Welcome to A.T. Stewart & Sons Ministries. I am glad to welcome my youngest son to our ministry team. Josh is one of the teaching pastors at Summit Church in Naples, Florida. Now take your Bibles and let's listen to God's Word together. Well, good morning, Summit Church. How are y'all doing today? My name is Josh Stewart. I am one of the pastors here, and man, just the honor and privilege to be able to communicate God's Word with you today. If you're new to Summit, welcome. We're so glad that you're here. We're honored and privileged that you would take the time to come and worship with us today, to participate in worship, to sing songs to our great God who saves and redeems and gives everlasting life, and then also an opportunity to worship with us as we get in God's Word. For those who are members and regular attendees, we're so glad that you're here as well. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. We're in our third week of a Healthy Church series. We're going to go through the entire book of 1 Corinthians over the course of the school year, so from here all the way until May. Taking a few breaks along the way, but we're going to spend a lot of time. And today we're in 1 Corinthians 2. If you don't have your Bible, we have ushers who can provide a Bible for you. So please raise your hand. We know some people don't have Bibles. Some people forget Bibles. And we just want you to have the opportunity to open up God's Word. We're going to process through a lot today. of 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and we want you to be in God's Word. We want to be in there together, processing through it, looking it together, examining it, pulling it out, applying it to our lives, because God's Word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And so we want it to penetrate our hearts and our souls, lead us to deeper change, lead us to more dependence on the Holy Spirit, lead us to understand and apply the gospel to our lives. And so we're 1 Corinthians chapter 2, but before we even dive in, even read it, I just want to open us up in a word of prayer. Lord, we're so thankful for today. We're so just honored that You're a God that allows us to worship You. That You're a God that allows the meditations of our hearts, O Lord, to praise the God who saves and redeems. Thank You, Holy Spirit, as we sang about today, as we prayed today, and as we'll continue to see even more in 1 Corinthians 2, that Holy Spirit, we desperately, desperately need You. We need you every second of every single day. We need you to penetrate us. We need you to work in our hearts and our souls to remind us of our sins, to lead us to repentance, to guide us into holy living. Lord, we need you. And I need you this morning, God. I'm an imperfect vessel, Lord. I am weak. I bring nothing to the table, Lord. But Christ, you bring everything to the table. And Holy Spirit, you can work in the hearts of your people. So we pray and we ask and we beg that you would today, Lord. Do it for your glory and do it for the advancement of your kingdom. We also pray for the other churches around southwest Florida, Lord. The ones here in Naples that are preaching Christ crucified. We pray for churches, Lord, like Center Point. We pray for churches like Faith Bible, for Covenant Presbyterian, for Compass Bible and all the other Lord's Christ-centered churches here today in Southwest Florida. Lord, bless their churches. Bless their attendees. Bless their covenant members. Bless them, Lord, that they would do mighty things for your glory and for the advancement of your kingdom, Lord. And Lord, we just also, Lord, just thank you that you're a God that moves and that you're a God that loves us and cares for us. And so pray today, Lord, that we feel loved and cared for, even if it means that our sins are exposed, Lord, even if it means we need to encourage, even if it means that we need to have tough conversations afterwards, that you love us enough and care for us enough that you want to mold us into the image of your son. So, Holy Spirit, we need you and work mightily. And it's in the awesome, powerful name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. So 1 Corinthians chapter 2, let's read all 16 verses here before we get started. So 1 Corinthians starting in verse 1 of chapter 2. And I, when I came to you brothers, did not proclaim to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. But as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. And so as we continue in our series today and what it looks like as a healthy church, we see that Paul comes to the church of Corinth. If you've been here over the last several weeks, you know, and as you will continue to read through the book of Corinthians, you will understand that this was not a healthy church, not at all. And Paul was going, instructing them and teaching them what a healthy church looks like. And what we see in chapter two today, what kind of the big idea of the passage is really simply this, is that a healthy church concentrates on Jesus Christ. that a church that is healthy will put its focus and its gaze and its concentration on Jesus Christ, who He is, and what He's done. That is what a healthy church is. That is what Paul is pushing forward here in 1 Corinthians 2. And I think it's important for us to understand exactly what a church is, because when I say the word church, a lot of people in this room have different interpretations or different thoughts of what a church is, right? Maybe you think of a building with a steeple. Maybe you think about a group of people gathering together. Maybe you think of many other different things, but what we define a church here at Summit is a definition given by Justin Holcomb, and this is what it says. It says, the church is the people of God, saved by Jesus, and set apart by the Holy Spirit for the glory of God. So a church is the people of God, saved by Jesus, and set apart by the Holy Spirit for the glory of God. And so it's individuals who have placed their trust in Jesus Christ, been saved by Him, set apart by the Holy Spirit, and for the glory of God. And so what we're going to do today is we're going to talk about a healthy church. And I don't want you in this room to kind of think of an abstract idea of what a