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1 Corinthians 1:18,25 -The Message- Pastor Rick Beaudry 2024-01-28
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First Corinthians one eighteen through 25. For the preaching of the cross is then that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where's the wise? Where's the scribe? Where's the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified under the Jews a stumbling block and under the Greeks foolishness. But under them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that we don't need to live in confusion. The devil's the author of confusion. That we don't need to live in such a way of putting our hope and our trust in men and in princes. Lord, we we thank you for that which we can learn. We thank you that we can study and learn and and make things better to a certain point, but lord, we don't have an ability to change the heart, only you do. And it's your glorious gospel that transforms and changes us and changes people, Lord. We just become slicker, better sinners the more we learn. More ways to get around it, but our heart has not changed. And we don't make the world any better with all of our technology and all our ability to grow food and all our ability in medicine and in every aspect of our society. We don't get better, we're corrupting, we're getting worse because of the heart of man. Because God, we need a heart change. We need a transformation and change from within. And Lord, it's only by the work of your holy spirit through your glorious gospel that people are transformed and changed. So God, teach us. Help us to hold fast to that which is good. Help us to hold fast to your word, to not live in doubt or be insecure, unsure of the power of the gospel. Help us to stand against the wiles, the strategies, the lies of the wicked one, the philosophies of the age in which we live, Lord. Help us to stand strong against these lies. Equip us, Lord, this morning, in Jesus name, amen. The message of the cross is God's wisdom. His message is powerful in contrast to man's wisdom. The Corinthians were trying to mix the wisdom of the world and Christianity and found themselves divided over philosophical viewpoints. There was a time where I was asked to be a juror at the Kitsap County Court and and so they're vetting you, you know, and you go into the room there and the judge is there and they're telling they're telling everybody there that it's not your job to interpret the law. You just listen to what you're being told and you determine whether this guy did it or not. And, I was hoping that I had my Ann Coulter book that said guilty on it. I I forgot to bring that one to carry a book in there. It's kind of the day before everybody on their phones, but, that's how I roll. And, anyway, they I I raised my hand or they were, somehow coming to me and I said, well, you know, up in Canada right now, they're passing laws, legislation that, a pastor can be put in jail for reading Romans one. Romans chapter one. And they're bringing forth a censorship against the pastor reading in public Romans one. And, I'm a pastor. And, that goes against the constitution of free speech, the first amendment. And so I'm hoping that there's enough people that would be in the jury, at least one that would recognize the pastor's right to free speech regardless of what the judge or attorneys try to reeducate people of what the law is. And the attorney says to me, well, you know, that's a philosophy. We all have our philosophies, you know, but we're talking about the law. And then this one girl over here out to my left, she starts, you're not a you're not a judge, you know. It's like all of a sudden they're all turning on me and I'm like, am I the only one in this room that understands jury nullification? That understands that tyrants will lie to people but they're chained, they should be chained to this constitution, the first amendment that there should be people that stand up and tell the truth and don't fear, you know, because they have the same privilege, the same freedom as a Muslim, as an atheist. We're not picking and choosing giving preferential treatment to anybody. Anybody can stand up and be a wackadoodle and say whatever they want. They have the freedom to do that. And we should have the freedom to tell the truth, and if they construe us as a terrorist or a threat or whatever, so be it. But we still have the freedom of speech. Basic. Very basic. But this guy uses the word philosophy. It's your belief system. We all have our belief system. No. It isn't in that arena. It isn't my base, my belief system. It's the law, dude. You know, it has nothing to do that Christianity philosophically. No. It has nothing to do with that. But the apostle Paul is addressing the church of Corinth because they're living in a time where the Greeks especially, had these, like on Mars Hill, the apostle Paul went to Mars Hill in Athens and the city was wholly given over to idolatry, but they're always looking for the newest thing. What's the new thing? What's the new thing? And, you know, and and they're who is this babbler, they said, the apostle Paul, when he spoke with the resurrection of Jesus. And they're just like indignant about that, you know, and who is this babbler? Get rid of this guy, you know. And so they're the epicurean philosophers, and, Paul, took him on there at Athens. But now as he's in chapter 18 of the book of acts, he spends eighteen months establishing the church in Corinth. And now he's in Ephesus gonna spend three years in Ephesus planting a church and he's writing a letter back to the church of Corinth that you guys are getting caught up in the wisdom of the world. You're you're shirking, you're you're you're you're not standing tall with the power of the gospel. And so he's trying to help them see through the fallacy of getting sucked into the latest greatest thing that comes along the philosophies of men. They were exchanging divine revelation for philosophy. They were given up. Verse 17, it says, Paul indicated that he was sent to preach the gospel, the pure gospel, not mixed with the wisdom of words or philosophies of men, lest the cross of Christ you've made of no effect. That word no effect means null and void, watered down. So what happens is we leave out the word repentance when we're preaching. We don't wanna offend anybody. We leave out the word sin because we might defend somebody. We leave out the word hell. Jesus spoke more about hell than he did heaven because we might be intolerant bigot haters and offend somebody. Well, let's all just eat some ice cream. Okay? You know? So you're you're drawing more and more unbelievers who are filled with pride and demanding, thinking that this is Burger King and you can have it your way, you know? This isn't Burger King. You don't get it your way. There's one way and it's by way of the cross. So settle it in your heart. The cross is humbling. The cross humbles every single person. You are a sinner. You are headed to hell. But God sent his son to die in your place so that you could be gifted with eternal life. If you just believe in him and trust in him. Pretty simple message, but a powerful message. A powerful message. Powerful enough to transform a person's life when the holy spirit comes into their heart and life. So Paul wanted to contrast the wisdom of men with the wisdom of the cross and thus prove Christianity has the superior message. So Christianity still has. Two thousand years later, the superior message. Why? Because it's God's message to man. God hasn't changed his mind. God is omniscient. He knows everything. So whether it's Freud and Roy or Noah Yuval, Noah Harari or Klaus Schwab or whoever they are coming up with a new philosophy, a new slogan, a new idea. We're in a war for ideas. The bible declares as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. That's why the indoctrination and the brainwashing at the early formative years of the children trying to convince the children that they evolved from monkeys to destroy the faith that God's placed there, that they wouldn't believe in the true living God, but that they're gods. The devil knows the truth. The truth is a bad thing to the devil. If if you're allowed to bring the glorious gospel and just let the chips fall where they may, alright, what's your idea? You you you get a half hour to give your idea. Give me a half hour to give our idea. We've got the gospel. They won't they won't do that because we have the powerful gospel. People's lives are transformed and changed. They won't allow a creationist in the public school to teach creation to these kids Because we have the truth. And it's easy to to teach the truth, to teach these lies over and over and over and you get caught in your lies and have to twist it around all the time and come up with some other little new nuance. That's a lot of work. It's a lot of work to keep those lies going. So as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. So it's getting to know God. It's not just facts, knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. It's not just the external amassing of facts, amassing of, you know, God's word in your heart and life. That's who the apostle Paul was, a Saul of Tarsus. He had the facts. He's the most brilliant mind of his age and yet he was lost, headed to hell because he was steeped in Judaism and he missed out on the very key. The very heart of the message is Jesus, the Messiah. He didn't see Jesus. And then when Jesus