The Fool’s Wisdom
Practical Church (1 Corinthians) • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
Announcements
Good morning. Welcome to Southern Hills Baptist Church. Thank you for joining us today.
If you are a first-time guest with us, you will find a Connection Card in the pew rack in front of you. We would appreciate it if you would fill that out and place it in the offering plate. That gives us a record of your visit and allows us the opportunity of reaching out to you this week to answer any questions that you might have.
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If you are a guest with us, know that this is our weekly Family Worship service. Our children will remain with us for the entire service. We do have a nursery available for children under 4 just down the hall if you would like to use it.
Please stand as I read our Call to Worship. We will be doing a responsive reading this morning. I will read the words in white and we will all read the words in yellow.
Call To Worship
My heart is steadfast, O God!
I will sing and make melody with all my being!
Awake, O harp and lyre!
I will awake the dawn!
I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples;
I will sing praises to you among the nations.
For your steadfast love is great above the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
Let your glory be over all the earth!
Opening Hymn
Scripture & Prayer: Pastor Atreju Matthew 10:17-22
Song #1
Missions Minute
Iglesia Bautista Cristo es la Roca- Humboldt, IA
Spanish speaking Church Replant ($50 per month)
Pray for Pastor Eddie Mejia & family
Missions trip to Oaxaca in April
plan to host women’s conference, kids program, leadership training, and gospel outreach
Asking for prayers, supplies, toys, books, financial support
Invite ushers - Pray for Offering
Offering & Prayer
Song #2 (Gratitude)
Lord’s Supper
Please be seated.
(beat)
We should always approach the table with thankfulness, for Jesus cleanses His church of their sins. Worship is primarily a response. We should respond to God’s creation in awe of His power. We should respond to His steadfast love for us with steadfast love of our own in return. And we should respond to the sacrifice of Jesus in our place to pay the debt of sin for us—and restore us in relationship with our loving Creator God—with gratitude.
And so, thankfulness should shape how we worship God. We should come to be with His family as often as possible out of thankfulness that He has adopted us into that family. We should love and encourage each other out of thankfulness that He has loved and encouraged us. We should sing hymns and psalms and spiritual songs out of our thankfulness. We should celebrate the ordinances of Jesus—baptism and the Lord’s Supper—out of our thankfulness for being united with the body of Jesus. And we should respond to the faithful preaching of the Word in thankfulness, because we know that God is shaping our hearts by it through the work of His Spirit.
We come each week to worship the One who makes all of this possible—to sit at His table and be drawn together in unity by His grace. We are thankful to sit at the feet of the King and to bask in His glory.
And in doing so, we will continue our reading about Jesus from the book of John. Today we will continue in chapter 1:
And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
(Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
At this time, I am going to have our ushers come forward. If you are a follower of Jesus, in that you have accepted Him as Savior, bowed to Him as King, and been baptized in obedience to His commandment, we invite you to participate with us. In just a moment, we will pass the plates. Please take a piece of bread and a cup and hold it until we take together.
Pass
Instruction from Jesus: Read 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Prayer of Blessing on bread and cup
Song #3
Pastoral Prayer
World -
Country-
State-
City-
SHBC-
Introduction
This morning, we be closing out Paul’s introduction to this letter to the church at Corinth. If you have your bible with you this morning, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 3.
Over the last 12 weeks in this series—which we are calling Practical Church—we have built to this culmination of Paul’s introduction. He has spent a lot of effort in laying out his overall concern for the church here at the beginning of the letter. He began by encouraging them before he laid bare his heart about their spiritual welfare.
Paul is frustrated with their spiritually immaturity, which is causing major division within the church and leading the people away from Christ rather than to Him. They seem to have become more worldly and divided since his last report. And so, he feels urgency to write to them and hold them accountable to the expectation of holiness that comes with bearing the name of Christ.
Over the last three weeks, we have seen Paul using metaphor to communicate the care and thoughtfulness that needs to go into the mission of every believer to make disciples and build the church. He presented the church as a field, as a building, and as a temple—each being built up for spiritual growth and holiness. But his emphasis was on proper engagement of the mission: that those who respond to the gospel and the mission do so faithfully and not half-heartedly.
