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We return again to our study of Luke's gospel. We're in Luke chapter six. We're going to look at verses 12 and 13, but we will use them as a launching pad to look at some passages in Ephesians four, as well as well as in one Corinthians one. And this is really the beginning of a series. I've entitled this morning's exposition "The Choosing of the 12, Part One." We're going to be looking at the prayerful selection primarily. So let's look at these two verses: Luke chapter six, beginning in verse 12,

"It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God.

"And when day came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles."

Throughout redemptive history, we see how God chooses very common men and women in certain cases, with no extraordinary gifts or abilities or social status or religious academic pedigrees, but primarily men to be his representatives, uncommon men. I should say: common men to do extraordinary things. It's really interesting when you think about it. I mean, we could go all the way back to Abraham. Abraham was an idolater, right? He was an idolater, and yet he became the physical father of Israel, the spiritual father of all believing Gentiles. I think of Sarah, Abraham's wife, barren wife, who gave her Egyptian servant Hagar to Abram as a surrogate wife. Then she despised her. You remember that story? Yet in old age, God allowed her to give birth to Isaac. Think of Jacob, who obtained his brother Esau's blessings through deception, through scheming. Quite a clever man; he had to flee his homeland and ended up wrestling with God. You remember the story, and yet God used him to carry forward the covenant promise through his 12 sons, which included Joseph. Joseph was a man that was sold into slavery in Egypt, but he became the prime minister who ultimately preserved the 12 tribes. Fascinating story. Moses was, you might say, an abandoned child, right? Found floating in the Nile, raised in an Egyptian family, murdered a man, spent 40 years in exile in the land of Midian before God called him to deliver his people from the bondage of Egypt. Joshua, think of him. He was merely a servant and an apprentice of Moses and a soldier, but after Moses' death, the Lord made him the successor to Moses, who would lead the Israelites into the promised land. Nothing real special about him. Eventually, when they settled in Canaan, Joshua led the gathered Israelites in a renewal of the covenant of Yahweh, you might recall. I think of Rahab the harlot. Remember her, how she helped the Israelites destroy Jericho, and she became an ancestor of the Lord Jesus Christ. Think of David, a mere shepherd boy that God used to deliver Israel from the Philistines by killing Goliath. Later, he became a great king, despite all of his difficulties. I think of Esther, a lowly Hebrew orphan taken into captivity, but she became the queen of Xerxes, remember, saved her people from destruction. In fact, her name appears in Scripture 50 times more than any other woman. You could think of all of the prophets, the judges that God raised up to protect his people and accomplish his purposes. I think even of John the Baptist, who was really the last of the Old Testament prophets, lived in the wilderness, didn't dress too GQ, as you will recall; had a great diet of locusts and honey, but he was the forerunner of the Messiah. In fact, Jesus said in Matthew 11:11, "'Truly, I say to you, among those born of women, there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist.'"

Now, in Luke's account, we witness Jesus choosing 12 common men to eventually be his apostles, and what we see here is they are not selected on the basis of their education, their social status, anything like that, or because somehow, they were a part of the elite religious establishment of Israel. They weren't part of the Pharisees or the Sadducees or the Levites, any of the priests or the rabbis, the scribes. None of that. But rather, he chooses 12. I like to think of it this way: 12 nobodies like me, like you.

And all except Judas Iscariot were Galileans, and you must understand that in that day Galileans were considered to be the uneducated, kind of uncouth, foul-mouthed, I guess you could say, rednecks, of that day. A bunch of fishermen; one despised tax collector who was really a criminal in a lot of ways and considered a traitor, one Jewish assassin who sought to kill Romans, and one who would become a traitor; I might add, by God's design and for His purposes. And yet the men he chose to be his official representatives, apart from Judas, turned the world upside down, and that continues to this very day. And over the coming weeks, we are going to examine each one of them, but today I want to give you some background.

