We're going to continue in our journey through Paul's epistle to the Corinthians, his most troubled church. And Paul has been in a prolonged conversation with him about a lot of that trouble. And it's remarkable to me, probably any other pastor would have quit by this time. But Paul stays in the fight. He has a profound love and commitment to the wayward church, and he knows that they've been led astray. And one of the things we're going to see in 2 Corinthians 11 verses 1-6 is an emphasis on our need to be loyal to Christ. Both in the New Testament and the Old Testament, there is this parallel between covenant loyalty to God and human marriage. And Paul brings some of that to bear in our text today. And as I was thinking about this, I thought what a great example was the book of Hosea. You remember Hosea, that passionate, emotional book in the Old Testament where the prophet Hosea was literally told by God, you go marry a prostitute so that the people of Israel will know what it's like having a cheating spouse. because Israel is cheating against me. Israel is going after idols when I am Yahweh, the Lord that brought them out of the wilderness. In Hosea 1-2, God spoke to Hosea, go take yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry, for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord. You get this judgment of God, but you ought to get this broken hardness a bit too, don't you? Hosea chapter 2, Hosea says, God says, and Hosea is acting out, I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in loving kindness and in compassion. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. Then you will know that I am the Lord. And yet, Hosea, Gomer, his wife, the harlot, goes and plays the harlot. And she receives all the abuse that would normally occur in a situation like that. And it's found out, I guess, because of her debts. She's found to be in the slave market, probably being sold for the debts that she owes, bruised, battered, and probably naked. And Hosea, with the forgiveness of the Lord, goes up and buys her and brings her back to himself after all of the sins that she has committed. The Lord said to me, Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and have raisin cakes. So I brought her for myself for 15 shekels of silver and a humber and a half of barley. Then I said to her, You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man, so I will also be towards you." So what we're going to see in 2 Corinthians today is like a faithful wife, we are to be loyal to Christ. And many of us are here because we've had experiences with churches in the past that did not keep that. So I want to really challenge y'all today that it's your responsibility to make sure that our church never plays the harlot and is always faithful to the husband, Jesus Christ. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we turn to you now as Paul writes hard words But Lord, we need to hear hard words sometimes. Sometimes we are just so complacent, we're so distracted by the world, we tend to put the priority of the church low in terms of our priorities for the week. And we need a good wake up call, Lord. If the Corinthian church could fall, so could this church. But we are tired of seeing compromise in the church of Jesus Christ. And I pray, God, that you would help us to have faith, help us to be a loyal wife to our husband. For one day we will see you face to face. And we want to be able to look you in the eye and love without hanging our head in shame because of our compromise. Bless us now, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. So Paul has just had a hard-hitting kind of defense of his apostolic ministry and he sort of summed up that chapter 10 saying, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. And Paul really is kind of disgusted with what he has to do. He has to basically boast on his ministry because he is being attacked by usurpers, by false teachers, and he's having to remind the Corinthians of the gospel and how important it is and how he is a true apostle and they are actually indeed false apostles here, and as we go through this passage in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 verses 1 through 6, you're going to see various sections here, and you'll find these sections laid out for you in the Home Group Helps insert. It might be of assistance to you to follow along, but you see here Paul's appeal in verse 1, and then you see four areas of focus for Paul's appeal, and each one of these areas begin with the word, the Greek word gar, the English word for. We see here Paul's jealousy in verse 2a, our loyalty to Christ in verse 2b to 3, our temptation to betray Christ for another, verse 4, and our need for discernment, verses 5 through 6. But let's first of all read the verse in its entirety, 2 Corinthians 11, verses 1 through 6. God says, Paul writes, I wish that you would bear with me a little foolishness, but indeed you are bearing with me, for I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. For I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully. For I consider myself not the least inferior to the most eminent apostles, but even if I am unskilled in speech, yet I am not so in knowledge. In fact, in every way we have made this evident to you in all things." So we first see this general appeal here in verse 