Who God Uses

Tom Shrader works through 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, where Paul reminds the divided Corinthian church that God does not primarily call the wise, mighty, or noble by worldly standards. Drawing on the doctrine of unconditional election, Shrader explains that salvation is entirely God's sovereign work, not based on human merit, so that all confidence must rest in Christ alone. The practical application is that pride is the root of all sin, and true wisdom begins when a person recognizes their own spiritual bankruptcy and places full trust in God rather than themselves.

“All of religion magnifies man. True Christianity magnifies God.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: 1 Corinthians

Recorded: 2000 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 37 min

Themes: humility, pride, election, wisdom, grace, calling, spiritual bankruptcy, boasting in christ, struggling with pride, feeling unworthy, new believer, navigating conflict, high achiever questioning faith, young adult, recovering from failure, seeking purpose

Scripture: Isaiah 55:8-9, 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, 1 Corinthians 1:18, 1 Corinthians 1:9, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Romans 1:6, Galatians 1:6, Ephesians 4:1, Colossians 3:15, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, 1 Timothy 6:12, 2 Timothy 1:9, Ephesians 1:4, Romans 9, Acts 13:48, Titus 3:4-5, Luke 4:16, Matthew 11:25

Theological Themes: unconditional election, efficacious call, sovereign grace, total depravity, sanctification, justification, sola gratia, foolishness of the cross

Full Transcript

The Collision of Values

In Isaiah 55, God says this: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than yours, and my thoughts than your thoughts." That is a perfect summation of not just all of Scripture, but of the context we are in now in 1 Corinthians 1, where Paul is saying there is a way that seems wise to men but is in fact foolish to God, and often what appears as foolishness from God is true wisdom.

We live in a world where values are colliding, where cultures are in competition with one another. A few years ago, Tony Campolo wrote a book titled *Who Switched the Price Tags?* The premise is interesting. Campolo said that when he was a kid, he and his buddy would go into a store, and if they found an ink pen that was a dollar and a transistor radio that was five dollars — and it was the transistor radio they wanted — they would switch the price tags. He did not advocate this, but it was something he did in his lost youth.

He said that as he got older and looked around, it dawned on him that somebody in the culture had gone around and switched the price tags. What was important to God — honesty and integrity, for example — had yielded to efficiency and results. What was important to God, the method and obedience, is not what is important to man. Man cares only about the bottom line.

This is the inevitable consequence of a culture, because the culture will always focus on the temporal and rarely think of the eternal, while God is focused on the eternal with little care for the temporal. That is the backdrop Paul has as he writes to this church.

The Church at Corinth and the Call of God

This is a troubled church, this church at Corinth — remember, it is in the midst of division. Paul says, "For consider your calling, brethren, there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble" — 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 26. Paul is going to talk to them about the composition of this church, but before he does, he reminds them of their calling.

This is the third time in these few verses that Paul has mentioned the idea of their calling. Whenever Paul uses this idea of the calling, he is talking about salvation — the formal word, the efficacious call on their lives, the call that moves them from sinner to saint. We know that is what this church at Corinth, like any church, is comprised of.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9, he says, "Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminates, homosexuals, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God — and such were some of you. But you were washed, and you were sanctified, and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ."

Paul's Message to Every Church

This morning, as I was putting all of this together, I went to Scripture to see whether this was a message designated only to the church at Corinth. And it is what I already knew to be true — Paul mentions it to every church. To the church in Rome, Romans 1:6, he says you were called of Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 1:9, you were called into fellowship. In Galatians 1:6, he says — and this is fascinating — "I am amazed that you so quickly deserted Him who called you by the grace of Christ."

In Ephesians 4:1, he writes, "Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called." In Colossians 3:15, he says, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you indeed were called in one body, and be thankful." To the church at Thessalonica, he says you were called through our gospel. And writing to Timothy, he says, "Fight the good fight, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called."

