All right, brothers and sisters, you can go and open up your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 3, if you would. We are excited for the season in which we'll be able to open up our Sunday school classes again and have programs again for our children and be able to meet for Sunday school live and in person. But in the meantime, we are grateful that at least we have this where we can gather together and we can get in front of the Word together. and look at the things that God has given to us and rejoice in the fact that His instruction endures every season, no matter what changes about us, Christ is consistent, Christ is who He is, and so we're very grateful to be able to be together today. We're looking at 1 Corinthians chapter three, and we're gonna be reading verses 18 through 23 this morning, and in the verses that precede this section, Paul's just shown us two illustrations of the church's growth model. We labor together like farm workers. Two weeks ago we spoke about this. Farm workers who are in concert trying to labor so that we might prepare the field of God's church for a harvest, but only the mysterious power of God is able to produce life and vitality. No matter how much effort we put into it, if the Lord God himself does not bring life, there will be no harvest. There will be only a dead field of dirt. And so no individual worker needs to be exalted above any other. individual worker. We all look to the Creator to bring life and we rejoice in that. And then last week Paul preached about how the church is like a building. A building that is in the process of being edified and risen. And so our only hope in standing firm and true is to be founded upon the work of Jesus Christ, which forms the only faithful foundation upon which the church can be built. And so we can't base our faith on the teachings of one man or another man. We must build it all on Christ Himself because He is the only cornerstone, He is the one foundation we can trust, and He is, brothers and sisters, immovable, immovable. These metaphors are intended to help dismantle the mindset of sectarianism that had plagued the church in Corinth. Remember, we're studying a letter that was written to a body of believers that had particular, specific problems that needed to be worked through. And so Paul desired unity for these Corinthians. He wanted them to be one church, united under Christ. But an inherent, divisive habit stood in their way of being unified. Following the model of the secular culture that surrounded them, the culture out of which they were saved, these Corinthians, many of which did not come from a Jewish background, many of which were very new to the word of God, were eager to prove their wisdom by aligning with what they considered to be the best teachers and leaders. And so there began to be this division and the split in the church where people said, well, I like this leader better than that leader. And my leader says it more succinctly than your leader does. Oh, my leader has a better approach in the pulpit. He's a better preacher. My leader is a better shepherd than leader. And they were beginning to fraction and become a church divided. And so this competitive mentality was undermining the purpose and the character of God's church. They weren't behaving as a group of grateful redeemed individuals who by God's mercy and generosity had been brought from darkness into light. They were acting instead like the lost world around them by constantly competing with one another and claiming to have victory over one another. And so following the two metaphors that were just given to us by Paul, he's going to now press again into this direct issue of wisdom, focusing on one of the most important characteristics that must define our attitude towards wisdom itself. The man who wants to be wise must first learn to be humble before God. The man who wants to be wise must first learn to be humble before God. And so we are in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. We're looking at verses 18 through 23. We're going to end this chapter this morning. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile. So let no one boast in men, for all things are yours. whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or the present, or the future. All are yours and you are Christ's. And Christ is God's. Let us bow in a word of prayer as we humble our hearts and prepare ourselves to really learn what we just read. Mighty God, if I came into this pulpit unarmed with your word, I would have nothing of eternal value to give the people before me. But we praise You, Lord, that the Word is at the center of this pulpit in this church, that by Your amazing revelation, You have not left us to our own devices, but instead You have interceded, You have come into this world that we have corrupted with our sin, and You have given us light and truth. And so we pray that you would feed us well by it today, Lord God. Give us strength in your scripture. Help us to be very, very grateful for it and let us value it above all things, Lord God. May it be more precious to us than gold and silver. May we desire it more than jewels and wealth and riches. May we want it more than health, Lord God. This word is to us so important and so vital. To our fellowship