If these church members and their leaders are to take their mission seriously, this letter should cause them the wake up from their stupor and begin fighting for a holy church. They will put to death their fleshly desires of idolizing man and chase after Jesus alone. They will become aware of the wolves within their midst and expel them from the church. And hopefully those half-hearted within the church will watch what takes place and bow to Jesus in submission.
If these church members are to accept Paul’s criticism and submit themselves to obedience to Jesus, they will have to move forward thoughtfully and intentionally. For that, they will need the wisdom of God.
[TITLE SLIDE]
The only problem with that is that the wisdom of God is still foreign for them. They have not drunk deeply from the Word in Paul’s absence and had their hearts shaped fully by the Holy Spirit. This letter must serve them as a guide to learn to engage with the Spirit in accessing and employing Heavenly Wisdom.
And so, before we get to our passage this morning, let us re-read Paul’s thoughts on wisdom in the introduction. Go with me back to chapter 1 verse 18:
[SCRIPTURE SLIDE x12]
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” (/)
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, (/) but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (/)
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; (/) God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, (/) so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (/)
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, (/) and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. (/) But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”— (/)
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (/) Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. (/)
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
Now on to our passage in chapter 3 verse 18:
[MAIN PASSAGE SLIDE x2]
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” (/) So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
Paul is referencing back to all that he has said in his introduction about wisdom. Because of all of this that I have said, “let no one deceive himself.”
What should they not be deceived about?
(Beat)
That even though they live in Corinth—a place dwelling in the shadow of Athens and known for its great knowledge and well-spoken philosophers—they don’t live in an Age of Wisdom.
Instead, they live in the Age of Fools.
[POINT 1 SLIDE]
The Age of Fools (v 18)
The British English Professor J.R.R. Tolkien had a first hand account of the knowledge and ambition of men in the first World War. He saw how worldly knowledge of power and warcraft drove men to lift up themselves and subjugate others—how quickly they would turn on each other when the temptation for selfish gain arose. The horrors of war haunted him. But, fortunately for Tolkien, he had a secured sense of the biblical story and how he fit into it.
This truth of the unseen spiritual world that was revealed to him through scripture broke through all his teaching and his writing. Throughout his history of Middle-Earth, we can see it mirroring the story of God in the Bible. There—in Middle-Earth—elves and the Maiar are like spiritual beings, while Men and Hobbits are like humankind.
The Men of Middle-Earth are corrupted by their desire for power. Their power comes to them through knowledge, strength, and domination over other creatures and nature. But Hobbits are more like children—innocent, naive, and carefree. To Men, Hobbits seem foolhardy creatures who spend their time enjoying life rather than seeking a better life.
The Corinthians that Paul is writing to are like the Men of Middle-Earth. They seek the knowledge available through general revelation above all else. That is the power that they desire: to know and apply human wisdom through experience. And in their quest to obtain that power, they will not hesitate to manipulate and hurt others, for their selfish ambition has blinded them.
Let’s go back to verse 18:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.
Paul challenges their thinking once again and calls them to move beyond it. Those holding on to the wisdom of the world are fools. It has no power or sway in the heavenly realm. And yet, it calls to us. Our sin-driven selfish hearts desire to know more—to experience more—all for the sake of knowing. But Paul reminds them that human wisdom is foolish in the eyes of God.
Therefore, for those who are wise in the ways of the world, let them forget it all and become fools in the eyes of the world. For that is the only way that they will rightly find the wisdom of God.
The Men of Middle-Earth must die to themselves and become more like Hobbits. They must allow God to purify their corrupted hearts and become like children—not jaded by the ways of the world, but innocent and filled with wonder. Remember what Jesus prayed in Matthew 11:
Matthew 11:25b “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children;”
It is those with the minds and hearts of children that can understand the wisdom of God. Jesus continued with similar teaching in Matthew 18:
Matthew 18:3b “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Every man and woman created in the image of God, but corrupted by sin, must put their flesh to death and cultivate the mind and heart of a child. We must accept—as Paul says—the foolishness of God if we want to be formed in His image.
