Grace That Levels the Field // 1 Cor. 1:26-31

Have you ever felt trapped in an endless climb up life's ladder, constantly striving for the next achievement? Pastor Evan unpacks 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, revealing how God intentionally flattens our worldly ladders at the foot of the cross. Through illustrations of modern ladder-climbing in both secular and church contexts, he shows how God deliberately chooses the seemingly unimpressive to display His power. This transformative message invites us to stop competing on ladders that don't matter and start celebrating Christ as our true wisdom, righteousness, and redemption. Don't miss this freeing perspective on finding rest in God's grace rather than our achievements.

Transcript

Everybody understands the illustration of climbing ladder, right? We've all heard it almost our entire lives. It's a very American illustration of, you gotta climb the ladder. And we oftentimes climb the ladder of life, right? We step up there and we say, hey, we want my kids to have a better life than I had growing up, so I'm going to climb that ladder.

Or, hey, I want my kids to be better at sports than I was. Or maybe I want to have more wealth than my neighbors and stuff. And so I'm climbing that ladder. And then we get to the top here, we get to the top here, and it's like, okay, well, where am I going to go? Okay, well, guess what?

When you get to the top of the ladder, to the top of the ladder. If I know how to. This is my ladder. I know how it works.

Guess what?

That ladder just gets taller.

So there's more for you to climb, right? See, we had better kids, better wealth, better sports. What else is there? Better job, better car, better house. There's all these things that we climb this ladder of life that tells us that we should be doing this.

And we look down at the people below us and we say, oh, poor you, you are below me because I'm so high on my ladder. Now, we do this as Christians as well. We do this as believers as well. We oftentimes get up here. Kelly and I were talking about this last night, actually, how if you've been a believer for 15, 18, 20, 30 years, oftentimes we can sit there and say, man, I'm so holy now.

Look at how God has changed me. I've climbed the spiritual ladder of holiness.

And look at all those peasants below me that are having all these struggles that I don't have. I could never have those struggles.

That's the reality that we find ourselves in. It's the reality that Paul is going to talk to us about this morning.

It's the message of the latter. The higher you go, the more important you feel. The lower you are, the less you matter.

And we love to. We love to climb that rung right up one after another in school and grades and sports and popularity, in money and promotions and titles and salaries. Maybe it's in our communities with our social networks of influence or how many follows we have online.

It's the message of the latter. And Paul is writing this morning to the Corinthians because they have had the same ladder mentality, ladder thinking in their church as we do as well. They looked at wisdom and wealth and pedigree as if they were measuring stakes for spiritual importance. But Paul wants them and he wants us to see that in the kingdom, in God's kingdom, the ladder is laid flat and the ground is at the foot of the cross, and the ground of the foot of the cross is level. We're in a series going through First Corinthians.

So if you're new with us, we're walking through First Corinthians in a series called Church Recalibrated. And Paul is recalibrating the church at Corinth to view wisdom, power, and what it means to boast in a godly manner, in a gospel shaped manner. And last week we saw that the Word of the cross looks like foolishness to the world, but we learned that the foolishness of the cross, that is God's wisdom and power. And this week, Paul is going to press into that same truth and he's going to press it into their personal experience.

You see, this is not just a Church of Corinth problem. This is a very much American problem and a Topekan problem. In Topeka, Kansas, in 2025, we are still obsessed with ladders.

We honor people for their resumes, their degrees, their influence, their bank accounts, how fancy their car is, how nice their house is. And even in the church, we can be tempted to measure the importance of a person by visibility or eloquence or personality. And if we're honest, if we're honest, many of us secretly long to be recognized as one of those somebodies. But Paul says, remember who you are and see what God has done and boast only in Christ. And so this morning, as we walk through First Corinthians 1:20, verses 26 through 31, I want you to see three things.

First, that Paul is calling us to remember who we are and to see what God chooses. We're going to look at what God chooses in there, but also how we should rejoice in Christ who is our wisdom. I'm going to read 1st Corinthians 26:31 for us this morning. So if you wouldn't mind standing for the Word of God, I'll read it for consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to the worldly standards.

Not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing, to nothing, things that are so that no Human being might boast in the presence of God, and because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us the wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. Amen.

You may be seated.