with you, and to our representation of you in this world. And so I pray, Lord God, that you would settle these things in our hearts and minds, and that they would manifest themselves, these truths would become alive in us as we obey them, in Jesus' name, amen. So let me lay out a brief roadmap of the passage that we're going to be studying today. We will see Paul give two stern warnings in the section that we're studying. Each one is urging a mature sense of humility, and each one is marked by the same phrase. You'll notice it twice. In verse 18, let no one, and then he says, deceive himself. So we're going to see that pride and wisdom is a lie that we tell ourselves. We are humbled when we're honest about our limits and our need for the Lord. So verse 18, let no one deceive himself. And then we see that phrase again in verse 21, let no one. But this time, there's a different instruction to it. Let no one boast in men. Our source of pride and wisdom cannot be ourselves, but neither can it be the people that we associate ourselves with, for they depend completely upon God, as we also must. So we will tackle these two warnings in order. We see in verse 18 that the wisdom problem the Corinthians were suffering from did not come from outside of the church, but rather it came from within. Again, let no one deceive himself. In the letter to the Galatian church that we studied some months ago, you may recall the apostle Paul was warning his brothers and sisters in Galatia about a threat that was very seriously possibly going to divide the church. And that threat came from outside. Teachers from outside of the church came into the church and began to spread doctrines that were contrary to what Paul and the other apostles had established there in Galatia. That is a consistent threat to God's people. We've always got to be sure to guard ourselves, our hearts, and our minds against false teachers, against the influences of the world that want to corrupt the good doctrine of the Church. But here in Corinth, they have no one to blame but themselves. This is not a problem that has infiltrated the Church. It is a problem that exists within them, that needs to be dealt with in heart. And there is a threat of self-deception among those who are worldly wise. This self-deception comes from an overconfidence in our ability to discern and to understand using the natural cognitive tools that God has given to each of us. We see this described by Paul in other places. Romans 12.3 says, for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment. each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. And so the Apostle Paul is there pointing out the fact that it's not about our intelligence. It's not about our ability to comprehend and pull things apart and put them back together again intellectually. No, it's about the faith that God has put into us to trust His wisdom above and beyond our own. And so there is this self-deception that is hindering the church. It is a serious wound that the Corinthians are dealing with. Perhaps this is the most twisted brand of deception. For self-deception is entered into willingly. It is a game that you play against yourself. So no matter how you play it, you're going to lose. You cannot blame the craftiness of another for the self-deception that you bring upon yourself. You have set the snare, and now you have also fallen into it. Most of you know that I'm a mechanic. I used to work in a shop. And mechanics have this saying that goes back and forth between them. For those who like to think of themselves as mechanics, but who really don't have much business in the garage, there are those who know enough to be dangerous, right? There are people that have learned enough about cars that they know basically how a car works, but sometimes that brings into them a sense of false security. They think that they can take it apart, so they must be able to put it back together again. And a little knowledge can get you deeper into trouble than no knowledge at all. And so sometimes in Christ we are the same way. We look at ourselves and think, well, the Lord has blessed me with an intelligent mind. I can reason. I can solve problems. I can think through my issues. And since God has not made us utterly dumb, we begin to get a false sense of security about our intelligence and about the ways that we can think through life's problems. And then we begin to rest on our own wisdom. We start feeling that we have enough tools of our own. We don't need God to lead us by the hand. We're grown now. We can do it by ourselves. And yet that is, friends, a terrible misunderstanding of wisdom. If we are going to be wise in this world, it's not going to come from our intelligence. It's not even going to come from our education. It's going to come from our dependence upon the God who alone supplies wisdom to us. When we deceive ourselves, brothers, we are betraying our own trust. Think about this. You all know somebody that you thought you could trust. Somebody that you depended upon. Somebody that you put your faith in. And once they proved to you that they were just a mere human and they let you down, it was difficult to trust them again, wasn't it? Sometimes this is our own spouse. Sometimes this is a pastor who has burned us. Sometimes this is