arrested him, when Jesus revealed himself, Paul's life was transformed and changed. And he said, all the things I learned, everything I was, everything I was coming to be, being raised at the feet of Gamaliel, living in a college town, all that knowledge. He says, and all the privilege, a Pharisee of Pharisees. He he described it as all his dung, all his refuse for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. When the light bulb went on, when Jesus introduced himself to him, Paul said, that's the meaning of life. That's what I've been searching for. That's what that's why I've been so empty inside, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. And here, this message can reach a child. Jesus said, except you become as a child, you'll no wise enter the kingdom of God. It's not a complicated message, a very simple message. Jesus Christ and him crucified for their mission of sins. Children can understand it, but a very profound you'll never be able to exhaust the bible. You'll never be able to exhaust the mind of god, that of redemption and justification and all the different different doctrines that our faith is built upon. You'll spend your whole life studying to get to know God and get to know his word, but it always always always comes back to faith in Jesus Christ. Amen. You never outgrow your childlike faith in Jesus Christ. So Paul wanted to contrast the wisdom of men with the wisdom of the cross and thus prove that Christianity has the superior message. Notice verse 18. For the preaching of the cross is them that perish, foolishness. But in us which are saved is the power of God. This word foolishness means silliness, absurdity, moronic. Okay. Now, if I ever use the word moron, this guy's a moron. I'm being biblical. Okay? I'm being biblical. Foolishness. Don't get mad at me. I'm not a hater. If Kathy uses second Peter two sixteen and says, Rick, you're a dumbass, she's speaking biblically. Okay? She can say that. She can say it's biblical. It's not a curse word. It's not bad. I just represent her mind Balaam's donkey, a dumbass, you know. That's fine. Use your words wisely. Silliness, absurdity, moronic. So that's the view of these these philosophers, these guys on Mars Hill, these epicurean stoic philosophers, they're searching for the meaning of life and of truth and relationships and all. They can never come ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. It's a it's I'm going to school forever. I'm gonna be in college forever to get another PhD, another PhD, but I never come to the place of knowing the meaning of life. Why? Because the meaning of life is Jesus. Amen. And Jesus has his great intellects. He has his great men and women who have PhDs, but it's it's leveled. Jesus is at the top. He's the greatest doctor there ever was. Right? And he's not against. He's not anti intellect. But when intellect becomes pride, and pride blinds your heart and mind to the simplicity of the gospel, that's why it's so hard for many people to come to Christ because they won't come as a child in humility and dependence upon God. They come saying, wanna understand it all. You can't understand a holy God. The only thing you can understand is what he reveals about himself. He holds a lot back. You're not able. His ways aren't your ways. His ways are past finding out. So he says, this is what I reveal about myself. If they don't get it by studying the old testament, you know, if they have Moses and the prophets and they still don't believe Jesus said in Luke 16, neither will they believe the one be raised from the dead, you know. So I'll give him my son. I'll cause my son to take on the form of a man. He'll represent me. Have I been such a long time with you, Philip? He that has seen me has seen the father. I'm a chip off the old block. You wanna know who God is? Look at Jesus. He's God. What what greater means of communication than to become a man? To communicate to men. To have all the temptations, all of the things that are pressing against you. He was tempted in all points like we and yet without sin. He understands the feeling of your infirmity, the weakness being trapped in this fallen body, although his body wasn't fallen. He's perfect. But still, the devil tempted him and he knew what it was to be hungry after forty days of no food. He knew what it was to be physiologically thirsty in John four at the Jacob's Well. Telling the woman I have water you can drink of, you'll never thirst again. If any man thirst, let him come into me and drink as the scripture said, he that believes in me out of his belly shall flow torrents of living water. He knows the very heart of man, the very heart, because he made you, and he made you with a God shaped hole in your heart. All creation was made subject under a vanity, and that by reason of him who subjected the same in hope, the hope of knowing God, of of being in fellowship with God. He made you with a God shaped hole and only Jesus can fill that void, that emptiness in your life. And you come there through the glorious message of the cross. And we, you and I, have been privileged to disseminate that message. And you should never feel inferior or embarrassed or ashamed of the gospel. It's the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, to the Jew first and to the Greek. For therein is the righteous God revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith. Martin Luther, the just shall live by faith. In Hebrews, the just shall live by faith. In Galatians, the just shall live by faith. In Habakkuk, the just shall live by faith. By faith, by faith, by faith in Hebrews 11. It's always by faith. You trust in God. You trust in his son. And it's imputed unto you into the ledger, righteousness, just as if you've never sinned. All your sins are washed away. All your sins are forgiven. Can the psychologist do that for you? Is there any pill that can do that for you? Is there any area of learning or book reading or AI or anybody that can transform and change you from within? What's it mean to be transhuman? Can they pull it off? Can they change a person's heart and mind and soul? No. It's mechanical. It's occultic. It's demonic. It's an attempt to be as God. But they fall short, don't they? Terribly short. Perishing. The word perishing means the reason for their perishing is found in their attitude. It's not an intellectual problem, it's a problem of the will. They will not believe. You've given the facts, you've given the gospel, the holy spirit's done its job to reprove the world of sin, of righteousness and judgment of sin because they believe not in me, of righteousness. You wanna see God's righteous standard? Because I send up to my father. Jesus is the only one who can send up to his father because he's righteous. And of judgment because the prince of this world is judged. Satan's a loser. Satan lost. So the holy spirit sent to convict of sin to come alongside the sinner and bear witness of the cross, to point to the cross. There's now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. So when the devil, your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter, when they condemn you, when they show you the pit of hell, that's not from God. That's not God using them. I need to speak through you to tell this person they're going to hell. No. You're a tool of the wicked one. You're not a tool of God. You're not a servant of God. You're accuser of the brethren. But when the holy spirit comes alongside, you may be like Nathan that says, David, you're the man, points you to the cross. Always pointing to the cross that you're guilty, you've sinned, but God's made provision for your sin at the cross of Calvary. You you should not walk in guilt. Don't believe that guilt. Don't hold on to that guilt. Let it go. You've been forgiven. And he's taken your sins and he's cast them from the east to the west, remembers it no more. There's no record of wrong. There's nothing in the ledger. Jesus took your sin. He took the punishment for your sin upon the cross of Calvary. The Freuds and Roy's can't do that for a person. They're trying to remove guilt in a person's life for a lifestyle of sin because we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. So they project the guilt onto mom, onto dad. You start to play the blame game. The reason I'm such a wretch, the reason I'm so depressed, the reason I'm I'm so disappointed in myself. It's an obsession with self. It's an obsession with looking in. Anybody that's obsessed with looking in isn't gonna find much good. I know you wanna grade on the curve. You wanna find somebody as wretched as me, so you feel good around feel good about yourself when you're around me. At least I'm not that bad of a sinner, you know. And if God grades on the curve, know, I'm going to heaven because I'm better than Rick Bodrey. Sorry. That doesn't work. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We're all sinners, so salvation can be a free gift by grace through faith alone. The wages of sin is death, eternal separation from God, but the gift of God's eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. It's a gift. So when because someone comes along to condemn or that guilt that's there, you've got to take that guilt to the cross. You've got to realize that Jesus died for that guilt. He died for that shame. He died for those sins. He being God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but humbled himself and took on the form of a man. He humbled himself even unto death, even the death of the cross. How shameful for the son of God to die upon the cross. But he did it for you and I, despising the shame. And so perishing, the reason for perishing is a problem of the heart, problem of the will. God did not make you a robot. He's not into artificial intelligence. He made you in his own image with the power of choice, the power of reason, power of power of, deciding, deciphering what it is you want to do. He made you for the purpose that you would love him as you would respond as he initiates with his love. Epitomized in Jesus going to the cross for us. Don't ever question God's love in your lie. The circumstances cause you to to question maybe, and the devil's telling you to question God's love. If God loved you, then why? For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That's all that needs to be said. He sent the son to the cross of Calvary. End of story. God loves you. He loves me. And he's promising us that he's working all things, not some things, all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to not your purpose. You're called according to his purpose. His purpose for your life is that you might glorify him in suffering. Can you imagine that? Something other than yourself that you could be given the privilege of being denied certain things in this life that when people reflect and think of you that you're a witness of Christ, foxes have holes, birds there have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Despise and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him. His beard is taken out. He spit upon. Have you been mistreated? Jesus was mistreated. Jesus was rejected by his own family. Jesus was raised in a dysfunctional family. His brothers thought he was beside himself. They didn't believe in him until after the resurrection. If you're a human being, you've lived in a dysfunctional family. You are living in a dysfunctional family. It's called sin. And Jesus is the only one that can take Humpty Dumpty and put them back together again. He's the only one. And he's doing that, being confident in the very thing that he that has begun a good work in you, that he will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. You're gonna have a new glorified body, a perfected body. You're not gonna have the struggle against the flesh and the spirit anymore. You're not gonna have the struggle of resisting the world and conformity to the world. You're not gonna have the struggle with the devil who seeks to lie and deceive and destroy you, to steal, to kill, and to destroy. You're gonna be finitely perfect, perfected, a new glorified body. No more guilt, no more shame, no more sin. Ruling and reigning with Christ, kings and priests, Amazing, amazing plutocrats, the plutos, the riches that are ours in Christ Jesus, the unsearchable riches of Christ. And all of it available through the gospel. Every single person has to come the same way through the gospel. The cross, his death, his burial, his resurrection, and whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But some people don't want to. They're perishing. Not because the message is ineffectual, but because they choose not to believe, not to trust, not to give in to God's love as the holy spirits come alongside to convict of sin. And as we said, even a child can understand God's love as demonstrated by the cross. And then we have the contrast, but for the preaching of the cross then the perish foolishness, but under though unto us which are saved is the power of God. This contrast to those who are perishing and think the message is foolish under those who are saved, It is the power of God, a saving dynamic dunamis. So for some, it's just foolish. It's pironic. It's crazy. You Christians are nuts. You really believe in a rapture, man? The rapture is not even in the bible. That's ignorance. Ignorance to the nth degree. But I've got to listen to this idiocy day after day, week after week. More and more people this past week, Brandon Holthus exposed to Eric McTaxis who's against the rapture now. And all so many people are so in love with America, it blows their mind that they might lose their penthouse suite in New York City. It blows their mind. You know, I've got more money to make. I've got more books to write. Don't you know? I'm not ready to be raptured. I'm not ready to leave this place. Well, go be friends with Klaus Schwab then, you know? Go go work it out, you know? But we Christians, we're ready to go, man. Yeah. And don't rob God of his glory. Don't rob him of his glory. Don't don't as Brandon said, you know, we're not subject to double jeopardy. Jesus has already suffered the wrath that was due us. We're not gonna go into the tribulation and suffer the wrath that God pours out upon a Christ rejecting world. We're better than that. We're the bride of Christ. It's not escapism. It's a purifying hope. It helps us to be ready to be watching. We're letting go of this world. I mean, come on. Love not this world neither the things that are in the world. All that's in the world, the lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, the pride of life is not of the father of the world. The world perishes and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abides forever. He that's a friend of the world is an enemy with God. Get over it. Your world is perishing. And you and I were alive for one reason, to come to know Jesus and to tell others about him. And if the church age is winding down, if it's coming to the point the full blindness in part has happened unto Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, that's glory. That means the rapture of the church is ready to come. That means the Lord is good. Oh, did I use the word rapture? Oh, wow. Well well, it's rapturous harpazo in the Greek and rap rapture from the Latin. Okay. We can translate it into rapture. We can say rapture. How stupid do you wanna be? Don't don't come at me with those lame, lame arguments or pre wrath, you know? Where'd you come up with that? Rosenthal in the eighties? Come on. Jesus believed in the rapture. He spoke of the rapture. In John fourteen one through three, come on. Don't rob God of his glory. He's glorified. That blessed hope. How's it a blessed hope if it's not a preacher of rapture? That blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and savior, Titus two thirteen. People act like, oh, it's foolish. You rapture guys. I saw the I saw the movie Left Behind, you know. I read the books, Hal Lindsey and all them, know. I've been waiting for it for so many years. Well, you're a fulfillment of prophecy. You're a scoffer that Peter warned us of. Where is the promise of his coming? You're fulfilling prophecy. They're mocking, willingly ignorant, not realizing that one day is a thousand years, a thousand years is one day. And God is long suffering. You can't get him to go any faster because he loves sinners. He's holding back as long as he can to continue in this church age to save people with your help. Can you believe that God? Does God need your help? Technically, no. Does he ask for your help? Yes. Did he give you a commission? Yes. The great commission to go and make disciples? It's your lips. It's your tongue. It's your mouth. It's the message you've received that you pass on to other people. Later in the tribulation, there's gonna be an angel flying overhead with the everlasting gospel. A 144,000, 12,000 Jews from each tribe who are saved during the tribulation period are sharing the glorious good news. And guess what? The greatest revival in the history of the world is in the tribulation period. An innumerable multitude of people in Revelation six and seven who are saved. How are they saved? They say no to the mark of the beast. We're not gonna worship the devil. And they say yes to Jesus Christ. Jesus is Lord. Simple. So simple. A child can understand. It's not complicated. God made it simple. And you and I are part in this church age of sharing the glorious good news of his coming kingdom. You see people stressing about Texas and tanks and and invasion and f sixteens and all these things. Hey, your citizenship is in heaven. It's a great opportunity to remind people Jesus is coming again. Are you passive? Are you just a pacifist just given in to evil? No. You're standing for the truth. You're living the truth. You're acting it out. You're not disobeying any law. You're obeying the constitution. You are you are a law abiding citizen. The criminals in Washington, God will have to deal with them. God is setting the stage to be glorified. He's setting the stage for all these pretenders, all these people that have rejected the glorious good news of his coming kingdom, and they're gonna be gathered there at Armageddon to stop Jesus from returning. What greater insanity could there be? And the blood is as high as the horse's bridle. He comes and he destroys their hero, the anti Christ with the brightness of his coming and the sword of his mouth. These guys are crazy. The sad thing is people are sucked in. They're seduced by their lies, by their deception. Because they reject the truth, they're given over to the lie. What's the lie? That you can be gods. People are actually gonna buy into that, that you can be a god, that you can live forever. If we put this chip in your head, if we put this technology in you, you can be transhuman. Pretenders. Pretenders. Playing gods. Counterfeit gods. It's a lie. It's a lie. God's god's and the playbook, he just simply takes god's playbook, god's truth, and he