A STUDY OF THE BOOK OF 1 CORINTHIANS
SERMON # 5
“What
Constitutes A Great Church”
1 Cor. 2:1-7
What makes a great church? Is it a great
pastor? NO! Is it having great special days? NO! Is it having great special events
(banquets etc)? NO! “Weak as the Tea, cold as Ice Cream, and Dead as
the Chicken” Is it having great buildings? NO! Is it having great givers? NO!
Is it having great preaching? Yes. You may be thinking either that is a really conceited
thing to say or no wonder our church has problems. But before you make a snap judgment,
hear me out.
In the previous sermons on First Corinthians
we have seen that the world views the preaching of the cross as foolish-ness (1:18-25) and
how God delights in demonstrating what he can do with nobodies (1:26-31). Tonight we see
that the message of the cross is to stand at the center stage of all that we do and say in
the church.
His Message (vv. 1-2)
“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come
with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. (2) For I determined not to know
anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”
Paul says he wasn’t a preacher because
he enjoyed preaching. He wasn’t a preacher because he was pressured by his family to
be one. Paul was a preacher because God would not let him be anything else, there was
nothing else that he could do and still be in the will of God. Paul later says in 1 Cor
9:16, “woe is unto
me, if I preach not the gospel”
The problem of our
day is that preaching has been accorded a very low place in many churches today. We have
moved to dialogue, discussion and small groups, all of which have their proper place. But
nothing will ever replace the preaching of the Word of God in the program that God has
outlined for His church.
When Paul says in verse
two, “I have
determined” he means he has made a conscious choice to do things a certain
way.
He didn’t
fall into it by chance or force of habit. Paul preached the way he did because he chose to
do it that way. Everyone who preaches is faced with the same choice. It is easy to be
sidetracked by good and worthwhile things. We can preach about social issues, or the
political issues of our day, or we can spend our time talking about the crisis in the
Middle East and how it relates to Biblical prophecy, or we can wax eloquence about the
decline of the family in America. And there is a place for all of those things but they
are never to be the center.
John MacArthur says,
“we should not
come to church to hear the preachers opinions about politics, psychology, economics or
even religion. We should come to hear a word from the Lord through the pastor.” [John MacArthur. MacArthur New Testament
Commentary: 1 Corinthians. (Chicago:
Moody, 1984). p.55]
Paul was a pretty amazing guy. He was
well educated in
the Greek/Roman philosophy. Yet he tells the church in Corinth, “I did not come with
excellence of speech”. Immediately before he had come to Corinth, Paul had
seen great success. Wherever he went people were saved and opposition arose. Then we see
in Acts 17:16-34 while in Athens, Paul came up against philosophers. Knowing that they
were not religious, he began to speak to them logically in order to convince them to
accept the One True God. This logic, mingled with the gospel truth, had little success in
Athens. When he came to Corinth, he had made up his mind not to make the same mistake
again, he would not go there as a philosopher or a salesman but as a witness. Why would
Paul need to speak eloquently? In Galatians 1:11-12 he says, “But I make known to you,
brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither
received if from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus
Christ.”
Paul isn’t trying to impress anyone. Paul doesn’t want to impress people.
He wants to express God’s goodness through the foolish-ness of the cross. 1:18,
“For the message of the
cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being saved it
is the power of God.”
Paul understood that
the Corinthians loved big words, clever oratory and complex logic. But he declared that he
wanted converts not compliments. His calling was to be a witness not a performer. Paul had
not come to Corinth as a philosopher but as a witness. The task of a witness in a court of
law is to report only that which they know objectively, factually and personally.
His Methods (vv. 3-4)
“I was with you in weakness, in
fear, and in much trembling. (4) And my speech and my preaching
were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of
power.”
The portrait that Paul gives of himself in
verse three and four is not the picture of a confident self-assurance that many of us
associate with the Apostle Paul. The Philips translation of 1 Corinthians 2:3 says,
“I was feeling very
far from strong and I was nervous and very shaky.” He responded in a
totally human fashion and I find that greatly encouraging. Occasionally someone still asks
me if I get scared or nervous before I preach. The answer is yes, and it happens every
single time because it is such an awesome responsibility. No matter how many times I’ve
preached or how well prepared I think I am, there is always a sense of nervousness.
Paul says he comes
before them, “…in weakness, in fear, and in much
trembling.”