The idea running through all of these is the undeniable, irresistible call of God on an individual's life that moves them from fool to wise man.

The Power of God to Those Who Are Called

Paul has been building to this point. He is talking about the gospel and he says this: "For the Jews look for a sign, the Greeks search for wisdom. We preach Christ crucified — to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Gentiles foolishness. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, it is the power of God and the wisdom of God." It is not to the world. We spent a lot of time on verse 18 last week: "For the word of the cross, to those who are perishing, is foolish. To those who are being saved, it is the power of God."

In this world, in this room, in every setting, there are two categories of people — those who are perishing and those who are being saved. When it comes to the gospel, those who are perishing say that it is silly, ridiculous, that it makes no sense at all. To those who are being saved, we understand it is power.

If you are a Christian, at some point in your life you moved from looking at the gospel and saying it is foolish, to looking at the gospel and embracing it. This is especially true for those who came to Christ as teenagers, in their late teens or early twenties, or even later than that. There was a point where you looked at the gospel and said, "That is ridiculous."

In my own life, there were times when people presented the gospel to me and I would ridicule and humiliate them. And then there was a day, a moment in time, when all of a sudden it made sense. What I have always asked myself is: why? Why did it make no sense one minute, and the next minute it made all the sense in the world? Did I suddenly get smart? Was it simply that the person explaining it to me did a better job?

The term we have come to embrace and to know is that we are elected by God. The phrase we use is unconditional election.

Remembering Your Calling

We are going to go through four or five thoughts, and in a sense it is almost unfair. But I want to make sure that you are remembering your calling. If this is something that is new to you, or something you want to wrestle through, or you want more information on, we have lots of books in the Information Center that will help you through this. We also did a tape series called *God's Plan for Salvation* that is very helpful in this process.

What the Bible Teaches About Election

When we talk about election, what we talk about is God choosing to save certain people. When man fell and sinned, he deserved death. And if God did not intervene in that person's life, or any person's life, they would never respond to the gospel. But God the Father chose those He would save, not based on anything within that person.

Here are some things about what the Bible teaches — not what you think, not what you feel, but what the Bible says. First of all, God did the choosing. God is the one who moved. When it comes to election, it was God who intervened.

We look at the passage where Paul speaks to the church at Thessalonica and says, "Know your election." In 2 Thessalonians 2:13 he says, "God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation." When he talks about "from the beginning" here, we are talking about from the beginning of time, from the beginning of creation. Ephesians 1:4 tells us God chose us before the foundations of the earth, before there was a creation — in God's mind, God chose us.

Why? Based on something we would do? Well, obviously that cannot be the case, especially if He chose us before the foundations of the earth. Throughout Scripture it is reminded to us that our choice is not based on our merit.

Jacob and Esau: Election Not Based on Merit

Romans 9 is a difficult passage, and Paul is talking to us there. I would challenge you — if you are uncomfortable with Romans 9, study it until you love it. Don't study it until you believe it. Don't study it until you accept it. Study it until you love it.

Paul uses an illustration from the Old Testament about God's saving mercy, and he uses the illustration of Jacob and Esau. Same mom, same dad, twins, still in the womb — they had not yet done anything. There could be no merit, nothing they could do. Paul reminds us: "For the children not yet being born, having not done any good or evil, they were chosen that the purpose of God, according to His election, might stand, not of works, but of Him who calls."

In that passage, what we discover is that when they were still in the womb, God said, "Jacob I loved and Esau I hated." Now that word "hate" carries a somewhat different meaning than it does for us today. What He is saying is: I will show favor to Jacob, I will give justice to Esau. God is going to have mercy, and He is going to have mercy on whoever He wants to have mercy on. If we say God has to have mercy on everyone equally, then by definition it is no longer mercy. God chooses not based on anything that we do.