Remember the context here: Jesus has been teaching, he's been performing miracles, and making monkeys out of the Pharisees. He's got a huge following, and at every turn, he is humiliating the Pharisees. They are furious. They're scheming to kill him, and Jesus knows this. You know, narcissists hate to be exposed, and they hate to be upstaged. That's what's going on here. The numbers of those who hate Jesus is now growing, and Jesus also knows he's going to soon go to the cross to suffer on our behalf and then ascend back into heaven. So God is at work here in his great sovereignty, and his eternal decree included the appointment of these men that would become Spirit-empowered apostles that would carry on what Jesus began.

I want to remind you a little bit about this whole idea of an apostle and how God has brought all this about by taking you to Ephesians four for just a moment. Ephesians four, beginning in verse 11, he says, "And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers." You see, the apostles and all that follow in that text are are not self-appointed or just merely church appointed, they are selected by God himself. Think about the apostles and the prophets first of all. In First Corinthians 12:28, Paul says, "God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers." So there's a chronological significance here that we see in Scripture: first, second, and third, in the giving of these gifted men to the church.

Now, let me digress for a bit, and help you see what God has done. The first two classes of gifted men that God has given to the church are the apostles - "apostolos" in the original language. It merely means one set on a mission. So you have the apostles and prophets. And they were given three basic responsibilities. First of all, their responsibility was to lay the foundation for the church. Ephesians 2:20, for example, it says, "Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone." But not only were they responsible to lay the foundation for the church, but secondly, they would receive and proclaim direct revelation from God. Ephesians three verse five, for example, "...it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit." We have an example of that in Acts 11 verse 28, "One of them named Agabus stood up and began to indicate by the Spirit that there would certainly be a great famine all over the world, and this took place in the reign of Claudius." So they were to lay the foundation for the church. They would receive and proclaim direct revelation from God, and then what we also see is all of that was confirmed, or you might say authenticated. The word that is revealed to them is authenticated through signs and wonders and miracles (2 Corinthians 12:12).

I might also add as a footnote: there were three qualifications for an apostle, not the prophets, but for an apostle. Number one, they had to be chosen directly by the Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, they were able to perform the signs of an apostle, being authenticated by miraculous signs and wonders and mighty works, as I just mentioned. You see that as well in Second Corinthians 12:12 and verse 13. And then thirdly, they had to be an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ. By the way, that's why we don't have any apostles today. There are many that claim to be apostles, but they have no biblical basis for making that claim.

Now, when it comes to the prophets, we see that they were also appointed by God to function primarily within local congregations, not to be confused with those with the gift of prophecy that you would read about in First Corinthians 12:10. Prophecy there means to speak forth or to proclaim. It's more forth-telling, not foretelling. That was a whole different group of people. But sometimes appointed prophets would speak direct revelation from God, like Agabus that I mentioned a moment ago in in Acts chapter 11. And other times they expounded existing revelation, as you would see in Acts 13 and verse one. But you must bear in mind that the prophets were second to the apostles, and their message actually was always judged by the apostles (1 Corinthians 14:37). And what we see is like the apostles; their office ceased with the completion of the New Testament, even as the Old Testament prophets disappeared 400 years before Christ at the completion of the Old Testament, except for John the Baptist, who emerged at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry to announce his ministry.

Now back to Ephesians 4 and verse 11, it says, "And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers." So you have two New Testament offices here that replaced the apostles and the prophets, and that is the evangelist. Men who proclaimed the good news of the gospel - that's what the term means. Like Philip, you may recall, he was called an evangelist in Acts 21 and verse eight. And evangelists were basically missionaries, even within the local church, that would proclaim the gospel - and outside the church - these would be gifted men that would proclaim the gospel and fulfill the commission of winning the lost to Christ.

