It's certainly my privilege to be with you again in the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I'll fill you in. I'm going to read there from 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And before we do that, I'll fill you in a little bit there on our ministries, which you help with and we appreciate it. We have a ministry there in Malawi that is going fairly good but they had real trouble there in Malawi because of the president that was trying to be a Mugabe there who ruined Zimbabwe. He was trying to take over as a tyrant. And the donor nations, which are US, Germany, Britain, Holland, France, and I think Japan, there's like six or seven donor nations that really provide about 40% of the budget of Malawi. So they all quit. They withheld their funds. And even my wife wouldn't let me put it in the paper. But he said he told them all to go to hell. That's what he said. That's his words. He didn't care. And they were calling upon him to devalue the Kowatcha, which was sinking fast and he wouldn't do it. So the banks around the world wouldn't take Kowatcha. So then the airlines, Malawi Airlines, went defunct. So we were going to go this year, and I guess the Lord saw many things happening, so it's just, well, we didn't go. But the only airline flying in then was South African Airlines, and they wanted to be paid either in Rand, dollars, or British Pounds. He didn't want to watch it. So the country really had grown into a standstill under him, but he was going ahead, pushing, and he was bringing the president of the Sudan who was wanted for massacring about 2 million Christians there in the southern part of Sudan which is a war criminal around the world but he brought them there and that was the first reason why the donor nations wouldn't they said they were withholding funds but then they said because you're going to bring them back he said if you bring them back we're not going to just withhold funds we're going to cancel the funds period so he didn't care Because when they get into, like, Mugabe, they don't care if the nation goes to pot, as long as they remain in control. And then he put the opposition guy who was going to run against him, he put him in jail for a while. He finally got him out on bail. But he was becoming a dictator. And we wrote about that and got people, you know, we're asking people to pray. Well then the Lord intervened because he died of a heart attack. So that ended his dictatorial because he had told all these things he was going to do. Well I always say that no man, I always say you better say D.V. God willing you're going to do these because if God's not willing you're not going to do them. And so he just died suddenly in the midst of everything. and his vice president whom he tried to, he had fired his vice president, it was a woman but she, the government there, the parliament that they had wouldn't take his firing off her so he put her out of his party but anyway she took over and so she's trying to bring some kind of semblance of control back to the country and to get the other nations involved But anyway, it's been a hard time for the people because they have nothing to begin with. I mean, the average wage, I think it's $2 a day or something like that in Malawi. It's one of the poorest nations on earth. And so our taxi cab man that we have gotten to know is a Christian. He's a kind of a Pentecostal Christian, but I think he knows something about the Bible. But he had emailed us and said that his business was defunct. because he goes to the airport and picks up people and takes them into the city. That's his primary taxi run. There's nobody coming into the country, he said. And he said a lot of other people were suffering, too, and there was no gasoline. So when any gasoline came, he said the lines were, I don't know, people had to wait all night to hope to get some gas. So things were really bad. I don't know if they've gotten much better, but at least the funds from the West will flow in again, and that should help them some. But we need to pray for him a lot, the churches all seem to be doing alright. My concern of course is what the people know. I went to Asbury Seminary, I went to Asbury College, I went to Talbot, I went to Biola, I went to Trinity, so I get all their lovely glossy magazines all the time that I read. and the one from Asbury Seminary, he was rejoicing and everything was global in this big glass magazine they just got the other day. Global this and global that. We need this and global, global. And he's saying, Africa has now become the most Christian continent. That's why I've heard this several times in the world. You know, because there's been so many millions of Africans that have embraced Christianity. Well, I always say, that's, uh, outwardly. because I honestly do not know how much the Malawian people and that's where David Livingstone went so they've got some kind of historic background in Christianity although his big Presbyterian church went all liberal there about 80 years ago so it's one of the largest in Malawi but it's totally defunct spiritually But people, you know, our people will say, we started the church out in the village and we've got 40 people coming and everything, you know. Do these people know anything, you know, about the Bible and about salvation? Because they say, well, now we've got a church, you know, 50 people, 100 people, we've got some big church, we've got a church over a thousand. So, and I try to teach them when I go. So I think some of the