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Welcome to Studies with Stearman. Join us as we look deeper into the Bible. Strengthen your faith with us, even as we see the day approaching. And now here's Gary. Now to review a little bit in First Corinthians. This is a, if you will, a dissertation upon foolishness versus wisdom. And we're all wise, we're all smart, we're all cool, right? We got it all together. We pretty much know everything. At least that's what I hear every time I flip on the tv. But Paul says, referring to the man of the world, the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. And every week I like to mention the Greek word for foolishness. And I'm kidding you not. I'm looking right at the Greek text right now. Greek word for foolishness is moron. That brings it right down to where we can understand it. Moronic. The things of God are moronic to the natural man. Kind of stupid, really. And Paul continually refers to himself as a fool. He says, I speak as a fool. And by the way, that's the way the world regarded him. When he went into Athens and spoke to the Peripatetic school of Athens, they all said, who is this goober? Actually, the Greek word for goober is spermatos, which means seed picker, but it translates into modern English as goober. Who is this goober? And he says, boys, I came in here today and I walked past a statue that says to the unknown God. And he says, I know him. And they said, you're crazy. You can't know him. Why do you. And he began to tell them how he did know the living God, the resurrected Christ, and had been directly taught by him. He says, here in first Corinthians we have the mind of Christ. And this is the beauty of being born in the Spirit. It's the hardest single thing to learn about Christianity. And that is that this incredible resource, the mind of Christ, is yours for the taking, if you will but take it. But taking it requires some self discipline. It requires some control, some study, some understanding. Nevertheless, the resource is there. Last week we finished chapter three of first Corinthians, and I'm going to read the concluding verses and take up where we left off last week, where it says in 1 Corinthians 3:18, Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth wise in this world, let him become a fool. There it is again that he may be wise. You mean you gotta be a fool before you can Be wise. Well, yes, you do, really. You have to abandon what you know about life and the world and philosophy, and you literally have to rebuild your thinking process from the ground up. This is a long process. It's an intricate process, requires the spirit of God. It requires dedication, determination. It requires the willingness to empty yourself of some of your old predilections. Verse 19. The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, for it is written, he taketh the wise in their own craftiness, and he does. And again, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain. Empty. The thoughts of the wise are empty. Therefore, let no man glory in men, for all things are yours. Now, verse 21 is the root of the argument in this whole letter. As you recall, in the early church in Corinth, as this is written, and this is back in the era of, oh, I would say around 56 AD churches were being set up. And at that time, in Corinth, which was a major trade city, you could see anything, get anything, do anything and be anything there. They had anything you wanted. It was a wide open city. It was the Los Angeles of the ancient Greek world. The thing about Corinth, you, is that the Corinthians were cool. I mean, they knew things that other people didn't know. Sort of like Los Angelenos are cool, you know, or New Yorkers have that ethos. They're just sort of better than everybody else. That was a Corinthian. And in that early church in Corinth, the people wanted to be wise. They wanted to be smart. They wanted, hey, this Christianity, this is a good deal. I'm going to be not only a Christian, I'm going to be a cool Christian. I'm going to be in on the top. I'm going to be a better one than anybody else. And they divided themselves into factions, some of which were following Paul. Some were following the preacher called Apollos. Some were following Peter. Some had developed a private doctrine of Christ relying only on the words of Christ. They were divided. This is egotism. And remember now, the word for I am in Greek is ego. Ego. And the whole idea of this letter is to wipe out the I am part. And he says here, Paul says in verse 21, therefore let no man glory in man. Do not follow a particular man. If I hear of somebody following me, for example, and saying, well, this guy has got a direct line to God, I'm going to hang on his every word and so forth and so on, I'm going to correct you, because you're not following me. We're here to understand the foolish things of the Lord. I do not believe in a separation between clergy and laity. I'm just standing up here because I'm handy. I believe any of you, if the Lord calls, you could step up here and do the same thing I'm doing. And really, there should be some of you out here who are capable of doing this, because it's not about me. It's not about men. Verse 21. Let no man glory in man, for all things are yours. Why? Because you have the mind of Christ. Everyone who is a Christian has, has and needs to avail himself of the mind of Christ. Do you? Well, if you don't, it's your own fault, because that's available to you. Verse 22. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world to come, or life or death, or things, present, things to come, all are yours. Is there anybody between you and Jesus? No. Do you need a representative like me to go before Jesus and take you by the hand so that you can get right to the throne of God? No. Do you need to go through a priest? No. Do you need to have somebody give you some arcane, hieratical, occultic, special teaching so that you can get to the Lord? No. It's all right here in the Word. Well, how do I understand the Word? Well, you have the spirit of God, the mind of Christ, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or things of the world, life, death, things present, things to come, all are yours. And look at verse 23. And ye are Christ's and Christ is God's. You've got a direct line to God. Is that cause for egotism? No, of course not. It's cause for incredible humility. In fact, as Paul continually said of himself, I'm a fool. I'm a fool for Christ. I've been stoned, I've been beaten, shipwrecked, starved, jailed. They think I'm stupid. They're probably going to end up killing me, which they did. By the way. Paul was beheaded, forgave his beheader before he was beheaded, by the way. That's a matter of historical record. This is the interesting thing if we look at the words of Paul. He says in First Corinthians 3:20, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain. In Paul's day, the thoughts of the wise were the thoughts of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Zeno, Democritus, the Greek philosophers who developed various kinds of methods of reasoning. And those reasoning methods were called dialogues. And maybe you've read the dialogues of Plato. And the word here for thoughts in verse 20 where it says again, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise. That's the Greek word dialogido. Well, you know that word in English, dialogizmos. Just take the gizmos off the end of it and you have dialogue, which we pronounce in English as dialogue. The dialogues of Plato. The Lord knows the thoughts, the dialogues of the wise, that they are empty. You know, I like to see exhibits like that because it reminds me of who I am. Basically. That's who I am inside. I've got that in me. Occasionally I will break into whining if things don't go just the way I like for them to go. And I have to then say, lord, forgive me for that. I didn't really mean to whine. Flat tire in the rush hour, you know. Well, I'll whine just like that. It reminds me of who I am. Solomon was very wise. Supposedly the wisest man who ever lived. He was also the richest man of his day, had more money than anybody else on earth. He had resources and he had wisdom. And back in 1st Kings 3, and you can turn there if you want to, Solomon becomes king over the richest kingdom in the world. At the time God gave the kingdom of David, gold, silver was like rocks in Jerusalem. Solomon had a method which he deemed wise for extending his kingdom and it would be to arrange deals with surrounding countries so that they would be favorable toward his house. First thing he did was marry one of Pharaoh's daughters. His reasoning was, well, if you marry one of Pharaoh's daughters, that makes him an in law and he's going to be good to you. So we can just stave off war here. And it says in 1 Kings 3:3 Solomon loved the Lord. This is right after he married the Egyptian woman walking in the statutes of David, his father only, oops, here's a parenthesis. He sacrificed and burnt incense in high places. He began to worship the gods of foreign countries rather than Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and King David. Now the Lord appeared to Solomon one night and the Lord said to Solomon, what is it you want? Just ask and I'll give it to you, man. That would be a great thing to have happen, wouldn't it? It happened to Solomon. So Solomon, this is to his credit. He says in verse nine, give therefore thy servant an understanding heart. That is a heart that is open and teachable is what it Says in the Hebrew, to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this, thy so great a people? Well, this pleased the Lord. And the Lord says, I've done according to your words. I've given you a wise and understanding heart. Solomon then applied that wisdom, built the greatest temple in the history of the world, built an empire. But in the process of consolidating his empire, as you all know, he married foreign women. He married 700 foreign women and had 300 concubines as well. Adds up to about a thousand. He was bonded to them in love, it says, and this means passion. He was passionately bound to these women. They represented the belief systems of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, the Hittites, the Egyptians. And it came to pass, it says here in 1st Kings 11:4, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods. And