A couple months ago a snake handling pastor in Kentucky died from a rattlesnake bite after refusing treatment when he went home after the service. This has happened more than a few times and continues to be quite a common practice in some churches in that area. There’s even a reality show called “Snake Salvation”.
A few years ago there was a story that an African pastor drowned in front of his congregation as he attempted to walk on water. So here it goes… (handle a toy snake)
That’s the only kind of snake handling you will see me do. And you won’t see me walking out on the lake unless the ice is at least a foot thick. In some ways I admire the faith that these people have. But the real problem is what they are doing with Scripture. Does the bible command us to pick up deadly snakes, drink poison, and walk on water?
Well the end of the book of Mark includes the snake handling and the drinking poison part, but this is a portion of scripture that for one thing is not found in all the manuscripts, and for another thing, it doesn’t command anyone to do this. Yes Paul gets bitten by a deadly snake in Acts and it doesn’t affect him, but he didn’t do it on purpose, and I’m quite sure when Jesus referred to someone drinking poison and not being hurt, he wasn’t meaning to go out and intentionally drink poison to test God. And the walking on water thing was given to one man at a certain time and he actually ultimately failed, remember.
When we look around and see what man has accomplished even in the last 40 years, it’s pretty easy to be impressed with the ingenuity, imagination, and intellect of man. But when we look at how people live their lives, and what some people do under the umbrella of Christian faith, wisdom does not seem to be as prominent. The wisdom of man even as we try to interpret Scripture is very suspect. So I want us to look at Paul’s words in the first couple of chapters in 1 Corinthians. Paul is writing to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both our Lord and theirs.
So he’s talking to believers, and he begins the letter discussing the divisions that have been reported to him in the church, which of course represents a lack of true wisdom. But I want to pick it up in verse 18 of chapter 1, and I think this is incredibly valuable advice in our day when human wisdom has been exalted above all things.
Read VV 18-25…
The Jews wanted signs and they got so many from Jesus and the apostles that they had no excuse not to believe. The Greeks were a very intellectually elitist society as contrasted with barbarians. To both groups the crucifixion on a cross was either offensive, or ridiculous. It was folly to the Greek and offensive to the unbelieving Jew. But Paul says to us who are being saved it is the very power of God. Paul even said back in verse 17 that he does not preach the gospel with eloquent words, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
May I just say that what Paul was concerned about is actually happening today. There does seem to be a lot preaching that contains eloquent and entertaining speech, with excessive human wisdom and very little Scripture. I pray that’s not me because I am up here very afraid to undermine the power and authority of God’s word, and I give you permission to straighten me out if I go down that road. God is so far above us that His foolishness is wiser than our wisdom, and his weakness is stronger than our greatest strength. We are to rely solely on God’s wisdom if we want things to work out for us as his children and his body.
Paul continues in chapter 2 and this is where I want to focus for now (2:1-16).
That phrase “I decided to know nothing amoung you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” is very telling. How often do we pile a bunch of other stuff on the message to make it more palatable, more relevant? But here Paul is reinforcing what this whole church thing is about. You don’t need wisdom, you don’t need lofty speech or to know Christianese. Do you know Jesus and him crucified? Paul decided to only know that.
That’s a huge question for us in terms of evangelism. So many people are afraid to talk about their faith with unbelievers, but really all you need to do is tell them about Jesus and his crucifixion, which of course also leads into his resurrection. Every Christian knows the story, and hopefully you know Christ well enough to talk about his character. We don’t have to do more than present Jesus and him crucified, why?
Because as Paul says in chapter 1, the word of the cross is the power of God to those being saved. We and our story are not the power of God, Christ and the cross are the power of God. All we need to do, all Paul needed to do, was tell people about Jesus and what he did, plain and simple. The message doesn’t need to be packaged any differently now than it did back then, it doesn’t have to be made more relevant, or more appealing. In fact it says that could actually empty the cross of Christ of its power.
We must trust that if God so chooses, if he is calling that particular person or those particular people that we are talking to, the Holy Spirit will be present as we present the power of God in Christ to people. If nothing happens when those who are perishing hear the message, nothing happens, but that’s up to God. None of our strength or wisdom can come close to the power of God in the message of the cross.
