You guys know what the word a sophomore means?
It's my favorite of all of our classes that we assign to our students.
You know what sophomore means, anybody out there?
Means wise fool.
Yeah.
So anybody that's out there that might be a sophomore, congrats, that's who you are.
You are a wise fool.
I was thinking about the word sophomore this week as I was preparing for
this message though, because i- in a lot of ways, that- that's how
the world looks at Christianity.
That- that we proclaim to be wise, but the world will look at us and say, "But-
but you guys are just a bunch of fools.
You're following a 2,000-year-old book.
Y- you're following a, a savior that you're telling me died as a criminal,
humiliated, stripped naked, crucified between two thieves, and, and you've
put your whole hope in this savior.
You- you're a, a wise fool."
When I graduated from high school, I was, even though graduated, I, I, I
was still in many ways a, a sophomore.
I was a wise fool.
I, I thought that, you know what, I needed, I…
And, and I wanted to go into ministry.
I, I w- I wanted to, to go be a pastor and, and yet in my
flesh, I thought, you know what?
I, I wanna go and be trained in the wisdom of the world.
And so I went to this school called Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.
Uh, and I was gonna go major in philosophy there, literally
the, the love of, of wisdom.
But I got there, and God very quickly redirected me and said, "This is not
where I want you," through a series of events that don't really have a
bearing on this morning's sermon.
But He made it very clear that that's not where He wanted me to be.
See, I was pursuing the world's wisdom as I was preparing to go into
ministry, and He was saying, "You don't need the world's wisdom right now.
You need more of the wisdom that I have for you."
And so I, I left.
I came back to Dallas.
I, I, I stayed here.
I, uh, worked at The Gap believe it or not, for six months.
Worst job I've ever had.
And then I left, and I went to, uh, the Master's University,
Master's College at the time.
And, uh, I, I needed that.
I needed that.
I needed the wisdom of the Lord to be able to come and, and be effective as a pastor.
But i-i- even that right there makes it so clear to us that there is a juxtaposition.
There is a, there is an opposition even at times between what the world
says, "This is the wisdom of the world.
This is the wisdom worth pursuing," and what God says,
"No, this is, this is my wisdom."
And so while the world may look at us and say of Christians, "Well, you guys
are nothing but a bunch of wise fools.
You're nothing but a bunch of sophomores," as we think about God's perspective on
this, it's important for us to realize that God's wisdom is true wisdom,
and God's strength is true strength
This morning's title, uh, message is titled The, The Foolishness of God.
Not saying that God is a fool, but I want us to, to look at what the world calls
foolishness, and understand that, that in the end, this is where true wisdom
resides, is in the foolishness of God.
Our passage is gonna be 1 Corinthians 1:21-25.
So let me go ahead and read it for us.
It says this.
It says, "For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through
wisdom, it pleased God through the folly," or foolishness, "of what we
preach to save those who believe.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ
crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.
But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power
of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness
of God is stronger than men."
Our big idea, idea this morning is, is that, that God's, God's
wisdom is true wisdom, that God's strength is true strength.
And so no matter what the world says, it's important for us to anchor
ourselves back to where we know true wisdom is to be found, where
we know true strength is revealed.
But this morning, I want us to look at this passage to find out,
okay, why does the world have such a problem with the wisdom of God?
Why is there this juxtaposition?
Why is the, the wisdom of the world pitted against the wisdom of God?
And I think our text is gonna answer these questions for us.
Look at verse 21 again, 21 and 22.
It says this, "For since in the wisdom of God the world did not
know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we
preach to save those who believe.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom."
Let's just stop right there for a second.
These verses, these opening two at least, they explain why the wisdom
of man looks at the wisdom of God and counts it as foolishness.
And the reason is, is because this verse shows us that the, the reason
that the wisdom is world, of the world is, is stuck, if I can put it
this way, on the checkerboard while God is playing chess, is that that's
exactly what God wants it to be.
That may sound odd, but l- look again at the text.
"In the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through its wisdom."
So God's wisdom said that the world is not going to be able to
get to me through its own wisdom.
That was part of the wisdom of God.
See, man's failure to know God through human wisdom is working out, in other
words, exactly according to God's plan.
As one commentator put it, he said this, "The world's failure to know
God through wisdom is no accident."
The fact that the, the philosophers and the, the intellectual elite
can't reason their way to God is not a problem with the philosopher or a
problem with the intellectual person.
It's part of God's plan.
It's part of God's design If the wisdom of the world could produce
the saving knowledge of God, it would give humans something to boast in.
We're gonna see that in just a little bit.