Back to Tolkien, in the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf and Saruman are both Maiar, divine beings who have taken on flesh within Middle-Earth to guide creation. Gandalf sees the value in Hobbits and even entrusts them with the fate of Middl-Earth. But Saruman sees Hobbits as hopelessly foolish—good for nothing but farming green pastures far from danger.
Instead, Saruman embraces the wisdom of the world—so much so that he aligns himself with the Satan character, giving up his guardianship of Middle-Earth to gather power for himself. In the movie The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf confronts him on screen, saying “When did Saruman the Wise abandon reason for madness?”
By reason, Gandalf means the wisdom of heaven. For just as the corruption of Middle-Earth is an inversion of the heavenly realm, so it is with us. We live in The Age of Fools, but we must remember that—as Christians—this world is not our home. We are here only as sojourners. We belong, instead, to another kingdom—to another world.
But for now, we live in The Upside Down.
[POINT 2 SLIDE]
The Upside Down (vv 19-20)
Long before Stranger Things of Netflix fame, the worldly men of Thessalonica knew that there was an upside down kingdom encroaching on their own. In Acts 17, Paul and his companions are accused of turning the world upside down by proclaiming another kingdom with a Jesus as its king.
Paul, here, also declares this upside down kingdom to the Corinthians. Look with me at verses 19 and 20:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”
The Age of the Wisdom of Men is, in fact, the Age of Fools—for their wisdom “is folly with God.” He, instead, rules a kingdom that thinks and acts in a way that is contrary to the world. It is an upside down kingdom. Or, rather—we live in an upside down kingdom. If Yahweh God is the Creator of all and the Sustainer of order, then it follows that His kingdom is the right side up kingdom and the world that we live in is the upside down kingdom.
This world fights against the Kingdom of God to maintain the rule of chaos. The wisdom of the world is the wisdom of Cain—the one who pushed away the image of God and desired to build in his own image. Cain denied God’s hand of provision and protection and sought to build in his own name and protect himself and his family out of selfish gain and pride. He became a great builder of cities, haphazardly assembling walls to keep out the intrusion of both outsiders and the influence of God.
God had warned Cain in Genesis 4:7 that “sin was crouching at the door,” waiting for the chance to have its way with him. And yet, Cain gave himself willingly to the darkness of sin—to chaos. He became the seed of the serpent—the ruler of the upside down.
Look at what Paul says next. He quotes Job 5, where Eliphaz is confronting Job. There, although he falsely accuses Job, he rightly speaks of the right side up kingdom of God:
[SCRIPTURE SLIDE]
he sets on high those who are lowly,
and those who mourn are lifted to safety.
He frustrates the devices of the crafty,
so that their hands achieve no success.
He catches the wise in their own craftiness,
and the schemes of the wily are brought to a quick end.
Eliphaz speaks of the opposite values of the kingdom. The things that God values are humility and selflessness. But the ways of the world are selfish and manipulative. The word that he uses to speak of this manipulating selfishness is “crafty”.
The upside down kingdom of the world values its wisdom for its “craftiness” in promoting oneself and getting ahead. This word should call us back once again to Genesis and the Garden of Eden. There, lived a supernatural imager of God who was also described as “crafty.” Genesis 3 says:
Genesis 3:1 “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?””
This fiery throne guardian in the form of a serpent was cunning and crafty. Notice that he did not lie to Eve, but he challenged the Words of God, twisting them in her mind—manipulating her for his own end. The serpent sought to sow seeds of chaos into God’s orderly garden.
A weed began germinating in her heart as she ruminated on the words of the serpent. He had invited her to taste of the knowledge that was enjoyed by God’s supernatural family and he had challenged the truthfulness of God’s warning of death. The temptation was shining at her, beckoning to be known. It looked and sounded appealing. She desired not just the forbidden fruit, but the knowledge that came with it.
She desired more than the provision of God. She trusted her own plan more than she trusted in God’s plan. So, she reached and took the fruit and ate—and Adam transgressed alongside her. They would adopt the craftiness of the serpent in making their own way. They would be their own gatekeepers of knowledge. And in that moment, their innocence was lost.
They paid a price for acquiring the knowledge of good and evil. They lost access to the garden—to the presence of God—to His blessing and protection. They lost their ability to access to heavenly wisdom.