Salvation Is Not by Works

2 Timothy 1:9 tells us God saves us and calls us with a holy calling, not according to our works. All of religion — and maybe you came out of a religion that said you do, you earn, you try, you do your best — teaches that somehow your efforts will satisfy or appease a holy God. All of religion is man's effort to reach out and become pleasing to a holy God, and it is impossible for us to do.

Who goes to heaven? If I went over to Fiesta Mall with a microphone and started interviewing people and asked, "What do you think you have to do to go to heaven?" the number one answer would be: be good. Technically, we would call that justification by death — all you have to do is die. That is what you actually have to do to go to heaven. And Scripture comes along and says no, there is nothing you can do. You cannot be good. How good is good enough? Salvation is based not on our merit, but on God's will and God's desire.

See how this begins to tie together? We have defined grace — and even those who might wrestle with this doctrine would define it the same way — as unmerited, undeserved, permanent forgiveness. Well, the question answers itself: what can you do to merit unmerited favor? The answer is nothing.

God's Choice Is Not Based on Foreseen Faith

Sometimes you will hear this explanation: God chooses, but He chooses based on looking down the corridors of time, seeing that one day you would choose Him, and so before you could choose, He chose you. In other words, God beat you to the punch. But no, God's choice is not based on that. If that were true, then a totally depraved man would have to choose God on his own, and that is not possible.

The Scripture teaches us in Acts 13:48 that as many as believed were appointed — chosen. The belief itself was determined by God. Salvation is a gift from God, based solely on His sovereign mercy. Titus 3 says: "But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior appears toward men, not by works or the righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us."

God Is Magnified

When you start to think about salvation, you start to think about how what was once foolishness to you now makes sense. It is not because you got smart all of a sudden — it is because God moved in your life. That is why, when you want to jumpstart your spiritual growth, you get your arms around this truth.

I guarantee you that when you understand this, God is magnified. All of religion magnifies man. True Christianity magnifies God. All religion puts the emphasis on man. True Christianity puts the emphasis and the spotlight on God.

The Context: A Divided Church

You may think, "Who cares? That's just a bunch of theological stuff, a bunch of pinheads sitting in a room trying to figure this out. What difference does it make to me?" Let me remind you of the context. This church is being pulled apart. The church at Corinth is beginning to divide. Some are following Paul, some Apollos, some Peter. There is tension and difficulty in this church, so Paul says three times: you had better remember your calling. We are saved by God's grace and God's mercy. We are saved for a purpose — to bring honor and glory to Him, for us to enjoy Him forever, and to bring harmony and unity, especially into the church.

It is as if Paul has a directory of that church in Corinth and he is looking it over. He says, there are not many wise among you according to the flesh, not many mighty, and not too many noble either. There are not many wise according to the flesh — not a large number of PhDs. Now let me spend a moment here, because this is very important. There is one little word in there that makes all the difference in the world. He does not say there were not any; he says there were not many.

Not Many, But Some

We know there were some powerful people — Crispus, Sophonius. We know Sergius Paulus, who was a proconsul. We know that there were noble women from the area of Thessalonica who were part of the church. What Paul is saying is that the vast majority were not like that. Either the gospel was not attractive to powerful people, or once they came in, they tended to lose those things.

And it is not just true of that church — it is true of every church. There are not a lot of Phi Beta Kappas around, have you noticed that? I always said there are more Tappa Kegaday than Phi Beta Kappas at our church. There are some — I know there are PhDs, I saw a couple of you coming in, bright guys, professors at the university. There are some, but they are not many, and when you go to your conventions and hang out with your associates, you are pretty much isolated.

Not a lot of the mighty, not a lot of the entrepreneurial, not a lot of the people with business clout, not a lot of those who are extraordinarily successful. Some, but not a lot of entertainers and athletes — a few. Rarely those in the top three or four tiers. Not many of the noble either, not many politicians. They do not tend to stay. I am not saying they are not here, but you see them around election time, or when it is time to dedicate a baby, or when they want to make some kind of political statement — they pick out the largest church in their district and do it that way. There are some who are probably genuinely converted, but not many.