men know that have been with us for about 20 years now. That's all the teachers I've ever got is what I know. I've been there 10 times and I try to teach theology and Bible and everything when I go. So I think the men that have been with us and have stayed with us, some of them have died and a couple have lost. But the ones that have stayed with us, I think they do know something about Bible Christianity. But I'm not sure about the churches. you know I'm not sure when we go there's a big crowd we often say my wife and I and daughter we would like to go in unannounced to see who's there when one of the local men show up you know for service so I hope people are safe but from the African culture and everything that we have observed The tribe is the number one. The tribe and the headman of the tribe is number one. So Malawi really has three divisions. You get it north, middle and south. And the south is more predominantly Christian. That is, you know, it's not Muslim, it's not Hinduism. I don't know what the depth of Christianity is. But tribes So that one person wrote there in the African Democratic Republic, I don't want to go on too long here, but anyway, they have, the Grace Brethren have been in there for, I don't know, maybe 80 years or more. They have founded seminaries, colleges, and supposedly Christianized the Central African Democratic Republic. Well, they had all kinds of problems there a few years ago and all kinds of fighting in which a lot of people were killed and massacred and people said that the Christians wielded the machetes and the clubs and everything, beating and dying and killing other people. And so, because this was written up in some magazine, somebody sent, I don't know what was in, but somebody sent me just a page they tore out. They sent it to me. And this woman was writing that the depth of Christianity doesn't transcend the tribal unit. Because these tribes got the fighting, so, and they were, I guess, both claiming to be Christian, but all kinds of problems developing, murderous problems, not just minor problems, great problems among the Christians. So, I think I'm not into numbers, first of all, because you can have a thousand people and they can know nothing. like we have in some place, I wonder what they know. But anyway, pray for Malawi, pray that the work... We tried to start a college there, but we have great difficulty doing anything with it because we've got the grinds, we've got buildings there, but we can't get anybody to man that. And we had hoped that somebody would go, but nobody has gone. So pray for that. We're in there in Zambia in the jails there in Kabwe, Kitwe, Livingstonia and Misaka. I've gotten contact with two or three ministers and pastors there who are outside the jails. So that work has grown so that I get... I've got a letter, I'm not exaggerating, a pile of letters about that high from people all over these places in Zambia, both in the jails and out of the jails. We went there and tried to start a church there. About 10 years ago in Lusaka, the man we worked with after we left, they claimed he was poisoned, which is another, you have to put that in quotes in Africa too, because if anybody dies suddenly, either from malaria or AIDS or whatever he has, TB a lot of times, many people say he was poisoned because he died suddenly. So I don't know if the man was poisoned, but then he relapsed. That whole effort of us to try to get that church established, and in the tank because we lost all contact with everybody because he was the only contact we had and mail is difficult there too and that's the only contact we had so we lost his post office box we had nobody to write to so all that fell through all of that teaches me that the work of the Lord is the work of the Lord So I went in there, tried to start this, whereas all this other thing that has come up in Zambia was not of my doing. In fact, I don't know how these people got my name and address, but one fellow there, he's got out of the jail now and he's trying to start a reformed Baptist church there. I'm trying to help him, and another pastor in Lusaka just wrote to me recently. He's all interested in work, and he's actually done some of the studies on Romans already. He wants to take some courses. So that work in Zambia has just mushroomed beyond anything that I can do. I can't keep up with it at all. Although I never tried to get anything other than the original church going, so that's how God works. Then we have Blackville Bible College, which is our smallest work, and seems to be going nowhere. So that's one of the main struggles. So it's strange how the Lord works. We've done everything to make this school go, but it doesn't seem to be going to go. I don't know. It's been in operation now for about 60 years since Dr. Blackville founded it back in Altoona. So we've got three graduating this next week, next Saturday we have our graduation. And that leaves a hole for us to fill because, well, one might come back, but the others are not coming back. And we have nobody on the horizon that's coming next fall, and we only have a few. And most of them will graduate next year. So unless something happens in the immediate future, we will be dying to almost no one. And so that doesn't look great from a man's standpoint, but we have to trust the Lord there that the school will continue. My wife thinks that if I retire that there'll be closed schools. I don't know if that's her thinking. Sometimes she has good insight. and certain things that I