1 with Paul's appeal here. He says, I wish that you would bear with me with a little bit of foolishness here. And again, he has happened to defend himself, something he would rather not do. And the nature of these false teachers is a little bit of a mystery, but you can read between the lines and tell, but they appear to be sort of this part Christian, part Jewish, part sophist journeyman philosophers. that were consumed with the eloquence of speech and rhetoric and that sort of thing, as was the practice of the Greeks. And they would go from place to place charging money, and they were so gifted in speaking that everybody would be just mesmerized by their abilities and their skills. and their craftiness, and they would be willing to pay them money. Well, they have come into the Corinthian church after Paul left, and they've gone and polluted the gospel. And because they're not real Christians, they've got these kind of pieces, parts of doctrine coming in, and it's really causing confusion, and it's causing factions and that kind of thing. So Paul is willing to boast because he's happened to defend the true gospel. There's a difference between the true gospel and this false gospel that these false prophets are providing to the Corinthian church. And he says he wishes they would bear with him here. He's got some tough love. You know, it's hard. We're all a little sensitive. I mean, I guess some of you aren't. But, you know, no one likes rebuke. No one likes being told they're wrong. But I'm telling you, if you can think about the times in your life where you were rebuked and you were told you were wrong, they were probably some of the most sanctifying, maturing times of your life. And you needed to be told that. And really, very often I've found is that very often people who don't rebuke you don't really love you. It's the ones that have a stake in your relationship that have a commitment to you that are willing to tell you the truth, even if that truth hurts in particular. So we see here four areas of Paul's focus here, all starting with the word for, which made the outline really easy this time, so I'm grateful for that. But he says here, first of all, there's Paul's jealousy. And this is a little surprising to us, because we think of jealousy as something that's bad, right? But he says, I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy here. We often associate jealousy with negative connotations. But really, jealousy, if you look up the word jealousy, there's some very powerful positive connotations in there. For instance, some of the definitions for jealousy are intolerant of rivalry or unfaithfulness, and vigilant in guarding a possession. And that's really what Paul's talking about here. He's got a godly jealousy. He has a jealousy on God's behalf here. And our jealousy often includes envy, bitterness, anger, insecurity, that kind of thing, that's not the quality of a godly jealousy. A godly jealousy is motivated, of course, by love. Human jealousy is almost always a vice. Godly jealousy is always a virtue. In Ezekiel chapter 39, God declares, I will be jealous for my holy name. Well, if God's gonna be jealous for his holy name, what should his people be? We also should be jealous, of course, for His holy name. He is jealous towards His people. And in a sense, he's got the kind of jealousy towards his people like a father has towards his children. And that's what the Apostle Paul is trying to communicate here. He's basically, as the responsible father, he's trying to make sure that his daughter, the church, who he birthed in Corinth, basically, is not seduced by the wrong kind of man. For you pride and prejudice people, here's a bone for you, right? I think about Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Bennett is a likable character, but really kind of a weak father in many, many ways. And if he had been more jealous of his daughter Lydia, he would not have allowed her to go off and elope with Mr. Wickham. and create profound scandal throughout the family. That would have been appropriate for him to step in and say, Wickham's not the man. I'm going to protect you. And that's even more important these days. There's a whole lot more seducers these days than there used to be, both for ladies, but also, of course, for the Church of Jesus Christ here. So Paul fears the false teachers are seducing the Church, the Bride of Christ, and he's jealous for it. This is a challenge for us. Are we jealous for God's reputation? Does it bother us when we see the Church of Jesus Christ maligned and smeared and we see false teachers come into the various denominations? There's not a one of us is not upset when the American flag is burned in a protest, but the cross of Jesus Christ is trampled all the time. Are we willing to put that forth, that kind of productive jealousy to make sure that that sort of thing doesn't happen in your home? or within the walls of this church. Now we see here our loyalty was with Christ, verses 2b through 3. He says here, Paul takes on the role of father. He says, I betrothed you to one husband. Now, betrothed is a word we just don't use very often, right? We say engaged. But in the Jewish marriage process, was like our marriage process. First of all, you get engaged, you betroth, and then you have the ceremony, two big things. But their