In fact, it's part of our, our memory verse, that no human may
boast in the presence of God.
It would give us something to, to take credit for, to be able
to say, "Well, well, look at me.
I, I, I made my way to God.
I reasoned my way to God.
I, I used my wisdom to get to God."
But in His wisdom, God chose to frustrate those plans, to frustrate the
wisdom of men in order to preserve all of the glory ultimately for Himself.
Our first point this morning is this.
I want you to realize God sets the terms for salvation.
Realize that God sets the terms for salvation.
We're talking about salvation, and you might say, "Well, where's…
Wait a minute.
Did I miss it?
Where's salvation in the text?"
Well, that's what it is to know God.
That's what he says there.
For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God.
It, the world could not come to a saving knowledge of God
based on its own human wisdom.
And, and, and that's something that, that God has designed.
In His wisdom, our wisdom wouldn't work, in other words.
And so He's going to frustrate that.
God doesn't do things in a predictable way.
In the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom.
I- if you want to know something, right, the way that you know
it is you begin to pursue it.
You begin to pursue a knowledge of it.
You begin to study it.
You begin to read books on it or you watch YouTube videos or you research or
you pursue the education or you get the experience or you go to ChatGPT, whatever.
You use your wisdom to try to ascertain knowledge, to gain knowledge about
whatever it is that you're curious about.
You wanna learn about sports.
You study sports.
You wanna learn about medicine.
You study medicine.
But when it comes to God, what, what God is saying here through the pen of Paul
is, is that there's no one who's ever made their way to God through using those means
and those efforts or their own wisdom.
And here's the thing.
It's, it's not that they haven't tried.
Rather, it's that God won't allow it to be that way.
In His wisdom, the world did not know God through their wisdom.
That part of God's plan, part of the terms that He set for knowing Him is to say,
"You're gonna come to Me on My terms.
You're gonna come to Me because I'm gonna make it possible, not because you're
gonna work your way to Me, not because you're gonna reason your way to Me, not
because you're gonna get smart enough about Me to be able to get there to the
point of saying, 'I made my way to God.'"
No one has ever made their way to God
Man's wisdom, one of the main problems with it is that when it comes to
trying to know God, man, man's wisdom is, is seeking the wrong things.
And this is where the first part of verse 22 comes in, where he says, "For Jews
demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom."
Th- they were after the wrong things from God.
When they said, "Well, we wanna know God," they were saying, "This is the
type of God that we want to know."
And so the Jews, they, they wanted signs.
Pastor Rod talked about this a little bit last week, and, and just to
build on it a little bit, they, they were thinking, "We want the king.
We want the Messiah that's gonna be the 2 Sam- Samuel chapter 7 Davidic
king that's gonna rule on the kingdom forever and ever without end."
That's the Messiah that the Jews were expecting, and even that
the disciples were expecting.
You remember Jesus on the road to Emmaus in Luke chapter 24 comes up on these two
disciples and, and they're just crushed.
And He comes upon them, and He keeps them from seeing who He is,
and He says, "Why so glum chums?
What's going on?"
And they look at Jesus, and they say, "Jesus, don't you know
that they just crucified Jesus?"
And then they say this, "We thought He was gonna be the Messiah."
See, even the, the best of his followers had a misunderstanding
of the type of Messiah that God came, that, that Jesus came to be.
They wanted a different type of Messiah, and so they said, "We wanna
know you, God, but on our terms.
And so our terms are we want signs.
Show us that you're ready to establish the kingdom.
Show us that you're gonna get Rome out of here.
Show us that we're gonna be just like we were under King David
and under King Solomon, but even better because without end."
Instead, what they got was they got a, a savior crucified as a
criminal between two criminals.
They got a, a savior who died stripped, embarrassed, humiliated on a cross.
And that's what we're gonna find out was such a scandal to
them, a stumbling block to them.
But they wanted to know God that way.
And then you had the Greeks, and the Greeks said, "Well, well, we wanna
know God too, but again, on our terms.
We want a, a God that's gonna be as smart as we are.
We want a God that's gonna be as eloquent that we are, as we are.
We want a God that's gonna be able to, to go toe-to-toe with the, the
greatest sophists and philosophers that we've ever been able to produce."
And they looked at Christians following a crucified savior, and
they said, "You guys are idiotic."
Again, the word folly there, foolishness, comes from our word for moron.
This is moronic to follow a crucified man That's beneath you.
Why would you ever wanna do that?
And so the Greeks, they wanted to know a god, but they wanted to know a god
that fit their understanding of God.
Today, it's the same way, isn't it?