healthy church means. What we're talking about is individuals who have placed their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, right, have been set apart by the Holy Spirit, and God is using them today for His glory. Paul was writing to the church of Corinth, but he wasn't writing to this abstract building. He was writing to individuals within the church who had placed their faith and trust in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. And so today, as we process through this passage, as we unpack what God has for us in 1 Corinthians 2, I want, if you are a Christian today, that this is a message for you. And if you're a non-believer today, we're so glad that you're here. We know it takes a lot of courage to step out and to come to a local church. And we hope that you see today the beauty of the gospel and just the beauty of what it means to be part of God's church. And so we're going to kind of have two angles that we're going to approach the text today. We're going to approach it as a group of a local body. As here as a church, we have people who have been visiting us throughout the summer and throughout as we kick off into the school year. We're so glad that you're here. We're honored by that. We also have people who have been here for, man, since this church started 12 or 13 years ago. And we have certain convictions that we hear at Summit Church. If you're here for any length of time whatsoever, you'll know that we are not a perfect church. We're not even close, right? We are saved by God's grace. But we are also a church, though, even though we're not perfect. We're a church that looks to God's Word for our convictions. We look to God's Word to lead us and guide us. And so we're going to kind of see here as a local church, here at Summit Church, what we strive after, what we're continuing to grow in. But then we also are going to take it and not only talk of us as a group, but I want to talk to you as individuals as well. God's Word wants to talk to you as individuals. and how you can apply this to your personal life as well. And so we're going to see it as a group of us, what we can go at together as a body, but also as individuals, what we can work on and what we can strive after. And so a healthy church concentrates on Jesus. And there's three ways today that we're going to see that that happens. And the first thing we're going to see is that a healthy church is built around the gospel of Christ. Look how Paul starts off 1 Corinthians 2. He says, I, when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And so Paul comes and he reminds them that when he came to them, he didn't come to them in lofty speech or with wisdom. And what Paul was saying there is he was talking to the Hellenistic culture. And in the Hellenistic culture that the Church of Corinth sat in is that people who wanted to get a great crowd, who wanted a large group of people to come around them, they focused on the rhetoric. They focus on how well they could speak, how well they could draw the masses to understand and go, man, this person knows how to speak. This person knows how to use their words. Let's gather around. Let's listen to them. They can impart wisdom on us. And so what Paul is saying is that it would've been tempting to me, right, or what you would've thought maybe I would've done is I would've come to you with lofty speech, that I would've worked for weeks and months to get my speech to be beautiful and eloquent so that the masses would come, that the people would gather around, maybe they would even write books about the man Paul, Paul from Taurus and what he can say and what he can do and how he can blow our minds in his speech and in his rhetoric. But Paul realized that just because he could speak well, just because he had eloquent words, he realized that people might come in masses. People might gather around, and they even might write books about him. But he knew that they would still be dead in their sins and they would have no salvation because lofty words and human wisdom doesn't save souls. And so Paul says, I didn't come to you with this lofty speech, with this great wisdom on my own strength, but instead I came to you teaching Jesus Christ and him crucified. And Paul said, what I was depending on was not how well I could use my words, but instead, I was depending on the story in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And when he says here, as Christ crucified, it's not that he was only focusing on the death of Christ, but what he was doing is he was in capturing the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus, right? We even do it today. We just a moment ago sang about the cross. And when we sing about the cross of Jesus, we're not only singing about his death, But we're singing about the life that he lived, the perfect life he lived that we couldn't live, the death that he did on our behalf, dying for our sins, receiving the punishment of God, and then also raising from the dead three days later victoriously. And so as he was saying, I came preaching Christ crucified, is I came preaching to you the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. Knowing that what you needed to hear was not my amazing words, was not what I could muster up on my own, but instead you need to hear the truth that you were dead in your sins, separated from God. but Jesus provided a way. He lived a perfect life you could not live, and the punishment you deserve for your sin, he died for it, received it, and then rose from the dead victoriously. And Paul, what he was saying here is that you need to build your church, you need to build your life on Christ and him crucified. But even as we fast forward 2,000 years later, right, in Naples, Florida, we find ourselves, right, with the same type of temptations and struggles. is that we can often, right, we can put our own power and our own strength on ourselves instead of proclaiming Christ and Him crucified. I mean, how easy it is for pastors, I can speak right to myself in this, but how easy it is as you prepare sermons, right, you prepare them unto the Lord, you spend hours processing through the text, thinking through things, like you do it in a way that honors and glorifies God. But so often as you're doing that, you get so caught