somebody that we work underneath. Human beings always eventually let us down. But friends, when you lie to yourself, that's gonna create trust issues within your own heart. And that's not entirely a bad thing, friends. You have let yourself down before. Don't forget that. When you're tempted to rest upon your own wisdom and to think of your knowledge as sufficient, remember how many times your personal wisdom has fallen short of the wisdom of God. Remember how many times you have been tempted and tickled by your ear to be drawn into the wisdom of the world which resonated with your desires and in doing so you left behind the wisdom of God and it only left you broken and hurting. Friends, we need to learn to distrust our own wisdom to a healthy degree and recognize that the wisdom of God is so much far superior than our own that we would do well to trust God better than we even trust ourselves. Now, if you've been attending here for a while, you know that we preach the doctrine of the depravity of man at First Family Church. The depravity of man simply explains that since the fall of Adam in the garden, the first man sinned, everyone who has come after him, with the exception of Jesus Christ, every human being is born a natural sinner. We are born cut off from God. We are not near to God in our birth. We are born unable to please God through our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. So we are not intrinsically good and then made bad by our circumstances. We're not intrinsically good and then spoiled by our environment. No, we are born with a brokenness and a need for Christ. We teach this doctrine because it is consistent to the true testimony of Scripture. And apart from the doctrine of depravity, people tend to develop a very inaccurate view of their own righteousness. This inaccurate view of their own righteousness can hinder them from seeing their need for salvation. If we think we're basically good people, then why do we need a Savior to come from on high to save us from ourselves? Now one of the key verses that is used to support the doctrine of depravity is Jeremiah 17.9. And I'll quote it for you, it's on the screen. Jeremiah the prophet declared, the heart, he's speaking of the heart of man here, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Now this scripture is often cited as a text supporting the doctrine of depravity, that we are all sinful within, that we don't need to be corrupted from outside or tempted by the devil because we've got enough corruption in ourselves to have to battle sin every day and to need salvation. But let's not miss the details of what was said there. The heart is not just sinful. How's it described there? It is deceitful. It is tricky. It knows how to pull the wool over someone else's eyes and even how to pull the wool over our own eyes here. It is so desperately sick that our own heart will often lie to our own face. And we're foolish enough to buy it. When it sees things in reality that do not match its desires, the heart is quick to lie. The heart will campaign to distort the truth. We often become victims of our own sinful propaganda. You know what that word means, right? Propaganda? It's right in our face right now because we're in an election cycle. Propaganda is the constant supply of information, true or not, that shapes the way a person thinks. We have plenty of evidence to prove that our foolishness and our lack of wisdom gives us a false sense of who we are. We often convince ourselves that we're mightier than we are, that we're more mature than we are, that we are holier than we are, and we say it to ourselves so much that we begin to believe it. The heart deceives us into thinking that we can stand on our own two feet, when in reality we need to be on our two knees before the throne of the king, because it is only his forgiveness and grace that helps us to walk forward with him. And so in this passage of scripture that we're studying today, the Apostle Paul reminds us of some things. He reminds us that our best wisdom is second-rate wisdom. The best wisdom that we can conjure up as human beings falls woefully short of what God can give to us. In verse 19, for the wisdom of this world is folly with God. Your best thoughts, your most detailed understanding of things is so short of what God knows, it is like foolishness to him. In verse 20, he goes on to say, Now how does he describe those thoughts? He says that they are futile. They are futile before him. They are powerless. They do not produce what they intend to produce. And here in verse 20, Paul is actually quoting Psalm 94, 11, because Paul, like any good preacher, is just going to lean on the word. He's not just generating all this stuff himself. He's going back to scripture. And so in 94, 11 in Psalm says, the Lord knows the thoughts of man that they are but a breath. They are but a breath. Friends, our thoughts are but a breath, or in the words of Solomon, a vapor, right? They contain such little substance, they are constantly in transition. We see evidence in this by looking at how quickly man's determination of what is right and good, how quickly it changes. Sometimes from one generation to another, we might be in the midst of one of those great shifts right now. where the world thought it had figured