But then you have another office, and that is of pastors - "poimēn" in the original language -  it means shepherd; one who shepherds a local congregation, one who - and there's a whole list of things that's a part of that responsibility - but primarily, a shepherd is one who has to nurture and protect and feed the flock that God has placed him over. He is an under-shepherd of God. And then also you have another office that of teaching. And really, the two go together. The "didaskalos,"  it has to do with the the primary function of a pastor. In fact, what's interesting, it says, "pastors and teachers" - "pastors and" in the original language, the word "and" can be translated "that is" or "in particular," so you see the two kind of going together. A pastor is a teacher, a pastor-teacher. That is what God has called me to do. And we see this more clearly, for example, in First Timothy 5:17. It says, "The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work at preaching and teaching." And that's why often you hear the phrase "pastor teacher." When somebody asks me, as often they will, you know, "What do you do for a living?" I say, "Well, I'm the pastor teacher of Calvary Bible Church." So it kind of goes together. You don't have a pastor who doesn't teach, right? That's part of the qualifications of an elder that you would see in First Timothy 3and Titus 1. You have to be able to exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict and so forth.

So no longer do we have apostles and prophets, but we have evangelists, we have pastor teachers. And the role of the pastor teacher, Paul goes on to say, is as follows,

"...for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;

"until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ."

And here's why,

"As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming;

"but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,

"from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love."

And so without apostles and prophets, we would have no foundation for the church. We would have no direct revelation and proclamation of that, and certainly the recording of it in the canon of Scripture. And you would have, without the evangelists, you wouldn't have had the spreading of the gospel and so forth. Nor would it continue even to this day. And without a qualified pastor teacher that God has appointed, that he is empowered and so forth, you will have a weak pulpit. If you have a weak pulpit, you will have weak leadership, and you will have a weak congregation. Without a pastor teacher, you will have no equipping, no exhortation, no edification, no encouragement, and so forth. If I can put it a little bit different, apart from the in-depth, systematic preaching and teaching of the Word of God - apart from that - believers will be banished to an island of spiritual infancy. They will never grow. They will never mature in Christ. They will lack discernment, and ultimately, the church will become a social club, a mere community center. Without a pastor teacher, you will forfeit biblical discernment. You will make bad choices in your life because you don't know the word, you don't understand the word, you're not being encouraged, you're not being shepherded, and so forth. And what we see is churches always, always drift towards worldliness, never towards godliness. They always drift left to liberalism, and so what will happen is people in those kind of churches will forfeit God's blessing in their life and in their family. They will lack a sense of purpose and power and forfeit the real joy in the Lord that can only come when you're walking closely with him and you understand who he is, and so forth.

Now back to Jesus choosing the 12. That's a little background here on the apostles. I've got one point in my outline here for you, so this should be real easy to follow. I was going to break it apart, and I thought that's more confusing than if I just say, "Look, here's what's going on": prayerful selection for personal preparation. All right, that's what's happening here: prayerful selection for personal preparation. And by the way, both priorities were absolutely essential to lay the foundation of the church to choose men that would receive and proclaim direct revelation from God, and again, the apostleship was an office ordained by God that included a divinely instituted commission of these men and the spiritual authority to act on behalf of God to fulfill that commission.

So we look more closely at the verse, "It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray..." Now, what is "this time"? It's probably a reference to shortly after the Sabbath controversies that we've seen in the previous verses, and the mounting hostilities coming towards Jesus at this time. "He went off to the mountain to pray..." It doesn't say what mountain. It was probably Mount Arbel. Some of you have been there with me there. If you go to my living room, you will see a picture that a dear missionary friend took of me. He hollered at me, and I was up on the edge of the cliffs there, the Arbel cliffs, a beautiful place. You can look down, and you can see where the Jordan River comes into the Sea of Galilee. That's where Chorazin, Capernaum, and Bethsaida was. That's where Jesus spent most of his time, that's probably where he went. By the way, that's on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. Once you're up on top of those cliffs that that jut up, I think like 390 meters over the water, you can look down on one side and you can see Tiberias, and over on the left side you can see Capernaum and so forth. That's probably where he went. We don't know for sure, it doesn't matter, the point is, he went someplace in a secluded place to pray, and it says, "...and he spent the whole night in prayer to God."

