The Wisdom of Reliance Upon Jesus

Um, okay. Are you guys ready to study the word of God? Okay, well then let’s begin by praying and then we’ll get into our study in First Corinthians chapter 2. Father, we we pause and we ask you to remind us that how much you love us in our spirit right now, in our heart right now. I ask that you would speak your love, whisper your love, shout your love. That we are your children, that you have no thought of disappointment when you look at us. That you have no worry about our future or our past, that we are enveloped in your love. And I’m so thankful and grateful for your consistent and supernatural love. Help us to learn who you really are and what you really think about us and what you have accomplished through Jesus Christ and his work of death and resurrection and what that means to us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Awesome. You guys are so cool. I love studying the Word of God with you. Today’s sermon is called The Wisdom of Reliance Upon Jesus. The wisdom of reliance upon Jesus. So obviously, you can trust in two things in this life. You can trust in Jesus, or you can trust in the world’s system, which is defined by four letters that we learned last week. S E L F. Self. Okay, that is the world system. What do I want? What do I need? Give me, give me, give me, take, take, take. That’s the world system, okay? And Jesus’ system is about giving love. So last week we saw God’s way of giving, which we can call humility, where you consider others as being more important than yourself. So you want to give your life for them. God’s way of humility was contrasted with the world’s way of self. So why did God choose humility as his path to life, as what we’re supposed, how we’re supposed to follow too? Well, if you look back at verse 30 of chapter 1, 31, it says, as it is written, that he who glories, let him glory in the Lord. So the reason why humility is the way and self is not the way is because humility glorifies Jesus. Jesus becomes everything for us so that he can glorify God through us. Okay. You are God’s instrument that he plays to glorify the Father. Jesus plays you like a fiddle, or like Nate plays the guitar. What other instruments do you play? Depends on the day. So he could play anything, right? Nate could just step up here and play a kazoo, probably, to the glory of music. And Jesus, you are his instrument. He lives in you to produce music that glorifies his father. That’s this deal, that’s this gospel. He lives in you. He loves you. He has no problem with you. He is taking care of all of the sin and the muck and the mire that we produced in our lives. He’s washed you clean. And he is gonna produce something beautiful, a music, and we’re gonna call that music love. And it’s beautiful. Okay, so what does this mean that Jesus is gonna glorify us, um, live through us? What does that mean for us today? It means we can depend on Jesus for absolutely everything in your life today. We should depend on Jesus in our lives for absolutely everything. And we must depend on Jesus alone for absolutely everything in our life. But wait, what about me? What when can I depend on myself? When can what can I depend on myself for? I’m full of good ideas. And the answer is nothing. That’s not who you are anymore. You don’t have to try to figure your life out anymore. You don’t have to try to worry about tomorrow. You don’t have to worry about the past, you don’t have to worry about anything. Your life belongs to Jesus and you can trust him. He wants to live through you. He is living through you. It’s not who you are anymore, right? And this isn’t about putting down the human race. This is this is the pinnacle of human living, human existence. This is what we were made to be. This is what Jesus made us through the gospel. We are like empty gloves without him, but with him, it’s a hand inside a glove that is giving us meaning and purpose and power and life. We were never created to be these independent little beings, choosing our own way. We were created with this incredible capacity to engage in real relationships with God and with people. But relationships mean one thing, and that’s reliance, dependence, humility. That’s how relationships work. You have to rely on somebody, you have to trust somebody, you have to depend on somebody. And the one word where you we’re gonna use to describe these relationships that we’re designed to experience, the perfect relationship, is described by the word love. Love. If your relationship with God is not described by that word, get ready for God to rock your world. Because that is the definition that God has for his relationship with you: love. He loves you, he cares for you so much. And if your experience with relationships with other people isn’t described in this way of love, God’s mission is to restore to you all this new definition of love, and all by all the children in his family coming together as a family, and we call that the church. And the church’s design is to love each other, take care of each other, and give their lives for each other in humility. And that is our purpose. He has this mission, and it’s his plan to accomplish this mission, this mission. So let’s see how Paul unfolds this plan for us. Because Paul started