How God Works Series

If you're like me, a lot of you guys still have some playground memories from when you were on recess in elementary school. Do you remember how you would choose up teams for pick up baseball or basketball games. Generally, two of the "cooler dudes" on the playground would somehow be nominated as the captain of each team, and then the captain would alternately choose from the crowd of assembled kids who wanted to play the players they wanted on their team.

And, of course, the first guys chosen were the absolute best players—if you wanted to win you absolutely wanted them on your team. And then you got down to the average guys, like me, and eventually you got to the players whom no one really wanted—the people who were slow, or small, or scrawny, or uncoordinated, the people who were known to be the worst "athletes' on the playground, and these folks would eventually rather disdainfully waved onto the team.

And, of course, it was always a pretty humiliating process for those who were among the last to be picked.

Well, that's just the way the world works, even as adults. We choose the best and the brightest, and the most capable for success, for winning. But do you know what? That's often the opposite of how God works. When God chooses people for his team, He most often chooses the least likely, the least capable, the least talented to be the people on His team. You know why that is, because God wants to get all the glory. God often best demonstrates His power and his ability through servants who can't take any credit for what God does through them, because it was obviously Him rather than them.

And as we come again to the first chapter of I Corinthians, that's the lesson that Paul is attempting to teach the Corinthians in verses 17-31. Why? Because the Corinthians had a problem with pride. It was the reason the church was divided and about to split. As we observed last week, the church of Jesus Christ was becoming fragmented as its various members became part of cliques or divisions that were taking pride in their particular preferred spiritual leader or teacher over against other cliques whose devotion was to a different leader. Their divisions or disputes were based on the sinful desire to compare themselves favorable to other members or groups within the church. They, in their own minds, had to find a reason to consider themselves superior or better than some other group or some other group's leader in the church. This tendency was a clear sign, according to the Apostle Paul that they were living according to their sinful, fleshly nature which is ruled by pride and selfish ambition, rather than the love of Christ.

And what He's going to tell them is a radical message in this world which is ruled by pride and selfish ambition. He's going to tell them that God doesn't work through prideful people God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, as James 4:6 says. Specifically, he's going to teach them that God works through a single "foolish" message and nobodies like you and me for His glory.

Now as we come to verse 17 this morning, the Apostle Paul has identified problem #1 in the church at Corinth, a church plagued by many problems in the first century. It was this matter of divisions that seemed to be fueled by what might be called the worship a various personalities in the church. And in his zeal to reverse the trend, He actually comes to the point of thanking God that he had only baptized a few people in Corinth, otherwise, many folks in Corinth might be attaching themselves to Him, rather than Jesus Christ, as the one they would be following.

And so after making this rather surprising statement in verse 14, "I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius" and he then goes on to mention few others he baptized, he makes a rather surprising statement in verse 17, "For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void."

Now at first, it sounds like Paul has changed subject very quickly, from divisions to the Gospel. But the truth is that the real underlying subject is pride in men and human accomplishments and abilities which had fueled the divisions in the first place. And His goal is to demonstrate how God works—that He does not work through human wisdom or cleverness but through the foolishness of a message called the Gospel, and not through the wise and mighty among men, but through humble men who are simply faithful to Him and His message.