We tend to equate complex with superior. But that can deceive us into missing the truth.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon contrasts Paul’s simple gospel message with the elaborate theological systems and prophecy charts some churches use. How do you balance deep scriptural study with the danger of overcomplicating the central message of salvation—and when does complexity become a distraction rather than an aid?
What are modern examples of spiritual “Franco Meloso amphitheaters”—teachings that are impressive on the surface but lack substance when examined closely? How can believers develop the discernment to identify them before they’ve already paid for the tour?
Paul boasts in “simplicity and godly sincerity” rather than earthly wisdom. Where do you see the temptation to add extra steps, secret knowledge, or insider frameworks to the gospel, and what would it look like to resist that in your own community?
The pizza illustration captures how we’ve come to expect hidden catches in everyday life. How does that same suspicion shape the way people receive the gospel—and how does knowing Scripture is fully “inspectable,” with nothing sliced out, change the way you read, trust, and pass it on?
Many people hesitate to share their faith because they don’t feel like biblical scholars. How does the simplicity and accessibility of the gospel—the kind Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 1:12–14—free someone to speak without needing to master a complex system first?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
If you ever traveled to Italy and you traveled to the northern part of the countryside, you can go to Franco Meloso’s curated Greek amphitheater. Franco purchased this plot of land a number of years back and over time set it up so tourists could come. He’d give them tours of the amphitheater, allow them to imagine what it was like for ancient Greeks and Romans to look at the culture of the day and to enjoy someone performing or maybe a stage play, all kinds of people performing or Greek-style stage play, a few people performing, whatever it might be, to imagine all these different settings, all the different things that could have happened, and to take in the wonder of the ancient world.
You approach it, as you might expect, some old Roman or Greek artifact. It’s built into the hillside. There’s a little iron door that keeps people from going in and messing with the artifacts until they pay for the tour, and then they can go in and they can see the fan-shaped amphitheater and the little lake on the stage and take in this magnificent falsehood.
Hi, welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad that you’re here with me tonight as we talk about the truth, God’s truth. He’s always true, even though oftentimes we are not. He’s straightforward and he puts it right out in His Word. And so would you hit like or share, let someone else know that they can join us tonight as we dig into God’s Word because Franco Meloso’s amphitheater is a lot more like everything we run into day to day.
If you’re scrolling through your timeline, you’re going to see a lot of things that look grand, that look fantastic, but they are genuinely fantastic. And that was the problem with Meloso’s amphitheater. You see, he bought a little rural plot of land and fashioned out an amphitheater using modern technology brought in construction crews. He created what sort of looked like an ancient Greek amphitheater, only this should have been apparent sooner than it was. Greek amphitheaters were oval shaped. This was fan shaped. Amphitheaters in general are going to have a stage. He had a lake where the stage went. And there were a whole host of other things that didn’t quite add up. And finally, someone realized what was going on. And he’s now being prosecuted for a massive scam in a country that prides itself in having tourists come and see the ancient artifacts that have been created by the Greeks and the Romans.
One of the things that maybe should have been a dead giveaway, and so you won’t find a Greek amphitheater in northern Italy at all, is that the Greeks didn’t go into northern Italy. It just didn’t add up. So how do you get away with it? Same way a lot of the things we run into online and offline draw us in because there’s so much detail, intricacy, even if it’s the wrong intricacy, you know, big fan-shaped amphitheater looks pretty impressive, even if that 54,000 square foot creation doesn’t actually match what a Greek amphitheater ought to look like, not shaped the same, doesn’t have a spot for people to actually stand and perform on the stage because there’s a lake there. All those things that were there to distract, ooh, look at the pretty lake, were actually distracting from the fact, well, this wouldn’t work as what it was supposed to be.
So it is so often with the things that they claim to tell us the truth. And the problem is, I’d imagine people are driving to this scene, wanting to see this grand amphitheater, had great reviews online to go and meet the curator, this kindly gentleman who took such pride in showing this area that he had restored so people could marvel at the ancient wonders, they probably drove past things that actually were historic, that were meaningful, but weren’t as intricate, or as complex and impressive with the lake and seating, big iron doors so someone didn’t vandalize it.
So the obvious things got missed. People got drawn into the falsehood. Reality often appears truthful, even when it’s really a complexity to cover a falsehood.