We find a world that just, they wanna know God, but they wanna know God the
way that, that they want God to be, that they- the way that their wisdom defines
that, that God should be this way.
God should be tolerant of all people.
God should just love us the way we are.
You know what?
God, God should have soft edges.
God needs to be a, a malleable God to, to fit what I want him to be.
God should be accessible through whatever religious pursuit
anyone wants to pursue him from.
God should be accessible to the Hindus as Hindus.
God should be acceptable- accessible to the Muslims as
Muslims, to the Mormon as Mormons.
God should love all people no matter what.
Or maybe sometimes even within the church, if we can step on some
toes here, sometimes w- we in the church say, "God, we want you to
be the God that we want you to be.
We want you to be the God that keeps me healthy.
I want you to be the God that, that makes me wealthy.
I want you to be the God that, that doesn't meddle too much with my life.
I'm in on Christianity so much, so long as I can still be in with
everything else that I wanna do.
I don't want a God that's gonna get too involved in my life
See, that's the problem with man's wisdom in pursuit of God.
As man's wisdom pursues the God that our wisdom says we want And all I'm saying
is thank God he didn't come that way.
Instead, God sets the terms for salvation.
He's not gonna do things the way that the Jews expected him to do or
the, the Greeks wanted him to do.
Instead, he was gonna make himself known, and he has made himself
known to all people everywhere.
Romans chapter one makes that clear, that God in the things that have
been seen, the things that have been created, his invisible attributes are
seen such that we can at least conclude out there that there's a creator.
The problem is if we try to get from that to an understanding of who he
is, relying on our wisdom, well, God's just gonna frustrate those plans.
Paul talks about this in Romans chapter one verses 21 through 22.
He says this, "For although they knew God, they did not honor him
as God nor give thanks to him.
But," and here it is, "they became futile in their thinking."
They became futile in their wisdom, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Claiming to become or to be wise, they became fools.
And so again, the, the world's wisdom according to God's wisdom
isn't gonna work, not because of necessarily something inherently
deficient about the world's wisdom.
Yes, it is deficient, but even more so because that's not God's plan.
And you might think, "Well, man, that sounds cruel for God to intentionally
frustrate the pursuit of, of the world, that he wouldn't allow them
to get to him through their wisdom."
And it's only cruel if we don't understand that in his grace and mercy, he has
made himself known, and he has provided a wisdom that will get us to him.
But again, it's on his terms.
Look at back in, in verse 21.
It says, "It pleased God."
Since in the wisdom of God, the world's wisdom wasn't gonna get to him, it
pleased him, it, it, it brought him joy, it glorified him through the folly of
what we preach, the foolishness of what we preach to save those who believe.
A- and so a cruel God would say, "You can't get to me, nanny,
nanny, nanny," and run away.
Uh, that's not what God did.
He said, "You can't come to me on your terms, but come to me on my terms," and
through the folly of what we preach, through the foolishness of what we
preach to save those who believe.
Uh, uh, there's these reels that I've seen, I haven't tried it
yet and, and I kinda want to.
But have you seen the reels where, where there's an ant on a piece of paper, and
if you draw a line with a pen, the ant will get to the line and, and turn around?
No?
Nobody?
Just me?
Okay, cool.
I, I don't know what's wrong with my reels then.
Um, my algorithm apparently thinks I like ants.
But it's, it's crazy 'cause you can draw lines and literally the ant will,
will keep moving away from the line.
It d- it won't cross the line.
There's something there and, and so people can, can…
the, and the really mean ones just draw a circle and the ant just keeps
going back and forth around the circle.
Um, but it's, it's sorta like that in the sense that God has drawn all of the
lines to only leave one path out, and that path out for us is Christ That path
out for every single person is Jesus.
That's the only way to salvation.
A- a- and here's why.
Because at the end of the day, everything is about Him and His glory.
Your salvation isn't about you.
Your life as a Christian, it's not about you.
Y- y- your goal as a Christian, God's goal for you is not necessarily to
make you happy, to make you holy, and to glorify Himself through you.
And so that goes back to your salvation.
God, jealous for His own glory, has created only one way possible to get to
Him, and it's through us surrendering ourselves completely and saying, "G- God,
I've got nothing to bring to the table."
I need Jesus
And that's the folly.
That's what the Jews say, "That doesn't make sense."
And the, the, the Greeks say, "That's idiotic."
But that's the gospel.
That's what saves.
A- and then it also fits 'cause it does another thing for us too, right?
Because remember Paul's writing to this group that's been kind of factionalized.
I'm of Paul, I'm of Cephas, I'm of, I'm of Apollos over here.