Now, as we're looking at this passage, I want us to remember, I've talked about this the last several weeks, but Corinth, the city of Corinth was the city that was obsessed with status. To be wise, to be powerful, to be of noble birth was everything within the city. And yet Paul points out that the Corinthian Church, the church at Corinth, was largely made up of ordinary, socially unimpressive people. Not. And because, right.

In verse 26, it says not many of you were wise by human standards. They weren't influential. They weren't noble of birth. Not none, but many. A few members we have out there, like Erastus and Gaius, had influence, but the majority were from what, the lower rungs of society.

The point here that Paul reminds them is. Is man. That's. That's the point that God deliberately chooses those the world overlooks to display his power and wisdom in Christ. We know this to be true.

This is a pattern that he does, right? He chose 12 disciples, some of the most unlikely people in the world that you would choose, choose to go and be the messengers of the gospel to the world, right? If you were. If you were to gather up a team of expert professionals that you were like, hey, I need this message to be spread out to the world. You're probably not choosing the 12 disciples, but Jesus chose.

It's the same thing here in Corinth. And So in verse 26, that's where we start. We start with remembering who we are, who we were.

Verse 26 says, for consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. Paul here begins with the imperative consideration to consider, which literally means to look carefully at.

This is a command from Paul when he's saying, for consider your calling. Consider commanding. Look carefully at your calling. Pay attention to. And he wants the church at Corinth.

He wants the Corinthians to pause and reflect on their own story. I think this is important for us as believers to often do, to pause and reflect on our own story. Before Christ called them, what did their lives look like?

He says, not many were wise or powerful of noble birth. And we remember, like in Corinth, these were badges of honor to Be wise. To be wise meant you had rhetorical skill, meant or possibly philosophical training. To be powerful meant you had influence. You either had, like, political clout or economic leverage.

So, like, you were wealthy or to be of noble birth meant that you had status. Your family name meant something, or you were of pedigree. Nowadays, we would say those same things, but we call them different, Right? We call them being educated or being talented or being wealthy. We might use different words, but we mean the same things.

Paul is reminding them. When God called you, most of you had none of these things. Notice the careful wording, he says in verse 26. Here he says, not many of you. Not any.

Not any. Not many. There were a few in the congregation with status. Acts tells us. Acts mentions Crispus, who's a synagogue ruler, mentions Gaius, who hosted the church.

We get in Romans 16:23, we're told about Erastus, who is the city treasurer of Corinth. But the majority were not the movers and shakers of Corinth. In fact, some of the earliest Christians we find in Corinth were slaves or freedmen or tradesmen. And that is precisely the point that God doesn't look. He didn't look at their resumes before he saved them.

He didn't choose them because they impressed the world. He called them into his grace. Paul is saying, don't forget who you were called, who you were when you were called by God. Don't forget who you were when God called you. I think so often we can do this.

He's saying, you didn't come into the kingdom because of your brilliance, your influence, or your background. You came in because of God's mercy. Remembering that. Remembering that guards against pride.

This is deeply relevant for us as churches in Topeka and churches in America especially. We can easily slip into this latter way of thinking. We admire people with degrees and charisma or financial means, and we quietly assume that those people are more valuable. I want you. I've got two stories I want to share with you.

The first is somebody sent a TikTok video of a lady who. I'm not bashing her, but she was making a joke about church planners about this and making kind of wide, sweeping assumptions about church planners. And throughout the video, probably like 15 times, she mentioned how church planters don't go to seminary and how church planters are Bible college people that don't even get theology majors. And they just assume. And I'm like, man, I know a lot of church planners, and I don't know any of them that haven't gone to seminary.

But this caricature that she was drawn to and she was overemphasizing this need to go to seminary. And while I agree and I think seminary is super important for pastors and the majority of pastors should go to seminary, and honestly, I would love every Christian to be able to go to seminary because I think it would be transformative for the church. But I recognize that that's not available to everybody. And it's also not God's call on everybody's life to do that. But I've also met some really amazing pastors that know the word of God better than I do.

After spending six years at seminary that never set foot in a seminary. One of the most popular preachers in modern day America is Matt Chandler. No seminary degree. His church has 5, 10,000 people. It's probably streamed by tens of thousands of people.