Perhaps he was concerned by his own
physically appearance, his
enemies had said of him in 2 Corinthians 10:10?, “For his letters, they say, “are weighty and powerful, but his
bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.” We don’t have any physical descriptions
of Paul from the New Testament and the ones from outside of the Bible are anything but
impressive. One such description says that was “a
man of middling size, his hair was scanty (that is he was balding) and his legs were a
little crooked and his knees were far apart; he had large eyes and his eyebrows met and
his nose was somewhat large.” Not a very flattering picture is it.
Perhaps he was awed by the great wickedness
of the city of Corinth. It
must have been the equivalent of preaching to Las Vegas, Reno, and New Orleans during
Mardi Gras all rolled into one wicked city.
Perhaps he was concerned for his physical
safety. He came to Corinth
after being beaten and imprisoned in Philippi, run out of Thessalonica and Berea and
scoffed at in Athens (Acts 16:22-24; 17:10, 13-14, 32).
Paul’s stated goal is to come and
declare “demonstration
of the Spirit and power.” The
word “demonstration” is word of legal proofs used in a court of law. The real
proof of the power of the Gospel is changed lives. The gospel’s most powerful
argument is not in great sermons preached but in the changes it causes in lives. Charles
Spurgeon, the prince of preachers said, “The power that is in the gospel does not lie in he eloquence of
the preacher, otherwise men would be the converters of souls, nor does it lie in the
preacher’s learning, otherwise it would consist in the wisdom of men. We might preach
until our tongues rotted, till we would exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would
be converted unless the Holy Spirit be with the Word of god to give it the power to
convert the soul.” [As quoted by John MacArthur. p. 57]
His Motive (v. 5)
“that your faith should not be
in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”
Paul didn’t come in the wisdom of man.
In 1
Corinthians 1:20-21 he asked, “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of
this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of
God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of
the message preached to save those who believe.” 1 Corinthians 2:6-7
he says, “However, we
speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers
of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the
hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory.” Do you
know what happens if you convince someone of the gospel using worldly wisdom? That same
worldly wisdom can convince them that the gospel isn’t true. J. Vernon McGee wrote, In other words, if human
wisdom is used to win a man, then his faith stands on human wisdom. If a man is brought to
faith through the power of God, then his faith rests upon that. [J. Vernon
McGee. Thru The Bible
Commentary. (electronic ed., 1997). (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, 1981)
Jesus Himself said that false Christ’s
and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the
elect and Paul wrote to Timothy, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine,
but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for
themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned
aside to fables.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4) The things that look and sound good to
the world is not godly wisdom.
There are three words to summarize Paul’s
preaching: clarity, simplicity, boldness. We have a Optimist Club here in Vilonia that
does wonderful work for our community. I know many of the members and I appreciate what
they do, but it is not given to the Optimist Club to preach Jesus Christ and him
crucified. We have the Republicans and the Democrats and they think they have it all
figured out. They don’t, but God bless them anyway. They have their politics, but it
is not given to them to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified. We have the public school
system that labors valiantly to educate the children of America. They do the best they
can, and God bless them in their efforts, but it is not given to the public school system
to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified. That calling is given to only one organization
on the face of the earth—the church of Jesus Christ. To us—and only to us—did
God vouchsafe the message of Jesus Christ and him crucified. That is our message, our only
message. We are to tell it because no one will if we don’t.
Conclusion
Billy Graham tells the story of a police officer on night duty in a city in northern England. As he walked the streets, he heard a quivering sob. Shining his flashlight into the darkness, he saw a little boy in the shadows sitting on a doorstep with tears running down his cheeks. The child said, “I’m lost. Please take me home.” “I’ll be glad to take you home. Where do you live?” the officer replied. But the little boy was so tired and so scared that he couldn’t remember his address. The policeman began naming street after street, trying to help the boy remember where he lived. He named the shops and the hotels in the area but the little boy could give him no clue. Then he remembered that at the center of the town stood a church with a large white cross that towered high above the rest of the city. The policeman pointed to the cross and said, “Do you live anywhere near that place?” The little boy’s face immediately brightened up. He said, “Yes, sir. Take me to the cross and I can find my way home.”
That is the mission of the church. We are to point people to the cross, and the cross will lead them safely home to God.