a church in Corinth, and he did it this way, with this love and this relationship and this humility and this faith that we’re talking about. That’s how Paul did this. So let’s see how Paul planted this church by depending on Jesus instead of himself. There’s so many ways to do church. And you can, but really, it’s you’re gonna depend on self and man’s wisdom, or you’re gonna depend on Jesus. And that’s the the big lesson that we’re learning here. When I was uh 15, I went repelling. Anyone been repelling? You’ve been repelling? Scariest thing, don’t ever do it. It is the absolute worst. So when you’re repelling, you’re like at the edge of a cliff and seven miles down, and at the bottom is just spikes sticking up. With all the bodies of the repellers who have gone before. And and it’s just down, and it’s so terrifyingly scary. And your Uncle Edwin, who’s maybe watching, just kidding. He uh he tells you to stand backwards, and this is the cliff, and he ties you up with you know some knot he learned in junior high. And he tells you, don’t worry about anything, just fall backwards. Just fall backwards. And it’s terrifying. It is it is absolutely you you guys seen those trust falls, right? On America’s Funny Some videos, because they never work. Because someone always falls the wrong way. I don’t know how do you fall the wrong way in trust fall? Like all the people are there and you fall this way. It’s just so weird. But um, so you fall backwards, and he my uncle would told me, he said, fall backwards, and I was like, I could not do it. I had a mental block, and so and I kept like bending my knees, and you’re just don’t bend your knees if you’re repelling. You just you have to like fall backward because it’s the it’s the pressure against the side that makes you able to repel. And it if your brain doesn’t trust in the ropes and in the person teaching you, you cannot do it. And so you’re because you’re like this and you’re you’re falling, and it just doesn’t work. And so then you’re just holding onto a rope banging against the side of the and then and it took me 30 minutes to just go like this. It took me so long, and then I did it, and I was like, you start like kind of bouncing against the the wall, and you’re like, hey, this is kind of fun. I’ll never do it again, but it’s kind of fun. And so, and then you start going down and you’re like, Oh, okay, I see it, I see it. But that that that moment, that 30 minutes, I was sweating, I was stressed, I was worried. And if someone asked me, how’s your life going? I said, I would have said, My life sucks right now. I would have been so upset. And and it that’s that’s how trust works with God. It’s it’s so crazy to think we have to trust this invisible God, that he loves me, that he is in complete control, and he’s asking me to do something absolutely insane. Trust him with the deepest parts of my life. Not what my job is, or but he’s asking me to trust him with my heart, that that I am loved, that he accepts me, that he’s not angry with me. These deep things where there’s wounds, where people have hurt me, where there’s just a lot of pain. That’s where God is asking us to trust his way instead of our own way. You see, in my heart, my way is to protect my heart and try to get love to meet my needs in my way. But God’s way is to trust him that he loves me and pour out my own life in response to him for other people. That’s God’s way. So Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 1, and I, brethren, I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, declare unto you the testimony of God, the word of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Paul was brilliant, educated, respected. He was like a doctor in that day. He he was disciplined, and those are not bad things. But the flesh doesn’t care if things are good or bad, the flesh can twist anything to be about me. Me. The flesh can take, I’m a good person, and the flesh can twist that to where that’s about me and not from the Lord. So if Paul consistently used his natural gifts and abilities in the flesh to serve God, there’s a very real possibility that Paul would start to trust in himself. And that’s what Paul’s saying here. He’s saying it’s being gifted is not bad. It’s never, it’s never about how gifted you are or how dumb you are, how disciplined you are or how relaxed you are, how talented you are or how simple you are. It’s never about that. The problem is what we trust in. Are we going to trust in our talent, our discipline, our giftedness instead of Jesus? Because that’s how we steal glory from God. Remember the last verse of chapter one, he said that all that all people that we would all glorify God. That’s the purpose of the church. That’s the purpose of what we’re doing here. And Satan himself even got kicked out of heaven. Do you know Satan used to be the worship leader in heaven? See, watch out, bro. He was like the best worship leader in heaven. His entire body was musical instruments. He didn’t have to like bring a guitar. His whole he had pipes and timbrels, whatever those are, just on himself. And he was the worship leader in heaven. And then he got this thought of pride. I should, I’m so beautiful, I should be worshipped alongside of God. And he was instantly cast out of God’s