As Paul writes the Corinthians, we’ve been looking at the second letter to the Corinthians over the last few weeks as he writes them. One of the challenges for Paul is Paul has a very simple message when you really boil it down. You might say, Paul, you seem so convoluted. Really it’s a simple message. Jesus died for us. He rose from the grave, and he triumphs over death for us, and if we believe in Him, we’re saved. That’s a very simple message.
And there were all kinds of other people showing up, speaking to the Corinthians, that had more complex messages. Look at the big metal vault here. Look at this beautiful lake on the stage. Isn’t this impressive? Paul has this rinky-dink little artifact shop. Why are you even paying attention to it? That’s what Paul addresses as we go on to verse 12 tonight, 2 Corinthians chapter 1.
Let’s pray tonight that we wouldn’t get swept up in the complexity and the impressive, but we’d get swept up in the beauty of God’s simple, accessible truth. Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your Word. Would you help us to see what is true, to embrace what is true, to run from what is false? For you, Lord, are the God of truth. And yes, there is endless complexity in this world, and your mind is not our mind. Your mind is so vastly beyond our understanding, and yet you lay down the important, simple truth right in front of us. And Lord, would you help us to hold on to that tonight? Not to overlook it, running for something more complex sounding, just because it sounds impressive. Lord, help us to do that. We can only do it through your strength. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, let’s go ahead and turn, take a look at verse 12. Paul says, “For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.”
Godly wisdom is sincere, not complex. Again, complexity can impress us. Sometimes we really want things to be simple, but you know what we really want? We want something really complex that someone breaks down enough for us to understand simply, but that we then sort of feel like we have this insight into something much more complicated than what we can wrap our minds around. It makes us feel a little better.
And Paul says, here’s the simple truth. You can’t add anything to this. It’s not Jesus died for our sins, and you do these 10 extra steps, and you do these steps, and you get to get partway there to Jesus dying for our sins, and then you do some more stuff, and then you get a little closer to it. It isn’t about somehow rising above our physical selves and becoming spiritually enlightened beings. It’s not any of that stuff.
It’s really simple. Believe in Jesus. It’s that simple.
So we measure something’s worthiness, its truthfulness, by its complexity, we’re going to miss it. But on the other hand, if we say what really matters, what we really care about, what we really want to know and to hold on to, is that it’s sincere and true, then Paul’s message is the message for us. God’s message, in other words, is the message for us.
Paul wants them to understand very clearly the things he’s been saying. He hasn’t been being clever. He’s not trying to come up with some way to pull them in a little further so that they’ll give him some money for his next missionary journey. He’s simply been speaking the truth to them. A lot of times we want to impress people. What we really should want is for Jesus to impress people.
It’s not necessarily the same thing, and that’s why I think we chase after all these different things. Maybe you’re like me and you grew up in a church that is part of one of the traditions that has lots of charts and graphs about how different parts of the Bible should be interpreted and how the time ahead is going to go. The more complex the chart, you pull out this multi-page chart, isn’t that impressive? Isn’t that great? Look at this.
You spend all this time trying to memorize all the details on the chart and, oh, this part in Revelation, let’s go back to Daniel, let’s jump over to Ezekiel, and then let’s jump back to Genesis, and then we’ll go over to Matthew, and then we’ll go back to Revelation, and then we’ll do it all over again and keep going back through this chart.
I’m for cross-references as much as anybody. Great! But you know this funny thing, the thing that finally struck me one day? I couldn’t see most of the things on that chart by simply reading God’s Word.
I need to be told this verse over here correlates with that verse over there, and then this third verse over there. And people were taking it in because it was impressive. I was taking it in because it was impressive, and then it was sort of, but what about what God’s Word just says? We just look at it. We don’t just read a verse here and a verse there and a verse over there, but we actually read the chapter. Book. Didn’t necessarily get the same picture, didn’t get the impressive chart, but you see God’s impressive love.
You see, I sound so much more impressive with that chart.
I remember the first time, and I’ve told some of you this story, I went up to a professor in seminary and asked him what his view of the end times was, and he said he was all millennial. And if you’ve ever looked at the end times, you know there’s different ones, non-millennial, pre-millennial, post-millennial.