Folks this is where I am coming from. I stand up here in weakness and with fear and trembling every Sunday, depending on Christ to do what he promises to do with his word. I don’t really know what I’m doing, I’m just following what he says.
It says Paul’s speech and message were not in plausible words of wisdom. A better translation of that word plausible is persuasive or enticing. Doesn’t that take some of the pressure off? We don’t have to be persuasive, but we just tell people about Jesus and him crucified in the demonstration of the Spirit and power.
When he says that I believe we often get in the way of the Spirit and the power when we try too hard to make the message something other than or more than it is. Scripture seems to make it clear that the more human is in it, the less Spirit is in it.
Now clearly Paul showed the Spirit and the power of God often through miracles and signs. And certainly I would like to see more of that when we share about Jesus to people who don’t know Him.
Don’t you ever ask God to do something obviously powerful to help people believe the message? Lord please make the ground shake when I mention your name. Heal that person instantly as I share about you. Please do something, show your power.
But I think here’s the thing. What greater miracle can He do than send his only son to live on earth as a human being, have him crucified, and raise him from the dead? Isn’t resurrection from the dead far greater than any other miracle? And in our day if a person doesn’t believe that, why would they believe any other miracle. In these days of magic and technology, we can do just about anything. But the one thing we can’t do and never will be able to do, is raise dead people from the grave.
Let me tell you another miracle that we don’t see much of anymore. God’s people telling anyone about Jesus. Wouldn’t that in itself be a great miracle, if Christians actually talked to someone outside of the church about Jesus? You want to see a move of the Spirit, watch him give you the words to speak if you’re willing to open your mouth. Maybe the simple message is enough, but we wouldn’t know because we stopped trying to speak it to lost people. How many people outside of church do you know that actually know or have ever heard the simple gospel of Jesus Christ?
They might know about church and that doesn’t impress them much, but how many have actually heard the message of Jesus Christ coming, being crucified, and rising from the dead to save the people he created from their default destiny of death and hell? I think you’d be surprised how few have ever heard the true gospel in our day. They just know church and church people, and that won’t ever impress too many.
As we continue Paul emphasises the Spirit. Verse 10 of chapter 2, “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. This Spirit knows the very depths of God. No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God”. But the Spirit and walking in the Spirit seems to be so lost in our day of the church for the most part. We Christians it says, have not received the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God.
I’m far from charismatic, but I need to share a couple experiences maybe to help you know me better. About three years ago I was feeling very stuck in my ministry in Killarney. It seemed God had departed, and I just didn’t know what direction to go. Literally after months of prayer, God spoke very clearly in my mind that he wanted to baptize 20 people through our church that year. I knew it was God because I would have never dreamed of such a ridiculous thing. I would have thought 5 or maybe 10 would be a miracle. He proceeded to lay out in front of me what he wanted me preach for the whole year. It was all about being a true disciple. I never really focussed on baptism other than when it was mentioned in the passages I was preaching, and by September that year we baptised our 21st person. He gave us a bonus one before the year was even close to being over, to really emphasize it. The church got to clearly see the power of God as people from age 10 to 84 were baptized.
A couple Januarys ago I was at a conference in Edmonton and the preacher was talking about fear. He asked people to come up to the front if they were bound by fear. There were thousands of people in the auditorium and people just came flooding up to the front by the hundreds. As I watched I noticed that so many of them were young people. The preacher asked us all to start praying for these people and I felt a strong burden in my heart that God would take away the fear from these young people. I was praying so hard to the point of almost frustration if you know what I mean, and suddenly I was quietly speaking a bunch of gobblygook. I have to assume I was praying in tongues, nobody else heard me. It had never happened before or since. But the peace I felt come over me was very tangible.
Now that was kind of cool and weird, but what happened next was even better. Two middle aged women I had never met were sitting in front of me, and when the preacher gave the invitation they both stood up but only one went forward and the other sat back down. As they took those who came up front into rooms outside the auditorium, the preacher asked us to continue to pray silently for them.