Now you must remember, Jesus in his incarnation, set aside the use of his divine attributes and depended solely upon the Spirit of God - the power of the Spirit of God - to lead him, and so he's going to prayer, and he's going to spend all night in prayer; and certainly, there's a lesson to be learned here, is there not? Whenever you have a major decision in your life, folks, you simply must seek divine wisdom, which only comes from the Word of God through the Spirit of God as he applies the Word to our life. We have to know the Word. We have to walk in intimate fellowship with the God of the Word. We must obey the Word as the Spirit of God applies it to our hearts. I think of, I think it's in First Peter three, maybe verse seven. It says something about how husbands need to live with their wives in an understanding way. They need to love and respect their wives and so forth, "lest your prayers be hindered," all right? In other words, guys, if you're not loving your wife as you should, if you're not honoring the Lord in your life in your marriage, God's not going to hear your prayers, and so you forfeit blessing, and so forth. The point is, Jesus knew how important it was to gain wisdom from God the Father and the Spirit. James one, in verse five, says, "But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God." If you're like me, you lack wisdom all the time, so you have to ask God for help. And he says, "...who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him." I think of Psalm 145, verse 18, "The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth." In sincerity, not in hypocrisy. And Jesus later said in John 14, beginning in verse 13, "Whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it." In other words, if you're asking anything to the praise of my glory, I'm going to hear that prayer and I'm going to answer that. John 15 verse seven, he says, "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you" - all right, that's the qualifier - if you're doing that, then he says, "...ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." Well, there's many passages to to to expand upon that, but this is what is so important for Jesus now in choosing the 12.

Very practically, again, if I can point this out, any kind of momentous decision you need to make in your life, you need to go before the Lord in persistent, earnest prayer, and many times in fasting, and seek wise counsel from other people, so you can know how to operate in the flesh, or in the spirit rather than in the flesh. Because if you're leaning on your own understanding and you have no desire to really know what God says about a particular issue, then you are embarking on a fool's errand. Just think for a moment of some of the stupid choices we've made in our life. You look back and you think, "Oh my goodness, what was I thinking? That was so wrong. How tragic. And I'm sure if you think back before you made that stupid choice, you would have to admit that you spent no time seeking the Lord's wisdom on it. You just jumped right into it on your own. And folks, we need to come before the Lord on these things to be able to say, "Lord, this is a huge decision. I think I need to do this because of this and this and this, but I'm not sure. Won't you please give me discernment? Help me to understand how your word would apply to all of the variables that are a part of this decision. Help me to go to different ones and talk this out so that so that I can be sure that I'm weighing everything in such a way that whatever my decision is, I can ultimately honor you." Very often people will say, "Well, how do I know what the will of God is?" Well, certainly there's a lot of things that we need to do. It's his will that we be saved and sanctified and suffer and so forth and so on, but as Augustine put it, "Love God and do what you want." Pretty simple. If you're truly walking faithfully with the Lord and honoring him, then the Spirit is going to lead you, but not apart from his Word; not apart from the wise counsel of other people, and God has placed those in your life. And if you don't have them, you need to find them; otherwise, you are living as an island unto yourself, and you will regret that. So, this is an extremely important decision.

Bear in mind, Jesus knew that he was calling these men to suffer on his behalf ultimately, and to die for the gospel. He knew that he would call them, and he would have to pour his life into them, to train them, to prepare them, to empower them, and to love them; so he prayed fervently for wisdom to select the right men. And verse 13 says, "And when day came, He called His disciples..." Disciples, his learners - "tous mathētas" - his followers, his his learners. He called them, "...to Him, and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles."

Now Mark adds a little bit more insight here. Mark three, beginning in verse 13,

"And He went up on the mountain and summoned those whom He Himself wanted, and they came to Him,.

"And he appointed twelve, so that they would be with Him, and that He could send them out to preach,

"and to have authority to cast out the demons.

"And he appointed the twelve:...."

