Free to Be Nobody

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[0:00] comment on the first reading about Elijah and Elisha. Elisha got a double portion of Elijah's power, and Elisha performed twice as many miracles as Elijah. I guess the first one was making the river part again, but the second one is my most favorite. I think I've told you this before. The most favorite miracle in the whole Bible is that as Elisha was walking through a town, some kids made fun of his bald head, and he cursed them, and some bears came out of the forest and mauled 39 of those kids. And I'm like, this is good. This is real power. Way to go, Elisha. No, that's bad. That's bad. But it's in there. It's in the book. It's kind of interesting. But it kind of points to don't make fun of God's messenger, you know. And I think that's where we get the phrase somebody took up the mantle, right? He took up, Elisha took up Elijah's mantle and carried it along. Well, let's go to our sermon text. Our sermon text for today is 1 Corinthians 2, 1 through 5. And we're meeting Elisha. Meandering our way, as I said, through 1 Corinthians. Victoria's going to preach on 1 Corinthians next week. We're going to try to have the lectionary readings as the first two readings, just to kind of stay connected to the lectionary. So those two readings aren't necessarily really

[1:09] related to what we're preaching about today, but we're trying to stay in the pattern of the lectionary, which we like. Remember that 1 Corinthians is a letter to a church that's struggling. And I think that's kind of a, kind of a, that's given it the best, possible sort of construction on it. There's a lot more going on than just that they're struggling. But here's some examples. There's lawsuits between members of the church. There's moral failings of the church and the church won't address it or correct it. There were class and wealth divisions in the church that were painful for the people who weren't wealthy or high class, right? And there were mistakes about what to believe. And so Paul had to spend a lot of time correcting those issues one by one, but also loving them. And so he's going to talk about that in a little bit. And it's very interesting as you read it, sometimes he's tender, sometimes he's stern. And it reminds me of a story that Marian often told. I don't know if it was you, Craig, or one of your brothers, or probably all of you, because she might've recycled it, was there was sort of a spot where one of her sons was having trouble doing some homework or doing the right thing.

[2:15] And she says, I don't know if I need to hug you or swat you on the butt. And, but that, but just saying that seemed to, so who, who did she say that to? All of you? I'm sure it wasn't me. Yeah. Wasn't it? It was everybody but Craig. Yes. Yeah. But it's a good story. Cause I don't know if I need to swat you or, or, or hug you, but that seemed to do the, the, the trick. And Paul's sometimes he's swat and sometimes he's hugging. He's like, I love you guys, but I've got some tough words for you. And you sense that he wouldn't say things like this unless he both loved them, but also was very concerned about what was going on in the church. He really, because he, as he understood it, the church was the embodiment of God's kingdom in the world. And if the church was completely struggling and dysfunctional, the kingdom of God couldn't go forward. And that was a big issue for him. So there's one other issue though, today that we're gonna really look at a little bit more. And that was that Paul is worried about the possibility that they're more enamored with someone who can present the gospel with flair than they are with the gospel itself. So there was another apostle who came through Corinth, whose name was

[3:21] Apollos. And we don't know much about Apollos except for what Paul writes about him. But, but it looks like Apollos didn't preach anything wrong. If he had, Paul would have definitely told us so. Apollos didn't preach anything wrong, but evidently Apollos might have been like a bit better looking than Paul, like a little more handsome, a little more charismatic, a little more eloquent. Like he could really spin a tale. He could really tell a story. People were just kind of like, oh, Apollos. And he realized that some of them were more connected to Apollos, the preacher than the message that Apollos was preaching. We get the distinction, right? There's a difference between the form and the content. And so they were, and Paul's like, don't make a mistake about that. And we're going to read here that he lacked many of those things that Apollos did. And some of the people even were nice enough to tell him so. I don't know how that worked. You know, they're like, you're not as good as him. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Well, and what we'll find out is Paul will say, that's fine. I don't need to be as good as him. Because I'm not preaching. My stuff. The Holy Spirit is giving me the words. That's what matters. So we'll get to that. We'll

[4:32] get to that. So, but what I want us to get to eventually is that I want to suggest that there's this path to real freedom, freedom from what we'll see, but there's a path to real freedom if we can understand that these things like Paul understood them. So there's freedom to be had and there's bondage to be taken out of. So I want you to listen for how Paul describes his own speaking style, the form versus what he's saying. Paul describes his own speaking style, the form versus what he's saying.