up, man, what can I say? What words can I bring to this table, right? What can I say that will be quotable or tweetable later on, right? What can I say that I can word things around that people's mind will be blown, right, by the things that I say? And so often we can get so dependent on our lofty speech that we neglect the truth is that what every person needs to hear in this room is not lofty speeches, but Christ and Him crucified. That's what saves. But even in our own lives, right? Like we do it when we talk, when we have people in our lives that don't know Jesus, and we know that we need to share the gospel with them. They're friends of ours, they're people that we come in contact with on a regular basis, family members. But then what do we say? We go, man, I can't say it, I don't know what to say, right? Like, I'm gonna fumble over my words. Like, I can't do that. What do they ask me questions I don't know about? What do they talk about young earth and old earth? Like, what am I going to say? Like, I have no idea, right? Like, I don't understand these things. I haven't been to seminary. I haven't been trained. And we begin to put the pressure on ourselves and our own strength. And then we step back and go, there's no way that I can say anything because I'm too weak. I'm not able to do that. What they don't need to hear is an amazing five point sermon through your conversation. What they need to hear is the work that Christ did in your life, and they need to hear Christ crucified. That's an amazing power that we have as believers, and what Paul reminds us as a healthy church, that we don't base our strength, we don't base our influence, we don't base it on our lofty speech, or anything man-given, or anything that we have on our own strength, but instead, we rest in the truth of Christ and Him crucified. And here at Summit Church, I'm just so proud to be part of a church that has different values, different distinctive values that we hold high and that we hold as pillars of our church and things that we want to build ourselves on. And one of ours that we have is the fact that we're gospel-centered. And at Summit Church, what we define as gospel-centered is that we are committed to embracing the gospel applying the gospel, and proclaiming the gospel. This is what we're committed to. We're one of our distinctive values that we want to embrace the gospel, we want to apply the gospel, we want to proclaim the gospel. And not just as pastors sitting up here at the pulpit, but as our members, the people that come here, this is what we desire of you. The first, that we want people to embrace the gospel. We want people to trust Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, understanding that there's not many roads that lead to God, or a few roads that lead to God, but the only way to have a relationship with God is found in Jesus. Jesus says, I'm the way, I'm the truth, and I'm the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. Then we realize that it says in the book of Acts that there's no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved except for the name of Jesus. So we believe that, and we embrace that, and our desire is everyone who walks through the doors of this church would trust Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, that they would hear the gospel, they would understand the gospel, and that they would respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so that's the first thing we do. We embrace the gospel. But secondly, not only do we embrace it, but we apply the gospel. And what does it mean to apply the gospel? It means that we understand the gospel in every single area of our lives. See, often what we do as people is that we trust Christ as our Lord and Savior, right? Salvation. We realize we're dead in our sins. There's nothing that we can do to earn God's favor, right? We need Him to save us and redeem us. So we trust Him as our Lord and Savior. But then the gospel is completely irrelevant in our minds for the rest of the stages of our life, right? That we make decisions and we completely don't even disregard the gospel. We don't understand it in light of the gospel. We don't have a Christian worldview and understanding of decisions around us. And what we see here is that we need to apply the gospel not only for salvation, but we need to apply the gospel for sanctification or becoming more like Jesus. See, often situations happen in our lives and we completely disconnected to the gospel. But we want to be people who take the gospel and then apply it to a certain situation. Say somebody's wronged you, like completely wronged you. You did nothing to deserve this. They spoke bad about you. They slandered you. They gossiped about you. We want to understand how to respond to that in light of the gospel. And what we understand is, man, we slandered God. We wronged God, right? We were mean and hateful towards God, yet in His love and His grace, He expends forgiveness to us. So because I understand the gospel, I'm gonna apply the gospel to this situation. I'm gonna forgive this person, even if they don't deserve it, because Christ has forgiven me. Right, our marriage might be struggling at some point, and things are hard, and the tensions are high, and it's so easy to be like, why in the world am I doing this anymore? I'm not happy, things are hard, things are challenging. But then we're reminded what the gospel says is that Christ is committed to us, that we're the bride of Christ and he commits to us, like not just for seasons, not just for moments. He is faithful and we're faithless and he's committed even times that we struggle. He's committed to us. And so in the same way we're gonna be committed to this marriage because Christ was committed to me. Or even when it comes to hardships in our lives, right? When we don't get the job that we wanted or maybe we're retired. Maybe our kids are out of the house and maybe we find ourselves and it's like, is there any purpose anymore to my life? I just feel like day in and day out I do nothing and I sit around, there's no purpose, there's no meaning, but then we're reminded what is most true about us, where identity is found is in the gospel. that we've been saved and we're now children of God. And we will always