don't and I'm pushing 80 in other words I'll be 80 next birthday so I don't know really how much longer I can go there you know it's not a matter of just being there but trying to teach and do things in a creditable way I don't know how much longer I can do that So pray for the school. We need the Lord's help. We've got many promises from the Lord in connection with the school. It's a Bible college and the Bible college is definitely out of vogue today. Because I've got all these things from Asbury, Biola. They're just building a big new education building there in connection with Talbot and Biola out there. They're building a big arts building or something there in Asbury. So notice that all the things that are going forward have nothing to do with the ministry. That grieves me. Asbury's Company University in Arkansas, about twice the size of mine. When I went, they tried to keep it at a thousand. That was their goal, 500 men, 500 women, roughly speaking. When I went there, it was 500 men and 237, if my memory is correct, 237 were in the Ministerial Association. Ha! The student body of men were going to be ministers of the gospel. I wouldn't, today, I don't know, they wouldn't have got two thousand, a thousand men and a thousand women today. But I don't know if there will be 200 men at all even interested in the gospel. Of course, many of them are going into liberal churches and everything. But I mean, everything that is posted I get in the magazines is telling about TV announcers, telling about politicians, telling about educators, telling about scientists, telling about doctors. They don't have much to tell, apparently, about the ministry. And both Biola and Asbury were founded by their founders to produce ministers of the gospel. So that's what's happening today. So the church is into everything but the preaching of the gospel. Then I have my writings, which come and go. I have the fall of man, the fall of Adam, which will go over like a proverbial flood. winning no fans and influencing not too many people. I struggled with this, I struggled with all my writings, but I struggled more with this because it's too technical. I wrote to several people and said it's way too technical after I see it not in print. So I struggled with that. Mindfully, it's only 50 pages, 60 pages. but it was a struggle so I wrote to several people I said I don't think the finished product will show the struggle that I went through to write it I don't know what it will do to most people but what I did try to show because I tried to like I told them down there in that little group we go to the men I said I try not to preach to the choir I'm trying to reach out two people, so what I was trying to show during the fall of Adam that almost every historic Protestant believed and taught that Adam fell and had a sinful nature whereas I believe that I would say probably 90% of preaching today in all groups fail to recognize that Adam has had a sinful nature which he passed on to all posterity because the whole teaching of self-esteem which is everywhere today, it's everywhere self-esteem could not be taught if you believe that Adam passed on a sinful human nature to every individual on earth and is passing it on continually, that's what I'm trying to look at there the people not yet born they will inherit a sinful nature from Adam And so some of my friends, I think, quit writing to me because of things I put in the paper on that, because they're into modern psychology. I mean, good friends of mine that I've known for years, and that would be classed as Bible believers in many ways, but all into that modern self-esteem and psychology, which is everywhere today. You just have to listen to other... I read Rick Warren talking about low self-esteem and high self-esteem and blah, blah, blah. That's all you hear today. whereas if you study the Bible, Adam fell and he plunged the human race into sin and misery so that every person born as Adam is dead now in trespasses and in sin so there is nothing to esteem in the nature that Adam passed on to anybody, nothing to esteem That's why Jesus said you must be born again. I've got these little books here from Jill Saunders up in Canada on C.S. Lewis. That's another one. C.S. Lewis is everywhere today. I hear good men quote him all the time in Reformed circles. They quote C.S. Lewis who believed in purgatory and it was far removed from the Reformed theologians you could get. Then a lamp in the dark. I had these with me last week and forgot to tell the people about them so that's how good I'm doing. But this is all about the Bible. It's quite interesting. It lasts for three hours. It's kind of a long thing. but it tells you all about the struggles and it's kind of a little shows you pictures that some people are worried about because it shows William Tyndale getting burned at the stake so some people are worried about their children seeing this man because they do a little bit of acting you might say in the talking in between times they show different things visually so I warn you about that so some people don't like it for those kind of things I don't know But it's a good documentary of how we got our English Bible and the sufferings and everything that people went through to give us the English Bible. So I want to look there, with God's help there, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul's first epistle to Corinthians chapter 1 and reading in verse 18. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God." They didn't know God. through the wisdom of this word. It pleased God by the foolishness of Greeks. He beset them that believed. The Jews were parasite and the Greeks seek out their wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block, not to the Greeks' foolishness, but unto them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren, are that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And the base things of the world and the things which are despised hath God chosen yea, and things which are not to bring to naught the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God has made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, that according as it is written, he that glories, let him glory in the Lord." So we're looking there at the wisdom of God and the wisdom of man. Let's ask the Lord to help us as we look at his word together. Our Father and our God, again, we bow in thy holy presence, in thy flight's holy presence, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We recognize our own inability, we recognize our own fallibility. So we pray our Father for the power and grace of the Holy Spirit to help us as we look into thy word together. That we might come, our Father, to understand it, to believe it, to live by it, and to glory in it. So write your word, our Father, upon our hearts this day. We pray And help us, our Father, to seek to follow after the wisdom that comes from the, not the wisdom of this age, the wisdom of this world, which so predominates in our time. Give us grace, give us understanding, our God, we pray. minister to our hearts and minds, our God, we pray, and help us to come to a better understanding of the truth as it is in Christ, that we might faithfully, our Father, testify to it and give a witness to it in this generation in which we live to the glory of Christ, our God, we pray. bless this church our Father enjoys as he labors here from week to week. In the gospel we pray for its testimony in this community that it might yet become a greater light and testimony our Father to the glory of Christ, to the grace of God in Christ, to the glorious gospel of redeeming grace in this community. So bless His labors, those that pray, those that support in every way, white family, friends, and others. We pray our God for it to grow and to become a great testimony to Thee and to Sovereign Grace, our God, in this area. To the glory of Christ we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You know, We live in a day of man's wisdom and I often wonder what constitutes the church because I read all the time in the literature of our times by men who claim to be Bible believers about the ministry of the church and one man who is the head of the Torrey Institute there at Biola and he had a big article in Biola magazine there about missions and he said he attended all four ecumenical mission conferences there in the world in 2010 celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first missionary global meeting there in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1910 So there was one in Tokyo, one in South Africa, and one in Boston, and one in Edinburgh. And he said two were ecumenical and two were evangelical. This is this man writing from Biola that used to take a 30 group stand when I went to Talbot. For instance, Biola wouldn't support Billy Graham's meetings there in Los Angeles in 1956. So they took some kind of a stand at one time, but I fear it's all gone now. So he was saying, you know, that is the great thing about missions. Missions, he says, is so ecumenical, it demands the whole church, or it wants the whole church to be involved in missions. So I think, what is he talking about when he says the whole church? Is he talking about all the apostate churches that don't believe anything about the Bible, about Christ, about salvation? Are they all involved in missions? And are they involved in getting out the glorious gospel? And that's exactly what he seems to mean. So the church, apparently if any group that claims to be a church that has a steeple on it or a people meet, so that is the idea of a church today. But I'm sad to say that most churches today are built on the wisdom of this age and not the wisdom of God. So the three things here we see quickly, God's declaration that is, the preaching of the cross, then God's destruction, for it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prism, then God's designation, how God's design works, God calls and God chooses. When you look at the Declaration, the Apostle Paul He preached Christ. and that's what he says here over and over and I've looked at this passage both in Greek and in Latin and I've looked at it for several years now this passage, these first chapter, second chapter, third chapter of Corinthians looking at how many times wisdom is used here what the wisdom of God is, what the wisdom of this age is and how the two are completely incompatible We cannot have the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the age. No, God's wisdom destroys the wisdom of this age. So the preaching is a declaration. You know, I'm just working through Adam Clark. The other Clark, this is Gordon Clark's book on raising the revelation. In fact, I brought it with me. I've got it half read. I'm working through it there and looking at many good things. But you know, I often wonder, as I read that, because I understand some of it, and like my friend always says, what about Joe Blow? You know, what about Joe Blow? That's the average man in the church. My