Now, apart from the garden, they would have to build their own wisdom from their experience. Through their generations, some sought after the presence of God, but most walked the way of Cain—determined to make their own way regardless of the cost.
In The Lord of the Rings, the Man Boromir represents the weak descendants of humankind. They project power of their own making, but they deny the King his throne—determined to forge into the darkness and make their own way. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Boromir gives in to his weakness, seeking to take the ring of power from Frodo and use it to conquer the enemy.
But he doesn’t realize his error in judgment. This ring represents sin. If Boromir succeeds in getting and using the ring, he will be using sin to fight against sin. The rebellious human imagers would be battling the rebellious spiritual imagers. He would be playing into the Satan figure’s hand, conscripting himself as a slave in an army of evil instead of conquering it.
As Jesus has said, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” Obviously, he cannot. Evil cannot conquer evil. The folly of human wisdom cannot be conquered by more human wisdom. Human wisdom—the corrupted and sinful thinking of the Upside Down—just like the ring of power, must be put to death.
Like Boromir, we desire and yearn for the craftiness of the serpent. Our sin nature screams to be heard and fed through selfish gain. And scripture is clear that we must put is to death—we must destroy it by allowing Jesus to take our sin and leave it at the gates of hell where it belongs.
If God knew what would occur in the garden, and made plans to counteract rebellion by both his supernatural and human imagers, surely the craftiness of the Age of Fools will stand no chance. The wisdom of the Corinthians, the Athenians, the Greek Masters of Philosophy, and ever sage to ever walk the earth stands no chance against the wisdom of the Almighty and All-knowing Creator God.
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
Paul continues by quoting from Psalm 94. Here, the psalmist is calling for God to come and judge the wicked. They are proud and abusive, maligning the widow and the sojourner and the fatherless, all for their own gain. But their actions are not hidden from God. In fact, He knows their very thoughts. All of their earthly wisdom is “futile.”
The ESV translates this word in Psalm 94:11 as breath, but the Hebrew word he’bel means vapor. If this word seems unfamiliar to you, turn to the Book of Ecclesiastes, where the preacher uses it 38 times. It is traditionally translated their as “vanity.”
Ecclesiastes 1:2–3 “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?”
What does man gain from all of his years of experience?, cries the Preacher. The answer is that he has gained only human wisdom. And what is all of that wisdom worth? Nothing. It is like a vapor which is here one moment and gone the next.
“So, Corinthian,” Paul says, “what is to be gained by all of your worldly wisdom? Only futile vapor. Here today, gone tomorrow. Vanished in a moment. Upside down wisdom won’t be a benefit to you in a right side up kingdom.”
And there is no gray area between them. For surely “no one can serve two masters.” Human wisdom must be sacrificed if you ever want to gain access to heavenly wisdom, for the wisdom of God is only available to the Sons of His kingdom.
[POINT 3 SLIDE]
Sons of the Kingdom (vv 21-23)
Followers of Christ have had their status elevated by their adoption as Sons. They have been granted royal status and are given access to the kingdom of heaven and to the wisdom of God. Paul continues:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
As Paul says in chapter 1, “let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” There is no need to boast in men, for they and their wisdom are bound for death.
He then says something that seems rather odd, “For all things are yours.” What does this statement mean and why would Paul use it here?
(Beat)
The Stoics were a sect of philosophers who followed the Greek Philosopher Zeno. They believed the universe had come together orderly and that there was a divine, rational spark within every human soul, which they called the logos—the reason or the message.
Their understanding resulted in them believing that although they each had a divine spark, that they were subject to fate—so, it was imperative that one work hard to gain wisdom and live life with virtue. That virtue was the employment of prudence—the practical wisdom that they had acquired.
And so, in accordance with their life-long effort to achieve virtue through the gathering and employing of human wisdom, they had developed sayings as a means of motivation. One of those sayings was “all things belong to wise men.”
The wise man, believed the Stoics, lived in perfect conformity with divine reason—with the logos, or the divine spark, inside of him. And in doing so—in chasing the wisdom of man—the wise would gain access to all things on earth.
For Paul to use this quote from the Stoics meant that he believed that the leaders within the church were heavily influenced by Stoicism. But he doesn’t just use their saying; he co-opts it to share truth. He takes it a corrupted saying and untwists it, virtually baptizing it in the cleansing waters of the true kingdom.