Won't you notice, it says, "He summoned those" it says, "whom He Himself wanted." By the way, there are many following him, all right, but he's going to choose the 12. I might add too that that in the original language, the Greek is very emphatic here, and it denotes his sovereignty in the sense that Jesus is summoning those whom he willed. In other words, he's causing them to come to him. His will superseded their will. That's the idea. You see, it's not like Jesus prays and then he approaches these guys and says, "Hey guys, you know, I don't know if you would want to do this or not, but here's what we're going to be doing, and I'm just wondering, would you would you like to join with me and follow me?" That's not what's going on here, not at all. In fact, in John 15 verse 16, Jesus says, "You did not choose me." That's pretty clear, right? "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He may give to you." Folks, this is like the efficacious call to salvation.

You see the same dynamic; the spiritually dead, as we know, have no capacity to savingly understand the Scripture, and therefore no desire to seek the Lord in saving faith. They're unable to repent apart from renewing grace, apart from the miracle of regeneration. I mean, we see this all through Scripture. Romans 9:16 says salvation, "does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy." In other words, salvation is not because of human choice or because of of zealous effort, it's because of God who sets his mercy upon a sinner; and so we trust in the sovereignty of God to do what only he can do, and that is to bring men and women unto himself to save those that he has elected by his grace.

I might also add, just as a point of theology here, because I like to include these things so that I make sure that you understand them - they're so precious - this is why we would reject the Pelagian heresy that essentially says that man is perfectly capable of responding on his own and surrendering to God in saving faith. So our responsibility is simply to persuade him to do so. You know, after 13 verses of "Just As I Am," you'll finally get somebody whipped up into an emotional frenzy, so that they will repeat a prayer and get saved. I mean, that's kind of the extreme of it, but that's where you...I mean, it's all that "altar call evangelism." That is not a biblical concept. Instead, we are to preach the gospel. The Spirit of God uses us as instruments of righteousness to bring the truth of the gospel to bear upon a person, and we depend upon him for the effectual call of God to convert sinners according to his sovereign grace and power, and that's what's going on here in the choosing of his apostles.

So, "He summoned those whom He Himself wanted, and they came to Him." And again, as we look at this, it's fascinating. He selects 12 guys that are completely counterintuitive. I mean, if he would have gone to the consultants and said, "Hey, look, this is what I want to do. I got this message called the gospel. Everybody's going to hate it, so I need to get some guys to help me with this. And what I'm thinking is maybe get some fishermen, an assassin, a tax collector, and a guy that's going to be a traitor. What do you think?" That's what he does. He selects ordinary, unimpressive, uneducated, religiously and socially unqualified men to be his messengers. Men that would one day rule the 12 tribes in the Messianic Kingdom, according to Luke 22, Revelation 21. And over the course of the next few weeks, we're going to examine these men closely.

But I want to launch off of this this concept of him choosing just as I say nobodies and apply this to ourselves. For this reason, I want to go to First Corinthians one, look at a few verses. This text has always had such a profound impact on my life. Verses 26 through 31 is what we're going to look at for just a few minutes, because whenever I ponder the fact that God chose me because I would have never chosen Him, I'm just profoundly humble and encouraged. And Scripture is abundantly clear that in eternity past, he sets his love upon his elect before we're ever even born, before even the creation of time and space, and he sets his love upon wretches like me and like you and ultimately draws us unto himself in an act of irresistible grace. And with these humbling realities in mind for the saints in Corinth, here's what Paul says in First Corinthians one, verse 26, and you're going to see how this applies to what Jesus is doing with the 12. He says in verse 26,

"For consider your calling, brother, there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble;

"but 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 which are strong,

"and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that that He may nullify the things that are,

"so that no man may boast before God.

"But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,

"so that just as it is written, 'LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.'"