betrothal was a lot more serious. As a matter of fact, it was legally binding. This is one reason when Mary was found to be pregnant, it was such a scandal, and Joseph was going to divorce her, put her away, basically to save her life, because she had broken, they thought, the vows of her engagement. But basically, engagement would have lasted probably a year, and engagement may have even been arranged when the husband and the wife were children, a prearranged marriage. But it was a legally binding contract. They were acted like married couples, but there was no consummation, no physical union here. That had to wait until the actual ceremony in the wedding night. And the father of the bride was really responsible for protecting the virtue, the chastity of the young bride. He was held liable for that in many, many ways. And we see that again today. Perhaps today it's almost more of just a ceremony for the sake of ceremony without really realizing how important it is. This weekend, though, is the anniversary of both the Stoffers and the McLeans, and both of those precious young brides came down the aisles with their father taking them, and I asked them the question, who gives this woman to be married to this man? So we still see that in our culture as well. Well, that's what Paul's saying. Paul is saying, I am the one who gives this woman to be married to this man. The woman is the Church of Corinth, and the man is Jesus Christ. So he's not meddling. He's not being overcritical. He has a responsibility here. And they are acting very loose with the commitment that they had made. He wants to present them, he says, as a pure virgin. That was his responsibility until the day of ceremony when they would actually have the wedding. But he mentions a concern here. I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, though, they're going to be deceived. Eve's mentioned twice by the apostle Paul here. Both of them have to do with her gullibility. Both of them have to do with how she was easily deceived. Go back to Genesis... Isn't it amazing how many times everything goes back to Genesis chapter 3? That's one reason why in our Sunday school classes I'm so glad that we're going through the Old Testament right now. So many things go back to that, right? But in Genesis chapter 3, you know, the devil didn't show up and wrestle Eve and bind Adam. He just made promises he couldn't keep, and those promises were attractive. He deceived her. She was gullible. Now, she was gullible. She was deceived. Adam was a wimp. He was sitting there right there watching it happen, and instead of being like Paul, protecting the girl in his life, he just let it all happen here. So he's conceived about this deceit, and that's what's happening. These Corinthians don't come in with Well, not guns a-blazing, arrows a-blazing. They don't come in and threaten the Corinthian church. They just make promises they can't keep. They just adjust doctrine a little bit. They just bring in a lot of the culture, which will be palatable to them anyway, and then all of a sudden that seems to sort of usurp the message of grace of the gospel. And ever since Satan deceived Eve, his followers, false teachers, have been doing the same. Just deceit after deceit. after deceit, and we seem to just love it so. Love it so. How many churches do you know that are a hundred years old that are still preaching the gospel? Many of them died during the 1960s. Many of them are dying today. It just takes a few little compromises before you don't even recognize the gospel anymore. So Satan was cunning. He had convinced many of the Christians that Paul was actually the cunning one and he was actually the deceiver. And that's why they were so critical of Paul while he had to defend himself. But one of the things I love about this particular text, because I really think it fits within the kind of worship that we have here at the church and we seek to maintain that you should have. We are called to a simple and pure devotion to Christ. Do you follow that? Simple and pure devotion to Christ. Why do we complicate Christianity so much? It should be simple and it should be pure. As we go through the Vesper services and we look at these eight foundations of the faith, one of them, that I think Jack Stauffer is scheduled to preach, is on the regulative principle of worship. and we embrace the regulative principle of worship here at Christ Reformed Church. And it's not complicated. It basically says we worship God according to what Scripture says God wants to be worshipped, or how God wants to be worshipped. So we have preaching of the word, reading of the word, almsgiving, fellowship, prayer, the singing of songs, hymns, spiritual songs, and the sacraments. That's it. It's just, it's pure and it's simple. You know, one of our mottos at the church is we're a black coffee church. We had a t-shirt. It's strong, straight, simple, and leads to a great awakening, you know? We're just a black coffee church. We're not a mocha frappuccino with two squirts of caramel and oat milk froth. That's just not us. That's not us. Just simple. Some people don't like that. Some people don't like that. Now in saying that, there's plenty of people that we can have fellowship with that don't worship the way we do. Don't take it too far. This is not the way we think it ought to be