dad was a Joe Blow, he was a plumber and he didn't get saved because I was only a little kid so I don't know much about it but I think he was 35 or 40 years old before he ever got saved. I don't think he had much background in church or anything and I think he was truly saved and I think he tried to live for the Lord for what he knew. But not everybody is a theologian and not everybody is a philosopher. But yet, everybody who is a Christian, I believe, is supposed to understand the Scriptures. They're to come to an understanding of the Scriptures, and the Apostle Paul says, or at least the Lord says about it, through the Apostle Paul, that preaching is God's ordained method. That's the declaration. So it's not all the arguments, and I believe in arguments, and I've used them myself when I write about different things, but I believe the main task of the church is to preach the gospel. That's the main task. That's what foils the devil. That's what overcomes the wisdom of this age. It's the preaching of the cross. Preaching Christ and Him crucified. We preach Christ crucified. Unto the Jews a stumbling block. Unto the Greeks foolishness. And in the term to know nothing among you save Jesus and Him crucified. The world doesn't like the crucifixion of Christ. They call it a slaughterhouse religion. That's the wisdom of the Word. That's the wisdom of the natural man. That's natural religion. And believe me, natural religion rules America today. Natural religion, that's what rules it. So they don't want. I remember a good friend of mine, I think he's one of the ones that's left, and I worked with Captain's Crusade, and that's one of the things they said. Don't use the blood, you know, don't use the blood of Jesus, because people don't understand. Don't use born again, because people don't understand that. So you're told immediately about the offensive things of the gospel. Don't use those. Now my friends, that is the religion, I don't care who says it, that's the religion of the natural. Man, that's Cain's religion. We read about it in the Old Testament today. It wants nothing to do with crucifixion. It wants nothing to do with blood. And even MacArthur, he got off on that for a while. And that whole thing there, MacArthur, comes out of the Plymouth Brethren, J.N. Darby, all those, and I've read, I'd like to read to the other fellow there from Ireland, he won't come to me, The Silence of God, Sir Robert Anderson. All those kind of brethren guys, they all talked about the death of Christ. So it was long before MacArthur. They wanted to talk about the death of Christ, but not the crucifixion! Not the blood shedding! Not that. So many people want a natural religion that the natural man can adhere to and follow. But the Bible says the gospel is a declaration and it's a declaration about Christ crucified. That's the wisdom of God. That's how God overcomes. the wisdom of man, it's through the preaching of the cross. For after the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. The world is not going to come to God through natural religion, through natural wisdom. It's never going to come because in the wisdom of God it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those that believe. That's the only way God works. Preaching is being Attacked on every hand today So, you know when I write things People think I'm whistling in the dark, you know They say because because that's one lady said and I'm Terry or a pastor. She said well, that's just his opinion You know some book is your children eyes, right? That's just his opinion But you know, I try to document things I just want to quickly, I don't want my time to go, how long did you go here? Just go on. Just go on. But here, I've got a guy who's working on his masters, he helps us out, he's our assistant professor. He's working on his masters thesis, which I'm reading and studying with him, to get it right, on preaching. So a lot of things I've got from him. but he's telling preaching is being attacked today not just in secular society where people don't want to be preached to but it's being attacked in the very place that's supposed to teach preaching in the homiletics departments of many seminaries the books being written attack preaching now they're supposed to teach you how to preach So one of the favorite words of writers in the church today is multiculturalism. So I suppose you get all fired up about that. This term has given rise to a whole new approach to preaching. Preaching used to be the central act of worship, but Niemann and Rogers, who have written about the homiletics, argue that doctrine and principle, that kind of sermon, will not speak here. It will speak today. They contend that people in their churches, because they get a whole lot of big response, sending out things and getting responses from churches in their book. They say, people in churches will not listen nor can they understand propositions laid in sermons. They add that their respondents referred to theologically dense concepts such as righteousness and justification as having literal ordinary use today. We don't need those today. They also conceded that although pastors cared deeply about preaching, in the end they had abandoned that heroic idea that it's the most important pastoral task. This is from Homilet. He teaches you, it's no longer, that's not an important task, preaching. Which inevitably requires the pulpit to bear more weight than it can support. So I don't know if there's your So pastors are supposed to merely