Multiple books, fantastic guy loves the Lord, amazing Mind for Jesus.

So like, what I'm saying is we oftentimes we get in these bubbles and say, well, we have to have a pastor that went to seminary. Maybe, maybe. Well, I think that it's great. Maybe then on the other side, on the other side, I went to this conference sitting there. This, it was a conference in Texas.

I'm not gonna tell what conference it was, but I went to this church planning, I know it's another church planning story. Went to this church planning seminar and I'm sitting in there and this well known pastor who is retired now, who kind of took over this church planning network is sitting there talking about the people they look for for church planning. And I can tell you that 95% of the pastors that were sitting in the room in that seminar did not meet their qualifications for what they were looking for. Here's the crazy thing. The qualifications weren't that you love the Lord, that you know the Bible, that you have a heart for church planning, or that you have a heart for the people of God, that, you know, none of those were the qualifications.

The qualifications, they weren't the qualifications that we find in Timothy either. They were, is the guy pretty enough? Will he attract people? Is he charismatic? Will he get money coming in to the church quickly because it takes money to run a church.

Those are the qualifications. And I said, man, I'm never going to be a church planner with that. Not that I was looking to be a church planner there, but also 95% of the other pastors in there were looking around and saying, who are they getting to do this?

Alistair Beg has a quote in his book Pathway to Freedom, that if we are not careful, wealth, wisdom and strength quickly become grounds for boasting.

I think the point here is that we either tend to either overemphasize, we overemphasize our own wealth, wisdom and strength, or we feel inferior because we don't measure up. I could have left that conference really discouraged and said, man, I guess I'm never going to be a pastor, like a lead pastor anywhere, because I don't fit any of those qualifications that this guy. I could have been really discouraged.

And maybe, maybe you're experiencing that in life somehow. Maybe where you think, I've got to have that degree and then they'll take me seriously, or I've got to make a certain amount of money and then I'll be happy and my family will be happy and my family will be taken care of, or I've got to get married. Maybe if you're single in the room and you're like, man, I've got to get married, and then I will be happy, then life can move on, then life will kind of be complete. Maybe you're thinking something along those lines right now, where you have. There's this rung, this ladder that you have to climb.

You see, the gospel flattens that. The gospel takes the ladder.

The gospel takes the ladder of the world and flattens the ladder.

There is no higher rung. It is all level.

And the gospel flattens the ladder at the foot of the cross.

Because at the cross, the doctor and the janitor kneel side by side. The person with the PhD and the person who never finished high school come in the same way through grace. And when we remember our calling, we stop comparing and we start worshiping.

I want to personalize this. This morning, I want you to think back of who you were when Christ called you. That might have been two weeks ago. That might have been 30 years ago or 40 years ago.

What did you bring to him? I want you to ask that question. What did you bring to. To Christ when He called you? Scripture is very clear.

We brought that we were sinners, that we were enemies, and that we were spiritually bankrupt. That we were dead in our sin. And God didn't save you because you were somehow impressive or he knew you were going to be impressive.

God saved you and he saves us because he is gracious.

And that's what it means when we say we can't boast in ourselves and only in Him.

I think those of us who are mature in Christ or at least have gone to church for a while can sometimes start to think that somehow we've started to earn something.

We might even go as far to say as well, I've changed this much, so God must owe me more now because I'm better than what I once was when I came to Jesus. And so I'm owed more now.

But what more? What more can God give us?

What more would we want from God? Because we already have all of Him. We have Jesus.

Paul begins here in verse 26. He starts this off with. With remembering who we were.

Remembering who we were, remembering that it is the graciousness of God who brought us to him.

And honestly, that is such a freeing reminder. It is such an encouragement to us. It should bring us so much joy and happiness and peace because it means that we can stop trying to climb this false ladder that we have built for ourselves, both in the world and the church, and rest in his work.

Because it doesn't matter how far up the ladder we go, because the ladder is flat. We just don't know it.

And that's what Paul is reminding us, that, hey, the ladder is flat. The only thing that matters is the cross. And you can find joy, you can find peace, you can find encouragement in that church, you can rest, you can give up the striving because God has already accomplished it all. Nothing you bring to him, nothing you bring to him matters.

