(Don’t) Give the People What They Want

Sermon Transcript

In Episode V of Star Wars, “The Empire Strikes Back”, the main character, Luke Skywalker, is being trained by the Jedi Master Yoda. Yoda is a Jedi master because he had learned to live and use the powers of “The Force” effectively, the force that is a kind of invisible, omnipresent power in the Star Wars fictional universe. In their training on the planet of Dagobah, there is a scene in which Yoda encourages Luke to lift his plane out of a swamp using the force. Luke fails when he tries to do it and gets frustrated, while Yoda can do it, but Yoda doesn’t then tout his own strength to Luke. Instead, he talks to Luke about the force and basically encourages Luke to trust the force to be able to do more than what Luke is personally capable of doing.

 

That’s a picture of faith. Yoda called Luke to faith, not in himself, nor in Yoda, but in the force. Star Wars movies, while great, take part in a fictional universe. But the passage on which we are focusing today was written in our universe, on our planet, about 2000 years ago, to a church that gathered for worship in the ancient Greek city of Corinth. The Corinthians had a problem Paul wanted to address in this letter: Division. Some were saying they followed Paul, while other said they followed Apollos, others Cephas, and still others Christ. What did Paul realize from this? He realized that they were all putting their faith in different people: Some him, some Apollos, some Cephas, and some Christ, as though he were just another dish at the buffet of teachers. And we are susceptible to that too. I mean, God is invisible and the gospel can seem unbelievable: 2000 years ago God became man, died for our sins, rose from the dead, and you saw none of it. Do you really want to stake your whole eternity on that? Doesn’t it seem wiser to follow leaders you can at least project an image of respectability and strength on to? That may seem wiser, but Paul realizes something similar to Yoda: If your faith is ultimately in finite men, however impressive and strong they may be in your mind, your faith is misplaced. So in this passage, Paul reminds the Corinthians of how he came to them in such a way that their faith might rest not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. So let your faith rest not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God, and we’ll see why by looking first at what Paul said, then how Paul said it, and then finally why Paul chose that approach.

 

What Paul said

 

Our passage today begins with Paul, the author of this letter to the Corinthians, reminding them of how he came to them. In the passage just before this one, he exhorted the Corinthians to consider themselves: Consider your calling, brothers, the time of your conversion. Remember your experience at that time. Now he’s going back to that same time, and reminding them of himself, how he approached them. Many of them could of course remember this; this letter was written only about 5 years after he first came to them. The story of his coming to them is recorded for us in the book of Acts, in chapter 18, but we don’t need to turn there now, because Paul tells us here what he wants us to learn from his coming to the Corinthians. “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.”

 

What did Paul do when he came to them? He came to them proclaiming something. That does not exclude dialogue; Acts 18:4 tells us that Paul dialogued in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. Here he says what he proclaimed was the “testimony of God” or the “mystery of God” as in the footnote. Earlier in 1 Corinthians he simply called it the gospel (1:17), or the “word of the cross” (1:18). The gospel is a testimony because in the gospel we report historical facts verified by eyewitnesses. Listen to how Paul summarizes it later in 1 Corinthians: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (15:3-4). Those are facts of history, and Paul himself is one of those eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead. But this is the testimony of God, not the testimony of Paul, because God has revealed the true meaning of these historical events to his apostles, and through the proclamation of his apostles, has made them known to the Corinthians and to us. That’s why it can also be called a mystery—a mystery in the Bible is something that can only be known if God specially reveals it. Anyone who was there the day Jesus was crucified could testify that Christ died, but that’s not all Paul proclaimed in the gospel. He also proclaimed, as he says in 1 Corinthians 15, that Christ died for our sins, and he can only know that, and we can only know that, because God first made it known to him and the other apostles, and he proclaimed it to the Corinthians, and wrote it down for us.