I said, well, what’s all millennial? He looked at me and said, it all works out in the end. Now that doesn’t make an impressive chart, does it? If I say, I know God wins, and he’s basically already won, but he has already won. We’re just waiting for it all to come forth, and today Jesus might show up, and we’re at the end. There isn’t a chart to fill out. It’s just there. Jesus is here. We celebrate. It’s good. He loves us, and evil is banished forever.
It doesn’t sound as impressive as if I can haul out a whole book, piecing together verses all over the place to form an intricate picture from a puzzle, but you know what it does? It lets me actually see Jesus.
Not looking to try to figure out what part of the current situation fits into what part of the puzzle. All we know is Jesus could return. He could return right now. I’m not waiting for a certain sign to say that Jesus could return.
He could return right now, friends, and that’s simple. It’s not as impressive, but how wonderful if we hold onto that.
It’s the kind of message Paul is speaking with simplicity here. It’s not impressive by earthly wisdom standards, and as long as we’re on earth, and as long as we’re sinners, we’re going to try to add stuff in, and we’re going to try to get new charts and new complex puzzles to somehow pull together the things no one has ever seen before in Scripture, but while some parts aren’t the easiest to understand—yes, Ezekiel is hard. Yes, Daniel is hard. Yes, Revelation is hard—do we take the time just to dwell in the simplicity of the gospel? Do we go there first? Do we keep coming back there? Or do we get bogged down in all this other stuff?
A couple of verses down, we’ll skip over to chapter 2 for just a second. Verse 17, Paul says to the Corinthians, “We are not like so many peddlers of God’s Word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.”
A peddler tries to get you to trust him. I’ll show how impressive I am, and you’ll listen to me, and I will sell you this bill of goods about God’s Word. Paul says, I’m not interested. I’m just telling you who God is, and what He’s done, and that’s all you really need.
If you’re looking for something more, let me tell you, there isn’t anything more that’s going to be worthwhile. Hold on to Jesus.
And so they deliver this message, simple message, but sincere message. It’s going to be with us. It’s going to heal us.
One of the things that strikes me if you spend any time at all online, we’ve all seen the “heading for one weird trick.” And what one weird trick might be there to do varies a lot. But the key thing, the key thing, is it exists to make you click. Whether it’s a YouTube video, whether it’s a post on Facebook, whether it’s at the end of an article, maybe even at a reputable site, but takes you to someplace else that isn’t as reputable.
Those one weird trick things, the implication is, whatever problem they’re meant to sell, no one else has been able to sell it, but if you just have this one weird trick, you’ll be able to get your bathtub gleaming. You’ll be able to make your carpets look better than ever. You’ll be able to get rid of that ache in your knee, and it will never bother you again. Just one weird trick.
And it’s so hard not to click on that, isn’t it? I make it a point to try not to click on it. I don’t want to encourage it. I don’t want to see more of it, but what if that is the one weird thing I really need?
And that’s what it’s playing into. Because there’s a certain appeal for us. If we can find that one thing, no one else has thought of it, secret knowledge, complex combination of simple household ingredients, you put that together and it takes care of the problem.
Why no one else thought of it? Well, they didn’t click the link and hear about one weird trick. Only, we’ve all probably clicked on that at some point, but one that usually is actually trying to sell us something more. Well, let me tell you about exactly how to use this one weird trick if you pay me some money.
But even if you actually got what was allegedly the one weird trick, it turns out not to be particularly impressive. It turns out to be something you probably already knew. But the allure was, I have this invitation to something complex and unknown.
That’s what the Corinthians wanted. These other teachers, these peddlers of God’s Word, allegedly coming with God’s Word, but they had the one weird trick. Let me tell you the one weird trick that cures your sin. Paul says, I don’t have a weird trick. Let me just tell you what I proclaim boldly. I’ll put it in the headline itself. Jesus died for sinners. Believe in Him. I don’t need you to click and view my ad and buy my booklet to tell you that. I’m going to tell you up front because I actually want you to know it because it actually does work and isn’t weird.
Why is that so hard for us? Yet it is.
Paul goes on, verse 13, “For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand, and I hope you will fully understand, just as you did partially understand us, that on the day of our Lord Jesus, you will boast of us as we will boast of you.”
Paul says it isn’t between the lines. I know I haven’t been telling you anything complex, but here’s the thing you can know about what I tell you. It’s just the simple truth. There isn’t that weird trick.
