1 Corinthians 1:18-25

But we are going to be in 18 through 25.

The text will be up on the screen as well as in your Bibles.

Thank you.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing.

But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.

Where is the one who is wise?

Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

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, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and folly to Gentiles.

But to those who are called, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

And the weaknesses of God is stronger than men.

Amen.

Alright, let's pray.

Lord, thank you for this text, and we ask for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as we look at it.

Would you uh instruct us in righteousness?

Would you correct us where we need correction?

Rebuke us, Lord, where we need rebuke.

Um, Lord, we want to lay open our lives before you in a vulnerable way where we allow you to um deal with us and um build us up where we need to be built up and encourage us, Lord, where we need encouragement.

Um bless this time we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

You may be seated.

And we continue on in the book of Corinthians.

We've been going through 1 Corinthians for a few weeks, and um we have gotten into a new section, um, or we've started this section last week that's dealing with and pointing out um kind of the first issue of the Corinthian church.

And that was the idea that there were factions in the church.

The Corinthian people were divided over their favorite preacher.

And last week we saw that there were four of their favorite preachers.

Can you name them?

Apollos, Peter, who's called Cephas in the text, right?

Paul and Christ.

That's right.

So those are the kind of the four camps.

Those are the four camps that these people are broken into.

And so last week we saw Paul appeal to these believers and say, I wish you were not.

I appeal to you to not be divided, but to have the same mind, to be unified.

And he's going to be talking about church unity all the way up through chapter 4, verse 18.

So this problem of church divisions gives Paul the opportunity to explain a lot of things about Jesus, about Christians, about pastors, about our nature, our carnal nature versus our spiritual nature.

There are a bunch of sub-themes that come up as Paul is trying to correct this issue in the church.

Paul is addressing their divided state by reminding them of the unifying message that they have believed.

What was the message that these this church has believed?

The gospel, right?

They've believed the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so last week we saw, well, this is the the, we'll come back to the map in a minute.

Last week we saw this verse, verse 17.

Christ did not send me to baptized, but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

So why is Paul saying this?

Well, again, there is one camp that was saying, Well, we're of Paul, right?

These divisions were based all around personality.

And so Paul is now going to correct this by talking about his own ministry, his own preaching.

And he says, Christ didn't send me to baptize.

So, and he kind of got riffs on the whole baptism thing for a while, right?

And he says, I didn't baptize very many people, right?

He couldn't even hardly name many members in the church who had been baptized by him.

Instead, he's like, I was sent to preach the gospel.

And he characterizes his preaching by saying, it was not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

And one of the things we closed with last week was, I said, why don't you meditate on the power of the cross and what it means for the for the power of the cross to be emptied?

What does it mean to take away the power of the cross in our own lives?

What has the cross done in your own life?

So, in our reading this morning, and what we're looking at this morning in verses 18 through 25 elaborates on verse 17 that we saw last week.

So I wanted to keep this fresh in your minds as we kind of follow Paul's train of thought through verses 18 through 25.

Here's kind of the outline that we're going to look at.

We're first going to look at 18 through 21, where Paul gives three reasons and four questions why Paul preached a simple message about the cross.

Three reasons, four questions.

And then verses twenty two through twenty five, it's the gospel is a message that is out of this world.

The gospel message is alien in its nature.

So let's go through this.

Paul told the Corinthian church that God had called him to preach the gospel.

Now, look back up at verse 1, 1-1 in 1 Corinthians.

You have it in front of you?

In verse 1, in your Bibles, not verse 18, but in your Bibles, verse 1 says this Paul called to be an apostle.

Now, an apostle is uh it's taking it's a um a term that's borrowed from kind of shipping and commerce, where ships were sent out across the seas on a journey.

And so um uh the Greek word apostolos is borrowed from that maritime terminology, and it's applied by Jesus and Paul to refer to people that are sent out on a mission.

And so there were 12 apostles that Jesus chose, right?

