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 Friends Romans, countrymen lend me your ears. Now those are famous lines from Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar spoken by the character Mark Antony. Just moments after his friend Caesar has been betrayed and murdered. Uh, now I’m, I’m not really a theater guy and full disclosure, I’ve never actually read the play, but I have seen the 1970 film, Julius Caesar with Charlton Heston played, uh, playing Mark Antony with my grandfather years ago.

And this scene has kind of stuck with me since then. So, so here’s the, the context for the play. Marcus Brutus, uh, who’s one of the lead conspirators in the plot to betray and murder. Julius Caesar has just addressed a crowd of angry Romans, confused about what’s just happened now. His speech is logical and factual.

There’s no pathos, no emotion. It’s full of reason. He calmly and rationally explains the need for the murder as a last ditch effort to save Rome. Now, by the time he finishes his speech, the crowd of confused Romans have kind of more or less aligned themself with, uh, Brutus and the other conspirators. Now, mark Antony played by Charlton Heston in the 1970 film, or the, or Marlon Brando, I think in the 1950s version.

Uh, mark Antony was a friend of Caesar, and he missed the murder. He was not among the conspirators. When he comes back to face, Brutus and the other conspirators, he begs them to let him speak to the crowd after Brutus and the conspirators for whatever reason, agree to let Mark Antony, this friend of Caesar, speak to the crowd if Antony doesn’t stir the crowd up against them.

And so here’s his challenge. Antony has to get the Roman crowd on his side in order to avenge the death of Caesar without actually calling out Brutus and the other conspirators. Now, Anton’s speech moves the hearts of the crowd as only Shakespeare’s words really can. Now he begins by finding commonality with the Roman mob.

Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your ears, is what he says. He goes on. I come to bury Caesar not to praise him. Noble Brutus has told you Caesar was ambitious. Now I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke. But I am here to speak. What I do know, my heart is in the coffin there with Caesar. So already the speech that Antoni gives is filled with emotion appealing to the pathos and the emotional needs of the crowd to make sense of what’s going on.

By the end of his speech, Antoni has won back the crowd, who then turn against Brutus and the other conspirators to run them out of the city. It’s Antony’s complete reversal of expectations, his subversive message and his appeal to the emotional needs of the crowd for both clarity and compulsion. That turned the tides of the play, the history of Rome.

And that’s basically what Paul is doing in the passage that we just read a minute ago Now, this morning. I know it’s a stretch. Go with me. It’s okay. Now this morning we’re halfway through a series on the practice of witness. And so if you’ve been a part of our church for the past three years, uh, we’ve talked through these specific practices, nine of them from the way of Jesus, that we want to define our community as we seek to become disciples who reorient their lives to be formed by Jesus together for others.

That’s what we’re about as a church. Now, to us, to be a disciple of Jesus means that we practice a regular Sabbath to anchor our souls and rest. We read the scriptures to reorient ourselves around reality. We live by simplicity with our digital lives, relationships, and our stuff. We practice hospitality to saints, strangers and sinners.

We prioritize peacemaking in all our relationships and conflict. We steward our resources with generosity. We tame our flesh through fasting. We commune with God in prayer, and we invite others into the kingdom. As witnesses now we’re defining the practice of witness. This way   📍 witnessing is leading from your witness to talk clearly about the gospel and leaning into your weakness to invite others into God’s grace.

And so far we’ve covered how witnessing must first start with our witness, which just means our proximity to God, to each other, and then ultimately to the loss. Last week we talked about what exactly the gospel is, how we can present and communicate the gospel with clarity, how important it is to understanding the full story and how to avoid the easy trap of skipping vital chapters in that story.

Up for today, leaning into your weakness and to give you the main idea of where we’re headed up front. Here it is,   📍 your witness is most effective when you are honest about your weakness in front of God and others.

Now, on a surface level, this is a really simple idea. When it comes to witnessing. Uh, you don’t actually save anyone, God does. All we do is we make ourselves available to God and God in his mercy uses our experience, our personality, and our shortcomings to bring others into the kingdom. He takes our loaves and he fish, and he creates a full meal For others to feast on, God is the only one powerful enough to save the lost.

It’s not us. We are weak, utterly weak, powerless, and on our own incapable of obeying. The last thing Jesus commanded us before he left earth for heaven, go and make disciples. Now stripped of its cliche, usages and over familiarity. Here’s what that command really means. Get the people around you to completely abandon their current worldviews, hopes, dreams, meaning, purpose, and everything else they’ve built their lives on.