[4:57] So he's going to talk about the form, but he's also going to talk about the content in these short five verses. Let's go to our reading. 1 Corinthians 2. Paul writes, When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn't use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God's secret plan. For I decided that while I was with you, I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified. I came to you in weakness, timid, and trembling. And my message and my preaching were very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit. I did this so you would trust not in human wisdom, but in the power of God. Let's pray.

[5:53] Heavenly Father, thank you. Thank you for this word. We ask that you add your blessing to it in Jesus' name. Amen. Right here on the Right Right Right Right learned as having been preaching now for over 20 years, and I'm not saying that to elevate myself. It's just I'm having preached as many sermons as I have, is often, especially in the lectionary, every three years, you get the same text again. And I'm like, oh, what am I going to do? The reality is every text that I've ever preached has at least seven sermons in it. So in 21 years, you'll have to fire me or you know, I'm fine. But the thing is, there's three readings in every lectionary. So that's actually, so it's like, I got 63 years, OK? So hang in there. No, I'm kidding. But there are seven sermons in every text, and this text is no different. So this text is about the gospel is really just about the cross of Christ. But today, this text is about Paul's freedom to not be great, OK? And how that actually affects how he preaches. So that's what our thing is about today.

[7:06] And it's about our freedom for us to shrink. I'm going to use that word again, but it's about our freedom to shrink. And for God to grow. So and this is such a short one, we can look at each passage verse by verse. So I'm going to ask Andres to put them back, just put back the, there's just two slides. So we'll go through it. So I'm going to read each verse again, and I'm going to talk about it briefly. And then we'll kind of get to our sort of the big ideas. So Paul writes, when I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn't use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God's secret plan. I know Apollos is in his mind. He mentions this in his book. He mentions Apollos several times in 1 Corinthians. But I know Apollos is right back here in his mind. Maybe he's a little annoyed. I don't know. He's like, why do you have to compare me to this other guy who's so much better than me at speaking?

[7:57] But God, here he says, I didn't use lofty words and impressive wisdom. Remember this category of wisdom from two weeks ago where we started preaching on 1 Corinthians, is that the gospel does not look anything like what was considered to be wisdom according to Greek philosophy. It was very prevalent in Corinth at the time. So those things relied on logic, for example, logic, rhetoric, all sorts of things like that. And the Greeks had it very systematized. It's very useful, right?

[8:25] In fact, Paul says, the gospel looks like foolishness to the Greeks because of the cross. So the cross is both the core of the gospel, but also the reason why the gospel is so hard for people to get. Because to the Greeks, the cross looked like foolishness because it was a failure. Logically, it was a failure.

[8:46] Because the leader of the movement, Jesus, died in humiliation. And that doesn't serve the purpose of a great teaching or a great philosophy. The leader of a great teaching or a great philosophy has to die a more noble death than just being executed on a cross. And as they understood it, the promise that he made to come back to life didn't come true. They didn't understand the resurrection. And so logically, that should mean that he was a fraud. Because he lied about coming back, and all his followers were dimwits, right? So that's what Paul is saying, is I didn't come with lofty wisdom. I didn't try to match the Greeks.

[9:24] So as for the form, he says he didn't use too many big words, right? And you've been around people like this. I need to work on this. We know people who use big words too much. Do you know what I'm talking about? Now listen, if they're doing it because they're talking about something technical or complicated, and they don't know any other words for what they're talking about, that's fine, OK? So we're not going to go after them. But Paul doesn't want to flaunt his large vocabulary. And he has a large vocabulary. But Paul doesn't want to flaunt that. He doesn't want him to get in the way of Jesus by puffing himself up. So evidently, when he preached the gospel to the people in Corinth, he used very plain language, plain language that children probably could understand. And there were children in the church, right? Do you want to talk over people's heads to make yourself look good? Or do you want to talk at a level everybody else can understand so that they get it? So you see what's at stake here. And it's possible that Apollos wasn't just attractive and eloquent, but probably had some big words that he kind of trotted out here and there. People are like, wow, he knows some big words. Paul knew all those words. He chose not to use them because he wanted the gospel

[10:37] to go out in plainness. So let's look at verse 2. For I decided that one day I would be with you, and while I was with you, I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified. NIV has Jesus Christ and him crucified. So this is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. When you guys called me to be your pastor, we actually talked about this in some of the meetings with the call committee. I said, this is kind of how I understand my call as a pastor is I can only really, this is my model. I can only talk about the cross. I don't know much else. I mean, I know other things. But this is the only thing I really need to know.

