2 Peter1:16 “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

Peter, whose version of Jesus’ life is written in the Bible’s gospel of Mark, didn’t preach and teach about a character he made up. He didn’t take a real character of history and make up stories about him, like the story you hear about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. He didn’t even embellish stories of Jesus’ life, like Laura Ingalls Wilder may have done in some of her Little House books. “We were eyewitnesses,” he says. He’s giving testimony. And he’s not the only one.

So why should we trust these witnesses? First of all, they have overwhelming numbers on their side. Four different men wrote four accounts of Jesus’ life–the four gospels. From the first to the last, they were written about 50 years apart. One of the four, Luke’s, is basically a collection of interviews with various people who lived and worked with Jesus. While they choose different details to mention in their accounts, as you would expect from different witnesses, their accounts all agree. Beyond the four writers you have 500 eyewitnesses of Jesus’ greatest act of power and majesty–his resurrection from the dead. That’s a lot of witnesses saying the same thing.

 But what if these witnesses all formed a plot, a pact, to tell a tall-tale? Just look at what their story got them. None of them became rich or powerful. They were thrown into jail. They were whipped and beaten. They died horrible deaths. Peter was crucified upside down. Other apostles were skinned alive, beheaded, or burned to death.

Now if you knew that the story you have been telling was just a story, and there was no advantage in sticking to it, and in fact you were going to be tortured and killed for it, wouldn’t you give it up? Wouldn’t one out of so many witnesses admit to the hoax? But these weren’t “cleverly invented stories.” They were the testimony of eyewitnesses. What Peter tells us, he saw with his own eyes.

Why does it matter? Like us, the people to whom Peter originally wrote these words didn’t know Jesus directly. They had all these amazing stories about Jesus turning water into wine, healing the sick and the blind, controlling the weather, confronting demons, raising the dead, dying and rising himself. That’s a lot to ask people to believe.

Then, like now, there were skeptics questioning everything Peter and the other apostles had to say. They said it wasn’t rational. Water doesn’t instantly turn into other substances. You can’t just tell a storm to stop and it stops. Dead people don’t come back to life. Those aren’t “modern” ideas. They called the people who believed in Jesus gullible. They mocked their faith. They tried to de-convert or un-convert them.

Maybe the bigger challenge comes from the inside. Jesus has a lot to say about how we live our lives, and some of it might not be appealing. His teachings meddle in our sexual lives. He tells us to be self-sacrificing in our relationships with other people, even our enemies. He tells us to deny ourselves, carry our crosses, stop treating our money like our god, stop our worrying. He forgives us when we fail without fail. But he does not compromise on any of this. He won’t meet us half way. Disagree with him, and he tells us to repent.

If we could make ourselves believe that he is a myth, a story, then we wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable with ignoring him. If we could believe that he is a man, just like us, then why should his opinion count any more than our own? But while it’s true that no one can force us to follow him, Peter wants us to know that the things you have heard about him are certain: his coming (he’s real), his power (he’s not just another man). That means his grace and salvation are real, too. Eyewitnesses vouch for it.

1 Corinthians 3:21-23 “So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future–all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”

Did you have a favorite Sunday School teacher growing up? Something about the way that teacher taught struck a chord with you. He or she opened up the Scriptures in a way you could understand.

But did you get nothing at all from the rest? Weren’t they all God’s gifts to you, feeding your faith, moving you along toward maturity? It is a matter of God’s grace to you that he has given you not just one cook to prepare dinner for your soul, but many teachers and pastors, each with their own flavor, just like God gave Paul, Apollos, and Cephas to the whole congregation in Corinth to serve them all. As long as God’s word is being served in all its truth, there is always some good thing there for us, no matter whose mouth it is coming from, even if it is just a reminder and confirmation of truths we have known for a long, long time. Why boast about just one when the Lord has given us all of them?