presence, cast out of heaven, because you can’t steal that kind of glory from God. So Paul teaches us in this that he implemented this radical strategy for church that would probably get laughed at in our world today. If someone dared to implement the strategy Paul’s talking about right now, they’d probably get laughed out of their church unless their church was in a bar. So Paul says this. He says, I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. So Paul determined, which means he decided, he chose, he made a choice. And the choice shows us everything about what Paul loved. What did Paul love? He loved Jesus. He loved Jesus. And he had accepted the call of God in his life to serve him. But Paul loved Jesus more than that mission. See, if Paul loved the mission more than he loved Jesus, he would use anything to try to accomplish the mission. Right? You guys who were in the army, it’s like you accomplish the mission no matter what the cost, right? But for Paul, he loved Jesus more than the mission, so he would not do anything to accomplish the mission. He would not use his own, he would not do something in his own way. He would only do things that glorify Jesus. Paul knew that first, more important than the mission, he was called not just to do the mission, but to know Jesus and to love Jesus. And to know that Jesus loved him as first and then love him in response. And it’s that love relationship that we are called to much more than we’re called to serve God. Is serving God important? Yes. But God can use a donkey to preach his word. And he has. No jokes about the pastor. God doesn’t need us. But boy, does he love us. And he loves us as his children. And let me tell you this. You do not have to serve God one day in your life, and he will love you just as much as he loves you right now because you’re his child. Now, do our lives matter? Absolutely. And there will be a reason to serve God. And there will be heavenly, you know, rewards and stuff like that as we give our lives. But it has nothing to do with your love that God, that the love that God has for you. Your position in Christ is not affected by what you do, good, bad, or anything. You do not need to tithe. God does not need your money. God needs nothing. He has the cattle on a thousand hills, the Bible says. Which means God’s rich. He’s not broke. We’re never even gonna ask you to tithe. The New Testament says nothing about tithing except that it was bad for the people who did it because they thought they were earning God’s acceptance by tithing. But we will talk about generously partnering with God. And if you want to partner with God, you can. You can figure out how. I’m not gonna even tell you. Because God loves you. And I want you to know, as a church, we are gonna stand on God’s love as the foundation of what we do, right? You can’t earn God’s love. We can’t earn it. If you never drank again, that doesn’t make you God love you anymore. But because of his love, he motivates us to love others with the same love that he loves us with. And so we have to think about how his love has impacted our lives and how we could best love the people that are right in front of us, that are right next to us. What is the best way we can love them? God literally takes away all the rules from us and he says, here’s the rule. What is the most loving thing you can do for the person right across from you? Just do what your heart tells you is the most loving thing to do for that person. If you want to show Jesus that you love him, and you do, you love him, give him your trust, is what Paul’s saying. Your faith. Did God need Paul to be special when he was planning this church? Like I said, he could have used a donkey. What was special about Paul is that he had given his whole life, his heart to Jesus. And that’s what Jesus is asking of you today in this room on May 4th. May the fourth be with you. On May 4th, 2025, Jesus is asking you not to do more for him and not to give more to him. He’s asking you, is your heart open and receiving his love? Or are you hiding things? Are you holding things in your heart that you don’t want to give to Jesus? It starts with us offering our hearts to him. Paul decided to do it God’s way when it came to this church in Corinth, to love God first, and through that relationship to ask God to build up his church. And he did that through worship and prayer. And so that’s that’s how this church started through worship and prayer. And worship and prayer are important for us. You know, so they help us develop our love relationship with God. That’s why it’s important that we sing songs every time we come to church. So we gotta ask why you do everything. Okay. In our church, we’re gonna sing songs. Why? Because It helps our hearts to express things to God, love things, love things to God, and we’re gonna pray, which helps us express things to God about the love that we have for him and what we um uh can receive from him as we trust in him. Last week we learned about this phrase: Christ crucified, which is the greatest oxymoron in human history, because Christ means king, he needs nothing, he is life, right? That’s what Christ means the anointed Messiah. He’s he should have victory and power over everything. And crucified means he was humbled and killed