And instead make them find new worldviews, hopes, dreams, meaning, and purpose. In Jesus. We’re not just asking people to add church to their Sunday morning routines. We are asking them to completely dismantle and deconstruct everything they believe about reality, truth, goodness, and instead aim their lives at a first century, rabbi named Jesus.

And you and I in this room know how much value Jesus brings, but to others, that is a huge ask, and it’s insane. And not only that, but like we talked about last week, our culture is not exactly primed to abandon the quasi secular narrative. It’s built itself up on trust. For example, an institutionalized religion is decreasing rapidly across all generations.

And though vague and non-defined spirituality is gaining popularity among Gen Z and Gen Alpha, it’s a spirituality that’s detached from accountability, discipline, and structure. Freedom is the new ethical standard, and morality is objective only, and that our choices shouldn’t cause intentional harm to others.

Everything else is fair Game desire is the new North star of individual expression. Communal identity is non-existent, and what’s left of our God-given impulse to love and care for our neighbor has been replaced by political tribalism. So if the mission that Jesus gave us to make disciples is really a mission to get people out of the cultural waters.

Of individualism and expression and into the streams of living water that Jesus offers, then of course, we’re weak. We just can’t do it unless God takes what we offer him and does the rest for us. Now, I don’t, uh, I don’t mean to pat ourselves on the back and I’m lumping us into this, even though I haven’t given the past two teachings.

I’ve helped write the guides and things like that. I think we’ve done a pretty good job the past two weeks showing how, uh, the gospel is a story and how to define it clearly, and showing that witnessing can start as simply as just getting near lost people and showing them how you live. But at some point, in order to become effective witnesses, we have to actually witness two people, meaning we have to demonstrate and communicate.

To the people around us that our ultimate hope in life is in a resurrected rabbi from the first century who we believe is currently ruling over the cosmos right now. How on earth do we do that? Well, that brings us back to Paul now around 51 ad just after making that bold stance against the stoic and epicurean philosophers in Athens, Paul spends around 18 months starting a small house church in a city called Corinth.

Now there Paul meets a husband and a wife named Akila and Priscilla, who owned a tent making shop just like he did. Now they believe in the gospel. They help start, uh, the first church in the city alongside Paul. And by all accounts, Paul’s church plant in Corinth is a success story. But to understand what made his witnessing in Corinth so effective, and to understand how we can learn from Paul’s strategy in our cultural waters today, we have to understand a few things about Corinth.

Now, Corinth was an intellectual and economic capital of the ancient Mediterranean, much like Athens, it prided itself on knowledge and Greek wisdom. It was a port city, which meant that merchants from all over Greece and Rome would pass through bringing in and out goods, wealth and religion. Corinth was overwhelmed by pagan rituals and different religions, many of which involved temple prostitution.

Sexual activity served as a major pastime for the people of Corinth, and it was arguably more publicly accepted and celebrated than it was today. Like our cultural waters Today, Corinth was a city swimming in individualism, open sexuality, and pursuing one’s own desires, no matter the cost. And so for Paul to walk into a new city like Corinth and announce that a local rabbi named Jesus from Nazareth had been publicly executed and then resurrected and is now ruling the entire world from the spiritual space called heaven was in insane.

The message of the Christian Gospel was just as crazy, foolish, and radical in Paul’s day as it is in ours. That’s exactly what Paul is naming in one Corinthians one that we just read. Now, most of us have this false idea that people in the ancient Near East were more, more open to the gospel because they were more open to spirituality.

But history tells us that cities like Corinth and Queen Creek are more similar than they are different. Here’s the other thing you need to know about Corinth. It was a city made up of people whose highest values were social status, success, and wisdom. Now, there was a movement. Spreading throughout Corinth.

At the exact time that Paul wrote those words that we just read, it was a movement called Selfishry, uh, which comes from the Greek word Sophia, meaning wisdom, uh, but don’t think wisdom. How you and I think of it today in a good sense, like the wisdom of proverbs or, uh, wisdom on how to live your life or be a better spouse or anything like that.

In this time and in this region, wisdom wasn’t about being true or right, or even about being good. Wisdom was about being persuasive. ISTs were individuals. They were intellectuals who would travel with a small band of disciples and use their arguments, their knowledge, their sfi, their Sophia, their wisdom to debate other s sophists, and people would attend these debates in forums as entertainment.