Okay, well, if at the end of the day none of us are smarter than each
other when it comes to salvation, then that takes everybody and puts
them on the same plane, doesn't it?
We all need Jesus just as much.
You need Jesus just as much as the serial killer on death row
who has a death row conversion.
You needed Jesus to die for your sins just as much as they did
You need Jesus.
If, if you have a doctorate behind your name, you need Jesus just as much as
the high school dropout needs Jesus
You don't need Jesus a little bit less because you've got
a little bit more education.
The gospel levels the playing field.
And for all of us, because it says God's gonna set the terms, this
is what we're gonna do through the folly of what we preach, it pleased
God to save those who believe.
Those who believe.
To the Jews, this was too incredulous to believe.
It was a stumbling block.
It was a scandal.
To the Greeks, this was too debased, this was too humiliating to embrace, and
that's why the wisdom of man falls short.
But in the end, God is there to maximize His glory, and so He sets the terms.
And so I want you to think this morning about your own testimony, how
God saved you, how you came to faith.
And you can probably see that it wasn't according to man's wisdom.
Even if it was after you sat in an apologetics class, apologetics
didn't get you into, to heaven.
Y- reading a book didn't get you into heaven.
It was an act of God through the folly of the gospel proclaimed to you.
That's what opened your eyes and got you into heaven.
See, y'all, God isn't playing hide and seek.
But the world, when they're pursuing God according to their own wisdom, they're
acting like He is playing hide and seek.
God's out there.
He's here.
He's saying, "I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm right here.
If you wanna come to me, here's the folly.
Here's the gospel.
Come to me."
God sets the terms for salvation.
Again, we are the, the wise fools according to the world,
and that's okay with me, because God's wisdom is true wisdom.
God's strength is true strength.
L- look at verse 22 as we continue in the argument here.
He says, "For Jews demand signs and, and Greeks seek wisdom," verse 23,
"but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly
to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God and the wisdom of God."
These verses, they remind us of the, the true definition of power.
When Jesus was on His way to, to Jerusalem to be crucified,
the disciples were convinced He was on His way to be coronated.
They thought, "This is it.
Let's go.
Let's go."
He's riding the donkey, triumphal entry.
"Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord."
They're going to Zechariah 14, and they're thinking about Jesus, and,
and they're going to, to the, the, the triumphal entry passages in the
Old Testament thinking, "This is it.
This is it.
He's, h- He's…
It's happening.
He's gonna be the king."
And they're planning where they're sitting at the royal
banquet, at the inauguration ball.
They're going, "What am I gonna wear?
Gotta get my toga cleaned."
And then when they saw their Lord nailed to the cross, less than a week later,
they fled in dejected despair, fearing they had been wrong, that they had made
a grave mistake that was even potentially gonna cost their own lives as well.
See, they misunderstood the power of God.
They misunderstood the wisdom of God.
The problem was they had a different definition of wisdom and power.
And if Jesus had come to be the Messiah that they were looking for, if Jesus
had come to be that Messiah, the, the Messiah they, they thought they
were getting, well then guess what?
We wouldn't be here this morning and heaven would be empty.
Because that's not the Messiah that we needed.
That's not the Messiah who could save us from our sins.
They didn't need a king on a throne at that point, they
needed a savior on a cross.
They didn't need Rome to get out of their lives, they needed sin to be dealt with.
And so that's the folly, that's the foolishness, that's the stumbling
block to the Jews and the folly to the Gentiles, but to us who are, as
he's gonna say here, called, who are saved to those who believe, that's
the greatest news we could ever hear.
Our second point this morning is this, be grateful God wrote the gospel, not us.
Be grateful that God wrote the gospel, not us.
'Cause the wisdom of God, that's true wisdom.
The power of God, that's true power
The gospel is so unique that, that I'm convinced that no one,
humanly speaking, on their own would have ever written it this way
If the disciples had their way, we, we wouldn't be sitting here.
Heaven would be empty except for God and his angels 'cause
nobody's sins would be forgiven
The wisdom of man would have never put the Messiah on a cross because the wisdom of
man could never have conceived a salvation coming through a crucified Savior.
It doesn't compute with earthly wisdom
Other death and resurrection tales exist, myths exist, yes.
You may have heard someone suggest that, that Christianity just borrowed
from these stories, the stories of, of Horus and Osiris, for example.
But I want you to, to, to not just listen to that objection from the unbeliever and
be like, "Oh, no, what are we gonna do?
This undermines 2,000 years of Christianity.
We might as well just give up."
I want you to actually dig a little bit on that, because once you begin to
dig and once you begin to study those stories, what you'll find is they're
really nothing like Christianity at all.
