Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 | Date: January 24, 2010 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Human Ingenuity and Gospel Preaching

We’ll be looking at verses 1 through 5 of 1 Corinthians chapter 2, which I will read in just a moment. But first of all, just to comment that judging from last week’s response after the Scripture reading, Baptists do indeed have a difficult time learning ritual. Remember now—and I don’t plan to do this every time, but I do plan to stick at it for a while so we learn it—I will say, “This is the word of the Lord,” and the congregation will respond, “Thanks be to God.” All right. Thank you for indulging me.

1 Corinthians chapter 2:

When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God, for I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on man’s wisdom but on God’s power.

This is the word of the Lord.

Our Father, we thank you indeed for your word. What a treasure it is. What a privilege it is ours to be able to read from this book and know that it is a book like no other. This is the Word of our Creator, the Word of God Himself revealing Himself to us. It’s an awesome privilege that is ours. With that comes an awesome responsibility as well. We pray that you will enable us to hear well from your Word this morning. We pray, as Pastor Greg has mentioned, that this would be indeed the climax of our worship this morning as we wait to hear from you. We ask that you’d open your word to us, give us through it a greater appreciation for all of the riches that you’ve given to us in Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

In 1821, in rural upstate New York, a young lawyer who had grown up a skeptic was converted to Christ. The next day in his law office, he told his client, “I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause, and I cannot plead yours.” It was, he said, a dramatic conversion. He wanted to give himself to Christian service without any delay, and so he left his law practice in order to serve the Lord full time. He became active in Christian work, witnessing the gospel. He was converted in the wake of some revivals that had swept that area, some powerful revivals at that time known as the Second Great Awakening. He was converted just at the very end of those revivals, and within just two years he was licensed to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church and he very soon began conducting revival campaigns of his own.

He had not studied theology formally. He had not been trained at any theological seminary, but he was obviously a very gifted man, and it must have seemed even at the time that he was destined for success. And as he led in these revival meetings, these “Western revivals” as they were called—remember in 1820s, a lot of what we consider the East was still the West—but these Western revivals were by most every count a dramatic success. Hundreds and hundreds of people made profession of faith in Christ. Many times, it seemed as though whole towns had come to believe in Christ together. And immediately, this evangelist became very famous.

And as many of you have already guessed, his name is Charles Grandison Finney. The icon of modern evangelicalism, father of many of the leading earmarks of the contemporary evangelical church. It was his “new measures” that gave rise to a whole new era in Christian evangelicalism. He had learned as a lawyer the art of persuasion, and he now put it to work for the gospel, and he found that the power of argument and the power of persuasion that he had learned in the courtroom and that he had honed to an art could be used very successfully for the gospel and could get many results.

It was Charles Finney who gave the “anxious bench,” as he called it—as we know it, the altar call—the permanent place in the evangelical church that it has today. His new measures, as they were called, included that he instituted the common practice of calling sinners to walk to the front of the auditorium in order to receive Christ. He would sometimes single out individuals in the audience, both in his preaching and in impassioned prayer as well. He perfected the art of the use of music in calling sinners to come to Christ. He developed the art of the protracted appeal to sinners to come, to come and be saved. He, in these and other emotionally manipulative tactics, were employed to get sinners to follow Christ. He could work a crowd to a fever pitch, a master at crowd psychology, working it to enthusiasm of various kinds, often marked by such things as faintings and shakings and loud weepings and such, and all for good reason. Decisions for Christ were being made. Sinners were making profession of faith in the Lord Jesus. Human emotion may have seemed to be predominant, but at least sinners were making decisions to follow Christ.

That, historically speaking, is the fountainhead of much of modern evangelical Christianity. And it remains with us in many ways. He has left his thumbprint, as it were, on the church in our society at least, in many ways. Many of today’s church growth seminars grow out of that. The idea today that theology may get in the way of reaching the lost grows out of that. Instruction at seminars is given in the art of the appeal, the effective altar call, how to get decisions for Christ and such. All of that is an outgrowth of Charles Finney and his works. The use of the story in preaching, sad stories, various kinds of emotional tactics to bring about decisions, 17 stanzas of “Just As I Am” at the end to get the crowd worked to an emotional state where decisions will be made and so on. All of this is the outgrowth of Finney, whose theology of manipulation got results. And with Charles Finney, a new era of evangelism was born, which of course lives with us very strong today.