I was teaching in Tucson, and we had a large study group down there. One day, in the midst of all of his problems, I walked in and there were men with little earpieces. I said, "Wow, what is this?" They said, "Governor Mecham is here at the Bible study this morning." He came up and asked, "Would you like me to say something?" I said, "No — I have studied, I am ready to go." I do not mean to be cynical about it, but we do tend to see politicians most often around election time or primary time. There are some, but not many.

The Riffraff of the Earth

One author put it this way: "Corinth was by no means unusual. Christianity spread most rapidly among the lowest class of Mediterranean society, and this single fact, in a class-conscious Greek and Roman society, was partly the cause of its being so offensive. The riffraff were being converted, saved, and changed." God picked out the scum of the earth and made them kings and priests in His kingdom. This is precisely what Jesus Himself had indicated when announcing His own ministry. In Luke 4:16, He said He is anointed "to preach the good news to the poor." This is the way of God — His wisdom, His power, His gospel. It is the way God works.

In fact, at one point Jesus was delivering a sermon, and He closed it in a very striking way. Listen to this prayer in Matthew 11:25: "I praise Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou dost hide these things from the wise and intelligent, and dost reveal them to babes." When Paul looks at the church of Corinth, he says there are not a lot of smart people there by the world's standards, not a lot of wealthy people, not a lot of decision-makers. That has always been the church.

Tested by Affluence

Someone I was talking to this week is convinced that persecution is right around the corner for us. It may be — who knows? But I will tell you what: we can handle that. Right now we are being tested in the most difficult way possible. We are being tested with affluence. I look at the homes we live in, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, and how rarely we even need to think about food and shelter.

That gets at the very heart of Christmas every year. I know your biggest problem at Christmas: how do you get a gift for somebody who does not need anything? When I was a boy, we would literally wait all year long for a bicycle or a first baseman's mitt. If a kid wants a bike now, we just go get it. I am not saying that is good or bad — I am just saying that is why it is so hard to shop at Christmas. You know how long it took my dad to shop? Five minutes. He knew what I wanted, he knew what I needed, and he went and got it.

Now we spend hours shopping, and we even have to stop and eat in the middle of it to replenish our strength, because we are taxing our minds trying to think of something original. "I will get them glider lessons — oh, we did that last year." We are simply running out of things to get. That is the test we are facing. We are being tested by affluence.

God Chooses the Unlikely

God has chosen to test His people in a very difficult way — with the test of prosperity and affluence. That is a much tougher test than persecution and suffering. In verse 27, Paul addresses this directly: "For God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong, and the base things of the world, and the despised" — those considered nothing — "God has chosen these and the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are."

God has turned everything upside down and defied human logic, because we think big and bombastic. We think program. We think wisdom. Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes: "We Christians often quote, 'Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord,' yet in practice we seem to rely on the mighty dollar and the power of the press and advertising. We seem to think that our influence will depend on our technique and the programs we put forward. We seem to have forgotten that God has done His most, indeed throughout history, through a remnant. We seem to have forgotten the great story of Gideon, for instance, how God insisted on reducing the 32,000 men down to 300 before He could use them. We have become fascinated by the ideas of bigness and are quite convinced that if we can stage — yes, the word stage — something really big before the world, we'll shake it and produce revival."

Bigness Is Not the Point

There is nothing intrinsically bad or good about bigness. If given the choice, and people ask all the time, the desire would be for a church of 40,000, because of belief in what is being done. The problem is when we put our faith and trust in the 40,000 — that is the problem, and that is the tendency. We look at the world and say that if we are going to go out and compete, we have to be bright, articulate, and have everything the world expects. We have to earn their respect and meet them on their turf.