They didn’t have movies or TV shows. They had this. And they were basically like ancient Greco-Roman equivalents of social media influencers with their band of posses. They would travel, debate, argue and entertain as many people as they possibly could, and people in Corinth ate it up. They were obsessed with sory.

Now, what it seems like is this obsession had seeped into the church. Uh, disciples of these sist would debate and even fight other disciples of other sist just to prove that their soft was smarter than the rest. Hence, Paul’s correction in one Corinthians. Later you say you follow Apollos and others say you follow Paul.

Paul says, it doesn’t matter. I’m not a sist. I’m not trying to create a tribalistic war where we’re pitting each other against each other. Now, what this meant was that the highest value in Corinth wasn’t actually sexuality, and it wasn’t actually indulgence, it was self-image. A New Testament scholar, Dr.

Roy Chomp. Says this,   📍 A Corinthian society in general was keenly conscious of social status. The church in Corinth was clearly in the thrall of human rhetoric with its elevation of human brilliance and its tendency to feed competition and pride.  So what’s happening here in these moments where Paul is writing this letter is people are giving their lives to follow individuals who appear so impressive and entertaining that they can charge whatever they want for you to come and listen to them speak.

That they can charge whatever they want for you to come and teach you how to be persuasive. And if you were willing to do that, then your social status might be elevated as well. And so when Paul opens his letter to the Corinthians. By saying God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

It’s not just a witty way to talk about God’s omniscience and sovereignty. It’s an attack on the cultural foundation of the city of Corinth itself, like Anton and Shakespeare’s play. And Paul isn’t playing the same by the same rules as his opponents. He’s throwing the game out altogether. The gospel doesn’t spread and the kingdom doesn’t expand based on our eloquence ability or power.

It spreads based on God’s strength. And here’s why this matters for us today. Like the Corinthians, we live in a culture that also prizes sexuality, indulgence, and self image. Our value worth and success are determined by our jobs, our homes, and our bank accounts. And though none of us in this room would admit to this, it still seeps into the default way of living.

For most Americans and most of us in this room, we naturally tend to project the best, the happiest, the most intelligent and successful versions of ourselves to those around us. This is what psychologists call the false self. It’s the version of ourselves that look better, that appear more successful, or that even come off as more humble in order to hide the parts of us that we are the most shame and embarrassed of.

Which means that when it comes to the practice of witness, we can fall into the same ancient trap as the Corinthians propping up and projecting the best possible version of ourselves so that others might be compelled to come to church, not by the goodness of God, but by the success stories of our lives.

It’s the modern day equivalent of what Paul calls human wisdom in our passage, or what the ancient Corinthians called, Ry, being the most likable, intelligent, and persuasive people we can in order to win people to Christ. Right? And I would argue that this means that our greatest fear when it comes to the practice of witnessing isn’t being rejected, ridiculed, or persecuted.

It’s being exposed. I don’t think witnessing is the most scary because it might lose us some friends, unless you’re doing it wrong. It likely won’t. I think witnessing is the most scary because it could potentially expose us all as frauds. So at the deepest level, most of us feel inadequate. Maybe not in terms of our jobs, homes, or bank accounts, but in our spiritual lives, our experiences, and in the places that we currently find ourselves before God to witness to others by talking about just how good Jesus is, can feel inauthentic at best or honestly, just like a flat out lie.

At worst, what do we do with suffering? What do we do with unanswered prayer? What do we do with questions and doubts that the Bible don’t give us answers to? What do we do when sharing the gospel feels fake and reinforces our spiritual imposter syndrome? See, ever since humanity’s rebellion against God and the guard and our instinct has always been to hide these weaknesses from God, from each other, and even from ourselves.

As cities from Corinth to Queen Creek alike celebrate sexuality, success, and self-image, not as signs of progression and modernity, but as cultural fig leaves that we sow together to hide our spiritual and relational nakedness. The temptation for all of us is to participate in the same way of life. As the Corinthians present, the most polished, put together and successful version of ourselves to those around us.

And only then will people maybe listened to when we try and share the gospel as witnesses. All of this points to our spiritual and our emotional nakedness that could potentially be laid bare before our friends when we try and talk about Jesus with them over coffee. So in a world like Corinth seeping with performance, the idolization of success and full of false ideologies that puff up the false self, how do we become witnesses?