and sacrificed for us, which speaks of his death. So the life of Jesus Christ crucified, his death. Christ crucified. I know nothing except the life of Jesus and the death of Jesus. That’s what’s Paul’s saying. That’s the only thing that matters. The life of Jesus and the death of Jesus. Does this really work? Yes. The life and death of Jesus is where the power is in the church. That’s it. Let me illustrate. Sin and shame in your life meet the death of Jesus. No matter what we’ve done, his death is sufficient to cover and take away our guilt and shame and sin. And it’s not like God just forgets about it. It’s not like he just puts on rose-colored glasses and he just sees you as perfect. No, the death of Jesus actually makes you holy and righteous. How righteous are you? You are as righteous as Jesus was, because his life is given to you. His life is put in you. You are put in him, and through that union, you are not now just God’s not pretending you’re good. You are actually good. But you know what? No one really believes this. Very few people actually believe this. Because this literally fixes everything in your life. Do you believe that you have been made righteous and holy? You are a child of God. You will. We’ll get there. But I know in my heart there’s deep dark corners that are that the lights haven’t been turned on yet. And I’m trying to believe in the power in his what his death has accomplished for me and all these things. Because the enemy, he’s really sneaky, and he tells me, You’re an idiot, you’re selfish, you want that sin over there, you want this thing. You know what? They don’t like you, and that that means you’re stupid. And the enemy’s so good at sneaking those thoughts into my head. And sometimes in my heart, those little corners, they believe his lies. That’s spiritual warfare. Are we gonna believe Jesus and what he did for us? Or are we gonna believe the lies of the enemy that you are something that Jesus says you’re not? You’ve you’re holy, you’re righteous. Oh man, it’s so good to talk about these things. So the devil tries to bring these things up. Oh, you remember that sin that Sean did just yesterday? You remember the sin that he he did? It was terrible. And God responds when the devil attacks us and he says, Oh, you mean that sin that I poured out my wrath upon my beloved son for three hours upon the cross? That sin? The one that I eliminated, I paid for. Yeah, I remember it. I remember that I poured out every single ounce of my wrath upon my son. And I have no anger left. All my righteous anger has been poured out, and I’m not angry about it anymore. There is no more anger left. Do you know what that means for us? The death of Jesus? It means God can never be angry at me again. He will never be mad at you. Ever. Because all your sin, past, present, and future, was laid on Jesus on the cross, and all of his wrath was poured out on Jesus. So now the even in our justice system, we have double jeopardy. So you can’t convict someone of the same sin. You can’t punish them the same for the same thing twice. You can’t go to jail for the same thing twice. And it’s the same thing with God. Once it’s done and paid for, it is done and paid for. And this is the amazing thing that we get from the death of Jesus. And that’s how you deal with the enemy’s accusations. It’s like, what did Jesus do? It’s what he says about me that matters, not what I feel and not what the enemy is planting in my mind. Okay, so that’s the death of Jesus. He’s not, so God will never be angry with us because of the death of Jesus. But what about the life of Jesus? What’s the power in that? The power in the death is that we’re freed from guilt, we’re freed from shame, we’re freed from sin. But what is the power in the life of Jesus? Jesus didn’t stay dead, but he rose from the dead, and that means that his life, his resurrection life, is completely transferable to you. That’s what that means. He is shareable with us. We share in his death and we share in his life. The same portion we share in his death. How much of Jesus’ death was for you? All of it. So how much of his resurrection life is also for you? All of it. That’s right. This is how we walk in a way that pleases God. Okay? I could tell you all the rules, but you will never follow them. Look where you go to church. Just kidding. The law does not fix anybody, and nobody can keep it. But the spirit of the risen Jesus lives inside us and he guides us and guides us by our hearts. And he says he’s way better at keeping the law than you ever were. So he takes the law, sets it aside, and he says, I have a better way for you to live a holy life by my spirit. Just look to me. Just believe in what I have done for you, and my spirit will completely transform your life. Has anyone’s life in here been completely transformed by the power of God? It should be like everybody’s. Yay! Just kidding. It’s amazing the joy that we have when we see that Jesus completely transforms our life. And Paul, as he plants his church and he’s writing this to us, he is determined to rely on the death and life of Jesus for everything in this church. He’s determined. So that’s what this book is about. It is about Christ crucified, his life and his death, and what that means to us. So how did it