Spirit – Power of God – Sermon 9 February, 2014

Spirit – Power of God

1 Corinthians 2:1-2:5

The church needs to be revived before it is too late. We need to change before it is too late. Without this change and revival, the church in the 21st century will eventually die and cease to exist.

Therefore what must the church do to be truly revived? How does this true revival happen?

Simply two points:

1. It always begins in the hearts of individuals as an individual flame and then grows to be a firestorm as the flames of others are joined together. When the fire of God starts burning inside us, it refines and gives us a special power.

2. It always meets opposition from the others. Satan would like nothing more than to see the Church remain ineffective and not able to act in the way it should act. He throws all kinds of things our way to discourage us from moving deeper into the things of God. The church always comes under a tremendous amount of spiritual attack, be it from outside or inside.

Therefore we should know that we need a message of revival as the church in Corinth needed, because the evil had already put the believers in a position of not respecting each other and forgetting to put Christ the crucified at the centre of their ministry.

As we look today to 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, we see that Paul came not with eloquence or superior wisdom or rational talk and wordy cleverness, he placed no confidence in such methods to bring about life change. He clearly understood that in order to bring the message of the crucified Lord, one must rely upon spiritual means and the Holy Spirit Himself.

He has resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He came to the people in weakness, in fear and with much trembling. He did not preach with wise and clever words but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that their faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.

Today, so many churches try to accumulate information, convinced that the mission of the Church will be accomplished through giving people the right information. Many believe that if they can do a better job educating people, fill them up with more information, then they will fulfil their commission. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but the danger is that we can reduce the Christian faith to just another educational program.

Paul did take the time to study, prepare and seek the Lord before standing up as God’s ambassador. He clearly understood that in order to bring the true message of Christ, one must rely upon spiritual means and the Holy Spirit Himself. As we said last week, his main goal was to preach Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.

He came in weakness, fear and with much trembling recognizing his own shortcomings and incapacity without God’s power to carry out the work to which God had called him.

There is some indication in 2 Corinthians 10:10 that Paul may have been less than spectacular by worldly standards in both appearance and speaking ability. There we read the arguments of some of his critics: “For some say, ‘His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing’.”

The message and preaching of Paul was proclaiming the gospel and declaring the life of Christ to the world. One of his main strengths was using persuasive words. We find a good example in the letter of Philemon, where uses this method to persuade Philemon, one of his converts to accept the runaway slave Onesimus as a brother. He did this relying on good arguments, but he did it with the power of the Spirit.

We find another good example of his practice of ministering the gospel in 1 Thess. 1:4-5: “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake”.

Paul may have been unimpressive in how he looked and spoke, but there was an element about him which no one could deny or negate, when he ministered, it was with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.

If we honestly examine our hearts, we will probably see that sometimes we have been denying the power of the Spirit and relying only on our knowledge, wisdom and experience. If we do that, somehow we stop the Spirit from acting and through us with its power.

Our faith should not rest on our wisdom, rather on the power of God.

It is easy to fall away from the faith if it only rests on our knowledge, wisdom and experience.

We should remember that the wisdom is in Christ. Therefore we should only preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

We know that we are weak as Paul accepts his weakness. We fear and tremble; hence we need the power to be able to perform and act. Human wisdom is important but not essential in the service of the Lord. To serve the Lord we need power.

Remember Jesus promised His disciples to be with them to the ends of the world with the power of the Spirit and we have the proof that His promise came true.

We need God’s wisdom to comprehend or understand truth.

We can get that wisdom from Christ our Lord and the power to be the active church comes to us from the Spirit.

Our main concern today should be to seek God’s presence through His Spirit.

Krikor Youmshajekian