abandon the task of trying to preach the word. Even further afield, some writers claim that preachers need to listen to other voices out there today, scientists, economists, feminists, and the voice of the gay and lesbian communities. Niemann and Rogers concurred that the arts can prove rich insight during a worship service. The basic strategy by which their respondents enriched their homiletical language was to draw from artistic treasures of the ethnic groups themselves. The church of these writers surveyed looked for ethnic forms such as dance, ethnic drama, visual and plastic arts to supplement the sermon. I hope you have that here. Some of these surveyed indicate they practically ended up substituting art for the sermon altogether. Neiman Rogers claimed that they heard of several cases where artwork or a cultural artifact became the focus of extensive examination during the sermon. I didn't bring one with me today. Sounds a lot like the three Roman Catholic clergy I saw discussing a relic on television. They spent the entire time period discussing the bones, supposedly, of Mary Magdalene. R.R. claims that religion is more danced than thought out and some modern homiletic writers allude to this idea by claiming that there are some cases where dancing is more appropriate than the sermon of course one of the new trends in seminaries is the woman preacher some statisticians claim that women now make up 50% of the enrollment in theological seminaries this has given rise to the woman homiletics professor James Childers, one of such modern homiletics teachers, says that in the African tradition, it expresses life and pulsates for individuals and communities through dance and music. And Nicholas Slash says, only when the biblical text is performed to an audience does it become alive. So the whole new idea about preaching is that the congregation has a role in preaching. All of you have a role to play here. And this is what makes people happy, it says. One professor at Piedmont College and at Columbia Theological Seminary, I thought that used to be conserved, didn't it? I thought it did. And so the woman tells her classes in homiletics that whatever else the sermon is about, it is first about the congregation. Because they are the community in whose midst the preacher stands and the congregation gives their minister the authority to speak. So then another professor claims that the new homiletics holds out the goal of preaching as evoking experience rather than explaining and describing the character of God. And then Childers and Schmidt claim that the preacher's work in his or her study is coupled with the work of exegeting the congregation. Not only bad theology, but bad grammar. Exegete is a nine, not a verb. And I know that even Dr. Robbins and Dr. Clark use it as a verb, but it's not. An exegete is a man who gives an exegesis. You don't exegete. But anyway, that's what they claim. There are some modern homiletic professors, instead of teaching preaching, that the church should be willing to change the worship service. They say, for example, Neiman and Rogers claim that Native Americans like stories and prefer music over the best homilies. So they advocate using more music and carving the story into the music. which then goes far beyond the dryness of a lecture or the slowness of a diatribe. Strange that two people who are supposed to be teaching others how to preach should refer to preaching as a slow diatribe. I wonder would Spurgeon have liked this message to be described in that way. And then of course the professor at Fuller Seminary says that preachers need to use movie plot lines as their text because that will get the young people they'll understand better if you do that, so when I say that preaching is being attacked I give you all the attacks that are being launched in seminaries and writers all over the country in the year of our Lord 2012 whereas the Bible speaks about preaching over and over it speaks, teaching and preaching are different, I try to tell my people, students that Preaching as a declaration, teaching as give and take, where the people respond, they ask questions, they answer, debate, and we argue back and forth, that's teaching. Preaching as a declaration, which there is no response while the man is speaking, because they have to hear the declaration from God. That's what preaching is all about, and that's the very thing that these writers say, modern people don't want to be preached at! It just don't want to, so therefore we've got to find other ways to communicate, whereas the Bible over and over says we must preach the gospel. What would it be if I preach not the gospel? So then quickly looking there at God's design, God says three things there, it says three things about God there, that God chooses. Now, how many times do you hear that in the modern church? Almost never. I read Max Lucado there. All he talks about through his book is about you choosing. You've got to choose. You've got to choose. Choose, choose, choose, choose. I saw a thing there on a church notice board about two days ago. It says, heaven to win, hell you lose, you choose. So that's the whole thing, and I know that people make choices, but the Bible speaks of God choosing. Why is that? I never see a verse where it says, God chose! I know I haven't seen one yet, maybe I'll see one tomorrow, but I've never seen one yet that says, For you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men are after the flesh, not many mighty, not many are called, but