And does witnessing look like standing on street corners with bullhorns and billboards? Is it hiding in our churches until Jesus comes back? Or is it pulling the broken pieces of our lives and experiences together to make Jesus try and look good to others? What does Paul do? I think if anyone could have played and beat the Corinthians at their own game, it was Paul, highly educated in a Jewish, in Jewish history and theology, well versed in Greek philosophy and Roman mythology.

Paul could have outspoken the best soft in the city, impressed the crowds with eloquent words and persuasive speech made himself look so good that people would want to follow him and eventually follow Jesus. But he doesn’t do any of that. Instead throughout both first and second Corinthians, and even throughout the rest of his New Testament letters, Paul is so honestly uncomfortable or so uncomfortably honest about his weakness.

See, if human wisdom is on one end of the spectrum, honest weakness is on the complete opposite. Human wisdom, as Paul defines, it depends on our ability. Human wisdom is what we create and present for ourselves. Human wisdom impresses people and wins them over. Human wisdom has all the answers to the questions people will ask when we share that six part gospel story, and human wisdom is entirely incompatible with being an effective witness.

I came to you in weakness, in fear, in much trembling. I’m convinced this wasn’t just nerves from Paul. This was a strategy. Over and over again, we see Paul wearing his weaknesses on his sleeves to let the power of the gospel shine through more clearly. See, Paul’s life isn’t as beautiful as a, a well put together and polished vase.

It was a clay pot with hidden treasure inside. His speech isn’t brilliant and eloquent. It’s reliant on the spirit. He says his past isn’t, uh, as his past as a successful Pharisee isn’t impressive. It’s worthless compared to what God has done for him since, or most famously, the passage many of us think of when we imagine Paul demonstrating his weakness.

Second Corinthians 12. For if I want to boast, he says, I wouldn’t be a fool because I would be telling the truth. In other words, if I came to you wanting to practice human wisdom and impress you with my life so that you would follow Jesus, I could do it. I could impress you, but I will spare you so that no one can credit me with something beyond what he sees in me or hears from me, especially because of the extraordinary revelations.

Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself

concerning this. I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.

Therefore, I will more gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure and weaknesses and insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong again. Like Mark Anton and Shakespeare’s play, Paul refuses to play the game that the crowd wants him to play.

He won’t boast about his AC, compliment his successes, or even his spiritual maturity. In fact, according to Paul, that would actually somehow rob the gospel of its power. The gospel loses its power when it’s buffered by our strengths, our achievements, and our attempts at covering our weaknesses. When we only show people the best versions of ourselves to others, we minimize the impact of that the gospel has actually had on our lives.

Instead, Paul exposed himself fully and truly to the Corinthians, allowing the power of the gospel to illuminate and outshine the darknesses of his weakness, his struggles, and his past. Now, here’s what this can look like for us to lean into our weakness like Paul means, that we have to be honest about first our sins.

Now, Paul references later in one Corinthians that he was a persecutor of God’s people, but even in his letter to one, Tim, uh, to Timothy, one Timothy chapter one, here’s how He opens. He says, I give thanks to Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has strengthened me because he considered me faithful appointing me in ministry even though I was formally a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man.

But I received mercy because I acted out of ignorance and unbelief and the grace of our Lord overflowed along with the faith and love their in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Christ Jesus came to the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them, but I receive mercy for this reason, so that in me the worst of them, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his extraordinary patience as an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life.

See, like Paul, when we begin to confess our sins to each other, and then when we talk about them openly to those we are trying to invite into the kingdom, we don’t make ourselves look bad. We make the gospel look beautiful. Also, our struggles. Now, Paul’s thorn in the flesh, has been a topic of the debate for decades, maybe even centuries, but the point isn’t the thorn.

The point is that Paul is a man who experiences hardship, temptation, and struggle just like every human being on earth. F. Being honest about our experiences, both the good and the bad is what allows the gospel to shine clearly. Offering up our struggles for God to use like loaves and fishes to make a meal for others to feast on.

It’s precisely Paul’s weakness, the things that he can’t control, that he experiences divine power and love that he wouldn’t otherwise experience. It’s in his surrendering, his fig leaves that he’s able to commune with God. But Paul’s also honest about his hope. He’s honest about where his hope really is.

His weakness creates room for healing. His hope isn’t in a perfect future version of himself without the thorn. It’s in Jesus’ transforming work in his own life here and now. That’s what that passage means. That’s how God’s power is made perfect in our weakness as well. When we offer our weaknesses to God in humble submission, we experience true hope when we allow him to use our struggles, our sins, and our past to form us into people who receive the love of God, and then share it with others.