out what was good and best, and then suddenly somebody else with a louder voice rises up and then the whole mass of people begins to follow in a different direction and think that good and best is something they need to redefine and reestablish. Rather than seek what is true, the thoughts of man are often so caught up with what is practical and useful in the moment that it will sacrifice truth for expediency. It is the wisdom of man that caused the Pharisees, come up with a loophole allowing the children of elderly parents to dedicate whatever money and resources that they would have given to their elderly parents in support of those vulnerable mothers and fathers to dedicate it instead to the Lord, to get out of helping their parents. Let me read to you Mark 7 verses 9 through 13. Jesus said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition. For Moses said, honor your father and mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die. But you say, and this is Jesus speaking to the Pharisees here, if a man tells his father or mother whatever you would have gained from me as Corbin, that is, given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do. So let me explain to you what's going on here. There was this resistance among the people of Israel to follow that mighty commandment to honor your father and mother through to its completion. When mom and dad got old, when mom and dad began to get weak and they couldn't take care of themselves anymore, God's law said, you honor them, you take care of them, you stand by their side, you look out for them. And yet the people of Israel were so stingy with their money and resources. They didn't want to have to spend those monies on their mom and their dad. They didn't want a burden of taking care of their mothers and fathers. And sadly we see an echo of that in our own culture today, don't we? We see so many of our elderly that deserve respect and honor, and yet they are relegated to the side, they are marginalized and forgotten. And that's what the Israelites were doing. In fact, they were so intent on doing this, that they added a clause to modify God's law. God's law said, honor your mother and father. And the Pharisees came along and the scribes came along and they devised a little subtext, a little loophole that said, well, there is an exception to this rule. If you will declare publicly that all of the resources you would have put into mom and dad are now going to go to the work of the Lord, then you are free from your obligation to them because the work of the Lord is more important. That was a man-made law that then obscured the true law of God. You know what God's law said? It said, take care of mom and dad. And yet the wisdom of man said, we can do better. We can change this around. You know, it was really just an opportunity for these wicked and greedy people to take that little money and give a little gift to the Lord up front, and then all the extra that they would have paid on mom and dad to put it in their own pockets. That is how the mind of man works. It is deceitfully wicked above all things. It is the wisdom of man that says that a poor, unwanted child is valueless and should be mercifully terminated before it is born. That's what our society says today. Abortion is one of the ugliest and most shameful sins that rests upon the conscious of man in this present hour. The death of 225,000 Americans and counting to COVID-19 has turned our society upside down, hasn't it? Did you know that in 2017, 862,320 babies were legally murdered in America? Because we have made it a law that you can get an abortion. If you don't want that child in your life, just go ahead and take care of it. 862,000 babies, and that doesn't count all of them, because there are many that are aborted in clinics that are not following government mandates. Do you see how twisted our mind is? That is the wisdom of man. We must learn to distrust the wisdom of man and to anchor ourselves instead to the wisdom of the living God. Paul reminds us not only is man's very best wisdom second rate, but man's best lies do not work on God. We may be able to fool ourselves, friends, but the lies that we tell ourselves to justify our sin will always fall short of convincing the Lord God of our innocence. Verse 19 says, for it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness, right? This is actually a quotation of Job 5.13, which says, He catches the wise in their own craftiness, and the schemes of the wily are brought to a quick end. You will not deceive the Lord God. Justice will eventually fall to you, even if you convince your fellow man that you are righteous. Even if you convince yourself that the actions that you do, that you know are against the word of God, are actually okay in your circumstances. Friends, we need to know who we're contending with here. Conversations in our own head are not unheard by the Lord. You can plot and scheme, but your efforts are like an open book to the one who sees all things and doesn't just see the words in your head, but the intentions of your heart as well. A convincing plea to the Lord God, trying to get him to change what he has declared as right and good, will not sway the king. He will not buckle to what is wrong or weak because a mortal was able to manipulate