be children of God. We can't retire from that. We can't outgrow that. That won't ever go away. And so what's true about me is I am a child of God, saved and redeemed and loved deeply and loved truly by the King of this universe. That is what's true about me. I'm going to take the gospel and apply it even in the midst of my loneliness, to my purpose and my identity. The gospel is meant to speak to every single area of our lives. We want to apply that. And we want to embrace it in all seasons, in all circumstances, good or bad. That's the beauty of the gospel. So often when things are hard, we want to grab the latest book, we want to read certain articles, we want to listen to certain sermons. Those aren't necessarily bad things to do, but most of the time we just need to be reminded of the gospel in that situation. We need to be reminded of what the gospel says is true of me, It's how I need to live out my life, and that's how I need to, changes I need to make, and sins I need to repent of, and things I need to be encouraged in. We want to apply the gospel. Not only do we want to embrace it and apply it, we also want to proclaim it. People need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. Here at Summit Church, one strong conviction that we have is every single message that we preach, whether we're in the Psalms, whether we're in Proverbs, whether anywhere in the Old Testament, New Testament, Epistles, it doesn't matter, that Christ and Him crucified, the gospel of Jesus will be in the center of every sermon that we preach. Because we believe, like Jesus says in Luke chapter 24, when He was talking to His disciples, that all of Scripture points back to Him. that all the scripture needs to be understood in the goodness of the gospel, that we need to hear it not only for salvation, but we just talked about a second ago, we need to hear it and apply it to every single area of our life. And so we will preach it, and we will preach it in boldness, and we will preach it in truth, and we preach it in full conviction, knowing that every single one of us in this room, even including the pastor standing at the pulpit, needs to hear and embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so we proclaim it. Charles Spurgeon is known as the Prince of Preachers, and this is what he says about this. Speaking about preaching, he says, I believe that those sermons which are fullest of Christ are the most likely to be blessed to the conversion of the hearers. Let your sermons be full of Christ from beginning to end, crammed full of the gospel. As for myself, brethren, I cannot preach anything else but Christ and His cross. For I know nothing else, and long ago, like the Apostle Paul, I determined not to know anything else to save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. People often ask me, what is the secret of your success? I always answer that I have no other secret but this, that I have preached the gospel. Not about the gospel, but the gospel. The full, free, glorious gospel of the living Christ, who's the incarnation of the good news. Preach Jesus Christ, brethren, always and everywhere. And every time you preach, be sure to have much of Jesus Christ in the sermon. and our lives, that is what we desperately need to hear and that we desperately desire here at Summit Church. And even in your own life, as you proclaim the good news to the people around you, they need to hear Christ and Him crucified. And you need to use that in your life to build you up, to strengthen you, and to apply it to different areas. Colossians 2, 6 and 8 says this, Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. You received Him in faith, now walk in Him. Rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and emptied a seed according to human tradition, according to the elementary spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. So we receive it and then we're rooted and built up and established in the gospel. So first, are you embracing the gospel today? Have you accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior? Have you taken that step? If not, today's the day. Freedom and forgiveness and a life with God can be yours today. But if you haven't, are you applying it to every area of your life? Are you applying in the decisions that you make about your family and about your finances, about your jobs, about your careers, about your children, about your marriage, right? Are you believing and applying the gospel to those ears and responding in the light of the gospel and what that means for you? And also, are you proclaiming the gospel? Who in your life today needs to hear the gospel? needs to hear the truth of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Not eloquent speech or human wisdom, but who needs to hear Jesus? Who's the person you can talk to this week so that they know that? And so a healthy church concentrates on Jesus, and a healthy church is built around the gospel of Jesus Christ. And secondly, we see that a healthy church has an attitude of humility. Look what Paul says in verses 3 and 4. because then I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. And so Paul comes to them, and he says something unique, right? He says, I come, and I didn't come in lofty speech, I didn't come, but instead I preached Christ and Him crucified. He said, in fact, when I came, I was fearful, I was trembling, like I was in much fear, like I was scared at this moment. And what Paul was doing is he was letting them know that he was weak. He was letting them know that he brought nothing to the plate. He said, I didn't do this to show my own power, but I did it so that you would see the power of God. that Paul recognized that he wasn't the answer. In fact, he was part of the problem, but he knew that there was an answer that they needed to hear. And if anyone had room to boast in the New Testament, if anyone had room to put their chest out and be like, look at me, it was the Apostle Paul. This man, besides Jesus, was the most influential person in the New Testament. Most of the New Testament that we read was written by the Apostle Paul. He planted churches, he wrote to churches. This guy was a man who loved Jesus Christ deeply and went after the gospel of Jesus and went after the mission. If anyone had room to brag, it was the Apostle Paul. But Paul understood that there was no room for pride and for arrogance in an unhealthy church. Paul realized that the gospel of Jesus Christ speaks directly against any pride and any type of self-boasting that we could ever have. And Paul even goes a step further. Look what he says in 1 Timothy 1, verses 5 and 7. Paul says, this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Everything Paul says is trustworthy and accepting of full acceptance, but Paul is emphasizing here, right? Like, listen to what I'm saying, but pay close attention to what I'm saying here. He says that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I receive mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who are to believe in him for eternal life. To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen. Paul says this is his trustworthy saying. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and I'm the worst of them. I'm the worst that there is. And not only that, but I believe that He saved me, the worst, so that He could show His patience to those who might believe in the future. His perfect patience. He says, the God of the ages, immortal, invisible, be all glory, right? Be all power and dominion. The glory rests on the great God who saves, not on this imperfect, sinful man who is saved by His goodness and His grace. that we see that there is no room for pride and arrogance in the Christian life because we bring nothing to the table and Christ brings it all. And so at Summit Church, we desire to have that humble mentality. That's why we pray for other churches. That's why we partner with other churches. That's why we go and we plant other churches. That's why we take members and take pastors, just like Erin a few months ago, and we send them all to North Carolina joyously because we realize that the kingdom of God is at Summit Church. We realize that we are not the end-all, be all of the gospel. We realize that we are part, praise God, that we're part of what God is doing, but there is many other Christ-centered, gospel-honoring churches throughout Southwest Florida and throughout the world that we want to champion, that we want to celebrate, that we want to rejoice in, because we are all going after the same mission, the mission that lost souls would embrace a gracious Savior. And so we partner with these churches and we pray for them. There is no room for a competitive within the local church. They're not threats, they're partners and people that we can go on mission together with. We love the local churches around here. We champion them and we celebrate them as long as they're preaching Christ and Him crucified. As long as they're committed to the truth of the gospel that we see throughout Scripture, that we love them and we champion them. And we want to have great humility when we do that. We're not the best church. We're not the greatest church. We're a church on mission. And we want to champion the other churches that do that as well. But even when it comes to our own lives, how often arrogance and pridefulness, it kind of sneaks up, doesn't it? So often we have people in our lives that are battling with sinful behavior. We have a culture right now that is so seeking identity, right? They're seeking purpose and hope. They're seeking it in how they identify as a gender. They're seeking it in their sexual orientation. They seek it in relationships. They seek it in pornography. They seek it in lusting. They seek it in cheating. They seek it in money. They seek it in comfort. They seek it in all these different ways. And so often when we receive that and we hear that, we often respond in hostility, right? In anger and frustration towards these people. And sometimes they're hostile towards us, and so we respond in hostility towards them. Or sometimes they're not even hostile towards us, but we respond in hostility and anger and frustration towards them. And if we're not careful, we will raise ourselves up on a certain pedestal. We'll say, look at us. You need to be more like me. You need to be more like us. But the posture that we should have as one of the Apostle Paul, that we are all, man, wretched sinners. In the words of Pastor Jeremiah, we are jacked up, right? And all of us fall short, and all of us are sinners. And I hope that our attitude and our posture is that we can raise our hand and say, Christ came into the world to save sinners. And me, man, I'm the foremost. I'm the worst that there are. And so our posture towards these people isn't hostility, but our posture towards them is love and compassion and mercy to know that we were just as dead as our sins before Christ redeemed us. And Paul tells us how we should respond to them in 2 Timothy 2, verses 22-26. He says, so flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Look what he says in verse 23. Have nothing to do with foolish, arrogant controversies. You know that they breed quarrels. and as a Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. So we pursue righteousness and faith and love and peace, right? We don't have anything to do with foolish and arrogant controversies. All they're gonna do is breed quarrels. We're not to be quarrelsome, but we should be kind to everyone, teaching them patiently enduring evil, and when we do correct them, We do it with gentleness. And why? So that God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth. That they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. That we have a lost world that is in the snare of the devil, and our posture towards them is to have consistent love and peace towards them, not to be quarrelsome with them, not to be engaged in these controversies that lead to just fighting, but instead that we love them, right? We're kind to them, we patiently endure them, and we with gentleness correct them. Because in great humility, we recognize that we are all sinners who are in desperate need of a Savior, and their sinfulness is no greater than our sinfulness, and their lostness was no greater than our lostness. And so in great humility, we go and we love them and we care for them and we teach them Christ and Him crucified. Because that's desperately what they need to hear and what we need to continue to hear as well. So do you have