One of Finney’s most powerful sermons was entitled—one of his most popular sermons was entitled—”Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts.” Well, that was the theological understanding from which he developed his new methods. The critical move was a human one. What ultimately made the difference was something on our part. And so if the critical move is a human one, well, then any tactic that might be used to bring about that human response was a legitimate one and a helpful one. So if we could encourage people, even coerce people to make that decision for Christ through whatever means—since it is up to them, and ultimately this is the human move that is critical in all of this—well, then any means that brings them to that is a useful one.

He reflects on his revivals in a book that he titled Reflections on Revival, and he writes this: “A revival is not a miracle nor dependent on a miracle.” Now get that. A revival is not a miracle. It is not dependent on a miracle in any sense. It is purely a philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means. You see what he’s saying. Sinners are bound to change their own hearts. Sinners have this ability to change their own heart. And so what we must do is develop whatever means that we can develop in order to promote, encourage, even coerce that kind of decision, so that having made that decision, they will be saved. And he says this is not a miracle of any kind. This is simply a human thing, like putting your quarter in the vending machine—I guess quarters don’t get anything out of a vending machine anymore, do they? Putting your dollar and a half in the vending machine now brings the candy bar. So now the application of these means designed to promote and to obtain a decision from a person will bring about that result.

And so Finney described himself at one point as carrying a revival in his briefcase. And what he meant by that, of course, is simply if you apply these means, if you go about this recipe, out will come the results, and they are very predictable. There’s nothing miraculous about it. It’s simply the right means applied to the right situation to produce the predictable results. These were his new measures, and so among them, as I say, the altar call, the anxious bench, and the power of argument, and all of that. Well, it’s well known to us today, and again, all of this does seem to work. It gets results. It gets people to make decisions, and so how could it possibly be wrong? Should we allow some tradition and prescribed ideals to interfere with reaching men and women for Christ?

And in fact, Finney himself argued like this: that those stodgy old traditionalists, those stodgy old Calvinists, they really aren’t concerned for the lost. And if they were really concerned for the lost, they’d get off their high horse and they’d quit hanging on to ridiculous ideals that are unnecessary and they would apply these means that are suited to the ends that they say they want.

Interestingly, I think, shortly after these Western revivals, Finney wrote again with considerable embarrassment. The results of the revivals where he had been were not what they had appeared to be. Few of the decisions that were made stuck. The people who were left ministering in those areas where supposedly such great revivals had swept through were left with a more difficult time than they’d ever had before because now people had “tried that Christian stuff” and it didn’t work and they’re turned off by it. And Christian ministers began to refer to those places where Finney had been as “burnt ground.” In Jesus’ words, they had been made twice the children of hell. And they’d been turned off because they’d tried it, it didn’t work, and now they’re turned off by it. Finney’s answer to all of that was, of course, that he had only taught them traditional Christianity; he should have gone further and taught them the doctrine of Christian perfectionism as well.

But by contrast, another evangelist by the name of Asahel Nettleton was an older evangelist at the time. He was an evangelist of enormous success in that Second Great Awakening preceding Finney, and he opposed these new measures of Finney. Many, many people had come to Christ. Powerful revivals had come through under the preaching of Asahel Nettleton in those years immediately preceding Finney. But for his part, Nettleton flatly refused to stay on in an area where there seemed to be excitement because of him. If there seemed to be reliance on him, if it seemed to be revival because of him, he’d up and leave. He believed in his heart that if he was the reason for the excitement, and the excitement did not seem to be because of genuine concern over sin and genuine desire for God, then not only could he not help, but he actually was a hindrance. And so he would just up and leave. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine that? Imagine one of these citywide campaigns and an evangelist coming, and somehow there seems to be this excitement and suddenly the evangelist gets this clue that the excitement is not Spirit-wrought, but it’s because of him. He up and leaves town. Imagine it.