You see, it is not what you do. It’s not the human self-sufficiency of chasing after human wisdom that sets you apart as virtuous within creation. Instead, it is who you are. It is your status as a Son of the Kingdom.
Jesus is the true logos—the living Word of God. He is the divine spark who used His hands in creation as the Father spoke all things into being. He has come as incarnate within that creation and sacrificed Himself in our place so that humankind could be reconciled in relationship with God—so that we could be adopted as Sons of God.
As a reminder, Son is inheritance language. Both men and women followers of Christ are adopted as Sons of God. That is—they both share equally in their eternal inheritance. They both become royal children. Both men and women will rule in God’s kingdom alongside Christ.
The status of believers has changed. Paul tells the Galatians 4:7 “So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
And look at what he says to the church in Rome:
[SCRIPTURE SLIDE x2]
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (/) and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
The Corinthians don’t need to worry about which man they follow or how hard they are working to attain and employ worldly wisdom. They can never do enough or learn enough to gain “all things.” But as, believers—as adopted Sons of the Kingdom, they now—in this moment—have access to all things by the will of their Father. Their status has changed from slave to Son. They are inheritors of the kingdom of God.
Back to our passage, Paul says, “Son:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
These church members don’t need to chase after Paul or Apollos or Peter. They need to chase after Jesus, for it is only in Jesus that are given “all things.” To belong to Paul or Apollos or Peter would be to deny Christ and put the chains of a slave back on. It would be the woman who finds freedom, yet longs for her days in slavery. It would be the man who puts sin to death and then digs it up to resuscitate it.
Paul tells them “all things are yours,” for you have been redeemed by Christ. Rest in Him as He rests in the Father.
When your Father is the Almighty Creator and King of all things, there is no need to work to gain the knowledge of man. We already have access to the King’s table—we have access to Godly wisdom anytime we want it through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Back in the Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is a noble man—both in action and in his bloodline. He comes from a line of kings, but has yet to claim the title for himself. He is embarrassed by the weakness that he has seen in men—their twisted selfishness—and he worries that he will find the same weakness within him.
But as the story progresses, he sees the urgency of fulfilling his role as a Son of the Kingdom. These faltering men need the shining example of a faithful king. Yet he must find the courage and fortitude within himself to step into that role. And he finds that courage and hope in the lives and actions of four Hobbits.
That, they—like children, would take on the gates of hell to achieve the mission that has been set out before them. Aragorn is inspired by their tenacity—their faithfulness to achieve what seems impossible. By the standards of the world, they seem foolish—but they have a wisdom greater than that of the men in the Age of Fools. They have so moved him that he will take up his sword and charge into battle against the darkest of foes and with the bleakest of hopes.
Now, this is not the perfect analogy. But, ultimately in the story, Aragorn the heir doesn’t have to work so hard trying to earn the throne. He can rest in the fact that his status is that of royal heir. The kingdom is already his.
[PREVIEW SLIDE]
Application
Christian, if you believe that Jesus is the Messiah and that He died for your sins—if you have bowed to Him as King and given your life over to Him—the kingdom is already yours. I say to you this morning what Paul has said to the Corinthians. Stop chasing after human wisdom. Stop trying to be crafty and manipulative like the serpent. You were once his seed, but you have been adopted as a royal son or daughter—an inheritor to an everlasting kingdom.
And, as a child of the King, you have full right to use your freedom to advance the mission that has been given to you. And part of that freedom is to approach the throne whenever you desire and to inquire from the wisdom of heaven.
Rest in your status as a Son of God. You don’t have to earn your birthright. But how will you live in your freedom as an inheritor to the kingdom? Will we be men and women who deny our birthright and lust for power or will we be those who rest in the rule of the King?
We don’t have to wait for the consummation of the end. Jesus is on the throne right now. Proclaim it to the world. Call each and every person you meet to bow the knee to Him. And do so out of love for your neighbor and out of loyalty to the Father who made you His family.
Invitation
Gospel presentation and call to belief
CLOSE IN PRAYER
CLOSING HYMN
CONGREGATIONAL BLESSING