There is no parallel to the story of a hero dying for the sins of his
constituents, taking their place on the cross, paying the penalty that they
couldn't pay, and then rising again from the dead to intercede for them as their
great high priest and to bring them all the way into the presence of God.
That doesn't exist.
There's no parallel to the gospel.
There may be pre-Christian resurrection myths out there, but there's nothing like
what you find contained in the gospel.
The wisdom of God that is true wisdom, the power of God that is true power.
Why is there nothing else?
Because the wisdom of man could never get there
But thank God that in His wisdom He did.
But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block.
That word there, stumbling block, is from the, the Greek word sk- skandalon, which
is where we get our English scandal.
That to the Jews, a crucified savior, uh, somebody that the
Gentiles were gonna crucify stripped ba- … That's scandalous to them.
They can't get past that.
They can't get over that.
Kings aren't crucified.
Saviors don't die.
And even though the suffering of the s- the s- Messiah was, was there in the Old
Testament, they didn't have that in mind.
Th- they had the divinic king in mind.
They had the glorious reign of Christ in mind.
That's what they were looking for.
And so it, it was a scandal to them to think that their salvation would come
from somebody the Gentiles were killing.
And the Gentiles, they were like, "This is your guy?
This is your guy?
This guy, the one that was crucified as a, a, a criminal between two thieves?
That's your hope?"
Power doesn't come through poverty, not in the world's standards.
Success never follows servitude
In Greco-Roman culture, it was about establishing oneself as, as the
greatest, the wisest, the most powerful.
Dying on the cross just didn't fit that paradigm.
And so that's why it's a, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the
Gentiles, but, but for us, it's, it's the, the message that is the greatest
message that we could ever know, and it's, it's a message that's different than
any other message that exists out there.
Consider the other world religions that exist out there for a moment.
One of the things they almost all have in common is this, to get
to God or to get to Nirvana or to get to wherever, it's on you.
It's on you.
Because that's where the wisdom of man naturally goes.
It's, it's on me.
I, I have to do it.
I have to pull myself up by my bootstraps.
I actually have bootstraps now 'cause I, 'cause I have boots.
But I, I have to do it.
I have to get there, right?
Think about Islam, the five pillars of Islam.
You know, you need to do those things, you need to, to, to be a, a good Muslim.
And guess what, y'all?
Even once you're a good, good Muslim, it's still up to a capricious God
that you can't predict in the end.
But it's about working.
Think about Hinduism, the, the whole concept of karma, right?
Karma essentially says what you do determines what happens to you.
So it's, it's on, it's on you.
Even the, the cults, the offshoots of Christianity that have perverted
the gospel and are leading people to hell by the thousands, uh,
they also have bought into a lie that it's a works-based salvation.
In the Book of Mormon it says, "It is by grace you have been
saved, after all you can do."
So you work as hard as you can, and then when you fall short,
then, then God's grace kicks in.
That's not the gospel.
That's a works-based salvation.
Even atheism.
You say, "Well, atheism isn't trying to get to God."
I was…
I would argue that it is.
The atheist is God himself.
And so how does the atheist work to get to God?
Well, the atheist worldview is, "Let me eat, drink and be
merry, for tomorrow I die."
I need to work to make my life as best as possible because
I have no hope afterwards.
So it's about me working to get to God.
It's just I'm God
Christianity is the unique offer that says you can't, but God can
Why?
Because of Christ crucified.
We preach Christ crucified.
The only way that a person can be made right with a holy God is contained
in those two words, Christ crucified.
It's what's known as penal substitutionary atonement, and it's
a doctrine that's been under attack even within the church, but it is a
non-negotiable imperative doctrine.
You reject penal substitutionary atonement, you reject the gospel Penal
substitutionary atonement says this, that Jesus Christ took my place, substitute.
He took my place, and he died on the cross for my sins, bearing the wrath of God.
That's the penal, that's the penalty.
He died for me in my place, and he bore God's wrath for my sins.
He bore my penalty on the cross, and he made me, as a
result, he atoned for my sins.
He made me one now with God again.
He reconciled me.
He brought me to the Father.
That's the atonement side of things.
The only way atonement is possible is through a penal substitute.
Jesus didn't just die on the cross to declare victory over sin and death.
He died on the cross to be your substitute, to pay the penalty
that your sins deserve so that you can be brought to the Father, and
that's the only way it's possible.
We preach Christ crucified, and this is the message that divides.
This is the message that's either salvation or it's a stumbling block.
That word stumbling block, it actually has roots in the Old Testament in Isaiah 8:14.