D.L. Moody at Cambridge

There was a man who was at Cambridge late in the 19th century when D.L. Moody arrived. The erudite people at Cambridge could not wait to get hold of Moody. His reputation was that he was a backward, ill-spoken American. In fact, somebody once said that D.L. Moody was the only man he ever heard who could pronounce the word "Jerusalem" in one syllable. There was a plot among the rector and those at chapel at Cambridge that when Moody got on the platform, they would boo him off.

This man reports that the day Moody came, he began by asking Ira Sankey to sing. As soon as Sankey finished, Moody stepped to the edge of the platform, looked directly at the students who were gathered there, and said, "Young men, don't ever think God don't love you, for He do." The man said he and his classmates were dumbfounded at this beginning. A few minutes later, Moody said it again: "Men, don't ever think God don't love you, for He do."

Something about the very ungrammatical structure of those words captured him. The intense earnestness of this man spoke to his heart. He sought out Moody for a private interview, and Moody led him to Christ. A great awakening came to Cambridge at the hands of that humble servant of God. That is what God does.

Man Looks at the Outside

Consider what happens when a guest speaker arrives who is tall, dark, and handsome — deeply tanned, perfectly eloquent, never an uh or an um, brilliant, moving effortlessly from verse to verse, book to book, philosopher to philosopher. After he leaves, the comments are predictable: "Isn't he really something? What a guy. Is he special." But when the message comes through a more ordinary vessel, no one says that. They simply say, "God is good." And He is.

It is the age-old story: man looks at the outside, God looks at the heart. It is amazing what God brings together. Sometimes you walk in, look around, and think everybody has it together — and you never get to hear all the stories of the people God brought right out of awful circumstances. It will be twenty years ago tomorrow since the last drink. And the reflection is not on what has been done, but on what God has done. That is only a small part of what God is doing in everybody's life here.

So it only makes sense that God would say He does not need a collection of the wise, the mighty, and the noble. It makes sense that He would gather together people — broken, humbled people — for His purposes.

No Man May Boast Before God

Paul then gives the reason: "so that no man may boast before God." The word translated as "boast" is worth examining carefully, because it can mean to take pride in, to glory in, or to boast in the way we typically think of it. But the way it is used here comes closer to the concept of trust, or to put full confidence in something. In other words, God does not use people who are extraordinarily self-sufficient.

In fact, by definition, those are often the very people who never do come, because coming to Christ in repentance and faith begins with stripping away oneself. "Blessed are the poor in spirit" — literally, blessed are those who are spiritually bankrupt, who are spiritual beggars. Not in the casual sense of someone asking for spare change, but the picture here is of someone cowering in a corner, reaching out, waiting for anything that might be given to them. That is the beginning of salvation. The wise, the mighty, and the noble rarely arrive there on their own terms.

Pride and Boasting Before God

The noble come with all of their pedigree, so they put their trust before God in themselves. Their trust is in who they are, what they think, how clever they are, and in the gifts and talents God has given them. But God chooses those things that are particularly foolish to the world so that no one would boast before Him. By His doing, you are in Christ, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.

Those words are all coupled together. What Paul is saying is that wisdom in Christ equals righteousness, equals sanctification, equals redemption. When we look at these words, we understand that wisdom allows us to see the world as it is — we begin to see and understand things around us. Righteousness speaks of someone or something being as they should be. In Christ, I am in right position — not just remodeled, but transformed to my original condition, so that I now have communion with God.

After that reconciliation takes place, my life is set apart, so I am supposed to be distinctive and holy. And God has bought me back — God has redeemed me. When I look at all of these together, what I see is that in Christ I have the wisdom from God, and in it I have my righteousness, my sanctification, and my redemption. There is no boasting, there is no trusting in me. In fact, here is what Scripture says: let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. Let him who has confidence put their confidence in the Lord, not in yourself.