 

So that’s what Paul said: The testimony of God, but in verse 1 his emphasis is not so much on what he said as what he did not say: He did not come to them proclaiming the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. Lofty speech or wisdom would be highfalutin or flowery rhetoric. The cultural background to this that can help us understand what Paul is getting at is that the ancient city of Corinth was influenced by a group known as the Sophists. The Sophists engaged in eloquence more so than in rhetoric; rhetoric was a standard piece of classical education that at its best trained students to communicate the truth in a persuasive way. But the Sophists disregarded the truth, and instead used language for language’s sake, argument for argument’s sake, to demonstrate their own impressiveness and “defeat” their opponent in debate. We have evidence from the time period that the sophists would even compete in this publicly, where again the goal was not to persuade one’s opponent of the truth, but to impress in the use of language, whether its end was truth or falsehood. We have evidence that when such a person would come into a new territory, they would come with an impressive display of their abilities with language. They would come with lofty speech or wisdom, in other words, in order to garner attention, admiration, and even wealth, for themselves.

 

And many ancient Greeks, far from being put off by that, loved it! They were impressed by lofty speech and wisdom, they applauded it, and they paid for it! So here comes Paul to town, and he knows that’s his audience. And what might we think an apostle would want? Wouldn’t you think he’d want a big crowd to come, hear the testimony of God, and believe it? And if he knows the sophists generally draw big crowds and gain followers, what might you expect him to do? Come like the sophists, right? Come with lofty speech and wisdom, right?

 

And yet, in verse 1 Paul reminds the Corinthians that’s exactly what he did not do when he came to them. He came proclaiming the testimony of God, but not with lofty speech or wisdom. If you’ve been around conversations of Christian missions or evangelism, at some point you’ve probably heard the term contextualization. The idea is basically that you should consider your context when you are trying to make disciples rather than just saying exactly the same words and doing the exact same things with every person and culture, and that is a very good, biblical idea. But where it sometimes goes sideways is when it essentially becomes finding out what a person or culture already likes, and giving it to them. In some cases, that’s as extreme as actually changing the gospel message, as though it were merely a testimony of men we could change to suit our audience, rather than the testimony of God that we’ve been commissioned to proclaim. In most cases, though, people are still saying we should preach the gospel, but we should do it in a way that makes it easier for the people hearing it to believe. And again, that’s appropriate to a point: We should preach the gospel in a language they understand, for example. But beyond that, Paul knows what his audience would like: Lofty speech and wisdom, and he considers that in his approach to them. In that sense, he contextualizes, but the way he contextualizes is by not giving them what they like; instead, he intentionally avoids it!

 

And we know it was an intentional decision on his part because look at what he says in verse 2: For, or here’s why I came to you that way, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. He’s essentially saying, “Look I thought about you guys and what I knew about you and what my commission was from God, and when I did, I decided to add zero lofty speech or wisdom to the testimony of God, which is Jesus Christ and him crucified.” The job of an apostle, the job of Christian churches, the job of individual Christians in evangelism and missions is simply to proclaim what has been delivered to us in a way that the hearer can understand, not to figure out how to get the hearer to like it. As Paul himself says again later in 1 Corinthians before summarizing the gospel: “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received” (15:3). We are middle men, messengers, proclaiming to others what we received from God through the apostles in the scriptures, and the basic substance of the message is Jesus Christ and him crucified.

 

When we consider the greatness of Jesus Christ, why would we want to obscure anyone’s vision of him with the lesser glories of what they already like? My uncle recently passed away, and one memory I have of him was a time he took me and some of his grown-up friends to a Penn State basketball game. I barely remember the game, but I do remember on the way home we stopped for dinner and I ordered a steak. When the waitress brought the steak, I asked her for some steak sauce as well, and my uncle and his friends looked at me like I just asked the waitress for a cyanide tablet. One of them said to me, “Why would you ask for steak sauce? You’re going to ruin a good steak with that.” Why’d he say that? He believed the real greatness of my order was the steak itself, and he was concerned that if I smothered it in steak sauce, all I’d taste was the sauce! That was Paul’s concern: He knows the real treasure of the gospel is Jesus Christ and him crucified, so he didn’t want to smother it with the steak sauce of lofty speech or wisdom.