happening. Some people interpret it different ways. But I've got to be honest with you. When I read the story of, is it, Nadab in a bayou? Some of the first priests that got struck dead because they offered strange fire to the Lord? Commentator say we're not exactly sure what strange fire is but strange would be unauthorized and fire probably has something to do with sacrifice You know, that's a wake-up call for a pastor. I don't want to be offering him that strange fire I don't want to be struck dead We just polished this thing up here, you know be kind of a mess strange fire Regulative principle, pure and simple devotion to Christ. But notice that it's a devotion not to a religion, but to the person of Jesus Christ, our ascended Lord here. And one reason why Paul emphasized this is because so many things recognize Christ, they recognize him maybe even as Lord, but they always want to add stuff. It's Christ plus. with so many people, and that's exactly, the Corinthians doesn't come in, they didn't come in, these false teachers, and say, oh no, don't worry about Jesus, it's not Jesus. It's yeah, you need, Jesus is wonderful. By the way, we sure do hope that you've been circumcised. By the way, we sure do hope that you, and you fill in the blank. Same thing's happening, of course, today. But what does this devotion look like? It looks like settled joy, mostly. But depending on how difficult things could be in our culture and in your life, it could look like a profound sacrifice. The kind of sacrifice that a loving husband and wife are willing to make even when times are difficult. It may look like Matthew chapter 10 when Jesus said, Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. and a man's enemies will be the members of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. He who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. He who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for my sake will find it. You know, many of us have read that verse in theory, Some of you have had to practice that verse. You've had people you love deeply abandon the faith, turn their back on Jesus, turn their back on you, and you've had to make a decision. Is Jesus worth it? Am I going to follow Jesus instead of wallowing in self-pity and rebelling against him and becoming an apostate because my life has not turned out the way I had wanted it to turn out? I love the example of polycarp. I also love his name, polycarp. Maybe the next child, who's pregnant? Now, never mind, I'm not going to do that. Y'all never listen to me when I'm going to suggest names anyway. Otherwise, we'd have 45 hibaccus around the turkey. Alright, so anyway, Polycarp. Polycarp was probably a disciple of the Apostle John, so he knew the Apostle John. He was that first generation after the Apostles left. He was the Bishop of Smyrna. Rome had decided that it was disloyal to be a Christian. You need to burn incense to the Caesars, so Polycarp was arrested. He was brought into the arena. And the pro-council told him, he says, what I want you to do is I want you to yell, down with the atheists. Now, we would probably be okay with that, right? Yeah, down with the atheists, you know. But the pro-council thought it was the Christians who were the atheists. You see, because they wouldn't worship the false gods, they wouldn't worship the sinners, therefore they were sinners. They were atheists, all right? So the pro-council wanted him to say, down with the atheists. Polycarp, look grimly at the wicked heathen. Multitude in the stadium and gestured towards them and he said down with the atheists speaking of all the Romans that were surrounding them and then the co-council says swear urge the pro council reproach Christ and I will set you free and Polycarp said this 86 years old 86 years I have served him Polycarp declared and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my king and my Savior? The procouncil says, I have wild animals here. I will throw you to them if you do not repent. Call them, Polycart replied. It is unthinkable for me to repent from what is good and turn to what is evil. I will be glad, though, to be changed from evil into righteousness. If you despise these animals, I will have you burned. You threaten me with fire, which burns for an hour. and then is extinguished, but do you know nothing of the fire that is coming judgment and eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly? Why are you waiting? Bring on whatever you want." And they burned him. And he didn't die, so they stabbed him in the heart. And he died. See, Polycarp got that until death do we part. He was committed to the husband of Jesus Christ. Christianity is not complicated. There's just this beautiful simplicity about it. It's pure, and it's simple, and it's also really difficult at times. Can we be honest? There's three principles here from the Apostle Paul that remind us of this regulative principle, just how simple, how life and all-consuming Christianity should be. It's not just a Sunday morning check-the-box thing. Philippians 121, for to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Galatians 2 20. I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. Colossians 3 2 through 4. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things of this earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory. So the apostle is trying to fight again this false Christ, this easy Christ, this Christ where you can have your own life but also give your life to Him at the same time. One commentator says this, and quoting Calvin in part of this expression, the twin goals of ministry are the glory of Christ and the joy of the church. Just simple. The glory of Christ and the joy of the church. That means we need to be warm-hearted and passionate while remembering that it isn't actually about us at the end of the day. So as Calvin warns, every Christian needs to beware of pursuing their own interests rather than Christ and of intruding themselves in his place, lest while they pretend to be the bridegroom's friends, they are in fact adulterers who seduce the bride's love to themselves. There is a settled, joyful devotion to being an active Christian. And we are active not just on Sunday mornings, but throughout the week. Indeed, you cannot separate our life from the life of the Church. And everything seems to pull that away from us. And yet, the more committed we are to the things of God, to the worship of God, to the gathering together of the people of God, to prayer, to the sacraments, the more settled, joyful confidence we'll have. That little nagging voice could be the Holy Spirit telling you, you need to be crucified with Christ. So you're no longer you who live, but Christ that lives in you. But we also have this temptation to betray Christ for another, and you see that here in verse 4. He says here, and he's really hitting them pretty hard here, and he's being sort of cynical too. For if one comes and preaches another here, basically that's probably would be better translated, since one comes and preaches another, because this is not a hypothetical situation that Paul is dealing with here. But the basic human nature that he's dealing with is that we tend to lower the standard, don't we? We find the most important things just a little too difficult, so we're always lowering the standard. We're trying to make it easier. We're trying to do fewer repetitions. Thank you. Those pesky vowels and repetitions. You can tell how many times I've worked out, right? I think about talking to some of the school teachers. There is a policy in many school districts that no matter what, you are not allowed to give below a 60, a D minus, to any student. So student doesn't turn in homework. They fail every test and everything. Basically, all they got to do is show up, breathe, and they will be able to graduate. Now, let me ask you employers out there, what kind of employee does that turn out? Let me ask you, what kind of son-in-law, what kind of daughter-in-law, what kind of students, if you are in higher education, is that going to encourage? No matter what you do, you will pass. So instead of raising the standard and helping the people get up to the standard, we just lower the standard. Now, by the way, I don't really blame the teachers. This is part of our culture. This is part of the culture. And it's part of this idea that the goal is high school graduation, not actually learning. It's a factory mentality. Matter of fact, I pity the teachers that have to subdue their conscience every time they give grades. Well, folks, that stuff's all over the place. Lowering the standard. And it's all over the church. It's all over the church. And it can happen in this church, too. That's one reason why I'm preaching this. Don't think we're above all this. The Corinthians probably did at one point in time. And he goes on and he gives these, he says, what are these false teachers doing? And he kind of gives these three general headings here. And he talks about another Jesus, another or a different spirit and another gospel here. They are believing another Jesus whom we have not preached. If you have been around long enough, you've seen this, right? The Jesus of the mainline liberal church is, Jesus is an example. He's an example. It gets awkward for us when you start talking about him being God, he's just a great teacher and you should follow his example. WWJD, what would Jesus do? The Jesus of the Mormons is, oh yeah, he's a great guy, you gotta read the Bible, you also gotta read the Book of Mormon. The Jesus of the Jehovah's Witnesses, great God, certainly not God. The Jesus of the Seventh-day Adventist, yep, you gotta worship Jesus, but you also need to keep the Levitical law code. The Jesus of Catholicism, yep, gotta be saved by grace, but you sure better keep those sacraments, and you better have the last rites, and you better go to Mass. That's not the Jesus of the Bible. We're always adding to Jesus, or taking away from Jesus. So it's another Jesus, another different spirit, And you know, this makes us very uncomfortable, but you know the spirit that they're following instead of the spirit, the Holy Spirit, the spirit of the devil, a demonic spirit. You know, some Christians just see a devil behind every corner. You're like, devil made you do that. But a lot of us don't see the devil enough. The Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 4 says this, but the spirit explicitly says that in latter times, some shall fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the doctrines of demons. Deceitful spirits and the doctrines of demons. It's another spirit and then of course another gospel And it's