how did it look to rely on Jesus exclusively? Because that word exclusively is the one that gets us in trouble. All right. So the world is fine if you like Jesus, but the world is not okay if you exclusively love Jesus. But look what Paul says. This is what it looks like to exclusively trust Jesus in verse 3. I was with you in weakness, in fear, in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power. So let’s look. This is how the church operated when Paul was there. This is how Paul led his church. So let’s look at a he says, I was with you. So that’s that talks about connection. Like he was in had a relationship with the people, he had intimacy with his church. He did not preach on Sunday and go home, and you didn’t see Paul until he approached with his robe and the people incense before him, and everyone, shh, Paul is coming. Paul is coming. Oh Reverend Paul, oh Most Holy, his excellency is here. No, Paul literally got a job making tents with the guy next to him. Some other guy at the at the at the church there. And so he spent time with these people. Jesus did the same thing. Jesus spent time with his father, and then Jesus spent time with who? His twelve disciples, right? And then his and then the people of the world too. And that’s how Jesus teaches us how to do relationships. And it it’s this T-I-M-E. Time. That’s how you do relationships. If you want to grow in your relationship with your wife, you spend time with her. Imagine for me, you get married, and you’re so excited for your wedding, and you’re just like, oh baby, this is gonna be awesome. And you I do, I do, you kiss, and she’s just like, oh, this is gonna be so great. And the husband, the new husband, he’s like, I love this. This is so great. I’m so happy to be in a relationship with you. I’m going fishing, and I’ll be back in six months. So I’ll see you later. Have dinner ready for me when I’m back. How is she gonna feel about that relationship? Not okay. Right? Are they still married? Yeah, technically. Are they enjoying anything about this relationship? No, because you have to be together and investing time to be growing and enjoying what a relationship is, and what a relationship is, is love. For you to love someone, it involves time, a sacrifice of time. Man, I relation I wish my relationship with God was better. Well, there’s a path to that, and it’s the path of time. Now I’m not saying have you guys heard people say, I need um uh to spend time with Jesus. That’s what what they really should say is you should read the Bible, not you should spend time with Jesus. Because Jesus is always with you. All right? Jesus, his presence is always with you. He does not leave you. It’s that he cannot leave his house. He’s you are his home. And so he lives in your heart. So he’s always spending time with you. You’re going to the bathroom, he’s spending time with you. You’re sleeping, he’s spending time with you. So it’s not about you need to spend time with Jesus, but we need to read the Bible and invest in that relationship, and that’s what takes time. You you open the Bible and you spend time in the Bible and prayer with Jesus, and those are those are important tools. They’re not magic. It is Jesus himself that is the relationship, but it the tools are nice, the prayer and the Bible reading. They do help, they help us to know him because you’re listening to him, you’re giving time to him. Um, man, I I wish that I had a better relationship with the people at church. Well, great. Come and talk to people. Go out to lunch. Where’s everyone going out to breakfast after? There’s some people going out to breakfast after this. I guess meatballs is having breakfast now. Meatballs for breakfast. Who would have known? But it’s it’s awesome to see you guys all here, but online, and you know, it’s important to connect and invest in your relationship with God’s family. This is your family, these are your brothers and sisters. So get to know how to love them and pour out your love for them. And then, man, I wish I had a relationship with this world where I was sharing, you know, uh, you know, what is our relationship with the world? Well, at Renew, they have an awesome connection. This church has an awesome connection with the world. They’re they’re loving on people every time they come in. And so that’s an awesome way to connect with with this world. You you just invest time. See, each of these things is time. Time with your wife, your husband, time with your family, your church family, time with your heavenly father. These this is what causes relationships to grow is time. It’s an investment. Listen to people, talk with people. That’s why I had you guys spend 94 seconds getting to know people in this room. Because that was a very small investment, but you can love each other. You do love each other. And you guys did great. I like had to calm you down when I came back up here. You guys would have talked all service, which is fine. Okay, so that’s what he says. I was with you, Paul says. I was with you. And then he says, I was with you in weakness. That means Paul was not depending on himself. He didn’t think he was stronger than everybody, smarter than everybody. He was humble. And he recognizes his own need for God’s love and God’s power. He’s the same as