Well, which evangelist was right? And why in the world do I spend so much time going through all of this history to raise the question in the first place? Well, I do it because all of this is precisely the issue that Paul addresses in our passage this morning, chapter 2, verses 1 through 5. It would be difficult to imagine a passage that is more contemporary to application to our churches and our approach to ministry than this passage is. In the Apostle Paul’s day, the issue was not manipulative music or sad stories or affected emotions or anything like that, but it was a question of carefully polished oratory designed to move an audience. Verse one: “I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom.” Both of those terms have to do with the packaging more than the contents—the way the message is conveyed. And in their day, it was not the rough, coarse language of a Charles Finney. But it was human ingenuity at its best, human ingenuity designed to get results. A kind of oratory that was itself impressive and therefore persuasive.

And evidently some of that had already crept into the church. We bumped into it in chapter 1 verse 17: “Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, not with words of human wisdom lest the cross of Christ be made of none effect.” It is this wisdom, this superiority of speech and eloquence that Paul is talking about here; it is that kind of speech that is intended to, as it were, “help” the gospel. Fine-spun rhetoric of one kind or another intended to be impressive, and therefore persuasive. And so Paul says here in verse 1, “No, when I came to you I did not come as an orator. I came as a preacher.” And there, he says, is the big difference.

Now before we go any further, I think I should clarify something here lest we misunderstand, and I think this is a difficult thing for us to—a distinction that can be difficult to grasp. Paul here is not making an excuse for poor preaching. I wish he were. He’s not making an excuse for lack of preparation, lack of study, lack of education, lack of training or anything like that. He is not placing any kind of premium on ineptitude in the pulpit. I have little doubt that Paul worked hard to say well what he had to say. We see things like that in the book of Acts when we read through his sermons. For instance, in Acts chapter 17, you get a glimpse of just how capable the Apostle Paul was in his thinking and in his speech. I have little doubt that if the Apostle Paul were to speak to ministers today, he would exhort us, “Look guys, if you’re going to say something, you might as well say it well. You might as well do the best you can. You ought to use correct grammar and all of that.” I don’t think Paul is disparaging any of that.

But what he is aiming at here, again, are these terms, “eloquence” or “superior wisdom”—lingo for the day of this fine-spun rhetoric designed to impress and therefore making the case more persuasive. And his point then is simply that the gospel is a message to be proclaimed because it, the gospel, is the means that God uses to call men and women to Christ and to faith in him. So we must never proclaim the gospel in such a way as to distract from the message. We must never proclaim it in such a way as to, as if we could help it, make it more palatable. This is Paul—this Paul is making here an indictment on those preachers who try to be the most clever, the most witty, the most amusing or whatever in order to gain acceptance of what they have to say. The kind of preaching where people go away impressed with the preacher rather than impressed with what their subject was. If it’s the foolishness of the gospel that is powerful to save—and that’s what we learned in Chapter 1—if it’s the foolish preaching of the gospel that saves, then we must be careful never to improve on it as though we could. Try to make it more palatable. Package it in such a way as to impress people with our abilities so that maybe now if they’re impressed with me, they’ll believe the gospel. Again, Paul is not making excuse here for the lazy preacher who might pride himself in his humble ineptitude. He is simply saying that the form and style in which we present the gospel must be in such a way that it does not detract. Otherwise, it becomes an instrument simply of human manipulation, and that has no place in gospel preaching.

I want you to notice again how Paul characterizes his approach in verse 1. “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or of superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.” Or if you have the older version, “as I preached to you the message of God.” This is the same word he used in verse 17 of chapter 1. Again, Chapter 1, verse 21, verse 23, the word “preaching.” Now preaching, of course, is something that has fallen on bad times. It’s a word that we’re afraid of today. Well, not inside the walls of RBC we’re not afraid of it, but we’re a little afraid of this word “preaching.” “Don’t preach at me.” You ever said that? God forgive me, I’ve said it too. Terrible way for a preacher to talk, as though preaching were something bad. “Don’t preach at me.” And it’s become commonplace now for preachers, when they come to the pulpit, not to use the word “preaching” themselves, but to say, “I want to share God’s Word with you today.” That’s a perfectly good word. It’s a wonderful word. I want to share God’s Word with you today, too. But we’ve become afraid of this word “preaching,” “proclaiming.”