It's up here on the screen, "And he will become a sanctuary," salvation
that is, deliverance, "and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to
both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem."
So there in I- Isaiah is prophesying and saying that, that God is either
gonna become a, a sanctuary, a salvation to people who embrace him, or a stone
of offense and a rock of stumbling.
And so even here as Paul writes that he's gonna become a stumbling block to the
Jews, he's going back, I believe in his mind, even back here to Isaiah chapter 8.
So then let me just ask a question, how?
How?
How does the world's wisdom go from, or how does one go from the
world's wisdom to God's wisdom?
How does one go from seeing the, the cross as foolishness to seeing the cross
as the saving wisdom of God that it is?
And the answer is right here in our text, "To those who are
called, both Jews and Greeks."
To those who are called, both Jews and Greeks.
Earlier, he said, "To those who believe."
Now we have those who believe that are defined for us.
Who are those who believe?
They are those who are called.
The calling of God is that act of God whereby he opens our eyes to understand
that the gospel is not foolishness, but it is the salvation of God.
Paul's gonna write in 2 Corinthians 4 that the god of this world has blinded the
eyes of the lost to keep them from seeing the light of the glory of Jesus Christ.
Then he's gonna say later, "But thanks be to God who has shone
into our hearts to give us the knowledge of the glory of Christ."
And so it's an act of God whereby he removes the veil so that we can see
and understand that the, the wisdom of God is truly wisdom So that's what
takes it from foolishness to wisdom for us, is because God opens our
eyes to be able to see that wisdom.
And again, that makes perfect sense with his argument so far.
What did I say earlier?
That our salvation is ultimately not about us, it's about who?
It's about God.
That our lives are for the glory of God, and that means that your being saved
is all about the glory of God, too.
I, I…
Remember we, we were all the ants with the pen?
Remember that horrible illustration from earlier?
Again, it fits if, if for me to even be able to come to God, he's
gotta remove the blinder from the first place, then I, I have n- I
literally have nothing to boast in.
Nothing
'Cause I, I, it's … He had to, to do it first.
He had to give me the eyes to see, the ears to hear, to be
able to come to faith in Christ.
And so be grateful that God wrote the gospel, not us.
It is good news.
He didn't come to be the, the Savior of the world thought he should be.
If he did, we're not here and heaven's empty.
Instead, he came to be the Savior that he knew we needed him to
be, 'cause he wrote it, not us.
And so we proclaim Christ crucified, which is the message as we continue on,
that is the foolishness of God which is wiser than men, verse 25, and the weakness
of God, which is stronger than men.
The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger
than men because the wisdom of God is true wisdom, and the strength of God,
the power of God, is true strength.
In the final verse of our, our passage, Paul reminds the Corinthians
of whose opinion really matters.
He's saying, "W- why should we worry about what men think about the gospel?"
Why should we b- be tempted to, to compromise?
Why should we be tempted to meddle with the gospel?
Why should we be tempted to repackage it?
Whose opinion really matters at the end?
Is it God's opinion or man's opinion?
The, the great theologian and guitarist John Mayer
He wrote a song called Waiting on the World to Change
And I think some of us in the church, that's been the
theme song for our evangelism
We're sitting back ready to go share the gospel with people as soon as the
world will change and be more tolerant of us sharing the gospel with people
Guess what, y'all?
It ain't gonna happen
World's not gonna change.
And if you're waiting for the world to all of a sudden look at the
gospel and say, "This is great.
Hey, will somebody come tell me about this?"
If you're waiting on the world to start knocking on your door saying,
"Hi, I'm an unbeliever, would you please tell me about Jesus Christ?"
If you're waiting on your coworker to come to you and say, "Hey, can we go to lunch?
Because I'd love to hear about Jesus," it's not gonna happen, because
that's not how God designed it.
Instead, He designed it that we should be the people that go, that we should
be the people that take the gospel.
And are you going to encounter opposition?
Yeah.
Why?
Because again, you're going to a world that's gonna look at you and
say, "Look at y- you, you're a fool."
You're gonna encounter opposition
But not every time.
There are gonna be people that you're gonna share the gospel with.
There are gonna be people that, that you're gonna lay out the, the, the truth
of faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and they're gonna hear that, and
God's gonna open their eyes, and they're gonna go from thinking that's, that was,
was foolishness at one point to say, "Man, this is the greatest news I've ever heard
And so our third and final point this morning is this: don't let the world
skew your confidence in the gospel.
Don't let the world skew your confidence in the gospel.
Just because the world is gonna stand up and say, "That, that's,
that's foolish," don't let that cause you to say, "Well, maybe I
need to take a, a different approach.