you. That’s what how he led. And that’s what we do as well. We all are in the same boat. We’re all brothers and sisters who are equal. He says he was in fear. That means that he the it says in the Bible, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. What is this fear that he’s talking about? It means Paul was afraid of the dark or people scaring him. No. It means he was afraid of living his own way. He was afraid of that type of life where he would be living for his own glory, where he would be living by his flesh. He’s like, I’m aware that I’m needy and that he’s worthy, but I’m needy, and I need to live every moment in that reality. Paul, that’s how Paul led his church. I’m not nothing special. It is Jesus that lives in me and through me. And then he says, in fear and much trembling, which is a further description of he physically recoiled against the idea of living not by the Holy Spirit, but by his own life power. It was like, man, I do not want to live that way. I do not want to neglect his life in me. I must have his life. I will not move forward without depending on Jesus and not myself. It’s pretty extreme, this view that Paul has. So look in verse 4. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power. So Paul is rejecting this self-trust for all ministry for his whole life. He’s rejecting self-trust, even in preaching the gospel. He’s like, I’m not even gonna preach the gospel in my own way, especially preaching the gospel. You know, you can never manipulate someone into the kingdom of heaven, you can’t argue people into heaven. You guys have figured that out, I’m sure, at your age. What? Was that funny? You know, we we can’t manipulate people. All we can do is give them the truth in love. You can tell people the truth. Jesus loves them and he’s provided a way for salvation, forgiveness by Jesus dying on the cross, and all those who put their trust in him will go to heaven. And not only that, he will live in you and you will be a child of his. And he’ll you you can give your life to him and live your life for him if you put your trust in him. You can give them that truth, but it’s the Holy Spirit that transforms people. It’s the Holy Spirit that helps them to believe the truth. People get revelation from the Spirit, and then they believe. If you ask, you know, um how each one of us came to believe in Jesus. Each one of us has a story. Maybe it was your father, maybe it was your parents, maybe it was your pastor, maybe it was just some random guy on the beach wearing flip-flops with a bald head, telling you about Jesus, or at a bar, giving you a beer. Whoever it was, it was God that opened your mind and your heart to believe in his son. All that we ever do is give the truth and love people. Why Paul planted the church this way? Verse 5, it says, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. That’s why Paul did it this way, and that’s why we as a church need to live by faith and reliance on Jesus alone and not our own way, is so that we can have understand the power of God and live by the power of God. Here’s some examples of how we could do things with human reliance instead of reliance upon Jesus. We could have a reliance upon emotions. Have you guys ever heard a sermon that really played on your emotions? Or church that really was just like, you gotta believe. There’s nothing wrong with emotions until we start trusting in them. Your emotions are like the when you’re driving a car and it’s got the check engine light, and you know, you just ignore it. That’s what emotions are. They they’re telling us something is maybe wrong or just something needs addressed in our heart, and they’re not the problem themselves. When we try to fix our emotions, we’re taking a hammer and hammering out the light that’s blinking on our dashboard. That doesn’t fix the problem, right? The problem is with the engine. Our emotions are just a beautiful thing that God has given us to help us understand what’s going on in the soul, where we need God, where we connect with God. So that’s what our emotions are for. If you rely upon your emotions and you you that’s where you deal with your life, that’s not trusting in God’s way, but trusting in man’s way. Same thing. When you rely upon entertainment, you ever been to a church that has like lasers and fog and smoke, and it’s really super awesome? I have, and it’s entertaining, and there’s nothing wrong with it until you start trusting in it, and so you think, well, God’s gonna really use this to touch people. Reliance upon engaging personalities, these things can lead to a response, but they don’t build God’s kingdom. Uh they don’t build the church. God’s church is not built, God’s church is built on the word of God and the truth of and the power of the Holy Spirit in in our lives. That’s how the church is built. Can man’s wisdom set us free from sin? No, it can’t. You can achieve behavior modification, but that’s not freedom from sin. That’s like shining the outside of a cup and leaving the inside of the cup just dirty. That’s man’s wisdom, what they can offer. The inside of the cup is our soul. That’s God’s domain where his grace washes us clean by the blood of Jesus, and he’s the only one that can cleanse a heart. And that’s why we need this God. That’s why