But preaching properly is simply proclamation. There’s a heraldic element to it. It is the word that is used of a herald speaking for a king, for example. And that’s why Paul has such a high view of preaching, and he speaks of it in that kind of way. Preaching is simply speaking for God. It is proclaiming what God has said. If I can use this word—I use it carefully, don’t misunderstand it—but there’s a sense in which preaching mediates God. It is intended to bring people into God’s presence because we are, after all, speaking His Word. And so there’s this declaratory element to it, a heraldic element to it. If I can say it this way, an in-your-face kind of element to it—not in a rude sense, but in an authoritative sense. It is coming and saying, “Thus says the Lord.”

Martin Luther had a famous passage on this. It was frightening to any preacher. He says to preachers that when you get done preaching, you ought to be able to go down and say, “God has spoken.” If you can’t say that, leave preaching alone. Make you careful what you say. But he’s absolutely right. And this is what Paul is saying. That’s what preaching is. We’re simply delivering God’s word. We’re speaking on his behalf. And this, Paul says, is the preacher’s responsibility. Proclaim a message about God. Now, there’s some ambiguity in the Greek there at the very end of the verse as should it be a “testimony about God” or a “testimony from God.” It’s ambiguous. It could be either way. Either way, the ultimate point is the same. This is a message from God, but it’s about God as well. And according to verse 2, it is a message about God in what he has done in Jesus Christ. But this is the essential distinctive of Christianity.

And this, Paul—he’s setting himself up as a model here. This is what he says is essential about my preaching, and this is what Christian ministry is to be all about. We have above all else this responsibility. We are here to speak for God. We are here to give voice to God, to proclaim his word. We are here because we have a message to speak. First and foremost, our reason for being is not to be a charitable organization, to help those who are hurting, although we ought to lead the way in that, and the church always has. First and foremost, our reason for being is not to push through public policy on those various social issues that face us, although we ought to do all we can to do that. First and foremost, first and foremost, we are here simply to give a voice for God. This, Paul says, is what I did when I was with you. Think back, he says in verse 1, “when I came to you.” When I came to you, brothers, what did I do? Did I come trying to impress you with my abilities? No, he says I came with this one thing in mind, and that is that I would speak to you a divine message.

And that is why to this day the church, at its best anyway, the church is marked by this distinctive. We have a message to give. And that’s why when the church gathers, when the church gathers, it’s marked by preaching and teaching, preaching and teaching. What do you do when you get together? We preach and teach. We open up the scriptures. That’s what we’re all about. Because first and foremost, our reason for being is to give voice to God. It wonders me why anyone would go to church for any other reason, but that’s another subject. Paul says, this is what I did when I came to you. Now notice here, Paul is very specific.

I Came To You Preaching The Testimony About God

His first point then in verse 1 is, I came to you preaching the testimony about God.

I Came To You Preaching A Message About God In The Cross Of Jesus Christ

His second point now in verse 2 is, I came to you preaching a message about God in the cross of Jesus Christ. Verse 2: “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” So far from preaching something that’s itself impressive, I came preaching about a cross. Can you imagine that? Well, remember Chapter 1, as we’ve seen, this is the only message that works. This is the message that transforms lives. This is the message that brings men and women into fellowship with God. And Paul says, when I came, that’s all I preached. I resolved to do nothing else but to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified.

I think it’s very important for us to notice the implications of this verse, verse 2. We could easily spend the rest of our time here, but I promise not to keep you through lunch entirely. Paul means here in verse 2 to give shape and definition to Christian ministry. “I determined not to know anything among you. I determined to know nothing among you except this one thing, Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Now as I said, chapter 1 is the theology that lies behind it all. God saves in such a way that only he receives the credit. Remember we saw that last time? God is not going to save in any kind of way that leaves you room to pat yourself on the back. He is out for His own glory in this, and so He is going to save in such a way that after the fact, we have only to praise and thank Him for it. That’s verses 30 and 31. “It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus.” So that, verse 31, “let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” That is, there’s room for glory, alright? But only when we direct it Godward. And He has determined to save in such a way that only He receives the credit for it. That’s why He’s chosen the world’s nobodies to save, and not just the big shots. Because He has reserved the glory and the credit in all of this to Himself, and He wants nothing distracting from that.