or confuse him. It does not happen. And I see such a Such an ugly example of this in the prosperity gospel that is so common in the world today, especially in our own nation. Prosperity praying looks much different than biblical praying. Think about it. It is just as twisted, by the way, as prosperity preaching. Prosperity praying means say the right thing for the right amount of time, and you can twist the arm of God and compel him to do what you want. If you just believe that you're going to get what you want from God, if your faith is strong enough, then God has no choice. He must give you what you desire because you have the faith to get it. This is nothing short of blasphemy. Who's really the one in control in that scenario? Is the skilled prayer who knows how to tug at the heartstrings of God the one in control? Or is it the one to whom he appeals? Jesus taught us to pray humbly. He taught us to ask the Lord that His will be done in our lives, that His kingdom would come. And this is not lip service, friends. We may deceive ourselves, but no amount of praying that God will let you get away with your sin is going to let you continue in your sin. Christ says there's one way for you to get away from your sin, and that is to repent and trust that I will wash away the record of sin that you've accumulated for yourself. Trust in my son, Jesus Christ, for there is no other name under heaven and earth by which a man may be saved. So the most impressive attempt at coercion that you could devise will not make an impression on the immovable and mighty God. Praise His name. Yahweh does not negotiate with us. And that is not to say He's not compassionate with us, friends. That is not to say that He doesn't hear us out when we pour our hearts out to Him. I was just studying the book of Habakkuk. If you've never read that little Old Testament book, three chapters long. Habakkuk doesn't hold back. He asks God, essentially, where are you? It just seems like the wicked are getting away with everything. Why have you not come? Why have you not intervened? Why are you not bringing salvation to your people? He's honest with the Lord God. But the Lord responds by reminding him of his sovereignty. The Lord listens to him. He doesn't smite him down. He has compassion upon Habakkuk and the broken heart that he's expressing before him, but it doesn't cause him to change his scheme. It does not cause him to change his plans. He simply assures Habakkuk that the things he is allowing to happen are happening for his purposes, and they will accomplish his good and perfect will. Prayer's purpose is not to change God's mind. It is to change your mind to match the mind of God. So friends, your only hope for wisdom is through a very unlikely path. The apostle Paul is going to line that out for us now. You must become what you refuse to believe that you are. If you hope to be wise, you must become a fool. Let him become a fool that he may become wise, says verse 18. Now to anyone who has read the Proverbs, to anyone who knows how important wisdom is to maturity and to holiness, this instruction might sound a little shocking at first read. Become a fool. Doesn't that fly in the face of everything that Solomon taught us? Become a fool? Throughout God's Word, we're told to be wise is better than to be a fool. And so in Proverbs 3, 13-15, Blessed is the one who finds wisdom and the one who gets understanding. For the gain from her is better than gain from silver, and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. So why is Paul telling us to become fools here? How can Paul justify telling us that we must become fools when everything else in God's word tells us that foolishness is to be condemned? Throughout the first portions of this letter itself, Paul made it clear that in order for the Corinthians to walk properly in the Lord, their whole definition of wisdom needed to be re-engineered. When man tries to understand and pursue wisdom apart from God, the results are nothing short of madness. So in order to grasp true, eternal wisdom, man will need to do more than just take a class. or get a better teacher over him, man's gonna have to do the opposite of what his worldly notion of wisdom tells him to do. Man's gonna have to become small in order to become great. He's gonna need to become weak before God will make him strong, and before he can truly understand and embrace wisdom, he must become, in the eyes of a fallen and broken world, a fool. Remember Paul's words from chapter one. Chapter one, 1 Corinthians, verses 27 through 29 says, But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He's returning to that notion right now when he calls for us to become fools in order to gain wisdom. So how does he expect us to become fools? We, brothers and sisters, need to stop caring about whether the world thinks we are wise. We need to stop caring. We need to make the world's opinion of us of very, very little import. The world itself, which would love to judge us and tell us whether we know anything or not, the world itself is not wise. The world is careening out of control. How can you trust that same world to tell you whether or not you are wise? Our Savior Jesus Christ put this into very clear words in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 15, when