 

Not only does Paul say Jesus Christ and him crucified is all he proclaimed when he came to them; he says that’s all he knew! It’s as though if they had asked him other questions that didn’t pertain to Jesus Christ and him crucified, he’d answer every time, “I don’t know.” “Well Paul are you with Plato or Aristotle on the nature of the forms?” “I don’t know.” “Well Paul what do you make of the current Roman emperor?” “I don’t know.” “Hey Paul we’ve got this issue with our economy in Corinth. How do you think we should fix it?” “I don’t know.” That doesn’t immediately seem like a winning strategy, does it? I mean, these are important questions and people want answers! But he knew his job was not to answer the questions the world was already asking; his job was to proclaim a message the world didn’t even realize they needed. Do you realize that with the people with whom you want to share the gospel? There’s a place for honest answers to honest questions and Paul certainly does talk about more even in this letter to the Corinthians than only Jesus Christ and him crucified, but it’s also far too easy to find yourself spending most of your time talking with unbelievers or even fellow believers about the age of the earth, politics, LGBT issues, and never actually proclaiming Jesus Christ and him crucified! Again I’m not saying you should ignore honest questions and just keep repeating Jesus Christ and him crucified, but you should have an intention of bringing the conversation back to that.

 

Iris and I were talking the other day about how to answer many of the Chinese unbelievers with whom she interacts who say people just embrace religion as a way of coping with the hard realities of life, and we came up with various ways to come at that. For one thing, you can point out that Christianity helping someone deal with hardship tells us nothing one way or another about its truth value. When evaluating the claim that Jesus is the Christ and that he died for our sins and rose again, the most important question to ask is not, “Does that comfort people?” but “Is it true?” Another way to come at it, though, is to point out ways that following Christ actually imposes greater difficulty in this life that atheism alleviates. Think about how as a Christian you “have to” give your money away, fight sexual desires that it seems would feel so good to act on, love people who hate you, never take revenge, welcome people who make you uncomfortable, and so on. It seems just as likely, then, that atheism is a way of coping with the hard reality of being a creature under the authority of a creator whose authority we are inclined to reject, but can I tell you what’s amazing about this creator according to Christianity? He loves people who reject his authority, and he loved them so much that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die for their sins and rise from the dead so they could be forgiven and have eternal life. I don’t always do this well, but what I’m trying to do there is answer their question honestly, while building a bridge from it to Jesus Christ and him crucified, because I know that’s actually the message they need to hear more than any clever answers I might have to their questions.

 

The message of Jesus Christ and him crucified, the testimony of God, covers both the person and the work of Christ. It is Jesus Christ, the person, and him crucified, the work. In Acts 18:5, when the author of that book, Luke, summarizes what Paul did in Corinth, he says that he testified that the Christ was Jesus. The Christ is the Greek word for the Messiah, and the messiah was the promised king and savior of God’s people. God had promised to send him through the prophets, all God’s people were waiting for him, this time of year many reflect on this very promise and the coming of this Christ, and the proclamation of Christians is that Jesus of Nazareth, born to a virgin in Bethlehem, is that Christ. He’s the one who came to save and rule over God’s people, and how did he do it? Crucifixion: Christ crucified. Because all have sinned against God, God’s justice now requires that those sins be punished. For any of us to be forgiven by God, then, someone must take the punishment in our place. Apart from that, all our sorrow, all our resolutions to do better in the future cannot meet the demand of justice that the sins we have already committed be punished. A murderer who resolves never to do it again isn’t absolved from their jail sentence. Justice is real, and it rightly demands more. And justice is real because God is real, and he is just. So if we are to be forgiven, someone must die for our sins who has no sins of his own, and the good news of the gospel, the testimony of God, is that when Jesus Christ was crucified, God put all the sins of his people into Christ’s account, and Jesus satisfied the demand of God’s justice against those sins, and then rose from the dead, so that now whoever is united to him by faith is forgiven of their sins, declared righteous in God’s sight, and promised eternal life with him. Something like that is what Paul said to the Corinthians, and nothing else.