counterfeits it. That's what the devil does. He just counterfeits. He can't come up with any original ideas. Do you ever notice that in the movie and the media and the arts that they have a very difficult time coming up with themes and ideas? The best themes and ideas are the ones that they repeat that have somehow Christianity, some vestige of Christianity mixed in. Values of Christianity. If you are Disney and you build a movie, you make a movie, and you bring it about a, you know, about a family and going through struggles and having kids and and I mean, that resonates with people. And overcoming or the bad guy getting his thing, know, the vengeance, then you make tons of money. But if you make them all little fairies and running around prancing and trying to convince the kids they're this, that or the other, you're gonna lose a $195,000,000,000 as Disney in eighteen months. Because you're worrying against truth. You're worrying against the truth that even liberal parents understand. You're not they're not gonna give into it. They don't want their children prancing around like that. They don't wanna go to the library and see fairy queens and drag queens reading to them. They know how to read. They'll read their own books to their own kids. It's a small percentage of people that give in to that irrational demonic philosophy. And why? Because they've rejected the truth. And if you perpetuate, if you continue in rejecting the truth over and over and over again, God says that you're gonna be of a reprobate mind. And you know what God does to judge you? God makes you a freak. He's gonna give you over to men with men and women with women in Romans one. And now the tragedy of, not now, it's been happening forever, but with children, and with your dogs, and your cats, and with animals. It's it's it's shameful. So then what you do when you're feeling that guilt and that shame and that sin, now you wanna enforce on the rest of the public the normalization of your aberrant behavior. You wanna normalize pedophilia because you're a pedophile and you feel guilty about being a pedophile. Well, that's God's judgment against you. He's judged you in that way. He's exposed you, and you feel the shame of it unless you come to a place where you have a reprobate mind, cauterized your conscience, your past feeling. We got a lot of those cycle paths out there, don't we? They're Washington DC and been to Epstein Island a lot and that sort of thing. It's crazy out there. Am I ever gonna get through this message? Look at this. But under us who are saved is to the power of God, which speaks of a saving dynamic dunamis. In acts chapter one, Jesus said, you shall receive power when the holy ghost has come upon you. That word power is dunamis, dynamic power. The power of the holy spirit. In me that is in my flesh dwells no good thing. If I look inward, I don't see anything good. But when I look upward and allow God to transform and change me, he gives me the power of his holy spirit within and upon to empower me to live the Christian life in the power of the spirit, not in the power of the flesh. In the flesh, I fail. I'm in Romans seven. Those things I wanna do, don't do. Things I don't wanna do, I do. Oh, rich man that I am. Who shall deliver me from this body of death? You go into chapter eight, spirit spirit spirit spirit spirit. It's the holy spirit. The holy spirit given us the power, the transformation, the changes from within. We're not pharisees. We're not hypocrites. It's not an outward show. It's an inward reality of God transforming and changing a drunk into a sober father. A prostitute into a loving mother, a homemaker. That's the power of the gospel. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise or bring to nothing. The understanding of the prudent. This is a quote that Paul has given from Isaiah twenty nine fourteen. And the occasion of this is king Hezekiah, he's got an enemy named king Sennacherib. And Sennacherib with the Assyrians have been wiping out other nations and such, even so much as as eventually taken out in July, the 10 northern tribes. But Judah, the southern tribe is still moving and shaking. Hezekiah is a good guy, good king, and and but he sees this insurmountable enemy, circling the city of Jerusalem and coming against him with all the outlined forts and stuff, the fortified cities. And, he's concerned. And then they've got this loud mouth. They've got this Joseph Goebbels. They've got this whoever he is today, Yuval Noah Harari, whoever the spokesman for the devil is. And believe me, when, there there's I I There's certain voices for the last fifteen, twenty years that I refused to even hear their voice. You know, Obama's voice, I will shut it off. I don't even know how Biden talks. I've never listened to him, you know. You've all know Harari. I'd I'd rather have the the words read there than listen to these voices because you listen to the demons. You listen to demons speak. And the Rabshaka was the publicist for King Sennacherib, the propaganda master as Hitler had as Joseph Goebbels. If you tell a lie large enough, big enough and often enough, you get anybody to believe it especially if you mix in fear. Once you get them afraid, you can get them to do anything. As we learned in the COVID, the COVID scandal, the COVID SIOP, the plannedemic, event two zero one in September, and all guess what? Warp speed jab in January. Wow. Never in the history of the world have you been able to put together a vaccine in that short of a time. You had your military involved, you had it developed and ready to go, planned and ready to go, a promotion and you've got your salesman, you've got Donald j Trump to sell it. You've got Franklin Graham to sell it by saying even Jesus would take this jab. And what's happened to Franklin's family? Many of the grams have heart trouble now. Franklin himself had his his heart operated thereafter. Over and over again, the craziness, the fear mongering. And so, Hezekiah had this. The Rabshekah came and began to threaten and saying, why do you think your god's any better than the other gods that we've wiped out? Every single nation, we've not only wiped them out, but we've destroyed their gods, the little idols. And so he came with all this threatening and instilling fear in the people. And Hezekiah is very wise. He took that letter from the Rabb Shekah and he held it up to the Lord. He went to prayer. When's the last time you heard bad news about Texas, about the border, about anything? And took that information and held it up to the Lord. Said, Lord, and here's how Hezekiah handled it. Remember when COVID happened? When we said if we follow the Lord and we stand for him and not shut down and not put plexiglass and not live a lie, Remember how we said the Lord will fight for us? But if you tried to do it yourself, you're gonna get whooped on. There's so many lies, so many lies upon lies upon lies upon lies to try and navigate that. You only come to the truth at the end of it in regret realizing you were deceived. But if you discern and you ask the Lord for help, and you reason with history in which you've known up to this point, you recognize this is an anomaly. This is strange. We've never had something like this. The whole world shut down for a ninety nine point nine percent recovery rate type, you know, epidemic. And so you stand strong. You don't shut down. You continue to worship. You continue to walk by faith. You don't wear the mask in public. You get yelled at by the Karens and everybody else. You get kicked out of every restaurant place you go, and it's all for the glory of God, isn't it? It's all because you don't wanna give in to a lie. And if you stand strong and you stand for the truth, the Lord fights for you. And so that's what Hezekiah did. He took the threatening letter, he held it up to the Lord. Lord, you've got the problem. You transfer that problem. It's not my problem. It's your problem, God. The globalists are trying to wipe out your church. The globalists are trying to wipe out the nation of Israel. God, you've got a problem. No problem, Rick. Just continue to trust me. Watch what I'm gonna do. Amen. Just it all lifts. It all lifts off you. It's not your responsibility to save America. It's not your responsibility to save the world. God is moving. God is causing according to Revelation seventeen seventeen, the thoughts in these globalist hearts, these demons, these these guys that are setting the stage to fight with God. They're fighting God right now, and God's getting ready to whoop on them. Yeah. In Psalm two, he says, oh, how the heathen rage and imagine a vain thing against the Lord and against his anointing against Jesus. And God looks down upon these guys and he laughs. Come on to me all you that labor and are heavy laden. I'll give you rest. Cast it upon him. Peter says, casting all your cares upon him for he cares for you. Keep casting it. When it gets too heavy and it's rolling back, it out again. Be a fly fisherman. Cast it. Lord, I'm not carrying that burden. I'm not carrying that. I'm casting it. Well, how are gonna eat? How are gonna I'm casting it to you, Lord. You promise that you'll feed me. Give us this day our daily bread. I don't know how. They're demonizing people that grow gardens, Lord. They're demonizing people that fish. They're demonizing farmers, Lord. What are we gonna do? They're going after the Amish, Lord. They're the experts at raising food. What are we gonna do, Stand strong. Stand for the truth. Stand against