he was helping his disciples to understand the true meaning of purity and holiness. He says in verses 12 through 14, And he answered, every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up, indicating that they were not planted by the Father, that these men were not truly saved men. Verse 14, let them alone. They are blind guides. And if the blind leave the blind, both will fall into a pit. If the blind leave the blind, both will fall into a pit. So those who do not exhibit a faith in the wisdom of God have no business judging the wisdom of Christians. And unless we want to fall into the same pit that they're headed into, we must disregard their opinion of wisdom and instead let God lead us to true wisdom. Even if that means that the world is going to think that we're fools. And yet so many Christians tremble at the idea that other non-believers think they're idiots for what they believe in. For nearly 2,000 years, followers of Jesus Christ explained the origin of the universe the same way that God described it to Moses in the book of Genesis. God was here before anything else existed. He spoke, and in accordance to his will and plan, out of nothing, something came to be. That is what God has showed us through his scripture. God generated the world and all that filled it. But then along came the enlightenment. Man began to make advancements in science and he began to look back over the ages and try to disassemble the history of creation and reform it based on the new information that they had found. Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory began to pick up a lot of popular favor. And suddenly Christians aren't preaching Genesis as literal anymore. They're sharing God's revelation with the world. And then suddenly they're not. Suddenly they're asking the world to share man's competing theory with the church. And instead of creation being an act of the will of an almighty God, now Christians who don't want to be thought down upon by the academic elite of the world feel compelled to conform their ways of thinking, and even their interpretations of God's scripture, to match what would be embraced in secular, godless classrooms. of the modern university. And I'll let you in on a little secret, friends. If you're a Christian who conceded the literal interpretation of Genesis and now holds to theistic evolution or will accept the viewpoint that creation account is really just an allegorical myth, you know what? The world and its great minds still look down on you as a fool. Because you still believe that Jesus Christ died on a cross for your sin, personally. You believe that he rose from the dead And you believe that anyone who puts their faith and trust in Him will live forever. And to the scientific mind who has not been humbled to see the true wisdom of Jesus Christ, that's idiocy. So they don't really care if you believe in their Big Bang Theory of Creation. They don't really care if you embrace evolution. They might give you a little pat on the back and let you hang out in their intellectual circles. But if you're truly a Christian and Christ is real, then they scoff at you behind your back. You've gained no respect from the world by abandoning what God says is true and trustworthy and taking instead the theories of man as your own. You've only made yourself look like a fool who wants to be on the inside of worldly wisdom. So friends, to become a fool means that we need to embrace the fact that holding to a biblical worldview is going to cause the world to think that you are foolish, and that is all right. That is not bad. We really can't expect anything other than that. Paul did not say in Romans 1.16, That's not what he said. No, Paul said, Why did he have to say that? Because he was being ridiculed because of the Gospel. Others thought he was a fool for throwing away such a prestigious upbringing, a position as a Pharisee who had studied under the tutelage of Gamaliel, this great mind in Judaism, one of the greatest rabbis of his day. He left all that to join what? An underground group of radical poor people who claimed Jesus really was the Son of God? And that he had died for the sins of others and risen on the third day from the grave? People thought he was an utter fool for believing these things. Paul was ridiculed for holding to that, but he was not ashamed, friends. Because it is the gospel, the perfect wisdom of God for salvation, that is the very power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and then to the Greek. At the end of the day, if the world thinks that the wisdom of God is foolish, why shouldn't they think that you, a devoted follower of that God, are foolish as well? Of course they're going to think you're foolish. Be a fool in the world's eyes, if that is what it takes to hold to the superior wisdom of God. So friends, the goal of becoming a fool is not to be foolish, it is not to abandon all reason, but rather what Paul is telling us to do here is by way of humility, accept the reality that God has revealed to us break through to the truth by saying amen to the things of the Lord, even if that means the rest of the world looks down at you as an idiot. The way that the Corinthians wanted to see themselves needed to change. Perhaps the same is true of some of us here today. They