Now the context here is the apostle has been contrasting the wisdom of God with the wisdom of man, all in an effort to exhort the proud and really the immature saints there in the church at Corinth; to stop dividing themselves over their favorite philosopher and joining their own little clique and causing division in the church. That was part of what their culture did. They were in love with the wisdom of man - philosophia, it was called - that was their way of entertainment. So what people would do is they would attach themselves to their favorite philosopher, who was essentially an orator, and that person would move the audience with their lofty rhetoric, and everybody had their man. And naturally, this bleeds over into the church, and people develop a divisive infatuation with their favorite spiritual leader. And of course, all of that caused polarization within the church, so everybody had their own little version of the truth from their own favorite guru; truth pertaining to life and death and religion. And what they would do is they would mix man's religion in with some of God's religion, which is like mixing a little poison in with your pure water. And the key that unlocks this whole section in verses 26 through 31 is found in verse 30. He says, "But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption."

Now I might add that grammatically the Greek construction here in the series of this particle, which is the word "and," indicates that the three nouns "righteousness, sanctification, and redemption" are what he refers to as "wisdom." In other words, it could be translated, "But by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, which consists of righteousness and sanctification and redemption." And in this one sentence, God summarizes this entire section and answers the most fundamental questions of philosophers - the ones that they're laboring to explain - the who, what, how, why, and where of life. As I think about it, Einstein did not believe in a personal God who concerned himself with the fates of men and man's actions - a view that he considered to be naive - he believed in pantheism that all things compose an all-encompassing and eminent God. In other words, a God that is actively involved in His creation. He didn't believe in life after death. In fact, he said, "One life is enough for me." And at some level, I can identify with that. But it's sad, you know, he sees himself as the spiritual authority rather than the Word of God, but the only answers to those questions can be found in Scripture, and it's only when a person humbles themselves in saving faith that the Spirit of God comes into their life. In fact, in John 16 verse 8, Jesus said that the Spirit, "...will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment." That's a work of the Spirit. That's not something man figures out on his own. In fact, we're told in 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 14, that, "a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised."

So Paul is exhorting the Corinthians here to abandon any latent love of man's wisdom, the "philosophia." So notice the philosophical questions that God answers in this section of Paul's letter, and the first one is the question: Well, who is God? He answers that to these nobodies, as we're going to see. The answer is that he is the holy and sovereign Creator, not one of many gods like the Greeks had invented. In other words, as we're going to see here, he is the holy one who has a judicial loathing of everything that is evil and brings such misery and death into the world. And for this reason, he sends his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be the propitiation for our sin - to be the payment - to pay the legal penalty of our sin that eliminates the sinner's debt of divine justice. And it's for this reason, as we've read, the "word of the cross that is foolishness to those who are perishing and those who are being saved, it is the power of God."

So what we see here with what Paul is saying, even if we look earlier into the text, that he answers the question, "Who is God?" He is the sovereign ruler of the universe, and in verse 19 says, He is the one who says, "'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.'" And in verses 20 and 21, he is the one who "makes foolish the wisdom of the world" by his wisdom. He goes on to say, in that, "...the world through its wisdom did not come to know God," instead, it goes on to say, "...God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe." And that's the gospel message. And He is the one who has given us the proclamation of Christ crucified, which, according to verses 23 and 24, "is the power of God and the wisdom of God." So it's the gospel message that God uses that he empowers to save sinners, and so what's Paul saying? He said, "Look, you Corinthians, and you folks at Calvary Bible Church, you need to remember this and bow down and worship the Lord your God, because He indeed is the sovereign, holy Creator."

And what does he do, secondly, well, what he says next is really fascinating. He calls His elect and unites them to Christ by grace alone. Fascinating. In verse 23, I want you to notice he describes the message of, "...Christ crucified...as a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles," but then he says in verse 24, "....but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks," that message is "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." And then he says this, "For consider your calling, brethren..." and he speaks here of the efficacious - or sometimes it's called the effectual call of God - that calling of God, which certainly results in the salvation of God's elect, an inscrutable mystery that harmonizes God's sovereignty with man's freedom; both will be in operation in ways that we cannot fathom. Yet God must initiate salvation and work with a human will so that it freely and it voluntarily chooses to come to Christ in saving faith, and the instrument of this special call is always the Word of God, and the agent is always the Spirit of God. You see, it is God who must draw us; it is God who must teach us, convict us, and so forth. In fact, Jesus said in John 6:44, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me.." What? "draws him." Verse 45, "It is written in the prophets, and they shall be taught of God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me." So both drawing and learning require God's sovereign work. And beloved, please understand, as soon as you try to explain all of this in some logical way through philosophical reasoning, you cease to be biblical. God is the one who ultimately does the choosing. Second Peter one in verse 10 says, "Make certain about His calling and choosing you." Paul told the Thessalonian believers in First Thessalonians one, beginning in verse four, to remember,

"...brethren beloved by God, His choice of you;

"for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction."