wickedness and let me fight for you. Stand still and see Jehoshaphat, the salvation of the Lord. And so with Hezekiah, Hezekiah don't listen to the politicians. Hezekiah don't listen to the psychiatrist. Don't listen to the so called doctors, Hezekiah. Don't listen to the experts. The Kissinger's, the Zabrinsky's, the Rockefellers, the Gates's. Don't listen to these guys. They're pretenders. They don't know me. Hezekiah, I want you to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. Don't conscript an alliance with the Egyptians. Don't try to get help from any other nation. Let me do it. How the Lord do it? He sent the angel of the Lord and in one night, a hundred and eighty five thousand of the Assyrian forces were wiped out by just one angel. Now, I'm like Peter, I wanna get a sword and I wanna lop somebody's head off And I'm gonna swing at Malchus. And when I'm in the Garden Of Gethsemane, the olive press, and I'm sweating, and I failed Jesus already again, I couldn't pray even one hour with him. I'm ticked off, man. I'm really ticked off because I'm Peter, you know. And now they're coming over and weasily Judas is selling them out for 30 pieces of silver, and they're coming over and they're grabbing Jesus, you know. He can cause the wind to and the waves to stop. He can walk upon the water. The demons are cast out. The lepers are cleansed. Raise the dead. He's what's he doing? What's he doing? I'm gonna take it into my hands. And he's got that sword, and I believe he swings like hit a home run to take Malchus's head off. And Malchus went, and just his ear went. Just the ear went. And Jesus said, what are you doing, Peter? Don't you know that I can call down 12 legions of angels right now if I want to? And they're they're ready. Just give the command. Just give the command. We'll wipe these guys all out. So a legion is how many? 6,000? So 72,000. Is that the math? Six times 12? 72,000 angels. There's innumerable multitude of angels, isn't there? One angel, just one angel wipes out a 185,000 of these Assyrians who are the biggest, baddest army on the planet. Are you afraid now? All your fear is gone because God's on the throne. He's in control. The wisdom of this world is directing you to trust in man. Better to trust in God than to put your confidence in man. Better to trust in God than to put your confidence, your trust in princes and government. Vain is the help of men. King Saul at the very best is a problem. You've got a theocracy Israel. Why would you wanna have a king and be like all the other nations? Don't you know what goes with human government? No way out. Corruption, deception, best plans and aspirations would come to nothing. Why? Because God has a better plan. What is God's plan for your life? There's a way which seems right unto men, but the end thereof is the way of death. Many are the devices within a man's heart, but the counsel of God, it will stand. Take on the mind of the Lord. You can get confused, so confused with the devices and the counsel of men. You gotta shut the mainstream media off. You can't let that rabb shekah into your house. You gotta get rid of it. They're they're just they're just breaking down your mind. Filling your heart and life with with lies. Now I think standing here, looking back at my Christian experience, the enormous amount of time that pastors that I studied under that took the bait, they listened to the 06:00 news, and they came into the pulpit, and they were a voice that they heard to go to Iraq and take out these guys. You took the bait, dude. You were lied to. Why didn't you stop and pray and lift it before the Lord? Why didn't you ask the Lord for discernment? And that's the America we're all caught up in. And now we're realizing our enemies, our own elected officials, they're after us, they're globalists. Now we're the terrorists in their eyes. It's all propaganda, it's all lies, it's all craziness. The way of man or the way of the cross? The wisdom of man or the wisdom of the cross? Which way? The word wisdom is Sofia, philosophy, lovers of wisdom found 16 times from verse 17 through chapter three. So we're going to see this word philosophy, lovers of wisdom. So there were at least 50 identifiable parties or movements led by so called philosophers in Corinth. Philosophy provided a view all invented by man of the meaning of life, values, relationships, purposes, destiny. So ideas were based entirely upon human opinion, no absolute truth, always changing, leaving men empty, unfulfilled, confused, and without hope. Guess what happens next? Suicide. Suicidal. Record suicides today because men are losing hope. Everything they've been taught, every idea, every philosophy, everything they base their life upon is coming to nothing. For you and I, that's good because we get to point them to Jesus. We have the blessed hope. We have a God of hope, a God of peace, God of love. Perfect perfect place to share the glorious good news of God's love for them. God never changes. He is truth. He is a God of peace. He's a God of hope. He's a God of love, of mercy, of justice. The cross dealt with man's sin, philosophy leaves you in your sins, unable to escape the guilt and the reality of who you are. I've got to escape Rick Baudry. He's wearing me out. My greatest enemy is Rick Baudry. He's not a celebrity pastor. He's a loser. He's a sinner by nature, and he wears me out. The the new Rick, the life of the spirit is worrying against the old Rick, the life of the flesh. And I'm tired of it. I wanna put off this old man that I have to carry around. Now I know how to get the victory to walk in the spirit, and you don't fulfill the lust of the flesh, but man, I'll tell you that guy never gives up. He never ever sleeps. The devil never sleeps, man. You know, someone I love very, much said yesterday, we've only ever been in two arguments ever. Is there anybody else like that out there? Anybody else out? Now, you guys all know if you say something to me, it's gonna wind up in the sermon. Right? It you all know that. Is there anybody out there that's that righteous? My response was, I got in two fights with her before I left this morning. I'm a jerk. I don't know how I'm still married. It's it's a miracle of God. If I'm left to myself, I can destroy and burn it all down on my best day. Thank the Lord for this example. Psalm thirty seven thirty seven. Yeah. Mark's the man. He's the man. So the wisdom of the cross, a superior message. Man's wisdom is foolishness part a. Verse 20. Where's the wise? Where's the scribe? Where's the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? And as I said, is there anything more freaky, more weird to see a military person whom we honor our uncles, our grandpas, our our moms, our dads, our grandmas, people that served in the military and they've got that uniform and it's just so pristine and you know, done just right and they stand right, everything right, honorable. To have Obama put red high heels on these guys and parade them through the news media. Is there anything more queer, more strange, more bizarre, as we said, moronic. The word foolish is moronic. And I'm not picking on anybody that was abused as a child and now is acting out out of out of a brokenness in their heart and life, they're acting out a homosexual or lesbian behavior. We're not condemning the people. We're condemning the enforcing or the projecting of that behavior on everybody else. It doesn't fit. At some point, you shouldn't be in the military wearing red high heels. Okay? You've got your boots. You put your boots on. You do what you're supposed to do as a military person. Don't degrade the military and dishonor the military by dressing people up to project your gay and lesbian lifestyle. Your queers is what we used to call them as kids. Drag queens and fairies around your children. Sorry. Not on my watch. Not gonna happen. So where's the wise? Where's the scribe? Where's the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the that's their wisdom, the wisdom of the world. It's bizarre. You wanna legalize pedophilia? That's your wisdom? You wanna legislate to remove the penalty of preying upon being a predator toward the most innocent society? You wanna you wanna take murder and remove the penalty for murdering somebody because she smoked a doobie. And she smoked a doobie and lost her faculties according to the psychiatrist in the courtroom, and the judge says she's not responsible for stabbing that guy, her boyfriend, a 108 times. And hey, it's just a it's just a gateway drug. It's just it's just it's just an herb, man. It's just an herb. Well, what's it laced with? What's it do? How's it alter your behavior? You make the decision to smoke it, you reap the consequences of being smoked, know. Not just two hundred hours of community service. Can you imagine the parents of that boy? What they're feeling? The injustice, the courts, the psychiatrist, these wackadoos? Well, what if it happened to one of them or one of their kids? Then what would they do? They're made to look foolish. Where are the experts? The sophists, the mental acrobats, the writers, the debaters? With all the information we have accumulated in fields of science, of sociology, of psychology, anthropology, with all the technical breakthroughs, with all the prosperity we've enjoyed, why is society in breakdown mode? Why is society corrupting? What answers do we have about man's origin and eternal destiny? Why so many divorces? The divorce rate in the church is just as higher higher than those in the world. People in the world, they don't even wanna get married anymore, so many divorces. What happened to the family? Rome went close to five hundred years with no divorces, very little divorce, hardly any. And once you mix the Grecian culture with the Roman culture, it's over. You take away the morality, the suicides, the abortions, the murders, the crimes, the genocidal wars, the genocidal clot shots. Are we any closer to happiness? My mom when she divorced her, I don't know, fifth husband, fifth or sixth, I said, why? Why? I wanna be happy. She never found that happiness. Never found it. The woman at the well, you've had five husbands. That void, that emptiness, that vacuum in your heart can only be filled with Jesus Christ. You need to be first be married to Jesus before you can ever hope to have a foundation for your marriage to be built upon. Contentment, the Mick Jagger phenomena. I can't get no I can't get no satisfaction. Godliness with contentment is great gain. Fulfillment, global peace. Yeah. We're gonna bring the antichrist in and we're gonna achieve global peace. Peace and security for the whole world. We're gonna sign a peace treaty. Yeah. How's that working for you? Rome crumbled from within because they had no moral absolute truth to live by. From professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. What's that word mean? Moronic, morons, stupid, silly absurd morons. Ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Morons and PhDs, let's block out the sun. Really? That's your philosophy? Yeah. We're gonna block out the sun. The heat of the sun, the carbon, the c o two, it's baking the planet. Well, did you ever think and consider that a lot of it's cyclical and that it's a bold faced lie, global warming's a lie, Al Gore, that we're going through a global freezing phase right now, you know, everybody's freezing. And did you ever come to think that, you know, the photosynthesis with the sunlight helps the plants to grow, the plants that grow give off oxygen, and we give off the c o two, but you wanna get rid of us as useless eaters and reduce the population to 500,000,000 because you want your utopian with the planet left alone and people not on the planet. You're the morons. You want us to eat bugs. You wanna kill the livestock. You wanna just wipe the livestock out, the chickens, the the the cows. You just wanna destroy them all. You wanna destroy the planet in the name of saving the planet. What kind of philosophy is that? You're chemtrailing. You're you're putting chemicals that we're ingesting, that we're breathing. It's going down to the soil and it's inhibiting the soil of of bearing fruit. God said to be fruitful and to multiply. The planet's plenty big for the people. We go away from an agrarian society to centralize food production into these smart cities where you control everything we do. You're the devil. Your philosophy is demonic. And now, we gotta beware of cow flatulence because it's deadly. It's deadly. How foolish you're looking. The wisdom of this world is foolishness. Blame it all on c o two. Blame it all on carbon. Let's what's your carbon footprint? I'm gonna stand before God and he's gonna say, Rick, what's your carbon footprint, buddy? You shoulda held your breath longer, buddy. It's like it's like when you see when you see Biden drooling, you know, it's like, that's your poster child. The world, that's your guy. Right there's your guy. How foolish. Four reasons man wisdom is foolishness. Number one, can't reveal God. Man's wisdom cannot reveal God. Verse 21, for after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. The incarnation is God's wisdom. Jesus becoming a man, the very idea of God becoming a man was revolting to the Greek mind. They couldn't handle that. What do you mean God's gonna become a man? What do mean God's gonna lower himself and take on the form of a man? He's God. You gotta exalt him. He's bigger than all of us. He he doesn't even wanna have anything to do with us. One of their philosophers, Plutarch said, it is an insult to god to involve him in human affairs. God is detached from men. That's the opposite of our god. He wants intimacy with us. He wants oneness with us. He wants fellowship with us. He became a man, not an angel. He left the free exercise of his deity to take on the form of a man, to be the babe of Bethlehem, to be the savior of the world. Augustine said, the word became flesh and dwelt among us is non existent in Greek philosophy. John one fourteen. Non existent. Man's wisdom is foolishness, number one, because it can't reveal God. Secondly, man's wisdom can't save. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. The psychologist, the psychiatry, man's wisdom leaves man still in his sins. God uses the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. Men contribute nothing. Nothing. You contribute nothing. I contribute nothing to the equation. It's all God. All of God. Men respond in faith. That's one of the key issues of religious systems, cults. It's always a works oriented. Always works, always something you gotta do. If ever you come here and I'm lording over you and exhorting you to do, to do, to do, you gotta do, do, do, do, That's heresy. Making you feel guilty, haranguing you, lording over you. That's what false prophets do. It's by grace. It's God's mercies are new every morning. Freely we receive, freely we give. We give the glorious gospel out. It's the Lord that does the work. There's now therefore no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. Men respond in faith. Thirdly, centered in signs. He says verse 22, for the Jews require a sign. In 8045, Theotis drew thousands unto himself promising that he would divide the Jordan River. In 8054, a man from Egypt drew 30,000 to the Mount Of Olives professing that he would cause the walls of Jerusalem to fall. Jesus healed the lepers, cast out demons, raised Lazarus from the dead, the widow of Nain's son from the dead. Jesus fed the multitudes with the little boy's sack lunch. Nothing he couldn't do. But they were still looking for a sign. And Jesus said, a wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah. And as Jonah was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. It's not just a Sunday school story. Jesus authenticated the book of Jonah and that story by quoting it in the New Testament. Right? Right? You've got submarines, submariners, why couldn't God make a fish, you know, carry a guy around in a fish. Right? How big is your God? Anything hard for God? Anything too big for God? And so Jesus is saying, the only sign you're against the sign of the death, the burial, the resurrection of me. That's your sign. And that for you and I is the sign that we give to people. What makes Christianity unique? If you've all know Harari thinks he's God, then as I've said many times or Klaus Schwab, put on your Star Trek, you know, little thing, doctor no or doctor evil, whoever you think you are, speak in your accent and be crucified, buried, and raise yourself from the dead the third day and we'll clap, happy clap, you know. We got another one, you know. It's it's idiocy. It's idiocy these people think they're God, you know. This destroy this temple, Jesus said, in three days I'll raise it up. Can you understand my speed? Three days I'll raise it up. I'm not stuttering. This is it. You I will prove I'm God, destroy this temple and three days I'll raise it up. And when he was crucified, the religious leader said, remember what this guy said? We need to guard the tomb and they did us a favor because this deceiver said three days I'll raise it up. So they guarded the tomb with a criterion of Roman soldiers. And then when Jesus was raised from the dead and the stone, the 2,000 pound stone was cast uphill, angels came out and those guys shake and quake like dead men. And they had to come up with a lie. Punishable by death if anybody got past them to get at Jesus. His disciples stole them. Yeah. Right. Oh, you mean the guys that are in the temple right now preaching, you beat them, you put them in jail. Silver and gold have we none, the name of Jesus Christ stand up and walk. You're preaching Christ, there's no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved and your wicked hands crucified them. You mean those guys who are not afraid of you anymore because of the resurrection? Yeah. Those guys. These are ignorant unlearned men. They don't know the wisdom we have. They don't know the writings. They haven't studied the writings. They're turning the world upside down. They've come to this city to turn this city upside down too. That's right. What's their message? Jesus Christ and him crucified for their mission of sins. That's it? That's all they got? That's foolishness. It's the power of God unto salvation. Look at the fruit. Look at the people getting saved. Drug addicts are sober now, working jobs, raising families. Adulters are not adulting anymore. They're faithful to husbands and wives. Murderers aren't murdering, thieves aren't thieving, liars aren't lying. Why? Because now they're living for the glory of God. Now they do right because they want to please Jesus. Their life is an expression of thankfulness and gratitude for God rescuing them at their worst before they went into an eternity of hell. Four reasons man wisdom is foolishness. Number one, can't reveal God. Number two, can't save. Number three, centered in signs. And fourthly, centered in man. And the Greeks seek after wisdom. So Paul's