a competitive mindset towards other believers and maybe other churches? Do you look at them as a threat? Do you look at other churches as a partner in the gospel that we can be on mission with together? Are you a pride for Christian? How are you approaching the non-believers in your life? And what mindset? Does it reflect the mindset of 2 Timothy 2, 22 through 26? Or is it the opposite of that? Do you have a mindset that you're the chief of sinners saved by God's grace? And when you correct people, do you do it with gentleness, hoping that it will lead them to great repentance and in faith of our Savior? Maybe there's some people that you need to call this week and apologize to. Maybe there's an attitude that you have towards certain non-believers that you need to check and that you need to change. And maybe there's just some repentance in your own heart towards God and the way that you've been behaving yourselves, and certain pride and certain arrogance. We're humble because we bring nothing to the table, but praise God Christ does. And so lastly, we see here, is that a healthy church will rest in the power and wisdom of God to guide them. Let's start in verse three and read down to verse five. He says, and I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but a demonstration of the spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. A healthy church rests in the wisdom and the power of God to lead them and to guide them. In Paul takes verses 6 all the way down to 16, he begins to unpack that the power and the wisdom of God to lead us and guide us comes in the Holy Spirit. We see in Scripture that God the Father planned salvation. When we sinned against God, He had a plan, and He planned salvation. And then Jesus Christ accomplished salvation by His death, His life, His death, and His resurrection. And then the Holy Spirit applies the salvation to our life. That we believe in the Gospel, we believe in Jesus, because our eyes have been opened to the Holy Spirit. The power and the wisdom of God comes from the power of the Holy Spirit to open our lives and to empower us. And Paul begins to walk through the different things in these 10 verses. He says, the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the hidden mystery of God. Salvation comes to you because the Holy Spirit opened your eyes to it. The Holy Spirit knows the mind of God and reveals that to us. Who knows the mind of a person except for their spirit? And the Holy Spirit is God. He knows the mind of God. He reveals to us the mind of God, the beauty of that. The Holy Spirit gives us true wisdom, not worldly wisdom. and so that we can understand the thoughts of God. The Holy Spirit gives us the mind of Christ. And then Paul makes it abundantly clear, without the Holy Spirit, we cannot understand the mystery, or the power, or the wisdom of God, that we are helpless on our own. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal that to us. And so we see here there's deep dependency on the Holy Spirit to guide us and to lead us, not only into salvation, but our every single lives, every single day, He leads us and guides us. This is 100% true. This is facts. But if it's 100% true, and it's the absolute facts of our lives, then why do we often functionally not live in this way? You know, the Holy Spirit is referred to often by even theologians and biblical scholars, the forgotten part of the Trinity. So often we put so much focus on the Father and so much focus on the Son that we actually even neglect the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us. And we're so focused on so many other things in our lives that we forget the truth. That the Holy Spirit not only leads to salvation, but to lead us and guide us in our everyday lives. And unfortunately, in the church today, the Church of America, this has become such a problem. There's even a saying that the functional trinity of the local church in America is this, it's Father, Son, and Holy Strategy. That's how we do it, Father, Son, and Holy Strategy. That we trust that we need to preach Christ crucified. We trust that Jesus saves, that God does miraculous things, but yet we're going to strategize until we're blue in the face. We're going to strategize everything. We're going to put everything in the lobby exactly where it needs to be. The books laid out where they need to be. We're going to sing the exact songs. We're going to preach the sermon in the exact way. And we're going to do all these certain things. And if we do it just right, right, get it perfect, then souls will be saved. And we get so caught up in strategy that we neglect the power of the Holy Spirit who wants to work mightily in our lives to empower us and give us wisdom. Do not get me wrong. Strategy is an important part of ministry, but it's not the most important part of ministry. That we want to be a church that relies on the Holy Spirit. Lord, I pray that Summit Church is always a church that is led and guided by the Holy Spirit. A.W. Tozer said this, he says, if the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95% of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95% of what they did would stop and everybody would know the difference. And there's so many areas of our lives that we just, man, Lord, forgive us for our sins. I'm so thankful, of course, here at Summit, like, for the last year and a half, we've been journeying as a council of elders across all three campuses of how we can be more Spirit-led in our services, how we can be more Spirit-led in the things that we do and the way that we function as a church. We're trying to grow in this area. We're trying to push into this area, and I'm so thankful for that. Sometimes it can be uncomfortable for some people. Sometimes it can cause us to think hard, but it's good conversations, and it's good stretching, and it's good pushing. Praise God for that. Let us always be a church that does that. But let's just not limit it to like the church as a whole, right? Like how many of us functionally in our lives have a trinity that is different than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right? When it's guiding you and leading you in decisions, often when we, as believers, we accept Christ, but then as we are led and guided and decisions