wanted to be esteemed. They wanted to be associated with brilliant men. They wanted to be able to consider themselves more intellectually advanced than others. But Paul demands that they just scrap that way of thinking. Because it is this proud way of thinking about the self that makes a man reject the notion of his own depravity in the first place. It is this self-centered, boastful view of wisdom that makes us want to figure things out apart from the leading and guiding hand of God. So we must forsake that way of thinking. In this letter to the Philippians, Paul explains the extent to which we must be willing to give up lesser things in order to obtain what is truly best. He says in Philippians 3, 8 through 12, he says, indeed, we count everything as loss. What does everything include, friends? Everything includes the luxury of thinking ourselves to be wise or being thought wise by others. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. It doesn't depend on some advanced intellectual acuity. It depends upon faith. That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it, or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. So notice that last line there. Not that I have obtained it. The great apostle himself recognizes that he had so much more to learn. You see the humility in him. Stop seeing yourself, friends, as a finished product. You are always to be learning. A fool more readily believes he needs to learn and grow. His faults are obvious before him, whereas a wise man often thinks that he's finished, that he is good enough. And so let us, in that sense, be like the fool who knows he needs instruction, who is willing to be taught. This fool will often pursue instruction from someone greater than him, where the wise will often be so comfortable in their own knowledge that they will allow pride to replace pursuit. They will stop seeking the Lord's instruction. They will do it on their own. Are we willing to give up the illusion of being wise men? It is a hard honor to part with, but in reality, it's an honor that we don't have anyway. If I refuse to accept that I am a fool, I am no the wiser for my stubbornness. I've already been declared fool compared to God anyway. Worldly wise are not truly wise, they are merely self-deceived. And so let us think now on the second firm warning of the passage. We've been told that we are to not deceive ourselves, but we are also told here, let no one boast in men. If you've been with us through our study of the first three chapters, you know what Paul's referring to here. You know about these divisions we've spoken of a little bit. For the Corinthians to make the teachers around them into celebrities, and to take pride in associating themselves with these teachers because they were slightly less foolish than most, is to totally miss the point. We cannot afford to see ourselves as wise, neither can we afford to say that true wisdom comes from other depraved men who are really just like us. We've already been given some reasons to avoid this divisive habit of picking sides. The Apostle Paul has told us that Christ himself is not divided. How can his church be so? When we choose one worldly leader over another and identify with them, we cut up the body of Christ into sections. There's only one wisdom, and that wisdom comes from above. And no one person has cornered the market on that wisdom. We're to act as one body, united under the one true word of God, directing all of our worship to one Savior. We can't afford to be sectarians, we can't afford to come underneath the tutelage of one individual because no earthly teacher has died for your sins. Not Paul, not Peter, not Apollos, only one died for our sins, and who is that? Jesus Christ. So when we put our focus and emphasis and trust in a man who teaches Jesus, what we're doing is low-grade idolatry. We're worshiping a man instead of worshiping the true object of our love and affection, which is Jesus Christ. in the kingdom of God. One worker is not more than another worker, right? Every elder or shepherd who blesses us is only playing their part in the body of Christ. The role of each believer is important. We should not value the work of one over another. So to be a sectarian is to place a human teacher in the position of head. But who is the true head of the church? Jesus Christ. In the kingdom of God, none of the workers can do what only God can do, and none of them know what only God knows. So there is only one faithful foundation that we can hope to build upon. When you build upon a man, you're building upon sand. Know that. When you're building upon a pastor, or a preacher, or a missionary, or a philosopher, you're building upon the sand. So Paul has given us all of these proofs to help us to see why sectarianism was counterproductive, was against the word of the Lord. And as he wraps up this section of the letter that deals with that particular problem in Corinth, there are others that we will deal with. But as he brings this part to a conclusion, he presents one more solid reason. In an ironic twist, Paul turns their sectarianism on its head. I belong to Paul. I belong to Peter. I belong to Apollos. Here Paul shows them that they've got it all wrong. They don't belong to these leaders. These leaders belong to them. Verse 21, so let no one boast in men, for all things are yours. You don't belong to some guy. All those teachers and leaders, all these helps that God has given to the church, they are your blessing and your benefit. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or the present or the future, all are yours. And you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. Friends, if you've trusted in Jesus Christ, He has taken you in as His own. You are no longer an enemy to God, you are His child. And like a good father, the Lord's gonna supply for you everything that you need. including wise counsel, including effective shepherding, including exemplary leadership. But He hasn't given you these gifts so that those gifts might claim you as their own. God has given you these things for your benefit, that you might be blessed by them. You don't need the approval of men. You don't need to share in the credit of their accomplishments. You have Christ. You follow Christ. You are in Christ. Should the whole world reject you and consider you a fool, do not be afraid, church. You are approved by the one counsel that matters, and that by the blood of Jesus himself. And so every blessing is yours. Every tool that you need has been provided for you. Every wisdom is being revealed as he sanctifies and grows you. All that you need is now in your possession, but only if Christ possesses you. Consider the chain of possession that's described here in verse 23. Everything is yours. That means that there's nothing that you need that God has not given to you. You're lacking nothing. Leaders, the world, life, death, the present, the future, God has given this all to you just how you need it. And then it goes on to say, everything is yours. You belong to something. You belong to Christ. You were bought at a price. He purchased you to be a people for His own glory. And so you, if you are a Christian, are His rightfully. Philippians 3.12, going back to that passage we looked at a minute ago, not that I have already obtained this or I'm already perfect, that was an example of Paul's humility, but keep reading, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Right? We are possessed by Christ. If we are His, He provides for our needs. But if we would rather be possessed by some human teacher, by some guru or celebrity, and we don't really belong to Christ. Is Christ the one who owns you? Is Christ the one who is your only king? And then we read finally that Christ is God's. Now this is not to say that Christ is anything less than God. It is simply explaining that Jesus belongs to Christ in a true eternal fellowship. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are perfectly unified. They've been forever. and there never will be a time when they are not unified perfectly. And amazingly, we are being invited in by the blood of the Lamb to taste of that perfect fellowship, to belong to God forever through the blood of Jesus. But to truly experience this blessing, friends, God must remove from us the compulsion to be wise in the worldly ways of wisdom. He is helping us to remove this self-deception that would have us anxiously desire the approval of men. We're placing it with a peaceful understanding that if we are Christ's, then we have all the approval we need, and the wisdom of God, which has become our guiding light, will lead us home to Him. Paul, Apollos, Peter. Their work and their writings have been given to us as a blessing, as we have been given as a blessing to others, because ultimately all things are the possession of Jesus Christ, God's Son, and our Savior. So rebuke your doubt, brother. Grow in hatred for your misplaced discontent. Do not deceive yourself into thinking that God has left you empty-handed. He has not. In Christ, your hands are now full of the things that you need the most. Do not make the mistake of putting down God's provision for you and taking up instead your own provisions for yourself. Would you bow with me as we close in a word of prayer, and then we'll sing before we're dismissed. Almighty God, you stand alone. There is none who can rival you. Your greatest enemy, Satan, will be dispersed in a moment with a word. The great and final battle will be in some ways anticlimactic because Satan can render no resistance to you. Neither can we, Lord God. So Father, humble us today and help us to know that the only shelter from the justice of God's rightful wrath is in Christ Jesus, who experienced that wrath in our place. Lord God, may every hint of wisdom we hope to attain to come from Him and be rooted in Him. Lord, we are not to be foolish. We are not to check our minds at the door. Help us to engage in thoughtful things, Lord God. Let us desire the deeper concepts of doctrine. Help us to not be content to just drink the milk of the gospel. Pray, God, that we would have a hunger for the meat of deeper things. Let us grow in maturity and spiritual depth. But Father, let us not mistake worldly wisdom for maturity. If we are considered fools by the world, then let that be only because we are trusting in the mighty gospel of Jesus Christ, which is foolishness to a dying world. We love you, Lord God, and we thank you that you will help us to put these things into practice. We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen.