You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s sheer genius, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified. (I Corinthians 2:1-2 MSG) We humans like to complicate God's simple message of salvation with a whole lot of religious talk and mumbo-jumbo. The fact of the matter is that Paul came to establish the New Testament churches with two messages: 1) Jesus and who he is; and 2) Jesus and what he did. When you teach those two things, you pretty much have the entirety of scripture rolled up into those messages, don't you? No 'fancy words' or great 'oratorical' messages - just the simplicity of telling us who Jesus is and what he has done. There is wisdom in keeping things simple, isn't there? When we add the complications of this or that regulation, rule, or requirement, we get into the ...
Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.” (I Corinthians 1:26-31 MSG) Hollow pretensions abound, don't they? There are tons of people going around 'tooting their own horn', proclaiming they have 'made it' all because of what THEY did, what THEY know, or how THEY created this or that. The truth of the matter is that their in...