So that’s His point that He’s developed so far. And now in chapter 2, He establishes Himself as the model in carrying that out in His own ministry. In verse 1, actually the connection here in the original language is even more explicit, but he’s simply saying, “When I came to you, I modeled this. This is what I was about when I came. Look back, and you’ll see that’s exactly what I did.” And he establishes himself as a model or a pattern for Christian ministry. And what is the leading distinctive of the Apostle Paul’s ministry? What’s the characteristic? Answer: Preaching. Okay. Preaching what? Answer: Verse 2, “I resolved to know nothing when I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

Now that’s a pretty carefully worded statement. It’s really precise. What does he mean by that? I didn’t know anything when I was with you. I put everything else out of my mind except this one subject, Christ crucified. Well, pretty clearly from what we know of the Apostle Paul’s ministry, he is not saying that in his preaching all he ever did was relay the scenes of the cross. We know that he did more than that. So that’s not what he means. Nor is he saying simply that in his preaching it was only a specifically evangelistic message, although that permeated everything he did, everything he preached. Nor is he saying here, very obviously, that when he preached he had nothing to say except for Christ specifically and, for instance, he never preached about Christian holiness, Christian responsibility, the roles in the home, the duties in the church, and things like that. Clearly he doesn’t mean that because he did preach on those kinds of themes.

But yet he says here, “I didn’t know anything when I was with you except this message, Jesus Christ and him crucified.” The language is very exclusive and it’s deliberate. And I think it deserves lots more thought than I’ve given it. But I think at the very least, we have to say here that the Apostle Paul is letting us in on something to see something of his mind and how he understood the scriptures. For example, when he opened the Bible, he found a book about Jesus Christ crucified. Old Testament—those are the scriptures he had. As it came from him and other of the apostles, New Testament as well—this is a book about Jesus Christ. Self-consciously, when he read his Bible, he saw a presentation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We have in our theological training a very helpful approach to systematic theology. That is, we have our categories of theology, so we have, for example, theology proper (the doctrine of God), and we have Christology (the doctrine of Christ), and then we have pneumatology (the doctrine of the Spirit), and we have anthropology (the doctrine of man), and hamartiology (the doctrine of sin), and we have soteriology (the doctrine of salvation), and ecclesiology (the doctrine of church), and eschatology (the doctrine of last things), and so on. And I would be the last person to criticize that. It’s extremely helpful in categorizing the scripture’s teaching in those kinds of ways. But I think we have some insight here into how the Apostle Paul thinks in those categories as well. It wasn’t so distinct. The categories were not so distinctly divided, I don’t think, in his thinking as they so often are in ours. But somehow in the Apostle’s thinking, he had Christ crucified at the very center and everything else was an outworking of that. And so, for example, he does preach on Christian duty, personal holiness, but when he does it, he does it from this standpoint: Christ crucified.

We saw that in the last chapter, didn’t we? “I’m with Paul, I’m with Apollos.” He doesn’t just say, “Hey guys, that’s not nice.” What does he say? He goes right to the root of the matter. He says you, in behaving like that, have acted exactly contrary to the profession of faith you have as Christians. Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? We’ll see it again when we get to chapter 6. There we have the problem of an immoral brother in the church, someone who claims to be a brother joining himself to a harlot. Paul says, how would you do that? You remember how he deals with it? He goes right to this matter of our union with Christ. Oh, would you join Christ to a harlot? In chapter 5, he deals with the matter of the problem of toleration in the church of ungodliness. Someone in the church was involved in some immoral activity and the church wasn’t dealing with it. And in setting up the whole question, Paul says, “Purge out the old leaven.” Why? Because Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us. Everything is from this center: Christ crucified, and it works its way out into everything else about it. It is a shameful, offensive cross, in other words, Paul says, that gives shape and definition to our whole ministry. It is Christ crucified. And Christ crucified is not simply one slice of what we have to say. It is the whole warp and woof of what we have to say. And this is what gives shape, then, he says, to our whole ministry.