on Acts 17 verse 21 at Mars Hill in Athens, Greece. And the whole city is given over to idolatry and everybody's sitting around the epicurean stoic philosophers and they're all looking for some new things, some new ideas, something that they can develop into a philosophy, a a movement if you will. I need to write a book on this. And Paul, stirred in his spirit, seeing the city wholly given over to idolatry, he launches, he uses a hook. I wanna speak to you about the unknown God. And that's his launching pad, and he begins to speak concerning the resurrection of Jesus, and they stopped him and they said, who is this babbler? Who is this seed picker? You know what they meant? Paul, you're borrowing from others. You're a seed picker. You're like a bird that goes over and gets a little information here, goes over to get a little bit of information there, little bit over there, and then comes back and takes credit for it. You're just a babbler. You have no original thought. Well, Solomon, the wisest, greatest man in the natural that ever lived besides Jesus, He said, there's nothing new under the sun, boys. Everything's repackaged and and recirculated throughout all of history. These are not new ideas, Klaus. This is demonic and others before you have tried this and failed. You're destined to failure Klaus but it's so intoxicating I'm getting away with it for a time. Well, why do you think that is Klaus? Jesus is setting you up for the biggest come up as ever bro. It's not gonna be good. It's not gonna be good at all, man. You're gonna wish you're never born. You guys in your bunkers, you can't hide from the wrath of the lamb in Revelation six. Your feet are your feet are undone. You're peeing your pants. Your knees are shaking like Belshazzar in Daniel five. You're quaking. You're rattled, man. There's nobody to save you. You can't nobody to call on. Who are you gonna call? Four reasons man wisdom is foolish. Now, four areas of superiority of the gospel. Number one, the power of God revealed. But under them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God. Not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. No way shame. Excuse me. I gotta back up. I get so excited. In contrast to man's wisdom, God's wisdom is Christ crucified. Verse 23. But we preach Christ crucified under the Jews a stumbling block and under the Greeks foolishness. So the Jews were looking for a conquering Messiah. They were looking for somebody, that would take over the Romans. They weren't looking for a suffering one. And John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, it was so strange if you've ever had a lapse of faith like Abraham or Sarah or anybody else in the hall of faith. They have lapses of faith. God edits those laps of faith out and only records how they pleased him by believing. Well, John the Baptist, the greatest of all the old testament prophets, the cousin of Jesus, he had the audacity to tell the truth. He's a truther. And he told Herod that, your wife, the woman that you've taken, Herodias, that he's she's really your brother Philip's wife, and that's illicit. That's illegal to take your brother Philip's wife as your own. And so John the Baptist was incarcerated in prison. He's a guy that eats locusts and wild honey. Are those bugs? Is there any protein in that? But he's out there long hair, the whole thing out in fields. He's not used to be encumbered and put within a small space like that. And he's in there and he's he's kinda losing his mind. And the disciples come and they John's disciples come and tell him the great things that Jesus is doing. So John says, well, send these guys back to my cousin. No. Send them back. Are you the one? Are we looking for another? Should we be looking for another man? Because this doesn't add up for me. I never envisioned that you'd allow me to be put in prison. They're gonna cut my head off, man, because I told the truth. Well, how are prophets treated, John? They're all executed. They're all killed. Right, buddy? So get over it. You'll be fine. And so Jesus said, go back and tell them in Matthew eleven five, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached on them. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me. In Psalm a 118, the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner and it's marvelous in our sight. And so the religious leaders reject Jesus but he's the head of the corner. He's the head of the corner. Upon this rock, I'll build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against us. So John, get over it. To be asked on the bodies to be present with the Lord. You'll be with me soon. The thief on the cross, this day you'll be with me in paradise. Right? Death, don't fear death. Don't fear it. Fear unbelief. Fear wimping out at crunch time. This is your moment, John. Four areas of superiority. Number one, the power of God revealed verse 24. But under them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God. So I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. To the Jew first, the priority of the Jew, no replacement theology, and then to the Gentile or the Greek. For their end, where? Within the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. When you believe in Jesus, his righteousness is imputed unto you. From faith to faith as it is written, the just, those justified just as if they never sinned, the just shall live by faith. Secondly, the not only the power of God, but the wisdom of God revealed and the wisdom of God. So Jesus is the wisdom of God. Colossians two three says, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. You can never exhaust as you, as you try to get to know Jesus, you can never exhaust the wisdom and knowledge of him. You're never gonna be able to reach a point where, hey, I've read the bible four times. What why are telling me to read the bible? I read it four times. You want me to read it again? Yeah. Read it again. Keep reading it. You're never gonna be able to exhaust what the holy spirit's revealing to you about who he is. Why would you settle for comic books? Why would you settle for rudimentary, lower levels of information of understanding of the universe and who God is, and listen to the wisdom of men when you have the superior revelation of Jesus Christ? God revealing himself in the person of his son. It's superior thirdly to man's wisdom because the foolishness of God is wiser than men. So in Colossians two eight, Paul says, beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments, so it's a lower level of understanding, kindergarten, after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ. The law of the lord is perfect converting the soul. The testament of the lord is sure making wise the simple. It's the word of god. What do you wanna pour into your kids? The word of god. What do you want to pour in your marriage? The word of god. What do you wanna be? A doer of the word, not a hearer only. What security? What stability? Be a doer, not a hearer of the word. Allow God to build your life, your marriage upon himself, Jesus, the rock. Second Peter one three, according as his divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him. You have it all in Jesus. There's nothing lacking. He's left nothing out. Paul and all of his learning, he narrowed it down to one thing, one thing, the gist of his life that I might know him. The power of his resurrection. I want that power of the resurrection in my life and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death. What's Paul saying? I want the Christian life. I wanna be a Christian in the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the Christian life, getting to know Jesus. Do you know Jesus? Many are gonna come to him in that day and say, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do many wonderful works in your name? What's he gonna say? Away from me, I never knew you. You didn't you didn't know me. I don't know you. Who are you? There's no universal childhood. You're either a child of God or you're a child of the devil. Your father is a devil. He's a murderer and a liar from the beginning, Jesus told the religious leaders. You're a brute of vipers. Who's gonna deliver you from the fires of hell? Well, that's not very nice talking to me like that. You hurt my feelings. Well, I've got a I've got a Kleenex box here for you, man. Get over it. Grow up. It's not about feelings. Don't make me sing that song, you know. You don't wanna hear that. You've got it all. You don't need to be looking past Jesus and act like, well, I've got Jesus and something else. I'm lacking something else. And spend your whole life searching for that something else. Knowing the person of Jesus Christ, you've got it all. Fullness of the Godhead. Four years of superiority, the power of God revealed, the wisdom of God revealed, superior to man's wisdom. Fourthly, superior to man's strength, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Time and time again, the Lord illustrates this in the bible. Over and over again, he takes men and women like you and I who are weak. Very seldom does he take the mighty, the nobility, the strong. God looks down and he says, you know, I'm gonna take the weakest one among them. I'm gonna take the guy that's from the worst home, the worst family, and he's the least in his own family. He's a loser. He's at the bottom. He doesn't have a high social credit score. He's not liked very much. His name's Gideon, and I'm gonna call him a mighty man of valor while he's in a hole, in