May- maybe this isn't strong enough to overcome this person's
doubt, this person's unbelief."
I, I watch this channel on YouTube called Matt's Off-Road Recovery because I drive
an electric car, and it's how I feel like I get more testosterone in my life.
This guy's got some- something called the world's largest off-road wrecker.
It's so cool.
Um, and so, uh, anyways, th- they go bail people out.
They pull people out of, of almost impossible situations to
get their, their cars out of.
And so there was one that I watched this past week where they went up to
Colorado, to Durango, Colorado, and this truck had gone off the side of
a mountain, and it was like 1,000 feet down the side of this mountain.
And so he brings his, his wrecker up there with, with two other vehicles
and, and he anchors his wrecker to these other vehicles, and he sends these
winch lines down and, and th- they haul this, this truck back up the side of
the mountain, and they eventually get it up and out, and, and they tow it out.
And it's just…
It's really cool.
It's one of those things that's like, maybe I wanna borrow, buy a
world's largest off-road wrecker.
Probably not super practical, but-
He's the guy that shows up because he's got the equipment to get him out.
Th- they, they couldn't call AAA . AAA would, would not even get to the trail.
They'd be like, "Sorry, uh, you're gonna have to upgrade your membership."
Um, th- they can't even call other off-road recovery people because
they're not equipped for the job.
And so they call this guy, and he goes, and he does these jobs that
no one else can do because he's got the thing that's able to do it
Y'all, the foolishness of God is wiser than men.
The weakness of God is stronger than men.
The gospel is what the world needs.
The world is wrecked off the side of the mountain, and
nothing can get them out of that.
And, and what's so tragic is for us as the church to have the thing they
need to get out of the situation that they're in, and to just sit back and
to watch them try everything else.
They call the tow truck of, of wealth and materialism only to
realize that it's not gonna happen.
They call the tow truck of, of hoping in, in a perfect family only to realize
that their marriage is falling apart and their kids are rejecting them and
don't want anything to do with them.
They call the tow truck of, of having a, a clean bill of health,
and they go to the doctor and the doctor says, "You've got a tumor,
and we think it might be cancerous."
And as the church, we're sitting back with the equipment, with the power to
see that they could be delivered from their despair, and we're sitting back
here shaking our heads and looking at them going, "Oh, if they only knew
That's why we're here
We're here so that they will know.
We're here because we read Paul say, "For the foolishness of God
is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."
A- and we sit here in the church and we say, "Amen," but do we believe it?
Do we believe it?
Or have we been sidelined because we're afraid that the world's gonna
make fun of us for loving Jesus?
Or we're afraid that the, the cultural Christian's gonna say,
"Dude, you're asking me way too much.
You legalist, why don't you get out of here?"
Or we're afraid that our boss may threaten our job.
A- a- and not that that doesn't hurt
But like Pastor Rod was, was talking about last week, if, if, if we're
thinking about that person, are, are we willing for, to have that,
that five minutes of, of discomfort ourselves to potentially see them
avoid an eternity of suffering in hell?
We preach Christ crucified.
All of us at some point in time thought the gospel was foolish.
All of us needed our eyes opened to see that the foolishness of God is wiser than
us, and His strength is more powerful than what we would deem powerful.
And so we preach Christ crucified, and we lean in on that.
And listen, that's what Peter preached, and where did it put Peter?
Well, at one point it put Peter, you remember in the book of Acts,
it put Peter on, on death row.
He was ready to be executed until the angel came and freed him because he
still had more work for him to do.
But guess what happened to Peter down the road?
What, what did Peter face?
Peter died for preaching the gospel.
Paul, our author in 1 Corinthians, Paul preached Christ, and
where did it get Paul?
It got Paul on the execution block with his head laid across
the, the stump waiting for the ax
We could keep going on, on these guys.
James, Thomas, Jude all died for their faith
So did the gospel fail those men?
Was the world wiser?
Was the world stronger?
Those witnessing their executions may have thought so, but we know better.
The very acts of the world meant to thwart the gospel so often just fuel it
The greatest evidence of that being the cross itself.
What seemed to everybody around like the defeat that put an end to Jesus and
all of his followers ended up instead being God's greatest act of victory.
Colossians 2:15, "He disarmed the rulers and the authorities and put them to open
shame by triumphing over them in him."
So I just wanna encourage you this morning not to grow defeated by the opposition
of a world that looks at you and thinks that you're a moron for following Jesus
Expect it.
Know it
But then remember, the wisdom of God is wiser than men, and his strength stronger
He's given you the message that saves.