[11:12] I need to preach the cross at all times. So all Paul really cared about was the cross. Everything else came second. He did talk about other things besides the cross, but the cross was the center of it all.

[11:25] Verse 3, I came to you in weakness, timid and trembling. I actually have a hard time with this verse. Think about it. I came to you in weakness, timid and trembling. Does that sound like Paul? I mean, what we know about Paul's other works. And even in this letter, he's like, when he's swatting them on the butt, he doesn't seem timid and trembling. He seems quite direct. He seems quite confident. So I'm trying to square this up. Is Paul, evidently when Paul came to speak to them, he was timid and weak and trembling.

[12:03] And so I think he was just in touch with how big God was and how small he was. And when this letter comes, he's like, when the time came for him to preach, all he could do was, it was less him, he was shrinking, and God was growing. But I'm very surprised at this, actually, this very short verse. I came to you in weakness, timid and trembling. It doesn't sound like Paul. You know, even before his conversion, he seemed quite sure of himself. He was calling for the, he asked the chief priest for a letter so he could go out to Damascus and round up a bunch of Christians and bring them down to Jerusalem to try them. That seems like a very confident person. A weak and timid person wouldn't do that. But I think that part of his conversion on the road to Damascus, and he went away into the desert for some time, was that God was not just teaching him what he needed to say, like teaching him the content of the gospel, but God was rebuilding who Paul was. So part of a conversion experience isn't just knowledge, but it's a reformation of our souls. It's a reformation even of our character. And so it's possible that Paul's arrogance got taken away from him on some level when he had a conversion experience. And it's also possible that he struggled

[13:23] with his own arrogance even after that. He wasn't completely sanctified ever. You know what I mean? He always had to fight with things in his own self. And he even says so in Romans, right? He says, I want to do the things that I should do, but I don't do them. And I don't do the things that I should do. And he's like, this is madness. I'm in trouble. I'm in trouble.

[13:43] But Paul was able, I think, in his conversion experience to allow God to change who he was, right? So that in actuality, he was weak and timid and trembling all the time when he was preaching in Corinth. And that's great. So I love this, that he can just go, I was weak. I was small. That's what I was when I came to you. I wasn't trying to put on any airs. Verse 4, and my message and my preaching were very plain, and I'm not going to keep them. We talked about this. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit. And this is similar to verse 1, sounds a little bit like it, with one caveat, right? He tells us where the words came from for his plain preaching. So he wanted to preach in a plain way so people could get it so that everybody was accessible to everybody. But now he's saying it wasn't even his words. It was the Holy Spirit speaking through him. That's great. Verse 5.

[14:41] So you would trust not in human wisdom, but in the power of God. So I think Paul had all the knowledge. He could have preached from himself. He could have preached what he knew about Jesus. He could have preached about his interactions with Jesus on the road to Damascus. He could have preached what God taught him while he was out in the wilderness. But he didn't. He became sort of an empty vessel when he preached and allowed the Holy Spirit to fill that vessel. And then he poured that out to everybody else. And so he shrunk. And God grew in all of these things. And he didn't want their reception of the gospel to depend on him. This is the important part. He didn't want their reception of the gospel to depend on him. He didn't want it to be how eloquent he was, or how loud, or how lofty, or how passionate, or how animated. You could do all these rhetorical flourishes and obscure the content. He cared about the content over the form. So he just wanted to focus on the message of the gospel. Which again, is only for him about the cross of Jesus and with words that don't come from him, but only from the Holy Spirit. So this was his goal when he came and preached to them. Now, we're talking about a dysfunctional church, a church

[15:53] that's struggling. But he's laying out maybe his authority for him to next say, here it is. One of the problems is you're comparing me to Apollos. Well, that's OK. I concede that Apollos is better than me in many ways. But that doesn't matter, because I'm preaching the gospel as the Holy Spirit directs me to do it. And this is the freedom. This is the freedom that he has now. He's not constrained. So I want to tell you about one of the worst days of my life. Not really. When I was in eighth grade, you know how junior hires are? And we had a substitute teacher.