 

Brothers and sisters, something like that is what our unbelieving neighbors, co-workers, family, and friends need to hear, and nothing else. You don’t have to try to reproduce my exact words or even the exact words of any particular passage of scripture, but the only way anyone can be saved is by hearing the proclamation of Jesus Christ, and him crucified. The only way people to the ends of the earth can be saved is if someone goes to them and proclaims to them in a language they can understand Jesus Christ, and him crucified. You give your money to this church and we give our money as a church to missionaries not first and foremost so they can drill wells, solve poverty, and cure disease. You give your money to this church and we give our money as a church to missionaries first and foremost to enable them to proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified to those who have never heard that message before. What a relief this is. You don’t have to figure out how to get people to like the gospel; you just have to proclaim it!

 

That’s what Paul did when he came to Corinth. Do you see how crazy it is, then, that some of them were saying, “I follow Paul,” while others said, “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ”? Do you see what the Corinthians were doing with Paul? They were treating him like one of their celebrities, like one of their sophists! And so he’s reminding them, “I didn’t come to you like that! I don’t want your praise and admiration; if I did, I’d have come with lofty speech and wisdom.” I don’t believe I’ve always succeeded at this, but one of my hopes as a preacher myself and for the preaching of this church is to keep it fairly simple and unadorned. I hope you hear these sermons and leave thinking, “He pretty much just talked about that passage” and I hope you leave seeing how the passage centers on Jesus Christ, and him crucified. I hope you hear many other orators who are more entertaining and impressive than the preachers you hear here, because that’s not what we’ve been called by God to be. Consider what you are looking for in a sermon. Is it lofty speech and wisdom, or Jesus Christ and him crucified? Some pulpits have inscribed on them the words of John 12:21 – “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Come to church with that heart. Some of you here today are looking for a church or will in the future move and be in a season of looking for a church; look for a preacher who preaches Jesus Christ and him crucified, and not with lofty speech or wisdom. That’s what Paul said. Let’s look next at how he said it.

 

How Paul said it

 

In verse 3 Paul says he was with the Corinthians in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and his speech and his message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. In general, here’s how he describes his posture or status when with the Corinthians: Weakness, fear, and much trembling. Now again, if you’re looking for followers, does that seem like the way to get them? I get that biblical concepts like servant leadership show up in popular leadership books, but I challenge any of you to point me to a popular book on leadership that encourages leaders to be weak, fearful, and in much trembling. Who wants to follow a weak, fearful, trembling person?

 

I was talking with another pastor recently about pastoral ministry and he said to me that it sounds like I think the ideal pastor is a confident, decisive extrovert. I shared that observation with a few brothers here and one of them wisely rebuked me with the observation that we have biblical qualifications for pastors, and those aren’t among them. Another added that if those were really important to God, I’m sure he would have told us. Now we can add that not only did God not put those attributes on the list of qualifications for pastors; Paul seems to have exhibited almost opposite characteristics in his ministry to the Corinthians. He was not the ideal executive, but then again, God didn’t call him to be an executive. He called him to be an apostle. And as an apostle, he was with the Corinthians in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.

 

Generally when Paul talks about his weakness, he has in mind the various hardships to which he was subjected as an apostle. The sophists didn’t come in weakness; they came touting their abilities and looking for more money and applause by which they could shield themselves from hardship. Later in his second letter to the church in Corinth, he gives us a representative sample: “Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak?” We know from Acts 18 that in Corinth in particular he was opposed, reviled (Acts 18:6), and even brought before a tribunal on trumped up charges (Acts 18:12).

 

But he did not revile those who reviled him, nor did he trump up charges against those who trumped up charges against him. He did not figure out what the people liked so he could become popular and thereby avoid all these hardships. When his friend and co-author of this letter, Sosthenes, was beaten, they did not beat anyone in return (Acts 18:17). Throughout the course of his ministry we do see times he fled persecution, we see times in court where he speaks in his own defense, and we see times when he even uses his Roman citizenship to demand a fair trial, but we never see him using force to avoid persecution or retaliating against those who wrong him. Being with the Corinthians in weakness meant putting himself in a position to have hurtful things done to him that he would never do to others.