You see, it's the regenerating power of the Spirit of God that causes us to be born again, because we can't "born again" ourselves. Regeneration is that miracle, that supernatural, instantaneous impartation of spiritual life to the spiritual dead that raises the spiritually dead to new life in Christ that changes our nature, the very disposition of our life. That's why the church is commonly called "the elect" in the New Testament. And through Scripture we clearly see that it is God who initiates salvation, not man. By God's regenerating grace, however, man will participate in response to God's promptings, and he will receive the word, as we see in First Thessalonians one and verse six, and he will "turn to God from idols," verse nine.

So back to the text here in First Corinthians one, Paul is saying, "Consider your calling, brethren." In other words, I want you to look closely at this, you people that are following all these lunatics out there trying to explain all of these things, look at your calling. And then he reminds them, verse 27, notice the phrase "God has chosen" two times. "God has chosen" "God has chosen," verse 28. "God has chosen," verse 30. "But by His doing, you are in Christ Jesus." It kind of rules us out, doesn't it? Again, this speaks of the supernatural, vital living union by which Christ becomes ours when we become united to him in saving faith. Galatians two and verse 20, Paul says, "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me."

Oh, beloved, what a magnificent thought! God redeems us that he might reside within us. This is the magnificent and often overlooked doctrine of union with Christ. What a glorious doctrine! You see, our union with Christ is the result of our justification. It is the basis of salvation and the source of all of our blessings in Christ. And because of this, God no longer sees our sin, but he sees our righteousness...I should say the righteousness of Christ, in which we have now been clothed. We become sharers in his life, which also finds its expression in our shared life in his body, the church. Not in the sense of belonging to some country club but being a limb or an organ of this mystical organism, of which Christ is the head. It constitutes a oneness whereby we co-labor and we co-suffer with Christ, and with one another.

And it's interesting as we look at Scripture, the Holy Spirit helps us grasp this unfathomable mystery by describing it in various figures. In Ephesians one, he uses the figure of the head and the body, and the body of Christ pictured in First Corinthians 12:27. It says, "Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it." So we're part of this supernatural organism, even though we're a bunch of nobodies. We cannot function outside of the body as independent organs. We respond as our body responds to the head, and that the head is Christ. We see another figure in Romans seven, verse four. We are "married to Christ." You see the same thing in Second Corinthians 11, in verse 12. And in Ephesians five, in the description of "the bride and the bridegroom"; you see the union there with Christ. We belong to him, and we enjoy that intimate spiritual oneness as we walk in fellowship with him. And because of this, he will one day, according to Ephesians 5:27, "present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that that she should be holy and blameless." You can go to John 15 and see another great figure in the vine and the branches, where Christ is pictured as the life-giving organic source of all that we are in him - the likeness of our nature - the impartation of spiritual light, the ability to bear spiritual fruit. We cannot do that apart from him. Isn't that what he says? "Apart from Me, you can do nothing." In John six, you have the figure of the body and the food. We have life by partaking of Christ, even as Christ had life by partaking of the Father. John 17:21 in the figure of God the Father and God the Son and the oneness that we share with them, and on and on it goes.

Beloved, I want you to understand that because of our union in Christ, there is now therefore no condemnation. Right? Because we're in Christ. Because of our union with Christ, we are free from the law. We possess the righteousness of God in Him. We are complete in Him. The dead in Christ will rise first, and on and on it goes.