are being made, right, it's Father, Son, and comfort, right? Whatever is comfortable. It's Father, Son, and my own logic. It's father, son, and whatever keeps my family safe, right? It's father, son, and whatever makes my life seem more presentable to other people, right? It's father, son, and whatever get me higher up on the corporate ladder, right? It's father, son, and you name it in your life that is what's motivating you in facing your decisions or, man, are driven by these things. And so we have challenges, right? We feel called to foreign missions, but we won't step into that, because what would that mean for our kids, right? That they gotta grow up in another language? They gotta grow up in another culture and speak another language? What's the school systems like over there? Like, what if they grow up and they're weird, right? Like, what does this mean? Like, all these things go in our minds, because comfort is what's driving us more than anything else. Right, we have a situation in our lives, and we're in a corporate working at a job, and man, there's unethical things going on, and we're like, but I can't. I can't leave the job. You know what that would mean for my family? We've got to downsize our house. What if I can't get another job? Like, what am I supposed to do here? And finances drive us and the decisions that we make. And it comes in so many, our happiness, right? How many times have husbands told me they're leaving their wives because they're not happy? Like we are driven by the things of this world, by our emotions, by our appetites, that we completely neglect the Holy Spirit that wants to take us and mold us into the image of our Savior. And it might not always be easy, it might not always be happy, it might not always be comfortable, it might not always be what makes logic to us and makes the most sense, but at the end of the day, we are shaped and molded more deeply and more truly into the image of our Savior so we can honor Him and we can glorify Him For our good, He does this. This is the beauty. And I promise you, a billion times over, that it's so much better than what you think you need. Looking more like Jesus and honoring Him with your life, there is nothing greater than that. And so allow the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us in our decisions, not the things of this world or the things that we think make sense. And how, you might be questioning, well, how in the world do I allow the Holy Spirit to lead me and guide me? Well, God primarily speaks through His Word. And He would never speak anything that is contrary to His Word. And so if God primarily speaks through His Word, the Holy Spirit primarily speaks through us when decisions need to be made in our everyday life, in the day-to-day grind, what do we need to do is we need to get into God's Word. Like we have to allow this to fuel us, we have to allow this to communicate to us, we have to allow the Holy Spirit to speak through this because this is the words of God. A pastor said one time, you want to hear the audible voice of God, read the Bible out loud, right? We believe that we believe this, like we believe this is breathed out by God so that we can read it. We can hear God's voice in an everyday life, right? So when we get into God's word on our own, man, we read it. We under process through it. We do it in the morning. We do it at night. We do it during our lunch break. We're creative if we need to be, but we seek God's word and we get into God's word. And so if you want to hear from the Holy Spirit, you have to personally be getting into God's Word. Secondly, you need to do what you've already done today, right? You gather here on Sunday mornings. You allow pastors who have spent 15 or 20 hours seeking God's Word, seeking the Scriptures, hopefully, man, by God's grace, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to go out and to proclaim God's Word. And then you receive it as it's preached over you. You come here, that's why the Sunday morning gathering is so important, because God's Word can be proclaimed to you, the good news of the gospel, not our lofty speech, not our human wisdom, but man, Christ and Him crucified. And so we get into God's Word individually, we gather here throughout the week, and the last thing that we can do is we can get involved in Christian community. that we can take the opportunity to gather with other believers, that we seek God's word together as the Holy Spirit lives within them, then they can speak it into our lives. They can encourage us, they can challenge us, they can mold us in the decisions that we make. And if they love Jesus and they love his word, they're gonna point us towards Jesus in the things that we do. I was part of a community group in seminary and we broke off one night and we did girls and guys, which we did often, just the guys could talk about things and the girls could talk about things towards the end of the community group. I remember I was talking to one of the guys and I was like, yeah, you know, things are hard. Like we're in seminary, like financially, like things are just struggling. Like I just, we don't have a lot of extra money. So I think I'm just going to put pause on like giving towards the local church. Like I just, things are hard and we got to get things situated first. Like I know God understands, like we're just going to put pause on that. And I praise God for my friend Ryan. He's like, Hey man, like I understand it's hard. Like I understand financially things can be challenging. If I said that about anything else in the Bible, right? If I said, hey man, I'm going to take a pause. I'm going to lie for a season. I'm not going to tell the truth. I'm going to go through a season and just lie all the time. Things are hard at work. I need to get out of a few situations. I'm just going to lie for a second. God's going to understand, right? Then I'll get back to telling the truth. Things are kind of just chaotic. I'm just going to be a jerk to my wife for a season. That's it. I'll get back on track when things get a little bit better. But for now, there's a lot going on, right? He says, you will rebuke me in a second if I said those things. He says, the scripture calls us to give, and it calls us to give generously. He says, I