his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David, his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, that's the female fertility goddess, Melcom, the God of child sacrifice. He did evil inside of the Lord. He built shrines and pagan worship centers all over to accommodate the women and the diplomats. The ambassadors from other countries who worshiped in a different way, basically sold out Israel. When he died, the kingdom was split. There was a famous controversy between Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and the country went downhill. If you read the words of Solomon in Proverbs, and I'm convinced that Proverbs was written probably in his heyday, when Solomon was really on top of the world, he wrote and he said the proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, King of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction and perceive words of understanding, said, listen up, I'm going to tell you just how great all this is that I have learned because God made me wise. I'm going to pass it on to you. Instruction, wisdom, justice, judgment, equity. To give subtlety to the simple. To give the young man knowledge and discretion. He says, a wise man will hear and the interpretation, the words of the wise and their dark sayings. And then he says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and understanding. So he begins to talk about wisdom. Wisdom in the Hebrew language is called Chokmah. And Chokhmah means skill. It's basically the word for skill. Now, when we think of wisdom today, we think of schmartz. You know, you gotta have schmartz. You Gotta have good mind, good education. You gotta be quick, you gotta know. Have these facts at your fingertips, man, and then you'll be wise. Wrong. That's not what wisdom is. Biblically, wisdom is skill. It is the ability to apply what you know. It's one thing to have what they call book larnin', as my granddad used to say, but it's another thing to be able to apply it to everyday life successfully. That's wisdom. Have you ever known anybody that knew a lot of stuff? But boy, were they ever stupid, right? Got two PhDs and can't tie their shoes. That sort of a deal? Well, that's not wisdom. Chokmah, the ability to use knowledge. That's what Solomon taught in Proverbs. It's one thing to know it. It's another thing to be able to apply it successfully. By the way, was Solomon able to apply it successfully? No. Wisest man who ever lived. Crashed and burned at the end of his life, rejected by God. Now, before we move back to Paul, I want to make a point here. Solomon writes about wisdom. How did he write about wisdom? He wrote about wisdom, putting it in the Persona of two women. If you read Proverbs, there's the woman of wisdom, she's called Wisdom. And there's another woman called the strange woman. And he uses these two women to illustrate how wisdom works. And he says here in Proverbs 1:20, this is where he's talking about the woman called Wisdom. And he describes her. This Wisdom cries outside. She utters her voice in the streets. Now, when it says she cries, that means she is passionate. She wails, here I am. Come on. She cries. In the chief place of the concourse, the openings of the gates in the city, she uttereth her words, saying, how long, ye simple ones? In other words, you naive and stupid people, how long will you love to be stupid? The scorners delight in their scorning, and the fools hate knowledge. So you have this woman crying out. And this woman, later in Proverbs, invites people to come to a great banquet. She sets this huge spread and says, come on to my house. I'll feed you, I will. Whatever. Come out of my house. My house will come on. This is an old, old song like that, I think. But eat. Come on. I've got food for everybody. Nobody comes. On the other hand, there's the strange woman. She's called the stranger who flatters with her words. She beckons, perhaps in the dark places of the street, says, wisdom delivers you from the strange woman, even from the stranger. Which flattereth with her words, which forsaketh the guide of her youth and forgetteth the covenant of her God, for her house inclineth unto death and her paths unto the dead. So here's the other woman. The figure of these two women, then, is the figure of the way wisdom works in the world. It's called seduction. The world's a very seductive place. Solomon found out firsthand just how seductive. In the end, he was seduced away. And in the very end, at the very end of his life, when he wrote Ecclesiastes, which is called in Hebrew, Qohelet, which we translate as Ecclesiastes. But Qohelet means one who preaches from learning and experience. And he says, you know, the whole thing is vanity. He says, I had wisdom, and I discovered something about wisdom. Wisdom cannot change the world. As he writes the 12 chapters of Ecclesiastes, it's like a drumbeat, just one beat after another after another after another. He comes to the end of his letter and says, the hard truth is, I've had money, I have had opportunity, I've had advantages, I've had every kind of pleasure known to man. And in the end, I did not change the world for the better. And he says, and I can prove to you that all the wisdom you can possibly gather will not change the world. And it's an exhibit. Look at the world. Look how many people have promised to make the world a better place. And what's the one certain thing that you can say about somebody who promises to make the world a better place? You don't know what you're talking about. How many trillion are you going to spend, and is it going to be a better place 30 or 40 years later? No. Solomon comes to the end of Ecclesiastes, and he says, you know, I have searched inside myself and I've listened to the words of God. And he says, in Ecclesiastes 12:11, the words of the wise are as goads, a goad, like a sharp thing pricking your skin, an irritating thing, and like nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd. He says, if you can imagine having nails driven into your skin and sharp things driven into your skin by people who are skilled craftsmen. That's wisdom. Wisdom stings, wisdom hurts. You can learn a lot. And at the end, what you really learn is this place stinks because this world is bathed in sin. And wisdom only makes you more and more and more aware of this and more and more aware of your inability to change It. And that's exactly the message of Paul in first Corinthians. Well, Solomon ends up and he says, I've been rich. I've been famous. Slept with the stars, drank the best wine. Nothing. It's worse now than when I came in. And he ends his observation about the world in one sentence. He says, let us hear the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. That's what Solomon came to in the end of his life. Wisest man who ever lived, whose wisdom tripped him up and made him realize just how stupid he really was. And he says, here's the end of the deal. Fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. That could have been written by Paul in first Corinthians. Because you know what Paul said? He said, your works are going to be tested. Any man build on this foundation. Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble. You're going to have to appear before the judgment seat of Christ to test the things done in the flesh, whether they be good or bad. Now, this all brings us to where we were, where Paul says, let no man glory in man, for all things are yours. In other words, you have the mind of Christ, if you would only use it. He says, all are yours. Verse 23. Ye are Christ's and Christ is God's. Now we come to chapter four. 1 Corinthians. Let a man sow account of us as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. But with me, it's a very small thing that I should be judged of you or man's judgment. Yea, I judge not mine own self, for I know nothing by myself. In other words, I don't know anything that would rule against me, yet I'm not hereby justified. For he that justifieth me is the Lord. These are complicated words, but really they're quite simple, as we'll see in a moment. Therefore, judge nothing before the time until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts. And then shall every man have praise of God. Paul has said something amazing here. After saying that all things are yours and nobody can judge you, he says, let a man sow account of us as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. You know Nobody in the outside world, nobody outside of Christ has the vaguest notion about the mysteries of God. As you grow in Christ, you become progressively aware of these mysteries. By the way, you know how many of them are mentioned in The New Testament? 22 Number of letters in the Hebrew Alphabet. I think that's fascinating, one of those amazing coincidences. But there are 22 mysteries mentioned in the New Testament, and those mysteries are the mysteries of faith, the perfection of faith. How do you find faith? Well, if you're a philosopher, you find faith in developing a system, right? You develop a system and you call it a dialogue. Or if you are a, say, a 20th or 21st century philosopher, you say, well, everybody says the Bible is really the best word in the world. So I'm going to look at the Bible and see what I can make of this Bible. And I'm going to apply all of my academic scholarship to try to understand the Bible. I have a PhD in Semitic languages, I have a PhD in philology. I understand text criticism, I understand history, and I understand that if I apply all of this knowledge, then I will be able to unravel the secrets of the Bible. And a lot of men have done that. It's called form criticism or higher criticism. You remember Julius Wellhausen, famous German scholar of the 19th century. Brilliant, brilliant man. And he came up with this form critical method and he began to study the Torah, the books of Moses. And of course, as we read the Bible, we understand that the books of Moses were written by altogether now Moses. Well, Julius Wellhausen said, no, no, no, no, no, no. There was another system called the hexatoic. Probably there were four or five, maybe six original manuscripts were collected by a whole bunch of people and brought together as separate scrolls over a number of years. And finally they were edited together, they were redacted and pulled into one place. And in honor of Moses, all those different scripts were given the name of Moses. And so it was basically a fiction books of Moses. Well, this is the form critical or higher critical method of looking at the Bible. Wellhausen also had followers. Rudolf Bultmann, for example, came to the New Testament just to give you one example. He wrote a book on what he called the signs Gospel, the Gospel of John. And he concluded that really the Gospel of John was not written by John at all. In fact, it was probably a loose collection of manuscripts that were edited together by scribes, some as late as the medieval period. And what we really need to do is develop a system of linguistic analysis so that we can figure out which scribe wrote what Part of John. And in the end, we'll be able to figure out which part of John is actually divinely inspired. And probably most of John is not divinely inspired. And that's exactly what Julius Wellhausen said when he looked at the books of Moses. They weren't written by Moses. And in the end, and this is the truth, Julius Wellhausen said there probably was only one sentence in the entire Torah that was inspired of God, but he could not remember which one it was. That is the wisdom of this world. That's the wisdom of this world. It's also the mystery of faith. Because these men, these academics, you know what they were really trying to find? They were trying to find faith. And they were using what they deemed to be the tools best suited to find faith. If I could just find the actuality, if I can just dissect this thing using my academic methods down to a fine point, I'll be able to find what's the truth, and then I'll have faith. That is so backward and so, if you will, foolish, moronic. What can I say? I read a letter from Paul, I Corinthians, and I read it as a letter. I read the Gospel of John. I read it as written by John with his own pen. I read a letter from Peter. It's a letter from Peter. I read it just like I would read a letter from Uncle George. Same deal. So does that make me stupid? Well, according to the higher critics, it does make me stupid. How gullible that I would actually believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. Isn't that foolish? It is to the man of the world. But if you have the mind of Christ and apply it bit by bit, you come to the point where suddenly you realize there's nothing between you and God at all. You're in direct communication with him. And that's astonishing. Back to First Corinthians 4. So let a man sow account of us as the ministers of Christ, stewards of the mysteries of God. And that's the mystery of faith, by the way. Faith. The mysteries of God. The mystery of faith. You know what faith is? Faith is falling flat on your face in the mud, making horrible mistakes, crawling through broken glass and getting up, dusting yourself off, standing up and walking again and saying, thank you, Lord. That's what faith is. And guess what? You're going to fall down again. And maybe again and again and again. How many times will you have to fall down? I haven't found out yet. I keep falling down, but I keep getting back up with the help of the Lord. That's what faith is. Faith is not arriving on the scene with two PhDs and saying, I have found faith and I'm about to tell you what it is. No, no, no, no, no. Faith is, have you fallen in the mud lately? Then you join the club. That's faith. We're all in this thing together. Let a man sow account of us as ministers of Christ, as stewards of the mysteries of God. But with me it's a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of man's judgment. Yea, I judge not mine own self. And then he says, for I know nothing by myself, yet am I not hereby justified. But he that judgeth me is the Lord. What Paul is doing here is saying there are three courts of judgment. The first one is the lower court of judgment, the opinion of others. The Phillips translation says of verse three. But as a matter of fact, it matters very little to me what you or any other man thinks of me. That's the court of others, the opinion of others, court of public opinion. Now, Paul was very sensitive to the opinion of others, but it did not become the guiding principle of his life. The second court is a little bit higher court. This is the court of one's own conscience. The question here is, is the conscience a safe guide? Well, if you don't depend on the opinion of others, let's talk about depending on your own conscience. Is your own conscience a safe guide? Paul says it's not. It's not. Take David for example. Now David had a marvelous conscience. If you read the Psalms, if you read the history of David in Kings, David had a conscience that was finely, finely tuned. He was always examining himself. What happened to David? David had many terrible calamities all through his life because of his failure to see the evil in himself. After all that self examination. And by the way, he was quite able to see the evil in others and goes very deep into dissertations about the people around him. He could point out the evil in other people easily and quickly, but he never was able to pick out the evil in himself in spite of applying the same rigorous standards to his own life. Because he would pray to the Lord, lord, give