we need this Jesus. His power and his spirit are not just the Wisdom of men, but they actually fix what’s wrong inside us. How can I tell if I’ve been living by man’s wisdom and not God’s power and spirit? Well, I’ve been struggling with sin. I’m his child, but I’ve been struggling with sin. I’ve been falling, I’ve been hiding sin. Those are all symptoms. Not that I’m a bad person. No, no, no. I am holy and righteous. They are symptoms that I have been living by man’s wisdom, my wisdom, instead of his wisdom and his power and his spirit. We have to stop thinking that when we sin, it’s because we’re bad. Remember our first sermon in 1 Corinthians, we said, Are we saints or are we sinners? Paul says, We are saints. We were transformed. The death of Jesus really worked. It really changed us from sinner to saint. No matter what your behavior tries to tell you. And he takes responsibility for your behavior. And he said, I’ll take care of it, I’ll transform you. I’ll completely sanctify your life. That means set you apart for my work, my kingdom. But if I’m struggling with sin, it’s because I have my eyes on me instead of on his spirit and his power. Another way you can test, you can tell if you’ve been walking in the flesh, living by man’s wisdom, is I’m tired, burnt out, worn out. I’m tired of serving God. I’m tired of church. I’m burnt out. I’m worn out. Burnt out means I’ve been doing ministry in my own strength. Not his strength, my own. I’ve been trying to produce it. Maybe I’ve been confused on the source of real life and joy. Some people call this depression, discouragement. These are real things, and they can be symptoms that we have been living in the power of our own wisdom instead of the power of his spirit and life. These are all wonderful warning signs. I call them wonderful warning signs that we have chosen to walk in man’s wisdom instead of the gospel of grace, which is the power of God. So the power of God is the grace of God. Look back at chapter 1, verse 18. And it says, it says, For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are parenting, perishing, parenting. That was funny. But to those us who are being saved, it is the power of God. So the gospel is all we need, this gospel of grace. And the world says that’s dumb. You need so much more. You got to be smart, you got to be disciplined, you gotta be, you gotta have all this stuff figured out. And Jesus is like, you don’t, you just need me. Are we gonna believe it? Romans 1.16 says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel but of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. First for the Jew and also for the Greek. Wouldn’t you like to see the power of God in your life? You don’t have to go to Bible college, you don’t have to go to seminary, you don’t have to read the Bible for a thousand hours. There is one thing you have to do, and that is believe in the sufficiency of Jesus and his grace. Believe. And that is how the power of God is unleashed in our lives and we get to experience it. That’s how his spirit works. Believe in Jesus exclusively. We’re never gonna see it if we mix Jesus with man’s wisdom. If we say, yeah, Jesus, he saves us, but if we want to change, you gotta follow the rules. You gotta go to church, you gotta do this, you gotta give, you gotta work, you gotta do all these things. That’s mixing two messages. It’s either Jesus does everything for us or he doesn’t. Which one is it? Rely upon him, Paul says. In 2 Corinthians, the next letter he gives to these guys, in chapter 13, he says this for though he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by the power of God. So that’s Jesus, died and alive, crucified in weakness, lives by the power of God, resurrected, living in heaven, he’s seated in the right hand of the Father, right? But we who are weak in him, we we also are weak in him, but we shall live by him by the power of God, live with him by the power of God towards you. So Paul says, our church, our life is gonna be that we look weak. We’re not ever gonna talk about how awesome we are or how amazing we are, but our life will be his life lived through us. And that’s what it is. And that’s the message of the first six verses of First Corinthians chapter two. Amen. All right, would you guys all stand with me? We’re gonna respond to God’s word. I think Buddy has the right idea. Spin around in circles with joy. So when you hear God’s word, what do you do? What do you do? You hear it, you have a choice. You’re either gonna believe it, or you’re gonna go on your own way. Continuing to believe in man’s wisdom. Okay. God’s word today says to you, rely upon Jesus. Depend on Jesus. It’s very simple. Like depend on Jesus. Three words. So you can take that home and just ask yourself that question when all the stuff happens today. The dog pees on the floor, you know, you’re broke, whatever is the itch issue that happens today. Just remember God’s word to you today was depend on Jesus. And see what God does in your heart and see what joy floods your life. As you say, Jesus, I do. I’m gonna depend on you. I’m gonna give you my all. I’m gonna give you my heart and see what God does to transform you and you how He uses you today. I look forward to hearing the stories of how God uses you guys this week.