almost always a grace plus gospel. They don't completely dispense with grace, but they're always wanting to add Something to it They're just deceiving the corrupt You know having a child in Ukraine. I tend to read the headlines of coming out of Ukraine here and one of them caught my attention recently and Y'all know what reactive armor is? Of course you do. Anyway, but let me explain just in case. A lot of the older tanks will put reactive armor on the outside of the tank, so when a missile comes through, the armor, there's actually a satchel charge there that will blow up, that will take some of the power away from the rocket, allowing the tank crew to survive, okay? And one of the things is the Ukrainians, as the Russian tanks have proven to be so bad, one of it is just simply because of the corruption of the government system in Ukraine. And as the Ukrainians were finding some of these tanks that were blown up by their missiles, they pulled off some of this reactive armor that was all over the tanks. They found egg cartons inside of them. Some little corrupt bureaucrat pocketed the money for the real armor and put egg cartons on the outside of their tank. How is an egg carton going to protect you from a missile? As they captured Russian soldiers with body armor, they found that a lot of the body armor plates were actually cardboard. Some corrupt false official made a bunch of money by replacing the real body armor with cardboard and people died. Well, it's just as bad to spiritually deceive, to be spiritually corrupted and give people a false sense of salvation and to get away from pure and simple devotion to Jesus Christ. The rest of that story is the defense minister of Ukraine wrote a letter to the defense minister of Russia and thanked them for being such a bad army, which I thought showed some chutzpah on their part. So we have this other gospel and then Paul goes on and says, and you bear with this beautifully. You're willing to put this up. You've embraced the gods of tolerance that says you can believe anything and still get into heaven. And he's rebuking him for it. You bear with this beauty. He's just being sarcastic there. Paul can be sarcastic here. They're just distracted. For the Corinthians, everything is squirrel. You know, they can't maintain a devotion to pure, simple devotion to Jesus Christ. There's a great old German proverb that says this, tell me who you are fighting and I will tell you who you are. They decided to make peace with everybody. No one got kicked out of the church. No one was accused of heresy. And folks, the reason why, I don't want to come down too hard on you, but our church can be just like this if we're not careful. And it's every one of your responsibilities. Think about the book of Revelation. You know the first, the seven churches in Asia? Churches that Paul probably planted, or at least directly or indirectly? Five of the seven, by the time John wrote Revelation, probably in 90 AD, maybe 30 years after this, 20 years after this, five of the seven had already been leaving Jesus Christ. And he said, if you do, I'm going to take your lamp stand out of the way. I'm going to remove your light for the world will go into darkness. And all five of those churches are in Muslim Turkey today. Y'all could be us. We ought to have a holy insecurity. where we just don't ever leave this pure and simple devotion to Jesus Christ. Presumption with obedience is very, very dangerous in many ways. Now we see here our need for discernment, and this is what Paul calls us to do. He says, for I do not consider myself the least in fear to the most eminent apostles here. He's calling them the most eminent apostles. Your translation might say super apostles. We don't know if this was a title that the false teachers took to themselves or Paul is, again, being a little sarcastic to them. But again, he's not talking about Peter and John. He's talking about people who have taken the title of apostle. This happens in churches today. I think I told you I was eating at Ryan's Steakhouse in Columbia several years ago when these ladies came up to us. They saw we were having a Bible study and they say, oh yes, we go to the church where the apostle Beatrice Smith is in charge of the church. Wow, the apostle, the apostle, big A apostle, Beatrice Smith, wow. Avoid those churches, I guess is the lesson there. So these super apostles here, he's saying, you know, he's comparing himself to them. He's not inferior to them. He says here, though, he is unskilled in speech. Now, that doesn't mean Paul can't preach. Paul was probably an excellent preacher, but he was not going to put on this stylized rhetoric of the Greco-Roman world, which is half acting, you know. One reason why we don't have drama in our church, Jack put me onto this quote, you bring drama into worship and you end up with very bad drama. And this is the kind of thing he was going against. It was all this drama and rhetoric and stylized preaching. And it's not pure and simple. Paul is just going back to this pure and simple. I am not unskilled in speech, but I certainly, I am unskilled in speech, but I certainly am not in knowledge. You know what Paul preached? Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He wasn't trying to be a psychologist. He wasn't trying to make you feel better about anything. He wasn't trying to give you a four-step diet plan or anything like that. He just preached Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And when you start attaching a thousand other things to worship, people miss that message. You know, one of the joys of our church is there's just not a whole lot of other reason to come here. We ain't got a great playground. The coffee is mediocre. Can we be honest? No offense to the Deacons, you know. You know, we don't have a thousand little reasons why you would come to the church. It's just Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And fellowship with really holy, committed people. And a good tradition that Lord willing will keep us safe, right? Now again, the bigger we get, the more resources we have, we can add some other things, but they will all be within that pure and simple devotion to Christ, whatever it might be. 1 Corinthians 1.22 says, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. To Jews, a stumbling block, to Gentiles, foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Paul himself had this knowledge. He was given the mysteries of God. He was discipled by Jesus himself. And he says here, in fact, in every way we have made this evident to you in all things. He told the Ephesian elders he did not shrink back from teaching them the whole purposes of God. It's tempting sometimes to pull the punch a little bit because it's disturbing. People don't want to know they're sinners. They want to be told they're saints and they're going to be just fine. But you have a responsibility to tell them the truth whether they like it or not. Now, don't be a jerk about it. That's part of what we're dealing with. There's been a lot of Christian jerks in the past, right? None here. But we all need to be generous doves and we all need to be true to service. We all need to season our words with salt and speak the truth in love. But we do need to speak the truth. We need to speak the truth. Telling somebody they're going to heaven when they're not, you will be held accountable for that lie. So, they're just missing it. They're not recognizing Paul. They're ignoring Paul, and therefore ignoring the Gospel, and they've gone after other teachers, other husbands, rather than pure and simple devotion to Jesus Christ. They're just like Israel of old. They just keep going after The others here, they don't realize the good thing that they have. Can you imagine if the Apostle Paul founded this church? I mean, those would be some Bible studies we would want to go to, right? There's a great illustration here about a group of hikers that were down in the foothills of the Himalayas, and there was an old man walking by there, and they stopped him and asked him to take a picture of their group. So the old man said, certainly, got the camera. They're all sitting there, you know, doing, I don't know, what's this, right? You're doing the pictures of young people. I got it wrong, right? That's a gang sign. I just joined a gang, didn't I? All right. Anyway, they're waving or whatever, you know, doing this, you know. They realized sometime later the old man that took the picture was Sir Edmund Hillary. the first European to hike Mount Everest. But they were so into their own little moment, they ignored the most famous person to ever be on those Himalayan mountains. Same things happened to the Corinthian church. They got the apostle Paul, but he's not as pretty and he's not as articulate as these false apostles. So they're going to follow after them. You know, we looked at Hosea. Eventually, God gave up. on Hosea. One of the most terrifying verses in all of scripture is Hosea chapter 4 verse 14. Ephraim, which is another, the major tribe of Israel, or Israel. Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone. There might be a time where Jesus just stops chasing after his bride. Now, if you really are his bride, you will be saved, you will be part of the marriage feast. But the church in general could be in a lot of trouble. if they keep following after the idols. So we look about this marriage, we look about this commitment. Is it worth it? Is it worth it to do the things you need to do to stay in the fight with Jesus Christ? Well, let me give you a little bit of a vision about what's going to happen one day. And this is history yet not fulfilled yet. Revelation chapter 19. Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder saying, Hallelujah for the Lord, our God, the almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to him for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready and it was given her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And then he said to me, right, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, these are true words of God. It's worth it. Covenant faithfulness, loyalty to Christ is worth it. Whatever you have to give up to make sure that you're loyal to that husband of Christ, it's worth it. Because what I just read will happen and you're going to be part of that great day. Father, please bless us with a joyful sobriety that it takes to be able to live in such a fallen age. Help us to rise above the passions and the distractions of our culture and of our own selves. And let us know the joy of being devoted to our husband, Jesus Christ. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.