And you just can’t read through that thoughtfully without seeing that Paul’s preaching then, Paul’s thinking and approach to ministry, is very different from what we often see today. I’m sure Paul would be told today that he’s off balance. Certainly this tells us something about how our preaching, our ministry, our lives, our thinking ought to be lived. We ought to be gospel-centered, Christocentric, gospel-focused Christians and everything works out from that center. Certainly, this ought to give us some instruction about our hymnody as well. One of my complaints about so much of contemporary music is that it’s so Christless. It might be good in so many ways. We might sing about praise or sing about God, or very often praise of praise. But even at its best, very often, very often, we hear so little of Christ crucified, the whole centerpiece of what we are as Christians. Paul says, I’ve put everything else out. This is the whole of what I am, and this is what ministry is all about. And Paul then lays this down as a defining distinctive of Christian ministry. We have a message about God in the cross of Christ, and that’s what gives shape to everything else about us.

Now moving on, all of that has to do with the content of our message. But now next there’s the question of the shape or the form of our ministry, or the shape and form in which the message is presented. Only the gospel works. Only the gospel saves. Only by virtue of God’s efficacious call is the gospel powerful to save. Should that then dictate the packaging as well as the content? And Paul says yes.

I Came Preaching A Message About God In The Cross Of Christ In The Power Of The Holy Spirit

If our first point then is, Paul says, I came preaching a message about God, and our second point is, I came preaching a message about God in the cross of Jesus Christ, His third point is, I came preaching a message about God in the cross of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Verses three and four: “I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.”

I think verse 3 is just a fascinating and intriguing insight into the mind and the experience of the Apostle Paul. Here is the mighty inspired apostle. Isn’t that your picture of him? If anyone was bold, this man was bold. If any man knew the power of God in his ministry, this man knew it. He was an inspired apostle, no less, chosen by Christ Himself. And yet, notice his frame of mind, he says, when he came to Corinth. “I came to you in great boldness, intending to turn the world upside down. I knew when I came, you’d hear from me and things would be different.” It’s not what he says, is it? “I came to you in weakness and in fear, even trembling.” Can you imagine the Apostle Paul in these kinds of terms?

You might recall in Acts chapter 18, we have the record of Paul’s going to Corinth to minister. Corinth is a big city, wicked city in the extreme, noted for its wickedness all over. It would be like—well, what can we say, going to—which city can I insult? Atlantic City, Sin City, Hollywood—only worse, a city known for its immorality and vice. And Paul goes in, and in Acts chapter 18 we get a little insight into that where he must be a little apprehensive. Even there we see it because God appears to, speaks to Paul in a vision at night. He says, “Paul, go on in.” Remember he uses the doctrine of election to encourage him. “Go on in. I have many people in that city. Go get them. I’ll be with you.”

Paul says, “When I came, I did not come as some of the preachers that you’ve seen before, bounding with confidence.” But he came feeling inadequate, even to the point of trembling. Plainly put, the Apostle Paul felt out of his league, outmatched, not up to his task, realizing his inability to do what he was called to do. In other words, his view of human depravity had shaped his estimate of his own abilities. He knew that because man was so captivated in his own sin, he is running away from God as fast as he can, and he knew that that was more than he could overcome. And he knew that no ingenious methods on his own part, whatever external effects it might bring, would not bring a true change of heart. And there was nothing in his ability that could reach the soul and turn that man around. Making the gospel work, in other words, was out of his hands. And so far from bounding with confidence, this great inspired apostle comes to Corinth feeling weak, fearful, and even trembling.

In other words, he knew that there was no “revival in his briefcase.” He would never lead a seminar on how to give an effective altar call, how to get decisions. “I proclaim a message,” he says, “but I proclaim it at the extent of what I can do.” The preaching is indeed the means that God uses to save, but when and how and with whom it is made effective, Paul says, is completely out of my hands. And so he says in verse 4, it wasn’t my abilities. “No, my preaching was not with wise and persuasive words”—not by my manipulative techniques, not by the ingenious methods that I brought to bear—”but my preaching was with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” The success of my preaching, Paul says, was due only to the fact that the Holy Spirit attended and powerfully demonstrated to those who heard the truth of the gospel that I preached. And because the Spirit of God was powerfully at work, it brought the results in Corinth that it brought.