There's nothing that you can do to work your way into heaven or his good graces. That grace that he imparts on us is a free gift through Jesus. And so he's calling us, remember who you were. And he doesn't stop there. He goes further.

He says, God didn't just happen to call ordinary people. He intentionally chose the foolish, the weak, and the lowly. And that's the heart of this next session here, this next section of Scripture verses 20:27 through 29. We see that what God chooses, what God chose. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing, things that are so that no human being might be able to boast in the presence of the God. Paul shifts here from consider your calling to see what God chose. And this repetition is striking. God chose.

God chose. God chose. We see this three times in two verses. And Paul is hammering this point to us. And we teach this.

When I'm teaching somebody how to read Scripture, I teach them how to reap Scripture, right Reap a passage. It stands for read, examine, apply, and pray.

That means in that second, we read the Scripture and then we examine what the Scripture is saying. And we look for things like repetition and names and places, etc. And we see here that Paul is repeating this. God chose. God chose.

God chose. And so this is important. Paul is wanting us to see this, that God chose what is foolish. He chose what is weak. He chose what is low and despised.

And this helps us see that salvation is not random. And God's calling on our lives was not accidental. He deliberately. He sovereign. He intentionally chose people.

He intentionally chose you. He intentionally chose people that the world sees as foolish and weak and insignificant.

And why did he do that? He did that to shame the wise, to humble the strong, and to nullify the things that are. This is a divine reversal here where the world's categories are turned upside down. What looks foolish like the cross becomes true wisdom. What looks weak like Christ being crucified, Right?

The Messiah being put on a cross becomes the power of God. What looks insignificant like this ragtag group of believers in the disciples. And later in Corinth or later, 2,000 years later, in Topeka, Kansas, at Bethel Baptist Church, they become the very temple of the Holy Spirit.

And Paul even pushes it further when he says, te me onta the things that are not, the things that are not. Literally, this means that the things that are not to be. This phrase is often translated as the nothings. God takes the nothings of the world and he uses them to bring to nothing these somethings.

And this was shocking language in a city like Corinth. And it's a shocking language in America today, where status and recognition are everywhere. How many followers you have on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or what kind of influence you have or the wealth that you can display.

In other words, God flips the ladder upside down. He doesn't climb the ladders, the rungs. The world builds. He knocks the ladder down. He flattens.

Flattens it. He chooses the bottom to confound the top so that no one can boast before him. The truth reshapes how we see ourselves and we see each other. First, it should humble us. First, it should humble us.

If God chooses the weak and the foolish, then we cannot boast in ourselves. Our worth is not in our achievements, but in God's grace. And second, it should challenge us on how we treat one another. Do we show favoritism in the church? Right.

James, he warns us. In his book, James warns us against seating the wealthy in the best seats while dishonoring the poor. Paul says that's not how God works.

He delights in raising up the overlooked, the broken, the ordinary. In fact, the church should be a place where the world's ladders are dismantled, where the last are first and the least are honored.

Third, it should give us confidence in the mission that he has given us.

The mission to love God, love people, and make disciples of Jesus. It should give us confidence. Because some of us, I know, some of us in this room are probably sitting here saying, I can't be used by God because of the sin in my life. I can't be used by God because of the sin that I've done in the past. I can't be used by God because I don't have the gifts that I don't have the gifts.

I don't have the influence. I don't have the status. I don't have the knowledge or the education. But this passage, this passage, this passage encourages us and says, hey friend, you are exactly the kind of person that God is looking to use.

You are exactly the kind of person that God loves to use. And his power, his power, his greatness, his glory, is made perfect in our weakness.

John Piper has a quote that says, boasting is the voice of pride in the heart of the strong. And self pity, self pity is the voice of pride in the heart of the weak.

There's pride in both in boasting and in self pity.

And we should find ourselves resting in what God has done, in the power of God, not boasting our own ability and not sitting off on the sidelines saying, hey, if only I was better, if only God had created me in a different way, or if I only hadn't made that mistake.

Philippians 3, 4, 8. I love Paul's Paul, he gives this list and I love how he does this because I think speaks to all of us. Verses 4 through 8 he says, though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more right as a Jew. He was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

But then he turns around, he says, but whatever I gained, I counted as lost for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. Jesus, my Lord, for His sake I have suffered the loss all things and count them rubbish in order that I may gain Christ.