He's entrusted that to you, to go and rescue as many
people as he will through you.
Eventually, everybody is going to recognize that God's wisdom wins.
We read about this in Philippians chapter two.
Philippians chapter two, verses four through eight, we read this, "Let each of
you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind amongst yourselves, w- which is yours in Christ Jesus, who,
though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing
to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.
Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled
himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."
So the world says, "See?
See?
How stupid is that?
He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
Who would do that?"
Well, God's not done.
Verse nine of Philippians chapter two, "Therefore, God has highly
exalted him," which implies that he's not still dead, right?
'Cause three days later, he walked out of the grave, never to enter, enter it again.
"And therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name that
is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven
and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord to the glory of the Father."
That day is coming when all will bow the knee before the wisdom of God.
All will bow the knee before the strength of God.
Until then, we live in the already not yet, and you've got the message.
You've got the message that God can use to see more people bow the knee now under,
uh, the, the, the humility of saying, "Lord, I, I need you as my savior," rather
than having to bow the knee then under the forced subjection of him as their Lord
and their King and their ultimate judge
And so go with it.
Don't let the world skew your confidence in the gospel
The foolishness of, of God is wiser than men.
The weakness of God is stronger than men
We preach Christ crucified, and now we turn to remember Christ
crucified through communion
These elements that we're going to take together are meant to cause us
to think about the cross, to think about the, the message of, of falling
Again, right there, right at th- these elements as, as you hold them, they
represent a, a body broken and bloodshed
Typically, a body broken and blood shed is not good news
People don't look for somebody to be their savior who is walking
around with a, a broken body and having their blood being shed
But that's because people look for a savior according to the wisdom of
the world, not the wisdom of God.
So these, these elements, they, they represent our hope.
They represent the wisdom of God, which is wiser than men, the strength
of God, which is stronger than men.
They represent the gospel, Christ crucified, a message that we would
have never come up with on our own.
They represent the, the message that says, "You couldn't, but God could."
And so these are things that are for us as a church, that are for us
to remember the sacrifice of Jesus.
If you're not a Christian this morning and you would say, "Hey, you know what, for
me this is still foolishness," I'm gonna ask you to let these elements pass by.
This is, is for the church.
This is for Christians this morning.
The rest of us, I, I just want us to, to spend time contemplating the
wisdom of God in the broken body of Christ and the blood of Christ.
Christ crucified, and how much we needed that, and that we should be thankful that
He didn't come to save us according to our wisdom, but according to His wisdom
I just wanna give one housekeeping item here.
These trays are a little bit pre- precarious 'cause we be- went back to
the broken matzah, not the, uh, Listerine strips that dissolve in your mouth
when you put the bread in your mouth.
So, um, just be careful as you're grabbing the cups out as the, the trays pass.
But the, the trays are gonna pass, the music's gonna play.
I'll come back up, and we'll take this together here in just a moment.
First Corinthians 11 verse 23, the Apostle Paul said this: "For I received
from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the
night when he was betrayed took bread.
And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This
is my body, which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.'"
In the same way also, he took the cup after supper saying, "This cup
is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me."
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim
the folly, the foolishness, the wisdom, the power, the strength of
the Lord's death until he comes.
Let's pray
Father, there's so much to be thankful for, especially on a, a
Sunday where we observe and where we re- remember the death of Christ
on our behalf through communion.
Lord, where we have spent time remembering and, and rejoicing over the reality that
we are secure in Christ, not because of a, a message that we concocted or
a wisdom of our own that says that we have to somehow work our way to you,
but because of the wisdom, the folly of the cross according to the world.
But the wisdom according to those of us who've been called, who have come
to know it as the good news that it is, that you came for us, that you saved
us, that you redeemed us through a, not just crucified savior, but through a
resurrected savior who is now sitting at your right hand interceding for us.
What a glorious truth and reality that is.
Lord, I pray that we would be those that remember that we have the message, we
have the power, we have the ability, we have the, the key to seeing people
come to, to saving faith in Jesus.
We know that you have to work, you have to open their eyes, but Lord,
you can use us as the mouthpiece.
So use us this week, God.
Bring us across those that need to hear the message this week.
May we not be a church waiting on the world to change, but may we be
a church that's active, that's out there, that's pursuing the lost,
that's taking the gospel to them.
And sure, some may reject us as fools, but some, God, according to your
perfect plan, may have their eyes open to see that this is the greatest
news, the, the greatest wisdom, the most powerful message that they could
ever know, and to come to faith.
May you be kind e- to use us towards that end.
We pray for a great week serving you, loving you, and following Jesus.
In his name, amen.