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Jan 14, 2024

What’s the Spirit up to in a Sermon?

What’s the Spirit up to in a Sermon?

Passage: 1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: That’s the Spirit: Learning to keep in step with Him who indwells

Keywords: wisdom, preaching, spirit, revelation, fear and trembling

We round out our study of the Holy Spirit with a final stretch of sermons on the activity of the Holy Spirit in our private and public acts of worship. This week we consider what the Spirit is “up to” in the human act of preaching.

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Psalm 84:1-2, 10

LEADER: How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!

ALL: My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
LEADER: For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
ALL: I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.

SCRIPTURE READING / AFFIRMATION OF FAITH John 7:14-18

LEADER: About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. 15 The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” 16 So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. 17 If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. 18 The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.
ALL: Thanks be to God.

CENTRAL TEXT: 1 Corinthians 2:1-16
1Cor. 2:1 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

1Cor. 2:6 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. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 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”—

1Cor. 2:10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 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. 12 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. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

1Cor. 2:14 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. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

BENEDICTION: Hebrews 10:21-23
LEADER: and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

ALL: Amen

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • John 7:16-17

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. If you had to guess, how many sermons have you heard in your lifetime? How old were you when you heard your first sermon? 
  2. Paul distinguishes rhetorical flourish and intellectual prowess from preaching in the power of the Spirit. Why do you think he makes that distinction? Why does it matter?
  3. What is the unfortunate outcome if, following a sermon, you end up being more impressed with the style, fervor, charisma, etc of the preacher than the subject of the preacher’s sermon? Why do you think we get confused by that? What’s the downside–even the danger–of that move?
  4. It’s hard to identify precisely what is preaching that is a “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (v.4) rather than a demonstration of intelligence, elocution, argumentation. What from the text and the sermon did we say is at least one clear marker (even if it’s not a test) of preaching more likely to be blessed by the Spirit’s power?
  5. In terms of understanding what is spoken, what distinguishes one who has the Spirit of God within them–in whom the Spirit dwells–from one who does not?
  6. How might this passage–and the preaching that flowed from it–alter the way you think of, prepare for, or wrestle with preaching henceforth? Be as specific and practical as you can. Who do you need to seek accountability from in order to establish that new pattern?

ILLUSTRATIONS:  

 

 

QUOTES: 

 

  • If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic—there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong; but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity  
  • Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. . . .They sink lower-become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations. From C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce

 

BOOKS / DOCS

SERMONS

   “Testimony of a Preacher,” Alistair Begg