Have only the pleasant things and the easy things served you in your life? Haven’t your injuries and your sicknesses, your disappointments and struggles, your losses and your crosses taught you humility, deepened your empathy, and developed your patience? Haven’t they stretched your faith, enabled you to see God’s faithfulness in action, and helped you to look forward to heaven with genuine longing?

Then Paul is right when he says the world, and life, and death, and the present, and the future–in other words, all of our experience, everything that touches us this side of heaven– is “yours.” God has put it all under you. As a believer in Jesus Christ everything is working for you, even when it seems the opposite. That’s not something that happens to members of some closed club of Christians who have attached themselves to some human teacher. Every believer has everything in Christ, so no more boasting about men.

Doesn’t every one of us belong to Jesus by faith? Jesus didn’t purchase some of us with his blood. He purchased all of us. Our sins are equally forgiven. Our souls are equally saved. He isn’t preparing a place in heaven for some of us. He is preparing a place for all of us. “You,” all of you, “are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” You don’t get that by belonging to a clique or dedicating yourself to some favorite teacher, even if that teacher is the Apostle Paul. You belong to Christ, so no more boasting about men.

Do you need something really worth boasting about, something that builds the church instead of tearing it down, something based on God’s wisdom not man’s, something that leaves the politics behind and leaves the spotlight on Christ? Paul has that identified for us too, in the last chapter of one of his other letters (Galatians): “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 Corinthians 3:18-19 “Do not deceive yourselves. If anyone of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a ‘fool’ so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.”

Sometimes people who think they are smarter than they really are can be funny. Remember Cliff Claven, the mailman on the old TV series Cheers? He would sit at the bar and share his gems of wisdom, like: the Chinese used cows as guard animals during the Chung King dynasty of emperors; in genetic research, DNA stands for ‘Dames Are Not Aggressive’; 42 % of all deaths in America are caused by accidents in the home; sun tanning became popular thousands of years ago in the Bronze Age; and many other “facts” he seems to have made up on the spot. It’s all kind of harmless, and funny, when no one is taking this stuff seriously.

Pride that styles itself “wise” by the world’s standards, and covets the world’s respect, and wants to be the smartest guy around church isn’t harmless or funny. It’s spiritually dangerous. When we think we are wise in this sense, we don’t tolerate correction very well. A man in the congregation where I once served stormed out of a council meeting because he had set up a game for a church picnic in a place where kids could get hurt. Everyone else on the council could see it. But he could not admit there was anything wrong with his plan. He had one “logical” reason after another for defending what amounted to an accident waiting to happen.

How many times doesn’t Solomon in the proverbs talk about the wise man who receives council and correction, and the fool who won’t. We lack biblical discernment about ourselves when we lack the humility to see that we don’t know everything.

Worse yet, when we are making our judgments or proposing our ideas “by the standards of the wisdom of this age,” the basis for our wisdom is suspect. Such a person may need to “become a fool so that he may become wise.” Paul explains, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.”

Some of the Corinthian men, being educated, knew their philosophers well and had their favorites. The philosophers weren’t stupid. Some of what they had to say was true, but not everything. Some of the Corinthian men tried to apply the wisdom of the philosophers to church life and church decisions. And some of them thought they saw a kind of similarity between things their favorite philosophers said, and things their favorite apostle taught.

But they lacked the Biblical discernment to sort out the false ideas in the philosophy from God’s truth in Scripture. They failed to discern that while the philosophers often disagreed with each other, the Scriptures and the Apostles always agreed with each other.

As a result, they created these political parties with a mishmash of worldly teaching and Scripture. They attached them to the name of an Apostle, and they ended up fighting with each other. They were dividing the church over non-biblical teachings they had imported.

Maybe this is a warning we can take for ourselves. Not all the scientists, businessmen, and politicians are ignorant. Some of what they have to say is true…but not everything. And not all of it has application in the church. Some of it flatly contradicts the wisdom God gives us in his word. Let’s not tear the church apart over ideas the Bible does not mandate just because they come from our favorite great thinkers in the secular world. And let’s not divide the church by introducing anti-biblical ideas that ought to stay in the secular world.