[16:32] And we're like, we're going to put this person through hell. Let's see whoever it is. And then, this is like so great. Like every moment of anticipation, God is going to make this person a little bit bigger. And then, through the door comes a woman with the biggest nose I have ever seen. I am not kidding. She had a giant nose.

[16:55] And then, she went to the board. This is not made up. This happened to me. She went to the board, and she wrote her name on the board. Mrs. Beakley. Mrs. Beakley. Which means she married into that name. And we were like, this is the best day of our lives. We are going to have such a good 55 minutes now. And then, she went and she said, my name is Mrs. Beakley, and I have a giant nose. I know. And let's all laugh about that right now, and then we'll get on with the lesson. And we laughed and laughed and laughed. And then, she said, now that's out of our system, let's open our book up. And we were like, what?

[17:41] She's a genius. She totally took away all of our fire. You know what I'm saying? Like, she just named it. So she had the freedom to go, yeah, I've got a big nose. So what? Now, let's move on. Right? Same thing with Chris Farley. Do you guys know who Chris Farley was? He was on Saturday Night Live.

[17:57] He was very overweight, and he kind of flaunted it, like he actually did this one skit, which is just kind of hard to watch, where he acted like he was a male dancer. And he was in a competition with Patrick Swayze. And they're both dancing around up there. And it was very cringy, you know? And spoiler alert, Patrick Swayze won for some reason.

[18:22] But Chris Farley tells a story about how he was a kid growing up, being really obese. And he said, kids would come up to me that I just met, and they'd be like, yeah, you're really fat and ugly. And he's like, yeah, I'm fat and ugly. What else you got?

[18:36] Let's be friends now. And they're like, oh, OK. Just took it off the table. You know, like, so this is kind of a little bit, this is a little bit what Paul is doing here, right? He understood this. He's like, I'm not good looking. I'm not eloquent. I don't have rhetorical flourish. What else you got?

[18:57] Nothing? All right, let's open our Bibles. Let's read. Let's get down to what the gospel is. So there's this freedom in not having to be this thing. Do you get what I'm saying? This is freedom in your own life. This is freedom in Paul's life. And this is important because it allows Paul to say, it's not about me. It's about the message of Jesus Christ spoken in plain words that the Holy Spirit gives me. So I'm not even responsible for what it is. If you're upset with me, you're upset with the Holy Spirit, right?

[19:31] So what other people think of me can be important, right? But being overly concerned about what other people think of me is a prison, OK? And I'll speak to you as a reformed, recovering people pleaser. Like, I used to be, this has gotten easier for me, thank goodness, that if I couldn't please people or make them happy or solve their problems or whatever it was, then I felt like a failure. And if they didn't like me for some reason, I felt like a failure. And it didn't occur to me that them not liking me could actually have absolutely nothing to do with me and almost everything to do with them. Sometimes it had something to do with me, but sometimes it didn't. And I couldn't even tell the difference, because I was just like, oh, somebody doesn't like me. I can't sleep tonight, you know?

[20:16] But by the grace of God, I'm getting past that. I think there's still little relapses from time to time, to be honest with you, right? And what other people think of me can be important. I need to listen. If I'm doing something stupid or wrong or say something wrong, I want you to tell me. And I care about that. So some reflection of what other people think of you is important so you can correct your own life and behavior. That's important. But if your sense of who you are is important to who you are, if your identity, if your well being, if your mental well being depends on other people complimenting you, other people thinking highly of you, other people admiring you, then you're in a prison. Because I can tell you, because I've been in that prison. It's you're in a prison. And the gospel wants to set you free, right? If everything I do is to get affirmation from other people, then they are controlling me, right? They have control or power over me if I allow them to. So it's not myself, not God, and not the Spirit. It's other people have that power to me.

[21:20] And if I am stuck or kind of needing other people's approval, I'm going to miss a bunch of important things that I need to watch out for. Like, I would have to make sure that other people see me doing good stuff. So I might even wait to do a good thing until they're watching. Does that make sense? Why not just do the good thing when I'm doing it right? Because if I have the right time to do the good thing is. No, no, I got to wait till they see me doing it so that I can get credit for it. That's kind of messed up, right? So even my calendar, so to speak, my schedule is dictated by that need.