Now sometimes, because we’re so used to that and everyone seems to have their angle and we’re looking for the angle, we start to think, well, it must be between the lines. Paul is saying he’s simple, but saying he’s simple is just trying to draw us in to say, but Paul, tell me the real story.
Let me just sign up for this Jesus thing. And then you’re going to say, well, and if you join the apostolic club for 100 shekels a month, then you won’t just be saved, but you’ll be saved for eternity. You don’t want to just be saved for the next year. That’s the free trial salvation. Go ahead and sign up for the lasting plan. What’s your real intent, Paul?
I’m just telling you what really is true. There is no subtext. There isn’t some passive aggressive thing in here where I’m claiming to do one thing, but I’m doing something else. There is no between the lines. There simply is a sincere, simple truth.
We look at Scripture and the thing that’s striking as you look through the pages of Scripture is that that’s what it is. God is up front on who He is. Yes, we don’t always understand all of prophecy, but you know the thing is, we need to ask what does it happen to be that God says over and over and over again the most? The things that are just incredibly apparent. Focus on those.
And yeah, we should know all of God’s Word, and we should dig into the stuff we don’t understand. But that doesn’t change that the foundation is simple and accessible. It doesn’t mean that it’s not skilled or worthwhile of value. We think that.
Paul isn’t writing a simple truth to the Corinthians that lacks weird tricks and secret knowledge because he can’t write something complex.
Certainly if you read his letters to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians is a masterclass in this. Paul uses Greek rhetoric. He uses all the tricks of argumentation. Not in a secret way. They would have seen exactly what he was doing.
He says, just so you don’t think that I’m saying this only because I can’t do anything else. He doesn’t say, well, I just want it simple. And what we mean is, I can’t understand the complex.
Paul says, I’m going to tell you this simple stuff, and I’m going to use all the complex things to do it so that you realize I could make this complex. I absolutely could. I just don’t need to because it’s the simple, upfront, sincere truth.
Paul’s not hiding anything. There isn’t the catch after you sign up. It simply is exactly what it was always supposed to be.
And yet we say, but Paul, are you sure? Is there something I’m forgetting to ask that I need to ask of you so that I understand what’s really going on?
We often run into those sorts of situations, don’t we?
For example, take a look here. Here’s someone at the pizzeria. You can see cutting up the pizza and you order your pizza. You say, I want eight slices, whatever.
And so here’s this lady slicing up the pizza, eight slices. But notice she makes a little extra incision in the middle of it and takes a small sliver out of the middle and pushes it, as you can see, back together.
Why? So that in the end, what do you have? You still have your set number of slices. Still a seemingly round pizza. There’s just part of it missing.
You say, well, how can you do that? But did you order a pizza that didn’t have any slices removed, that didn’t have any slivers detached from it, that was really the whole pizza that came out of the oven? You probably didn’t.
You said, I’d like a 12-inch pizza, a 14-inch pizza, whatever it might be. Didn’t think I needed to say that.
And I’m sure when confronted, that lady said, you know, no customer’s ever said you couldn’t have a sliver taken out. They just said they wanted a round pizza. And look, this pizza’s round still.
Of course we say, well, I shouldn’t have to say that, right? I order a pizza, I get the whole pizza. I don’t expect someone to take part of it out.
And yet we see enough of these things that maybe we didn’t think about on pizza. Now you will.
But on all sorts of things, whether it’s signing up for a new internet plan with your cable company or a telephone company, right? We expect tricks there. Buy a new car. You expect tricks when you go and pay for it. What are they going to slip in at the end? All these different things.
We expect day to day, we get a job or a raise and we expect there’s a catch there. It’s going to somehow, okay, my pay went up, but my benefits went down, right? Something.
We expect those catches, those little spots where, yeah, everything I was promised, I got a pizza. It’s round. It has a certain number of slices. It looks good, but I really thought I was getting the whole thing and I didn’t expect that to happen.
And so the Corinthians flip side of expecting complexity and valuing complexity is what thing are you leaving out, Paul? What is it that should be there that we should be able to trust that isn’t there?
And Paul says, there isn’t anything. This is it. This is the whole thing.