me insight about myself. And in the end the prophet had to come to David and shake his bony finger in David's face and say, david, thou art the man, you have sinned grievously. Until that moment, David didn't even know it. His conscience had not alerted him to what he was doing until the prophet Came and shook the bony finger in his face. So the opinion of others doesn't matter. The opinion of yourself doesn't matter. The third and highest court is the Lord's court, the bema, the judgment seat of Christ. He says, for I know nothing against myself and I don't know of anything whereby you accuse me. In fact, you could accuse me of many things, but whatever you accuse me of, I know worse things about me than you do. So there. But the Lord's judgment is another thing. That's the Supreme Court. He that judges me is the Lord. By the way, do I judge any of you people in the way that superior intellect and wisdom judges? Have you ever had anybody look down their nose at you and say, you are a slob? Or, boy, are you ever naive? Or, boy, are you ever mistaken? Boy, you're being subjective. You don't know what you're talking about. You ever have anybody look down their nose at you and say, man, oh man, are you ever a loser? Now maybe they didn't say that, but you knew that's what they were thinking, right? What's your reaction to that person? Well, you may be right, but I know worse things about myself than you know about me. So take that. See what Solomon said, what David did, none of these things will change the world. Wisdom won't change the world. Dialogues, book, learning. It comes down to accountability to Christ, as Solomon said in his ending words. What did he say? Just love the Lord, keep his commandments. It's between you and God. That's who it's between. It's between you and God. And all of this is to sharpen our thinking and to reawaken us to the idea. Okay, if it's between me and God, maybe I'd better tune up my life a little bit. You know, this is the whole thing. This is a great internal motivator. Verse 5 says, Therefore, judge nothing before the time until the Lord come, who both will bring light to the hidden things of darkness. This is the imminent return of Christ. Paul always preached the imminent return of Christ to the Church. He always preached that Christ could return at any moment and then would be the time the Lord will come, who both will bring light to hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of the heart. And then shall every man have praise of God. This ends on a great note. Now he's writing critically to the Corinthians, and they have sinned, they have made grievous errors. But he doesn't exclude them. He says, look at the end of the matter. When the Lord comes, when he judges, when he brings light, then shall every man have praise of God. I think in the end, to those who have loved the Lord and have tried, no matter how unsuccessfully, to perfect their spiritual lives, in the end you will have praise of God. He's going to figure out some way to praise you. Some way, because he operates in love. And love always tries to praise the objects of its love. Think about it. How do you view children? Well, your own children, you can see right through them. Oh yes. Oh yeah. And oftentimes they will try to pull the wool over your eyes or whatever. You see right through them. And you could look at them in an extremely negative way and say, these are scheming little, you know. Or you could love them. And you say, oh yes, he does this, this and this. But I love him. I love him. I'm willing to overlook such and such because I know that he's going to grow up or she's going to grow up. Right? You love him. Well, this is the way the Lord looks at us. I'm just a little child. I've fallen on my face more times than I can ever tell you. And I have pulled scheming tricks which I'm not going to tell you about. I've done things just like a little kid. But the Lord loves me and he's going to figure out a way to praise me in the end of days. And it's between me and him. These things. Brethren, verse 6. I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes, that you might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another. Hey, look, you people who want to believe in me, you people who want to believe in Apollos, you have to learn. You're not following man, you're following God. He says, all I'm doing. All Apollos is doing is pointing to God. You look at God, don't look at me. That's what Paul tried to do all of his life. Look at God, don't look at me. For who maketh thee to differ from another? What distinguishes you from somebody else? And what have you that you didn't receive? What do you have that you didn't receive that wasn't given to you? Did you build yourself? Of course not. Now, if you received it, why do you glory? In other words, if everything was given to you, what are you glorying in? It's like glorying in wealth. Let's say you're born the heir to a chewing gum fortune or something and your dad dies and suddenly you're worth $2.2 billion. And you walk around saying, I'm worth $2.2 billion. Oh man, you know, I'm really something. Actually, a lot of people in that position have done what jumped out of