[21:55] Think about what Jesus says about giving. This is so great. When he talks about giving, he says it should be so anonymous, so anonymous, that your left hand doesn't know what your right hand is doing. Isn't that great? Like, so anonymous that you almost forget that you gave. Like, you almost don't even know how generous you are, because that's how it should be, right? So if I'm completely elated by praise and I'm completely deflated by scorn or indifference, then I'm a prisoner of my own need to feel good about myself. And so Paul is free from that. Paul is free from that. He knows Apollos is a better preacher than him. He says, yeah, I know. I know. He is. What else you got, right? And the freedom allows him to connect with the Spirit, right? It unblocks the Spirit, I would say. Paul only cares about what God thinks of him. He doesn't want to be a people pleaser. He wants to be a God pleaser. I think that's a good kind of distinction, right? Is he being faithful to speak the words the Spirit gives him or not? And he's free from feeling bad about himself if people reject the message. This is interesting. Actually, the sermon text does, I mean, the gospel text from the lectionary does connect to today. This Samaritan village rejects Jesus.

[23:13] And two of the disciples are so kind of hurt by that that they asked Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven, as if they could. Like, as if they could. They really couldn't. And Jesus rebukes them because that was such a dumb thing to say. They're taking offense on behalf of Jesus. But you know, if somebody is mad at you for preaching the gospel or speaking the gospel, they're not mad at you. They're mad at the gospel. You're just sharing what God has put on your heart, right? So their business is with God. You're just this vessel that God is using to share the message. And so if somebody is mad at me and says, I can't stand, if somebody said to Paul, I can't stand what you're saying or I can't stand you, Paul can say, well, that has nothing to do with me and my person. I'm only saying what God has given me through the Spirit. And so what you're really saying is you can't stand what God is saying. Your business is with God. Take it up with Him.

[24:11] So we're about to be done here. What about us, right? We do need good self-esteem. So don't take this as me saying don't tend to your own self-esteem. Your own self-esteem is important in how, if you have children that are still in their formative years or even if some of your children, if your children are in their 30s, they're still in their formative years. If your children are in their 60s, they're still in their formative years. You still need to love them, OK? So we should teach children to be confident and understand their gifts and try to develop new ones and strive. We should clap when your child gives a speech or plays in a recital or competes in sports. Be sure to clap for your kid. It's not going to ruin them if you praise your child. It's OK. But in the end, if our sense of self-worth comes from what other people think of us, then we won't be effective at sharing the gospel. It actually interferes with our ability to share the gospel. Because we'll hedge on it and we'll sell it out or we'll hold our tongue. And we should speak up because we don't want to offend. Or we don't want people to think less of us because we believe this foolishness that's in a contradiction to the wisdom of the world.

[25:20] Are we afraid of being called fools? Yes, I am. But I have to set that aside because I have to not be afraid of what other people think of me in this area of my life, right? My sense, and I'm speaking for myself now, but I think you could all kind of adopt this. My sense of self-worth is that I'm a child of God. My sense of self-worth needs to come from the fact that I'm Abba's child. God is my father and he loves me, right? That he made me in his image fearfully and wonderfully, and that he's given me the gift of the gospel, which is the gospel about the cross of Jesus Christ, right? That's my sense of self-worth, is the cross. Jesus died for me on the cross, right? That's like a million dollars compared to the compliment from a friend, right? Isn't God's estimation of us worth so much more than even a really heartfelt and good and elating type of compliment? God loves you so much. He really is all you need. Now, you do need a community. You do need friends. And all of you are like amazing people, OK? So just let me say that. But you're also rotten sinners that need the cross. Can you be both at the same time? Yes, you can, right? We need both. Did you see there? That was like the hug and the swat, right? At the same time.

[26:38] And I'm saying it to myself, right? God loves us, but God redeems us because we need redeeming because we're sinners. So there's that freedom, right? And I keep coming back to the freedom. When I can be free of being too bound up in what other people think of me, then I am open to do what God wants me to do. And I can do it without fear. Let's pray.

[27:02] Father, thank you for this word. Thank you for freedom that comes from finding our values only in you. And Lord, help us to preach the gospel in season and out in plain words and led by the Spirit. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.