a wine press, threshing wheat hiding from the Midianites. Every time they grow crops, the Midianites come right at harvest time and steal all the crops. You go on top of a mountain with the wind blowing to thresh weed, you don't want the shaft to hit you in the face all sweaty. But he's down in a wine press where normally you're crunching the grapes to make wine. And the angel lord comes along and says, oh, Gideon, oh, thou mighty man of valor. And he's like, you got the wrong guy, man. You got the wrong guy. I'm a nothing. And the lord says, you'll do. You'll do. And so Gideon is conscripted to be a leader, one of the judges for Israel to defeat the Midianites and the Amalekites who are surrounding them, and wanted to take them over and causing them anguish and harm. And so Gideon still doesn't really believe and he says, alright, cause the dew to come down and to go upon the fleece and cause only the fleece to be wet and the ground all around it to be dry and maybe I'm hearing from you. And in the morning, he rings out the fleece and it's dry. Well, I still don't know if I really heard from you right, you know, kinda like Moses. I don't even know your name, you know, and get somebody else. Cause the ground to be wet, but the fleece to be dry. The Lord does it. And then the Lord tells Gideon, get your men, get the people that wanna go after these guys. And 32,000 people show up. And what's the Lord say? In Judges seven, too many. If I let give you the victory, now you're 32,000 against innumerable multitude of camels and soldiers and all. Way outdone, way outgunned. But 32,000 is still too many, lest you guys take the glory onto yourself because I'm not going to share my glory with anybody. Superior demand strength. And so the Lord says, anybody that's afraid that fears, let them go home. 22,000 went home. Now he's got 10,000. God says, too many. Still too many. Alright. Take these guys and take them down to get some drink and observe how they how they're drinking. And, and so they go down to drink, some put their face down on the water drinking like a dog, and others are on there watching like a soldier lifting the water up to their hand watching. There's 300 that passed the test. It's getting in the 300. Now, what's your strategy? What's your wisdom? What's your did you go to the school of war? Did you read Sun Tzu's arts of war? Did you go to the war college? Did you go to Annapolis? Where did you go to learn the art of war? You got your drones and your technology and your heat seeking missiles and all. What are you gonna do here now? Well, what I want you to do, God says, is take your 300 and divide them up into three groups of a 100, and I want you to lead one of the 100, and I want you to take a a pitcher, a pitcher, and put a candle in it. And then I want you to take a trumpet, and I want you to, at a certain point in time, I want you guys to break the pitcher, blow the trumpet, and shout the sword of the Lord of Gideon. Yeah. Right. Well, whose whose wisdom is that? It's so preposterous, only God can get the glory. Right? And they do just that, and they destroy all these guys. And Gideon's able to slay Orib and Zeeb, love those names, and gain a victory for the children of Israel. They live to fight another day. They live to serve the Lord another point in time, and then the cycle in the book of Judges is in a time of prosperity. They turn their back upon God. God puts them into bondage America, and America cries out to God. The churches are filled. The churches in approaching God with the Rabshakah's letter is more important than watching football today, more important than anything. We're at the place of desperation. We got no way out. We're crying out to God. God, we need a miracle. And God says, hey, I've got Deborah. Deborah will lead you out. Hey, I've got Jephthah. Hey, I've got Samson. Samson will lead you out. I've got some judges. I've got some I've got some guys that'll help liberate you, but how long will it last before you forget me in a time of prosperity? How long before you so fall in love with the loaves and the fishes that you forget me? How long church of Laodicea? You're rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing. How long? You've kicked me out of the church. How long? How much pressure? How much persecution? How much difficulties it gonna take before you come back to me and let me back in your lives and let me be the center of your whole being? How long? When will it happen? Joshua, He's around Jericho. Joshua six four through five. God gives him this military strategy. You guys take and circle the city for one time each of six days. Circle it. Bring seven priests out, the Ark of the Covenant, and take a ram's horn, a a trumpet, and wait, don't say anything for six days. And on the seventh day, surround the city seven times, come around it seven times. And after the seventh time, blow the tekka gudea, the long blast of the ram's horn. That's the horn, the trumpet for the rapture, that same horn. It's not the trumpet judgments. It's the Taqiya Gedea. So these guys blow the horn, and guess what happens? Archaeologists tell us what? The walls didn't fall inward, the walls fell outward. God caused the walls to come down. And who did they save? Rahab the harlot, because Rahab the harlot had faith. Her and her whole family were saved. The wisdom of God. And guess what? We see her in Matthew one, in the lineage of Jesus. Rahab, I said Ruth, Rahab the harlot. The wisdom of God, Christ crucified. The cross is God's answer demands wisdom. The cross makes crooked people straight, the ungodly pure, the drunken sober, the weak become strong. If man could do that with a pill, if man could do that with therapy, he'd have all the the money that the world has. They have enough already, don't they, by lying and dealing with symptoms. But to actually bring healing, to actually transform and change a human being from within comes by way of the cross. And the cross only. Only by way of Jesus. For the preaching of the cross is the them that perish foolishness, but under us which are saved is the power of God. Contrasting messages and contrasting destinies. The wisdom of men or the wisdom of God. Who will you believe? In man or in God? In God's message or man's message? Man's wisdom. God's message is the cross of Calvary. Let's pray. Father, thank you. Lord, I was not looking for you. Lord, I was seemingly content. 20 years old, I was not looking for you. But Lord, that night that Glenn invited me to that concert, Calvary Costa Mesa, and Lord, they shared the gospel that night, first time I ever heard it. And Lord, you arrested me. You opened my heart, my mind. Such a simple message, Lord. You transformed and changed me right there. You came into my heart and life, and you've never let go. Lord, I can testify that it was the greatest moment, the most powerful awakening I've ever experienced. And Lord, you went on to do it to thousands, and you continue to do what you've done for me to thousands more, Multitudes, innumerable multitudes of people are coming to know you through the glorious gospel. Lord, I thank you for again, that night, I thank you for the message. I thank you for those that discipled me. I thank you Lord for the privilege of watching you save so many around me, family and friends through the gospel, Jesus Christ and him crucified for the remission of sins. Lord, we owe you everything. We could never pay you back. Here we are, with all of our faults, with all of our frailty, And Lord, ask that you would equip, empower us, that we might be effective, that we might bear much fruit for your kingdom and your glory. That our life would be an expression of love for you, Living out the Christian life. Anyone here this morning, you don't know Jesus Christ? The way to Christ is simple, you trust in him right now. The work is complete, the price has been paid. All you need to do is call upon the Lord while he is near. Cry out to God, God be merciful to me a sinner. Jesus come into my life and he will come into your life. As you believe that he was crucified, he was buried, he raised himself from the dead, he's seated at right hand of the father, and he's coming again, if that's the cry of your heart. As you're inviting him into your heart and life even now, as you're praying, lift your hand up, we wanna pray with you. We have the blessing of seeing God save you. Anyone here this morning? If any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. The old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. God transforming you from within, from body and soul to body, soul, and spirit. You're born again, born of the spirit. Father, thank you. Thank you that we're safe. Thank you that we're secure. Peace and safety only from you, Lord. Help us to sort through all the pretenders, all the lies. Help us to rest in your love, to rest in your truth, to settle it in our heart and mind, and just rest. Be at peace with all the chaos, with all the crazy around us. Let us be at peace, Lord. Speak to our heart, show us how we can best serve you, how we can best alert people and awaken people to the truth of who you are. We ask you to bless in Jesus name, amen.
About This Podcast
Calvary Chapel Bremerton - Sunday Service
Listen to Rick Beaudry, Pastor of Calvary Chapel Bremerton, teach the Word of God cover to cover, chapter by chapter, and verse by verse. Be edified and built up in your faith with solid Bible teaching. New episodes on Mondays in the Pacific Standard Timezone.