What confidence that Paul had in his ministry was simply in a power of God, a God who was able to raise the dead. It was not simply the right use of the constituted means to produce a predicted result. There’s a supernatural element to it. There’s a divine element to it that’s almost completely overlooked today in decisionalism, isn’t it? I could polish my orations. I could repeat the hymn a hundred times. But what’s needed must come from God. Contrary to Mr. Finney, revival—the salvation of any human soul—is a miracle in every sense of the term. It is a supernatural work, divinely wrought.

The Old Testament illustration of this, of course, is in Ezekiel chapter 37, where the prophet is led out to this valley of dry bones. Remember that? I’ve always been amused at one of the descriptions of it in Ezekiel 37. These bones are not just dry, they were “very dry,” which I suppose is meant to emphasize that these bones are not just dead, they’re very dead. Okay. The voice of the Lord comes to the prophet: “Son of man, can these bones live?” Now, if he were some of the preachers I’ve seen today, “Oh, yeah, they can live. Let me at them. I brought my briefcase.” But neither did the prophet simply dismiss the possibility because he knew he’s dealing with a sovereign God. He doesn’t say, “No, they can’t live.” He didn’t say that either. “Lord, you know.” Safe answer. “Can these bones live? Lord, you know.” And so God says, “Preach.” Say again? “Preach.” And so the prophet begins to preach. And there’s a rattling and there’s a shaking. That’s where we get the spiritual: the foot bone connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone connected to the shin bone. Hear the word of the Lord. And a mighty army arose. He says, “Preach again. Preach that the winds will come and put breath into them.” And he preaches, and there comes this mighty host.

You know what happened when you were saved? All we can say is that God is at work. And that’s what Paul is saying here in verse 4: “My message and my preaching are not with wise and manipulative words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.” That’s what brought the results that you saw in Corinth when I was there.

I Came Preaching A Testimony About God And The Cross Of Jesus Christ And The Power Of The Holy Spirit To The Glory Of God

And so, finally, our fourth point: preaching the testimony about God. That’s why I came, number one. I came preaching the testimony about God. Number two, I came preaching the testimony about God in the cross of Jesus Christ. Number three, I came preaching the testimony about God in the cross of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Spirit. And then number four, I came preaching a testimony about God and the cross of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of God: “so that your faith might not rest on man’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”

You remember how Paul said in chapter 1 that we saw last time that God saves only in such a way that he receives the glory for it. Paul said that consideration shapes my whole approach in ministry, the form of my ministry, and it also shaped the result as well. If I used, in other words, if I used ingenious methods of manipulation, I could produce decisions. But if I used manipulative techniques like that to produce decisions, those decisions would not be anchored in a faith in God. They would not be anchored in a faith in the power of God. Those decisions would be anchored in a faith in me. And frankly, faith in me will not do any of you any good at all. The numbers would make me look good perhaps, but it would steal glory that belongs only to God and leave you with a faith that can’t save. And so Paul says, “I preach in such a way that when people are saved, everyone will know that God has done it.”

I think this is very important for us. Unlike today’s preachers who have virtually stripped the supernatural from salvation, Paul—and get this carefully, I think is important—Paul was very concerned that no one would believe, that no one would believe because he said so. He wanted, when they come to faith, for their faith to be anchored in the power of God who had transformed the soul. While this, Paul says, is the proper shape of Christian ministry, you see how it affects our evangelistic witness. And this is not just for public preaching. Language is used for our personal witnessing of the gospel as well. We’re preaching just the same. And these considerations should give shape to it. When we preach and when we witness, we do so with a real sense of humility, a real sense of inadequacy. We are called to do something we are incapable of doing. But when we preach and we witness, we also do it with a real sense of assurance that this is the means God uses to transform the soul. We can’t improve on that, brothers and sisters, and we dare not try. We proclaim a message about God in the cross of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Spirit, to God’s glory. And only in that way will we do any lasting good. Amen.

Let’s pray.

Father, we’re grateful for your Word that has shown us these truths, and we’re grateful for how they reflect on our own experience, where we see how you have worked powerfully in us to bring us to faith in Christ. Give us, Lord, a confidence in your power to save, and may that drive us in our work and service for Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Take your hymnals if you will, please.