 

As a church and as Christians, we too must be content with a position of weakness in the world. The world will always be unbelieving until Jesus returns; the present age will always be evil (Gal 1:4), but churches and Christians in America have often enjoyed a strange position of cultural privilege in which even though many of their neighbors still rejected Christ in their hearts, they would respect Christianity and nod in agreement to various aspects of Christian ethics. And frankly, there were pros and cons to that situation, and I won’t try to guess at which outweighed the other, but most now recognize that that culturally privileged status is shrinking for churches and Christians in America unless those churches or Christians are willing to change what they’re saying or how they’re saying it to give America in 2024 what it wants. We can learn a better approach from Paul here: Don’t try to give the people what they want. Give them the gospel, and be content with that leaving you in a weak, vulnerable position. Yes, if you proclaim the testimony of God people might hate you and revile you and accuse you falsely and fire you and even kill you, and you’ll never hate them or revile them or accuse them falsely or fire them or kill them, but that’s ok. That’s the Christian posture, in fact: Weakness.

 

And fear and trembling. Those two are a package deal not only in the title of a Soren Kierkegaard book, but in the Bible. We can think of one simple reason Paul would have been in fear and trembling: He was opposed and reviled in Corinth. In fact he said that the Holy Spirit testifies to him in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await him (Acts 20:23). He’s going into places in which he has no standing, he’s not using lofty speech and wisdom to gain standing for himself, and he’s instead proclaiming a message that as we saw last week, is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles (1:23). It’s natural for any human to feel some fear about this, and Paul was a human, but again, rather than fleeing what was fearful, he remained among them in fear and much trembling. He stayed, even when it was scary, just like he stayed, even when he was weak.

 

But fear and trembling in the Bible don’t just refer to the fear of danger from people (e.g., Psalm 55:5); they refer to a posture of reverence before God (e.g., Psalm 2:11). In verse 1 of 1 Corinthians Paul refers to himself as one who was called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. He was sent to proclaim the very testimony of God. God didn’t say that he would whisper the mystery of God into the ears of each of the Corinthians; he sent Paul to proclaim it, and their faith in that message was the difference between eternal conscious torment and eternal conscious joy. That’s a weighty responsibility, is it not? In his second letter to the Corinthians, he asks, “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor 2:16) He recognizes how big of a deal the task is, he recognizes how weak he is to the task, and yet, he stays, in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. We learn in Acts 18 that he actually stayed with them a whole year and a half (Acts 18:11).

 

As you seek to share the gospel with others, you should feel these same things. It’s a weighty responsibility, we are utterly insufficient for the tasks, and yet…God has sent us. If God wanted a different Christian in your family or neighborhood or barber’s chair, he’d have put them there. But he didn’t. He put you there. Press into the weakness, the fear, and the trembling as you seek to share the gospel there, and stay. If you are a man here who aspires to the office of elder, you should feel weak to the task, and should so with fear and trembling. But don’t let a sense of your weakness and fears stop you from aspiring. Far from being an argument against your aspiration, they may be further evidence of it. It’s often those who are most forward in their desire to lead who are least qualified to do so. And brothers and sisters, let’s keep that in mind as we assess future elders. We want men who are weak and have a sense of fear and trembling in the presence of God as they consider the task, and who are willing to proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified from that position of weakness, even knowing that some will not like it. A man who is willing to say unpopular true things from scripture without retaliating or getting angry at those who oppose him for it; that’s who you want.

 

That’s what Paul was among the Corinthians, and he didn’t try to bolster his strength through plausible words of wisdom as verse 4 says, but rather in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Instead of using the flowery rhetoric of the sophists to convince his hearers, what did Paul rely on to convince his hearers? The demonstration of the Spirit and of power. I said earlier that our job in evangelism is simply to proclaim the gospel, but of course, we aren’t indifferent to how people respond. We want them to believe! The question is, by what method do we hope to elicit belief from them? God doesn’t just give us our message in scripture; he gives us our method. Do we aim to persuade others by plausible words of wisdom, or by the demonstration of the Spirit and power? Paul is saying he opted for the latter.

 

He proclaimed the gospel, and he trusted the Spirit to do the work of demonstrating the truth of it. That’s why it’s ok for us to come without lofty speech or wisdom, and to simply proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified in weakness and in fear and in much trembling; because we aren’t alone, and it is not by our power that anyone will believe anyway! The sophists could win people to themselves by their own powers of speech, but you will not win anyone to Christ by your powers of speech. Each of our hearts are so dead-set against God by nature that none of us will say Jesus is Lord unless the Holy Spirit does the work of convincing us that he is (1 Cor 12:3). We proclaim the gospel, and yes we engage in dialogue and reason with people, like Paul himself did in Corinth (Acts 18:4-5); none of what he’s saying here is meant to go against that. But we always do so from a position of weakness, willing to have done to us what we would never do to others, with fear and trembling under a sense of our insufficiency for the task, and the only reason we therefore continue in it is because we trust the Holy Spirit to do the work of demonstrating the truth of the gospel to those God has chosen to save.

 

Do you see again, then, how crazy it is that the Corinthians would put Paul on a pedestal and prefer him in competition to other preachers? Paul’s saying not only is what I said to you totally contrary to that, but how I said it was with such weakness, fear, and trembling, that none of your confidence should now be in me! Let’s close, then, by looking at why Paul took this approach.

 

Why Paul chose that approach

 

I mentioned earlier that this was an intentional approach on Paul’s part. He considered the context in Corinth, and decided intentionally to not give them what they wanted. Why do such a thing? If the Corinthians like lofty speech and wisdom, why come with none of it? If we all know people kinda want to follow decisive, strong, self-confident leaders, why come as one in weakness and in fear and in much trembling? Verse 5 tells us: So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. If you want to win people to yourself, you give them lofty speech and wisdom, you give them strength and self-confidence, and why didn’t Paul do that? Because he wasn’t trying to win people to himself! That’s not what he was commissioned to do as an apostle! Elsewhere he says, “what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor 4:5).

 

And this is why it’s such a significant mistake to start with what people already like in evangelism, missions, or contextualization. If we just give people a better version of what they already want, guess what their faith is likely to rest in? Those things, rather than in the power of God. We will not be serving Christ or loving people by giving them what they already want, because there is a problem with what we already want! God doesn’t come to us and offer to give us everything we already want; God comes to us to change what we want! What you win them with, you win them to. If Paul had won the Corinthians by lofty speech and wisdom, he would have just furthered their addiction to lofty speech and wisdom. If we try to win people by lofty speech and wisdom, or even by beautiful music or aesthetics, or by a political program, or even by promoting social justice and good works, we will win people to lofty speech and wisdom, beautiful music or aesthetics, a political program, or social justice and good works, and as soon as you try to then get them to actually follow Jesus, which means things like listening to his word from fairly mundane preachers, loving people who lack impressive gifts, meeting in buildings that aren’t pretty, and professing beliefs that the world calls unjust and not good, they won’t, because it’s honestly not what we invited them to do.

 

Paul chose to say the things he said and say them in the way he said them so that wouldn’t happen. He wanted it to not only be a theological truth he knew, but a part of the Corinthians’ experience of coming to faith, that they knew the only reason they believed was because of the power of God’s Spirit convincing them of the truth of the testimony of God, Jesus Christ and him crucified, not because Paul flashed some impressive wisdom that won them over from the last sophist who came into town. Here’s what Paul realized that we all must realize: His days in Corinth were numbered. And if their faith in Christ was only as good as their faith in him, it wasn’t going to last when the next sophist came into town who had even loftier words than Paul, or even when they called a pastor who wasn’t as gifted a preacher as Paul. He wanted their faith to rest not in the wisdom of men, not even his own, but in the power of God.

 

And brothers and sisters, that’s what God wants for you. Don’t let your faith ebb and flow based on the performance of your pastors. Take it from me; we’re pretty unimpressive. I feel like the now dead pastor John Newton when he said: “Ah, what a poor cold, confused, inconsistent creature! I am a poor servant, indeed! and my only comfort springs from thinking (which yet I do too seldom and faintly) what a wondrous Master I serve.” We are weak, but Jesus Christ is strong. We are poor, cold, confused, inconsistent creatures, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Did you really come to believe in him because of how impressive the person who told you about him was? How many of us can hardly even remember who told us about him? Who cannot testify that if you believe in him today, it is only because the Spirit of God overcame your stubbornness and opened your blind eyes to see Jesus Christ, and him crucified? Let your faith then rest, not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.