That’s being a witness In a world of hurry, power struggle. Digital illusions and false selves propagated by a cultural system that rewards achievement and success at the expense of humility and authenticity. We have an opportunity to swim against the current, to be like Paul, so counter culturally weak and vulnerable, open and honest with others around us, that the only way it makes sense to those around us for us to have hope is if we are actually aiming our lives at something better and far more transcendent than anything this world can offer.

See honesty demonstrated through our vulnerability is what moves people away from their false selves and towards a good and holy God. What if witnessing looks less like debating others into intellectual submission and more like loving others through self-sacrificial honesty? What if witnessing looks less like explaining a gospel track to someone on a napkin, though that there might be a time for that?

And more like explaining how and why we have hope in the midst of our tragedy or peace in a season of pain. What if witnessing just looks like us explaining our lives to others with honesty, not covering up our doubts, insecurities, sins, struggles, but sharing them, meeting people in their weakness with our own?

So how do we model weakness? How do we do that as a community and as witnesses to the world around us? I would argue the best way to do that for most of us in this room is through the   📍 practice of conversation. This is a practice you’ll talk about in your groups and in the guide this week is how to just have an intentional conversation with a lost person.

And when we talk about weakness and vulnerability, we can’t jump straight into inappropriate depth and vulnerability with other people that we don’t know. Uh, there’s a difference between vulnerability and indiscretion, but for most of us, the first step in demonstrating our weakness and offering it to God, for God to use for the sake of the gospel is to open our lives to those already around us, through our daily conversations, just simply being honest about our lives and how we talk about our lives with other people.

See, conversation is what most of us are afraid of when it comes to witness. Uh, we can demonstrate how God has changed our lives with how we live and prioritize our time all day. We can know and internalize the gospel story, but actually putting it into practice by talking about it. That’s the scary part.

Talking about spiritual things, emotional things, or even relational things can feel like a breach of an unspoken social boundary. Even to mention church, God or the Bible in a conversation with others at your lunch break at work or while you’re walking with your neighbor is a cultural taboo at best and a act of hostility at worst.

But conversation is how Jesus met and healed. The lost the conversation is how the woman who just met Jesus at the well in the middle of an afternoon bore witness to her experience back to her city. Conversation is how Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, and conversation is how he planted churches and spread the gospel in hostile cultural waters.

Conversation is how the apostles received the gospel for themselves, spread it with each other, and loved and served each other’s actual needs. So how do we move people from the cultural waters of success, self-image and individualism? I would argue it’s by leaning into our weakness in honest conversation with those around us about what we believe.

Again, in order to become effective witnesses, we have to actually witness through both our deeds and our words. Simply living like Christians in front of others is not enough for people to abandon their worldviews and their purpose and trade their current lives for eternal life. But when our Christian lives are demonstrated and paired with the conversations about our sins and struggles and hope, conversations that don’t play to the standards and expectations of success and self image, that’s when the kingdom breaks through.

Conversation is how we close the gap between heaven and earth. Practicing the habit of dismantling that compartmentalization between our normal lives and our spiritual lives is how we bring the kingdom of heaven here down to earth. Sharing with a coworker during your lunch break about what you learned at church, sharing your hope that you have in a world of anxiety with someone who’s losing theirs, talking about your past and current sins, and struggles with someone who feels alone or sharing your doubts, questions, and pain points with those who have the same.

That’s the kingdom shattering the false self and the false dividing line between normal and spiritual. Now, this week in your groups and in your guide, you’ll learn more about how to have these intentional conversations. Uh, it does not mean just randomly starting to talk about Jesus with others unless you feel led to, and there might be a time and a place for that.

But having an intentional conversation can look like inviting someone out to coffee to learn more about their history, their life, and their values. It could be having a conversation like we just said about what you’re learning at church or in your groups, what other people are doing for you. Or it could be a conversation about how you get your hope from the gospel story and how you’re aiming your life at something better than what this world can offer.

But for now, the first step in becoming people who lean into our weakness is this. So it’s only when we’re able to be honest with ourselves before God and others, that we experience healing, love and the grace of God. That’s the love that transforms us into people who have tasted and seen that God is good.

That’s the love that moves us from being frauds to being honest. That’s the love that compels us to reach out to others and boldly say like the woman at the, well, come and see what I’ve seen. So why do we stand and respond?

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