You can actually turn the camera on as I slice the pizza. It’s all going to be there. Why? Because it simply is what it is.
Godly wisdom doesn’t have anything to hide. We see someone teaching God’s Word, but they have to somehow hide part of it. They feel like they need to. They need to somehow apologize for God and leave out part, slice out something in it.
Why? It doesn’t need that. God’s Word doesn’t need help. It doesn’t need part of it to be hidden for a later time.
Yeah, there might be places that are easier to start in Scripture. Someone says, I’d like to read the Bible for the first time. I don’t suggest, well, go and start in Leviticus and Numbers. Not because I’m ashamed of anything in Leviticus and Numbers. Not that there’s anything that needs to be hidden in Leviticus and Numbers.
It’s just a harder spot to start reading. Start in John. Maybe start in Genesis if you really just want to see how things began, right? But that’s different because it’s not taking anything out.
Paul says, I simply have told you with sincerity. And now your commission is to believe in that and to spread that. That’s what we’re going to rejoice in. We’re going to rejoice in you. We pray you’ll rejoice in us. Because God’s spoken the truth in ways we can understand and we can hold on to it. We can share it.
Do we understand that?
I think one of the reasons why we hesitate, all of us feel this, is should I share something about God’s truth with this person and we wonder, well, do I know how to phrase it right?
We spend a lot of time, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t be tactful, but do we actually look at the beauty of the simplicity of the gospel such that we feel like, well, I can say this because there’s something simple here. Jesus loves you. Jesus saves you.
How much do we need to find complexity to make that work? We don’t. It’s simply true.
If we’re looking through God’s Word, flipping it over page by page, what do we find? The consistency of a God who loves us and cares for us and is always there for us.
That’s why we can have confidence. Confidence in the promises for us. That’s what Paul’s initially telling them. But also the confidence then to go and live the mission that being fishers of men that we’ve been talking about on Sunday nights. We can do that. Why? Because it’s simple and fully inspectable. We can look at God’s Word and see there aren’t any slices taken out.
It’s not going to be the upsell. Simply is what it is.
When we hold on to the truth, we can have confidence because God’s truth is that beautiful, rich simplicity that He’s put out there for you, put out there for me.
Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. We do pray that you would help us not to make your Word more complex than it is. Yes, there are things that are mysterious, things that we sometimes struggle to get our heads around. But Lord, don’t let us walk away from the simplicity of the gospel.
That is where we rest our confidence, that love that you have shown your people throughout all the ages that we see authored through the pages of Scriptures, the love that you have for us today and every day. Lord, would you help us to know that, would you help us to believe that, would you help us to share that, that we are established in that confident grace.
We pray in Jesus’ precious name, amen.
I hope this has been an encouragement to you. If it has, again, please hit like or share. I know now you think, ah, there’s the upsell. No, the commission has always received the simple truth, share the simple truth.
And someone needs to hear, they don’t need to be a Bible scholar. They don’t need to spend years and years to understand the basics of what God has for them.
Yes, there’s value in deep study, but the simplicity of the gospel is there for each of us right now.
And if tonight’s the first night you’ve ever even thought about it, if it is, then you can text into our texting line, 833-356-4032. You can text into that and ask for prayer, ask for how to get started in believing in Jesus or prayer for anything you’re struggling in life. That is our prayer line. You can also leave it in the comments below.
Either way, you’re welcome to, and we’d love to hear from you, whether you use the comments or the texting line. So great when you do.
I hope that you’ll join me again next week as we continue this series, looking at 2 Corinthians chapter 1 and the confident grace that we find in our God. And of course, join us for Bible study on Tuesday nights. It’s a great way to see that consistency of that simple truth from page to page of Scripture.
When we go from page to page, yes, we get into deep, deep discussions, but you know what it always comes back to? That God loves you and He loves me. That’s a wonderful thing.
You can join us anywhere in the world for Bible study tomorrow night. That’s at 7:15 p.m. Central Time, 8:15 p.m. Eastern, and adjust to however you want. Elsewhere, it’s all online.
Just leave in the comments or the texting line that you’d like to get into it and I’ll help you connect. And it’s fully interactive. You can ask questions and no question is too simple because God’s truth is simple and there for us.
Hope you have a wonderful and blessed week, and I’ll see you again very soon. Bye-bye.
Start the Conversation