So the point here that Paul is making, dear saints at Corinth, following all of your narcissistic philosophers that think they have all the answers, and fighting amongst each other, infatuated with human wisdom, I must remind you of something that your philosophers has never ever dreamed of - that which they would consider to be utter foolishness - and that is number one: that God is a holy, sovereign creator over all things, what does he do? He calls his elect and unites them to Christ by his uninfluenced sovereign grace alone. Then the next question: Well, how does he do it? Well, he gives wisdom to the weak, to the base, to the despised concerning righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, and he gives that to ordinary, insignificant pipsqueaks like me and like you. Pip squeaks. I haven't used that in a long time.

Verse 26, he says, "For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise..." Wise refers to clever, like these philosophers that you're talking about, that you're following. "Not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty," referring to those with great influence and great power. No, not many of those. "Not many noble" - those of high status in society, those of royal nobility. Isn't it interesting? The Spirit of God chooses three categories of people that the world adores. God's not impressed with any of that. All we have to do is look around, even in this room, and you see that he didn't choose us because we were wise according to the flesh, mighty or noble.

I find it interesting, the Roman catacombs are a series of underground burials that span from about the second century to the fifth century A.D. 1000s of Christians are buried there. And what's fascinating on the inscriptions of virtually all of those catacombs, we see they were written by Christians who misspelled words and used very bad grammar because most of them didn't know how to read, didn't know how to write. Many of them were illiterate slaves. But think about it: by God's grace, they became the children of God, heirs of the kingdom, joint heirs with Jesus, men and women who possess an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away (First Peter 1:4).

 So Paul's words are so powerful here. I mean, how sad to see some of you use the very same standards of the world to exalt yourselves and to exalt other people, and thus bring division and disunity into the church. You all need to take a breath. You need to sit back. You need to consider your calling, you not many wise, mighty or noble. But verse 27,

"but 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 which are strong,

"and the base things of the world.." in other words, people of low origin and the despised. There's the nobodies of the world. God has chosen the things that are not, in other words, people the world chooses to ignore as if those people don't even exist. Why? "So that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God." Again, back to the 12 disciples that became apostles, men whose only remarkable qualification was their lack of remarkable qualification. In fact, if you would have looked at their yearbook, you would have seen people write "least likely to succeed." Even after they were saved, they were prejudiced, right? Impetuous, proud, cowardly, just the type of people that God likes to take and conform them into the image of Christ. 12 ordinary men, fisherman, tax collector, a Jewish terrorist that hated Rome, and other nondescript nobodies. I mean, what was God thinking?

But what an encouragement this is for all of us, right? Oh, it's such an encouragement. Beloved, never underestimate your capacity to be used by God. It has nothing to do with your lot in life. Nothing to do with your status, your economic status, or your educational status, or any of that type of thing, but it has everything to do with God's grace that would break you down where you see that apart from His grace you could never be saved. And in your Humility, and in your availability, he takes and he uses that.

That's why he says in verse 30, "But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, which consists of righteousness, sanctification, and redemption." And the reason we are in Christ Jesus is solely because God made it happen.

Well, that's enough for today. The next time we get together, we will begin to examine these individuals. But I want to just challenge you to go before God even today in utter humility and gratitude, and thank him for his saving grace, acknowledging that your salvation, your sanctification, your entire life is by his grace alone, and then you will truly be able to sing,

"Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul.

Thank you, Lord, for making me whole.

Thank you for giving to me Thy great salvation, so rich and free."

Amen. Let's pray,

Father, thank you for the great truths of your Word. They are certainly beyond our ability to grasp apart from the work of your Spirit. And even though we can't explain them all, we are deeply humbled by them, and we trust you to do what you have promised to do, and we thank you that you set your love upon us solely because of your grace, not because of our merit. Take us and use us mightily for the sake of the kingdom. And for those that do not know you, O Lord, won't you bring conviction to their heart this day, that today they might be saved and experience the miracle of regeneration and be used mightily for you, for their good and for your glory. I ask in the name of Jesus and for his sake. Amen.