Faith in the Power of God

the type of religion that will stand the test — when the ministry leads men individually to God and His omnip-

8 Faith in the Power of God.

otence, and when every believer is brought to feel: It is Almighty God to whom I have been led, and it is Almighty God that saved me, and it is Almighty God who is my keeper.

Now the Apostle tells us in the previous chapter, and in this chapter, that the great danger of the Gospel ministry is the wisdom of words. Have you ever noticed that remarkable expression in the previous chapter, where he tells what Christ told him when He sent him to preach? He says in verse 17, Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.’’ Christ told him two things; Christ told him what he had to preach and how he had to preach. What had he to preach? The Gospel of Christ. Christ in effect said one thing: Paul, beware of wisdom of words! that is the one thing that will ruin you in preaching Christ; your preaching will be of none effect. And Paul felt it so deeply that in the second chapter he repeated that, time after time. Read the first verses of the second chapter, ‘‘ And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not” — he puts it in the foreground — with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” And so you have the two things again: the one the contents of the Gospel, Christ and Him crucified; the other the way of preaching the Gospel, not with excellency of speech or of wisdom. Paul felt so deeply, I do not doubt it, in himself the temptation, that he tells them, in other words, on the strength of Christ’s command: It is work I must be careful about.

How many a man has taken the second verse as his motto, “I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified,” and how many an earnest minister has said, “I want to preach nothing but Christ and His cross “— and praise God for the fact that a man is careful to preach the true Gospel — but has he paid as great attention to the other half of Paul’s statement? He said in effect, My great care is not to come with excellency of speech or wisdom”; and then he repeats it once again: “I was with you” — here is the contrast to excellency of speech — in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” Why is that the contrast? Because it is the place of a man who feels he is absolutely nothing, and who preaches every sermon under the feeling: I am dependent upon God’s Holy Spirit, and I must wait upon the Holy Spirit as an empty vessel; I am not able to cope with the power of heathenism and unbelief and sin, and I cannot trust in the fact that in former days and years God spoke through me, but every day afresh I stand before God in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling, in emptiness and nothingness, waiting upon God’s pleasure to give me the Holy Spirit.

Do you notice that that was to St. Paul an abiding consciousness? I think it is

ONE OF THE MOST INSTRUCTIVE
LESSONS

in the life of Paul. He had been twenty years the chief of the apostles, not a whit behind the chief, but he still writes to the Ephesians, thus: Do pray for me that I may be able to speak as I ought to speak. He had been speaking for twenty years as he ought to speak, and yet he asked them to pray for him, so absolutely and unceasingly dependent on the power of God did he feel. I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my... preaching — here again note the word not; you will find it most instructive in Second Corinthians as well as in this chapter; look at that word not as a contrast between what the Spirit of God is and what is opposed to Him — “my preaching was not with enticing words of mads wisdom but m demonstration of the Spmt and of power; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of

Godr The question I want to put before you this morning is: Are we preaching in demonstration of the Spirit and of power? You have come here into God’s presence that, together, we should inquire: Lord, what is there wanting in my ministry? What is the cause of the feebleness in Christ’s Church? What is there wanting in my own life? Is there anything that Thou wouldst have otherwise? We come together before God to inquire: Are the promises of God’s Holy Word, that we, as leaders of the people, can be filled by the Holy Ghost, within reach? Can they be realized now? Can we walk before our people, in and out, every day, as men guided by the Holy Spirit? Can we attain to that, or must we be content to live, as we have too often lived, in feebleness and failure, and continual self-reproach and self-condemnation? Is this privilege verily within our reach? Can our preaching be in demonstration of the Spirit and with power? If I did not believe that it could be that, I would not stand here to-day; and I ask God that by His grace I may be able to point out to you, how that is the one condition upon which God has put you into the ministry of the Gospel. That is the one promise you have a right to claim from your God in heaven, and that is the one great need of the Church, and that is the one only power that can enable the Church to fight successfully the powers of evil and of the world.

Let us speak about preaching in demonstration of the Spirit and of power; and if we are to understand what this is, let us go back, first of all, to Pentecost. You know it is said often that a tree cannot grow on any other root but that from which it first sprang. An oak five hundred years old always grows from that root from which it first came out of the ground when it budded forth from the acorn. And so the life of any Christian can only grow and continue and increase in and by the operation of the same power in which it had its Divine origin, and the Church of Christ can only grow and increase and become ever stronger and do its work as it stands in its first root at birth.

Now, where had the Church of Christ its birth? The resurrection of Christ from the dead was the birth of the Church of Christ. We are begotten again from the dead by the resurrection.” And Pentecost was the baptism of the new-born Church; and if we want to know

Keep reading