The Idolatry of Pride

One businessman writes these words: "It's my pride that makes me independent of God. It's appealing to feel I'm master of my fate, I run my own life, I call my own shots, I go it alone. But that feeling is my basic dishonesty. I can't go it alone. I have to get help from other people, and I can't ultimately rely on myself. I'm dependent on God for my very next breath. It's dishonest of me to pretend that I'm anything but a man — small, weak, and limited. So living independent of God is self-delusion. It's not just a matter of pride being an unfortunate little trait, and humility being an attractive little virtue. When I am conceited, I am lying to myself about myself. I am pretending to be God, not man. My pride is the idolatrous worship of myself." And listen to this phrase — it is the national religion of hell.

C.S. Lewis calls pride the ultimate vice. He says it is through pride that Lucifer became the devil. Whenever I talk about me, whenever I draw attention to myself, I am drawing attention away from what God has done. And it is really easy to spot, and everybody hates it.

There is a building here in town that I drive by. On this building is the name of the guy who owns it. It is a tall two-story building, and the letters of this man's name are in a very bright color, displayed on the building three times in a conspicuous space, with letters that have to be three feet high. It drives me crazy — and that is more of a comment on me, I am sure, than on him. So when I drive by, I say to Susan, "This guy has got to be a jerk." And Susan says, "Let it go, it doesn't matter, Tom. You don't even know the man. He's probably a very nice guy." Eventually, because I know people in his industry, I decided to find out what he was like. I called someone and said, "Do you know so-and-so?" And he said, "He is a jerk." I said, "Thank you" — and I wanted to get Susan on the line, because I was right again.

The reason I can spot that in another person is because I know it in myself. I can tell you right now what your besetting sin is: it is your pride. It is the source of all sin. It is the reason you would mess around on your spouse. It is the reason you would cheat in business. All of your sin flows out of your pride. Even when you have low self-esteem, that is nothing more than you not measuring up to your own standard for yourself — and you have pride about that. Until you are broken of your pride and put your faith and trust in Him, you will always be lost. You will never understand life. And if you remain in that condition, you will spend eternity in a place called hell.

Four Things Godly Wisdom Gives Us

Fear of the Lord gives us wisdom. There are four things, simply put, that godly wisdom gives us. Number one: you can see reality. When I was in college, we used to sit around late at night and ask, "What is reality?" We did not have a shot in the world of finding the answer, because the only place you are going to understand reality is when you go to God's Word and He opens your eyes.

Every once in a while I get someone who says, "You are out of that real estate business now — we live in the real world." And after I have heard enough of that, I say, "Let me tell you something. I see more of the real world in a week than you see in six months." When you have wisdom from God, you can see the world as it really is. You may still drive yourself for material gain and for prestige and for power, but if you are a Christian, you know that is foolish. All of a sudden you know what is truly valuable, because you see the eternal and not the temporal.

In fact, that is why you are so frustrated sometimes. You are working hour after hour every week at the expense of your family, at the expense of your friends, at the expense of your relationship with your Lord — for something that by definition you do not need and you know is going to burn. That is why you are frustrated. Now you know how to respond to God — not in some

Godly Wisdom and How We Respond

When we come to God without godly wisdom, we respond in a religious way: "I'll take care of this, I'll do this, I'll be good enough." But if we have godly wisdom, we know how to live, we know what is right, and we have the ability to do what is correct — to live before God in a way that brings honor, glory, and pleasure to Him.

As believers in this world, we have the eyes to see the truth. That is because God has opened our eyes and put His Spirit in our hearts to see it and believe it.

Looking Ahead

Next week we will be doing something that was not originally planned. Gary came and we were going over the upcoming music, worship, and Christmas Eve service. He was making a point that dealt with the incarnation, and since that topic has come up in Priority Living as well, next week's message will approach it from a somewhat different perspective. Although we do not typically do this, it may well serve as a Christmas message for us.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You. We praise You and we worship You for the wisdom You have given us — not the wisdom of this world, but a wisdom that is even looked at as foolishness by this world. God, help us consider the calling You have placed on our lives, that You have decided to work in a group of people like us. God, we praise You for it. In Jesus' name, amen.