God has chosen, and if you look at your Greek, that is in the eras, it's in the past, notice God has chosen and finished his choice already! Finished it. And he's chosen the foolish things that there were. to confine the wise, he's chosen the weak things to confine the mighty, and that confine there means to bring them to shame, to bring them to overshade, and base things of the word and the things which are despised has God chosen, four things there and then one more, five, and the things which are not, to bring to naught the things that are. So God overturns natural religion, he overturns the religion of man, he overturns the religion that's all through the modern church, all through Christian academia, because God does the exact opposite of what many are trying to do. I believe in Christian academia. God has chosen. He has done it. God has called, God has chosen, and it emphasizes again, God has chosen, God has chosen, God has chosen, and the things which are despised, the things which are not, the things that are, have God chosen. So, God is not impressed with the natural man. He's not impressed with the wisdom of this world, the wisdom of this age, which arises from the God of this age, which is earthly, sensual, and demonic. That's the way the Bible describes the wisdom of this age. So God brings all of that to nothing. He brings it to nothing. And He does that through people that are looked at as nothing. Because I always say I'm one of God's not. The things which are not, that is, they are nothing, they are not to the wisdom of this age, to the wisdom of natural religion, to the wisdom of the natural man, the things that I preach are foolishness, they're nothing! That's what they think, well that's Jesus blowing hot air, that's nothing, but that's the very thing that God has chosen, and he's done that for three reasons. He's done all this choosing for three reasons. One, that no flesh should glory in his presence. Two, that we should see that if we are to glory, we are to glory in Christ who has made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And thirdly, so that if we're going to glory, we're going to glory in the Lord. So when I look there at the thing in Zambia, I just have to glory in the Lord because man had nothing to do with it really. I had nothing to do with it. But God was working. That's how God works. And that's so that I will not be caught up with the religion of man which glorifies man. You know, I watched some big choir there some time ago singing. And they sang fairly nice, you know. But in the end, everybody clapped. It's that modern singing, which is something I don't like, but it was that one, and I don't even know it, but glorify, you know, glorify, glorify the Lord. And they say the same word over like 50 times. That's modern writing, I guess, because you can't write right. But anyway, glorify, glorify, glorify. But in the end, they all, glorify man at the end by applauding. So it's all through the modern church. The glorifying of man. So it's like, well he's done this and he's done that and he writes this and he argues that and he writes that. So isn't that wonderful? No. Because God hasn't chosen that at all. Very few has chosen that God. Most of the time, God has chosen the foolish, the base, the despised, the weak, the things which are not. That's how God works. so that no flesh will glory in his presence. So when I recognize my foolishness, my weakness, my baseness, the fact that I'm nothing, then God gets the glory. And then when I understand how God gets the glory, it's through Christ who has made unto me wisdom. Because the wisdom of God is not stupidity. The wisdom of God is personified in Christ. Christ is the wisdom of God. Christ is the righteousness of God. Christ is the sanctification of God. Christ is the redemption of God. And that Christ is made unto me! My wisdom! My righteousness! My sanctification! My redemption! That's Jesus, so that I can glory in the Lord. He's done it all. He's the wisdom of God. He's the righteousness of God which is imputed to me. He's my sanctification because he works to make me holy. Sanctify him through thy truth. He's my redeemer. He has brought me back from the slave market of sin. The price was his own precious blood. So I glory then in Christ. I glory in the Lord. That's what the true church is all about. And that's what Satan works the God of this age works to blind the minds of those that believe not lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them as Satan's chief work is to darken the mind against the gospel of Christ but he will never he will never succeed Because Paul goes on to say there that God has commanded the light to shine out of the darkness to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ God will have the last say and God's light shines, that was the cry of the Laodiceans in the dark ages The light shines in the darkness Let us pray together. Our Father and our God we thank you for your word that Christ in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily and we are complete in him and in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and he personally personifies and is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption so we can glory in him our father as we come into thy presence we can glory in the lord jesus christ and glory in the lord for his choice for his designation we thank thee our father for what you are doing and for what you will do through the lord jesus christ in whose name we pray Amen.