God's Secret Sauce Recipe- February 9, 2025

I ask you now to hear the word of the Lord this is the Apostle Paul writing to the church when I came to you brothers and sisters I did not come proclaiming the testimony of God to you with Superior speech or wisdom for I decided to know nothing

among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified and I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling my speech and my Proclamation were made not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the spirit and of power so that that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God the true wisdom of God yet among the mature we do speak wisdom though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are being destroyed but we speak God's wisdom a

hidden Mystery which God decreed before the ages for our glory and which none of the rulers of this age understood for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord Of Glory but as it is written what no eye has seen nor ear heard nor the human heart conceived what God has prepared for those who love him God has revealed to us through the spirit for the spirit searches everything even the depth of God for what human knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within so also no one comprehends what is truly

Gods except the spirit of God now we have received not the spirit of the world but the spirit that is from God so that we may understand the gift GI bestowed on us by God and we speak of these things and words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the spirit interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God's spirit for they are foolishness to them and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned those who are spiritual discern all

things and they are themselves subject to no one else's scrutiny for who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him but we have the mind of Christ and so brothers and sisters I could not speak to you as spiritual people but rather as fleshly as infants in Christ I fed you with milk not solid food for you were not ready for solid food even now you still are not ready for you are still fleshly for as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you are you not fleshly and behaving according to human

inclinations for when one says I belong to Paul and the other I belong to Apollos are you not not still all too [Music] human this ends our reading of God's holy word may God add to our understanding and application of its truth in each of Our Lives will you join me in a prayer of preparation Lord God we do thank you for Paul's letter and for the wisdom that it carries and for teaching us even this day how this applies to our lives and how we should live in this life in service to you and now Lord I do pray

that the words of my mouth and that the meditations and thoughts of all of our hearts and Minds will be acceptable in your sight oh Lord our strength and Our Redeemer for this we pray in Christ's name amen there's a story about a woodpecker who was out working on a on a telephone pole and he was just pecking away when all of a sudden zap a lightning bolt struck the telephone pole splintering it into all kinds of pieces the Woodpecker stood back and went look what I did the people of Corinth were very much

like that wood pepper pecker because to them the most important thing in life was to put themselves out there and show how great they were in whatever field they were in they wanted to be shown to be the richest the most talented the best the most beautiful person in the world look what I have done well perhaps the the people of Corinth aren't too much different than the people of today huh a lot of people these days are like that woodpecker walking around consciously or even unconsciously saying look at the

house I bought or look at the car that I am driving look at the school I went to look at the job I have look at the money in my bank account look at what I have done I I I because of the worldly wisdom that I have acquired not acknowledging at all that the only reason we are able to do any of this is because God provided the lightning the Apostle Paul proclaimed in verse 1 and two of our reading and I when I came to you brothers and sisters did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech

or wisdom for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified when Billy Graham was a young evangelist he met a man who was also preaching whose name was Charles Templeton maybe some of you have heard from from of who he is quite honestly I did not know of Charles Templeton until very recently it seems that prior to meeting Billy Graham Charles or Chuck Templeton as he became known had a an emotional religious experience that made him think that his calling was to go out

and preach about the word Billy Graham and Charles or Chuck Templeton preached everywhere they became very well known in this country they preached in the United States and they even went overseas and Charles Templeton even had a weekly religious program called look up and live on CBS he and Billy Graham were well known in fact some people said that they thought Chuck Templeton might be the Evangelist of our day then one day Charles Templeton decided that he wanted to go to Seminary just to learn something more about the

faith that he was proclaiming and it was at Seminary his son said that he became an agnostic this was a pretty big event at the time it would be like Billy Graham renouncing Jesus at one of his Crusades unbelievable why what what happened that would make a man renounce his faith my guess is that he was an extraordinary preacher but he was because he was more concerned about how he presented himself how these lofty words were being eloquently delivered so that people might pay attention to him and to his words I

think of so many many of the preachers we have seen not all but some on television or perhaps even heard about who were more concerned about their reputation and their book deal and their television special than they were about the Lord that they were proclaiming my speech Paul said and my Proclamation were not made with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the spirit and of power so that your faith might rest might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God on the true wisdom that is

God's you see my friends this is the secret sauce of God God's power God's will wisdom many years ago when so many people went to see the World's Fair there was a gentleman a great teacher and preacher AJ Gordon who wrote about his experience at the World's Fair it seems that as he was walking into the fairgrounds he saw right there at the beginning of the fairground a a gentleman that was pumping one of those oldfashioned kind of pumps and he was pumping away and he thought oh my goodness he is was going to town on that

pumping that water but as he got closer to the man he noticed that it wasn't a man at all it was a wooden figure that was pumping and in fact the pump was not a real pump it was connected to electricity and in fact the man was not pumping the water but the water was in fact pumping the man and so brothers and sisters I could not speak to you as spiritual we do not know who and why we are able to do what we do so Paul says I fed you with milk not solid food you are not ready for solid food in fact you're not even ready now

because you are actually acting fleshly you gain your wisdom because of the flesh because of your own ego your own desire to promote yourself instead of tapping into the power of God he says yet among the mature we do speak wisdom though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are being destroyed but listen up we are speaking God's wisdom a hidden Mystery which God decreed decreed before the ages of our Glory now wisdom you must understand in the New Testament days mystery was something that meant a truth

that could not be studied and or understood let's try that again again the word mystery meant a truth that could not be studied or even understood it was a mystery the Apostle Paul says we speak of God's wisdom a hidden Mystery which God decreed before the ages of our Glory so this hidden Mystery my friends is the secret sauce that is God's mystery we find out what it is and what the recipe is in one of Paul's later writings when he was writing to the Church of Ephesus when he says for it is by grace that you have been saved

through faith and this is not from yourselves it is a gift from God