the 40th story window because they could not take the pressure of having received a gift for which they knew they were unworthy. Suicide's among heiresses. Very well documented phenomenon. That's a lot to lay on somebody. And that's exactly the point that Paul is making here. What do you have to glory about? Everything you have is given to you. Really stop and think about it. What do I have to glory about? Says Paul. What does Apollos have to glory about? We all report to the same man, Christ. Now you're full, now you're rich. You have reigned as kings without us. And I would to God you did reign, that we also might reign with you. He says, I really wish. He says, I really wish that you would learn to live in relation to God, not in relation to me. What's going to happen when Paul dies? You know, we won't have anybody to worship anymore. What's going to happen when Apollos dies? The whole theory here is that if you can get believers pointed in the right direction, factionalism will disappear. In other words, if you can get people looking vertically instead of horizontally, the whole idea of factionalism will become ridiculous. And what will develop is the communion that we have in the knowledge that we are one in the body of Christ. That's the real thrust of this letter. That's what this letter is about. I've been a Christian now for a while and boy, have I ever seen factionalism. Somebody comes along and says, hey, I've developed a method here to understand the bible. It has 35 points of promise. And if you read my 35 points of promise and follow them day by day, you're going to be a better Christian. You'll be a lot better Christian than this guy over here that doesn't follow my 35 points of promise. And by the way, for 1995 and one Wheaties box top, I will send you my 35 points of promise. You know, ooh, you've heard. You know what I'm talking about. I would take the 35 points of promise and go right down the middle. Why? Because we have the mind of Christ. We don't need 35 points of promise. We report directly to Christ. And the 35 points of promise are only a divider. They only serve to divide. This group over here, that follows 35 points of promise. And this other group over here, that follows 50 points of promise. And those two groups won't even talk to each other. Right? It sounds silly, but it's all about foolishness. Well, that's where we're going. Here. Verse 9 says, For I think that God hath set forth us, the apostles last as it were appointed to death. For we were made a spectacle unto the world and to angels and to men. And he says, we are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ. He's referring to the apostles. He said, we're fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ. We are weak, but ye are strong. We, the apostles, are weak, but ye are strong, ye are honorable. But we, the apostles are despised. By the way, they were all killed, you know they were despised. They were beheaded, they were burned, they were pulled apart by wild animals. It was not a pretty deal. Even under this present hour, we both hunger and thirst are naked buffeted. We have no certain dwelling place and labor working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless. Being persecuted, we suffer it. Being defamed, we entreat, we pray. He says we are made as the filth of the world and are the offscouring of things. Unto this day I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons, I warn you. For though you have 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet have you not many fathers? He was one of the fathers. And like I say, if Paul could be here today, I would just step right down and just let him read this letter to you. And whatever else, he couldn't make it. So I am reading the letter. For though you have 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the cross gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be followers of me. Be imitators, actually is what it says in the Greek. For this cause I have sent unto you. Timotheus, Timothy. And by the way, Timothy came to the Corinthian Church in AD 56, during Paul's third missionary journey. Paul traveled through Ephesus. He wrote this letter in A.D. 56. He sent Timothy by boat across the Aegean Sea to Corinth to visit the church. Why? Because he knew based on what he had heard from correspondents, that this church was in trouble. It was factionalized, it was broken apart. It was in danger of internal disruption and collapse. He sent Timothy, my beloved son, he calls him, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into the remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach everywhere in the church. Now, some are puffed up, that is, some are proud, as though I would not come to you, but I'll come to you shortly if the Lord will and will know not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power. It's not about empty words. It's not about phenomenal preaching. It's not about factionalism. It's not about following the list of 35 pleasant promises. It's the power of God. And what is this power of God? It's the power to create between you and him a living, working relationship. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. What will ye? In other words, what do you really want here in this verse? And I wanted to point this out, because this is very interesting, where he says, what will ye? That question is two Greek words. Ti thelete. He says, ti thelete. Ti in Greek means what? Thalete means what do you all fervently desire? The loss. Ti telete. And we say it in modern English like this. Hey, what do you guys really want? What do you really want? Shall I come to you with a rod or in love? You name it. Shall I come over there and just beat the tar out of you people, or shall I come in love? The spirit of meekness. You know, this Christianity is serious business. It's not for weaklings. I want to go back to something that I passed a minute ago. It's very important, I think, to look at this verse nine. For I think that God hath set forth us, the apostles last. And by the way, there have not been any other apostles since apostolic era. They were the last to reveal God's word. Haven't been any since. And he says, as it were, appointed to death. You want to be an apostle? Well, check the price. For we are made a spectacle unto the world and to angels and to men. And I wanted to conclude on that verse because it's so important. The word spectacle in the Greek is one of those really fancy Greek words. It's theatron. Well, have you heard that word? Yeah, we brought it right over into the English theater. You know, in every major Greek and Roman city, they had an outdoor theater. You've seen pictures of those huge semicircular theaters, many of them. For example, the one at ephesus would seat 25,000 people. And you could stand down in the middle of the amphitheater. And. And you could whisper. And everybody in the whole amphitheater, because of the acoustical design, could hear the words of those speaking or performing. Theatron is the word. He said, we're made a theater to the world, a show, something to watch, and to the angels. Remember, Peter said, you know, the angels desire to look into this business called salvation, because the angels never knew what it was like to be lost. Those who stayed true to the Lord have to grope with the concept of being lost and then reborn again. To them, we are theater. The idea of taking a scruffy bunch of little human sinners and saving us through the blood of Jesus and building us up so that we are actually in communion with the Father to the angels is a puzzle. They would love to watch this. And we are a theater to men. And I want to read this. The annals of Tacitus. Tacitus, the brilliant Roman senator, very wealthy man who wrote a history of Rome. And he said, when Nero burnt Rome, basically he did it in order to rebuild the city in his own image. And people found out about it, and Nero tried to cover it up. And he says this, but no human aid, no largesse, that is money from the emperor, no supplications to heaven did anything to ease the impression that the fire had been deliberately started. Everybody said, nero did it. Nero did it. Nero looked around for a scapegoat and inflicted the most fiendish tortures on a group of persons already hated by the people for their crimes. This was the sect known as the Christians. Their founder, one Christus, had been put to death, says Tacitus, by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. He says this checked the abominable superstition for a while. He calls Christianity an abominable superstition. But it broke out again, and it spread not merely through Judea, where it originated, but even to Rome itself, the great reservoir and collecting ground for every kind of depravity and filth. Whoa. That's Rome. Those who confessed to being Christians were at once arrested. But on their testimony, a great crowd of people were convicted. Not so much charge of arson, but of hatred of the entire human race. They were put to death amid every kind of mockery, dressed in the skins of wild beasts, they were torn to pieces by dogs. They were crucified, they were burned to death. And when night came, they served as human torches to provide lights. Nero threw open his gardens for this entertainment and provided games for the circus. You've all seen the Coliseum, Circus Maximus mingling the crowd in a charioteer's dress or standing in the chariot. These Christians, they were guilty and well deserved their fate, says Tacitus. But a sort of compassion for them arose because they were being destroyed. To glut the cruelty of a single man, Nero, and for no public end. Why, some of these Romans even developed sympathies for the Christians. Can you believe that? Even though it was an abominable superstition, I come back to Paul's words. For I think that God hath set forth us, the apostles last, as it were appointed to death. For we were made a spectacle, a theater to the world and to angels and to men. We're fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ. We're weak, we're buffeted, we're naked. We thirst, we're hungry, we're just. Oh, man. Did Paul ever quit? No, he never did. His one message is that the kingdom of God is not in some body's interpretation of the word, it's in power. It's your relationship to God through Christ, and it's personal, and it should bring you together as one body.