows nothing about electrical work to do electrical wiring in the church. And we don’t look for people who won’t study the Bible and can’t communicate to pastor a church. A pastor must be able to teach, the Bible says. Paul himself would reason with people and powerfully prove the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. In Athens (Acts 17) he showed he was able to quote the poets of the day and he made use of such things.

The point is that the power in preaching, in evangelism, in the simple sharing of the gospel is not in the man or the method.

First of all, the power to convert someone does not lie in the man. Paul came in weakness and in fear and in much trembling (v. 3). That’s not what the Corinthians wanted. That’s not what you do to draw a crowd. How often do we think that we must have some big name or a celebrity give their testimony if people are going to come to Christ. Letting plumber Joe speak will never do.

Within Christianity we have developed our own culture of Christian stardom. We have celebrity leaders, our own television stations, bookstores, and superstars. We could forgive the average person in the pew for feeling like they don’t have much to contribute. And maybe for some, when you find yourself in a situation where you can share Jesus, your hands get sweaty, your heart beats faster, your mouth gets dry, and you think, I could never give a strong and compelling witness for Christ feeling like this. Not so! God’s power to covert does not lie in you or your strength. And he may work through your weakness. It does not depend upon the man.

Secondly, the power is not in the method. Verse 4: “and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom…” This does not mean that Paul couldn’t speak clearly or cogently, but that he wasn’t going to trust in his ability to woo or entertain. In Corinth, people loved to listen to the orators wax eloquently. It wasn’t so much about the quality of the content as the power of persuasion and entertainment value. People today don’t gather to hear rhetoricians give speeches that go on for hours. But they will gather for stand up comedy, the theater, a concert. And our temptation may be to say, let’s give them smoke and lights and a big production, let’s give them stand up comedy and entertaining and emotional stories, let’s give them drama and interpretive dance, but by all means, don’t give them preaching. There’s no power in that. People don’t want it. It will not draw a crowd.

Now listen, the point of this is not to give an exhaustive list of what we can and can’t do, to say there’s no place for artistic expression, or to be unduly critical of others who are trying to reach Christ. That’s not where this is going. Often, when I find myself raising an eyebrow at someone’s method in evangelism, I usually find myself coming back to the realization that I like the way they’re doing it better than the way I’m not. And I’m thankful that the truth of the gospel is being faithfully proclaimed. So don’t misunderstand my point.

What I am saying is that when it comes to the proclamation of the gospel, be it in our churches or at your workplace, if all of our focus and discussion and hope is being centered on ourselves, our own cleverness and ingenuity, and how powerful and persuasive our methods of communicating are, as though that is where the power lies, we have lost site of the most important thing. Just a reminder: at the end of the day, it is the gospel that saves. And where it is faithfully proclaimed God can do incredible things, even if we’re a bit unimpressive and not too relevant in the eyes of the culture (kind of like Paul at Corinth).