Again as I was praying I felt very compelled to put my hand on the back of the lady in front of me. Now I would not normally do that without their permission, but for some reason I did it as she was bent over praying herself. Then I heard, pray for her daughter with breast cancer. Here was the moment. I could feel doubt trying to swell in me, and normally I would have chickened out, that was just too risky, what if it wasn’t God, what if I was just being emotional. But I guess because of what had happened a couple minutes earlier, I somehow had the faith to just open my mouth and I prayed for her daughter who has breast cancer.
As I was doing this I felt her start to sob convulsively under my hand. I just held my hand there for a couple minutes until she stopped, and as the preacher started to speak again, she turned around looked me in the eye, and said thank you. Now that’s not me but in those moments two complete strangers got to see the Holy Spirit and the power of God. And all I did was be willing and courageous enough not to stop what God wanted to do through me. I’ve never seen or heard from this woman again. We didn’t even get a chance to talk afterward, but whatever the outcome, it really didn’t matter.
Let that sink in for a minute. Yes we are dirty vessels, but the very Spirit of the living God, the same Spirit that empowered Jesus when he was a man on the earth, the same Spirit that empowered the apostles and early Christians, the same Spirit that is God and therefore knows every thought God has, and Paul says allows us to understand the things freely given by God. That Spirit lives in us. Paul even says that we have the mind of Christ in verse 16. That’s what being born in the Spirit again is all about.
So why don’t we experience this Spirit more? Well it’s very possible that many in the church are not truly born again. But I think more often it’s what Paul says in the first verse of chapter three. “But I brothers and sisters could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.” Now the Corinthian church was probably at least 5-10 years old, and yet Paul could not address them as spiritual people.
He said he had to feed them milk instead of solid food. I and other preachers have had the odd person come up and say that they didn’t feel like they were getting fed by my sermons. Well the writer of Hebrews (who I think might be Paul) says you should be able to teach by now, and one of my favorite preachers Alistair Begg said in his Scottish accent, “What, do you want me to stick the bottle in your mouth or cut your meat for ya? You should be able to feed yourself and others by now.” And it’s interesting how some of those people who say they aren’t being fed, show lives that do not conform to Scripture very much, such as a critical spirit. They often want to be consumers and not doers of the word
Anyway, Paul is simply distinguishing between carnal and non-carnal people here in 1 Corinthians. He’s saying that many Christians continue to live carnal lives rather than by the Spirit. Look at the words used to define the Greek word for spiritual there: supernatural, regenerate, a part of humans which is akin to God and serves as his instrument or organ (that’s what I believe happened to me at that conference), belonging to the divine Spirit.
Paul explains this very simply in many places, but specifically in Romans and Galatians. Gal 5:16, “But I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. The desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit oppose each other… If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit”.
In Romans 6 Paul says our old self was crucified with Jesus so we could live in him. He says we actually have a choice about whether we want to be slaves to sin or slaves to God. Then in chapter 8 he talks about those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live by the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. It all takes place in the mind first. And those in the flesh cannot please God, in fact anyone who does not have the Spirit does not belong to Christ.
Some of you know that this is Pentecost Sunday, and I think it’s appropriate not only to remember the incredible outpouring of the Spirit at the original Pentecost, but to always be anticipating a great move of the Spirit when God’s people are praying and being obedient.
So what am I trying to say here. I want you to know that when I lead a church, my sole authority above all else is the Bible. Anybody’s traditions or human wisdom that is not backed up by the Bible is not going to be very convincing or persuasive to me.
I am not a big church programs guy, unless they are very biblical and achieve what God intends for us to achieve, and that is to make true obedient disciples. And I’m not big into a lot of human ingenuity in the church. I believe Christ and his word are sufficient and if we keep our eyes on Him, and do our best to live by the Spirit, we will please Him regardless of worldly outcomes. And he will reward that.
And I want to let you know that it makes me tremble to preach God’s word every Sunday. I take it very seriously, and therefore much of my time during the week is spent on my sermons and prayer. After Fathers Day I think I will bring a series on the fruit of the Spirit since we have moved into this beautiful fruit mecca. And that will hopefully prepare us for a season of real growth in the fall.