So Paul, he says, remember who you were, this ordinary, unimpressive person who was a sinner, dead to sin, an enemy of God, and see what God chose. The foolish, the weak, the nothings.

And now he brings it to this climax here, that we are to rejoice in Christ because Christ Himself is our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification on our redemption. We see in these next two verses in 30 through 31. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. Paul now brings his argument to a high point.

He says it is because of him, literally, that's what he said. Literally, it is because of him from him that you are in Christ Jesus. Our salvation is God's doing. From the start, from start to finish, from start to finish. Our salvation is God's doing.

And what do we have in Christ? What do we have in Christ? Paul piles up these rich theological terms that we like to throw around, and I'm going to kind of try and explain them to you, right? He says that, that we have righteousness, we have righteousness. What does righteousness mean?

It means that God has declared us right before him through Christ's work.

We also oftentimes call this justification. We are justified before the Lord by Christ righteousness, right? Oftentimes we use the illustration of this cloak. Like, Jesus covers us with his cloak of righteousness. Like, and so God only sees Christ's righteousness when he looks at us.

Jesus imparts his righteousness on us. And so we are justified. We are saved at that moment.

And so he is our righteousness, but he is also our sanctification.

We have sanctification through Jesus because God sets us apart, right? He sets us apart. He brings us to life. He imparts his righteousness to us. He justifies us, and then he sets us apart.

And he makes us holy through Christ, right? Both positionally. Both positionally. We are right with him, but progressively, as he changes us, as the Holy Spirit indwells us and lives within us, and we are the temple of God. The Holy Spirit speaks to us as we study Scripture, as we are in community with each other, we are discipled to look more like Christ and we make changes in our lives to become more in line with the image of Christ.

And we are. So through Christ we are. We have sanctification but we also have redemption, right? God frees us from the slavery to sin and death through the cross.

He frees us from the slavery of sin. It is through the blood of Christ that we are no longer slaves to sin.

And together, these show that Christ himself is our wisdom. The Corinthians prized worldly wisdom, but Paul says true wisdom isn't found in philosophy or rhetoric. True wisdom is found in a person.

Christ embodies God's saving plan. Christ is that wisdom. And then Paul goes on. He quotes Jeremiah 9, 23, 24. Let no one.

Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. This prophetic echo drives it home for us that boasting is unavoidable.

Boasting is unavoidable. We love to boast.

Think about it.

When you buy a new car, what's the first thing you want to do? You want to go tell people, look, look at the new car I got. In fact, you might post it on Facebook. I do, right? I'm guilty of that.

Bought a new car. Post it on Facebook. Look at the new truck I got. Awesome.

We love to do that. Bought a new house. Look at the new house I got. Got a new grandbaby. Look at the new grandbaby.

We love to boast. We love to boast about things. Boasting is unavoidable.

But the thing is, we were made to glory in something.

The question is not whether we boast, but in whom.

Paul saying, stop boasting in ourselves. Stop boasting in the leaders that we follow. Stop boasting in the status that we have and boast only in Christ. Because in Christ we have everything we need. We have wisdom.

We have righteousness. We have sanctification. We have redemption. And therefore, our only boast. Our only boast.

Our only glory is in the Lord. Our only boast is in the person of Jesus Christ. And this gives us a whole new identity that we don't have to prove ourselves by climbing ladders. We don't have to compare ourselves to others. We don't have to cling to the achievements that the world puts in front of us.

We don't have to cling to our family name. We don't have to cling to reputation.

Because everything we need is found in Christ and should also reshape our testimonies.

When we share what God has done in our lives. The spotlight should not be on us.

It shouldn't be on us. It shouldn't be. Look how smart I was. Or look how strong I was, or how determined I was. The spotlight should always be on Christ.

Look at how gracious he was. Look at how powerful he was. Look at how he rescued me. Look at the struggles that I had before him and how he has answered those. Look at how he has brought me peace in this terrible situation.

Look at how faithful he is.

And it should shape our worship. Because every time we gather on a Sunday morning, every time we gather at the women's conference coming up, every time we gather in our small groups and we gather and we pray and we might sing songs, we might hear preaching, all of it, all of it is meant to boast in the Lord.