know you might not have a lot of money, but man, I'm going to challenge you to give some of what you have, because Christ has given so much. In fact, it all belongs to Him anyways. I was being guided by my comfort and my budget, and not by the Holy Spirit. And I had a good friend of mine challenge me and push me in that. And honestly, I didn't want to hear it, but I needed to hear it. And it caused me to go back to Maggie and say, man, I failed as a husband. Like, I haven't led us well. We need to give. And actually, she was even pushing me to give during that season, and I pushed back. and say, man, praise God that the Holy Spirit can work in our friends, that the Holy Spirit can work in our community groups, that Holy Spirit can work through our spouses, that Holy Spirit can work when we gather together for life-giving community so we can hear and seek after this God together. May us be members of Summit Church, attendees of Summit Church, followers of Jesus Christ. Let us be committed to the Holy Spirit leading us and guiding us over anything else in our lives. and that we will be molded by that, that we'll proclaim Christ and Him crucified, that we'll live in great humility, and that we'll allow the Holy Spirit through the wisdom and power to lead us and guide us in our everyday lives. Ben, you guys can come on up as we close out. I want to read to us Proverbs 3, verses 5 through 10. The writer of Proverbs says this, trust in the Lord with all your heart, right? And do not lean on your own understandings and all of your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. Trust in God, man, put your understanding on him, rest in him. And so what's going to happen at the end of the day, right? Your life's going to be chaotic. You're going to be more stressful. Things are going to be hard. No, Look at what it says in verse 8. If you do that, you'll be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. Healing and refreshment comes when we rest in the power of the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us and mold us. Let us be a church that rests in the power of the Holy Spirit. So how is the Holy Spirit leading you into the power and wisdom of God? Are you dependent on the Holy Spirit in your daily living? If the Holy Spirit was to get up and leave, which he never will, but if he got up and leave, if he got up and left, would your life look any different? How do you make decisions about your family and your job and your life and your purpose? Are you seeking God's will when you do that? What other things are you looking now to lead you? What sins do you need to repent of? What conversations do you need to have? What changes do you need to make? So Lord, allow us to be people who are led and guided by you. And so what we do at the end of every service is we do communion. And it's an opportunity for us to come and to celebrate what Christ has done for us. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. He took the cup of wine, he says, this is my blood shed for you, right? For the forgiveness of your sins. And so we have an offer to you to come and celebrate what Christ has done. We can rejoice that we can be saved from our sins, that we can raise our hands as the foremost sinners to ever exist, but saved by the glorious grace of our God, the King of the ages, the immortal, the invisible, the powerful God redeems, and we can celebrate that because of Jesus. That the Holy Spirit can lead you and guide you and empower you because of what Christ has accomplished for you. That Christ provided access to the Holy Spirit, a relationship with God since forgiven. And we can walk around in great humility knowing that our identity is found in who we are in Christ and not what we do. And so as we take communion, this is our opportunity to celebrate that. This is our opportunity to rejoice in that. So as the song is played in just a moment, take the bread and dip it in the juice. Celebrating what Christ has done for you. And if you're a non-believer, we ask that you don't take up this meal. This is a family meal for those who accepted Christ. But instead, we challenge you to accept Christ. It's where life is found. It's where forgiveness is found. It's where hope is found. It's where guidance is found. It's where true wisdom is given, only in knowing Jesus. So accept Christ as your Lord and Savior today. I'd love to talk to you about it. Jeremiah will. We'll have deacons throughout the room to talk to you. Or if anybody needs someone to pray for them, we'll have deacons who will be there. Let's do what Christ has called us to do and step out in great obedience. Let's pray. Lord, we're so thankful for today. We're so thankful for every single person in this room. We're thankful that you brought them here today, not by any accident, but by your divine providence today. It might have seemed like a last minute decision to them, but it was not to you. Because you, Holy Spirit, wanted to speak through them. You want to speak to them through what your word says. So Lord, allow us to be people, Lord, who claim Christ crucified and raise that above anything else. Help us to live in great humility to the people around us, knowing that we are saved by the grace and goodness of our Savior. And I pray, Lord, that we be people that are guided and led by the power of God, led by the Holy Spirit. For those in this room, Lord, that need to be encouraged at this moment, encourage them. For those in this room, Lord, that need to repent of their sins in this moment, lead them to repentance. For those in this room, Lord, that need courage and strength to have conversations with people they've wronged, give them the strength to do that. For those in this room, Lord, that need the courage to step out and talk to those around them that don't know Jesus, work in their hearts and work in their lives to do that. And for those who are neglecting to step into Christian community, Lord, I pray that today they see the importance of that and how you can use that to change their lives and change their view of the gospel. Work in our hearts mightily. Do it for your glory and do it for the advancement of your church. It's in the powerful, mighty, saving, satisfying good name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.