And we should be saying together that Christ is our wisdom, Christ is our righteousness, Christ is our sanctification, Christ is our redemption.

I want you to imagine two trophy cases. Two trophy cases, one on one side. One's filled with diplomas and awards and trophies and plaques and all the symbols of personal success, all the things that we teach our kids to chase after, all the things that we teach our kids to and encourage them to drive after. Sometimes we even push them in that way.

And then on the other, we have the cross on the other side, in the other trophy case, we have the cross. I'm going to ask you, which one is going to last?

Which one is going to last? Which one is going to have the lasting impact on you? What is going to. What is for the parents of the room or future parents in the room? What is going to last for your kids?

I've sat across the table from more parents than I can count who have said, my kids grew up in church, but we also push them to chase academics and chase sports and chase hobbies. And so we missed. We missed maybe some Sundays. We missed being in small group. We missed being in community.

We missed youth group, you know, for those things. Because we thought the world taught us that these are the important things, these are the achievements that we should go after. And I'm not saying that they're bad inherently. Many of them are good. They teach good things like teamwork and.

But when we put those in front of Christ, when our boasting, when we teach our kids that the boasting is in the achievements they have, and we teach our kids that these are more important than the cross, then our boasting becomes in the achievements that we have, not in the cross. I think it's super relevant today for not just parents with kids. We do this too, as adults. Right? I'm going to pick up the extra Shift so I can get some more money.

I'm going to pick up the extra shift so the boss will like me more.

And picking up an extra shift is not bad. But I'm not saying that. Okay. But we put other things in front of our relationship with Christ because we, we tend to drift this way to boast in other things rather than the cross.

And so when we ask which one will last, the answer is very clear because which one will you boast in on the day you stand before God is the most important question of today's age, for today's people. Achievement, education, sports, where is our priorities?

Because the only answer, the only answer that is going to be the only right answer is the cross. The only right answer is Christ. The only boasting that we can have is in Christ and in the cross. And I hope, friend, this morning that you see how Paul has taken us on a journey this morning. How Paul has leveled the ladder this morning.

And he has reminded us. He has reminded us by bringing the question of like, remember who you were when Christ found you. Because not many were wise, not many were powerful, not many were noble. And it is great reminder to us that God did not call us because somehow we impressed Him. Because if we impressed him, then we have to continue to impress Him.

And we can rest that, hey, we don't impress God, but He loves us and he was gracious to us. And, and, and then Paul tells us, he says, see what God chose? He chose the foolish, the weak and the nobodies so that no one may boast before, before Him. I think he does this. He does this to show us.

And you don't have to change. You don't have to be the somebody, but instead we can rejoice in Christ who is our wisdom, because he brings us righteousness and sanctification and redemption all ours in Him. And so we can rejoice. We can celebrate, we can be encouraged. We can, we can find peace in that.

So what do we do? This? We can. This morning we stop boasting on ourselves, stop boasting in ourselves, and we start boasting in the Lord. But what does it mean to stop boasting ourselves?

It means we stop competing on ladders that don't matter. And we. And we start celebrating the grace of God that has leveled that field and church. This is great news for us because it means that every person in this room matters. Not because of what you achieved, but because of who you are.

I should I apologize. Not because of what you've achieved, but because of Whose you are, not who you are, whose you are.

It means the gospel invites the overlooked, the hurting, the unimpressive, the broken. And it means that if you feel broken this morning or you feel lost, or you have been striving for the world and nothing seems to quench that fire, that means that God is inviting you today to stop, to find healing, to find peace, to find his son, Jesus. It also means that for the believers in the room, that together we can only say that Christ is all, Christ is enough, Christ is worthy. And I think that's something we don't say enough.

So, church this morning. My challenge to us is to be a church that boasts in nothing but the cross.

And what that means is that all the preconceptions that you have about what education you need to be a missionary on the field of Topeka, Kansas, of how to talk to your neighbor about Jesus, of how to talk to your co worker about Jesus, man, all that, you don't need any pedigree. The only pedigree you need is Jesus.

And let us rejoice, let us rejoice together that God's grace levels the ladder for all who come to Him. Amen. Let's pray.