And then Paul is also an apostle, and then there's a sense, a little a apostle, where even to this day God gifts individuals and calls them to be apostles, and we would typically identify them as ones who are kind of sent to pioneer new works, plant multiple churches in a region.

That's that's kind of like the manifestation of an apostle today.

So Paul tells this church that he was called to be an apostle in verse 1, and now in verse 18, Paul tells the Corinthians again that he was, or in verse 17, that he's called to preach the gospel.

And his manner of preaching is not with eloquent wisdom, the message version says fancy rhetoric, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

So now Paul is going to elaborate on the contrast and contrast fancy wisdom against the message of the cross.

Fancy wisdom against the message of the cross.

The first reason that we have is this the cross message is foolish for those who are perishing, but for those who are being saved, it is God's power.

The cross message is foolish.

Here's how Paul puts it in verse 18.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

You'll see even in our context here, I think it's five times that either the word folly or foolish is used.

And this theme is going to continue next week.

Folly in the sense of Paul is using sarcasm to communicate here.

He's talking about how there's a scoffing that the world does when it looks in from the outside at Christians.

The world, somebody who doesn't yet have a relationship with God, looks at the Christian message and the message of the cross, and they say, That's dumb.

That's silly.

The other day I was hanging out with my daughter Hanale, and um one of her things that she likes to do is to watch uh this particular YouTube channel called Glitter Box or something like that.

I can't remember what it's called.

And it's these two little girls, you know, about nine or I think they're like nine years old and fourteen years old, and um they just kind of do life, and they're like these two little YouTubers, and they're just silly for like um 20 minutes each episode.

And I sat there with with with my daughter, just watching her mesmerized by these two little girls.

And I was thinking, this poor kid, you know, she didn't have any friends that she could just like play with or something, like no, but it was silly, you know, it's just silly time for these for these little kids.

And uh it was fun, it was fun spending time with my daughter, but it wasn't entertaining at all.

And what Paul is saying is that those that are perishing, they look into Christianity and they go, that's stupid, that's silly.

Now, do you see the irony here?

The irony of how Paul lays this out?

I mean, gosh, we could, I don't even know.

I'm I'm gonna cut myself off at 1115 because I want to honor your time.

But I cannot promise we're gonna make it through the whole text because there's so much here.

But do you see who thinks that the cross is folly?

It's the ones who are dying.

Isn't that ironic?

The ones who are dying and in decay are the ones who are going, that is silly, the cross is silly.

That is the most like um what we would what would we call that?

We would say that that person is self-deceived or they lack self-awareness, right?

That they would they would critique a message where they themselves are in a position or in a posture of decay.

But then Paul says, but to us who are being saved, it being the word of the cross, it is the power of God.

The cross is the power of God.

So, fooly or foolishness, it's the opposite of wisdom.

Paul is saying, you are dying over there, and in the midst of your languishing, you're rendering judgment on my belief system as if it were foolish.

So here's a question.

Don't we want the perishing to be saved?

When you read this, don't you feel like, wait a second, why would God allow those who are in a condition of perishing not to perceive the cross as a source of power?

And if Paul is preaching a message that is perceived as foolish, won't that inhibit people from accepting the gospel?

Well, I think that that is exactly the point.

Paul is asking people to commit.

Paul is asking people to commit to a message that is radically different from the body of wisdom being preached by the Greeks.

Remember last week we talked about the so the sophists?

That there was a there was a full-time job, there was a career that some people made out of just speaking eloquent words, kind of like how we have modern-day podcasters, and and people will speak, you know, just kind of go and give public presentations, maybe think of TED Talks or something like that.

Well, the Greeks had these sophists that would come through.

And Paul is not trying to make the message of the cross just another sophistry presentation.

He's not trying to say, look, this is just another competing idea with um compared to the guy who came through last week.

Not that you could kind of chew on this and riff on this for just a little bit of time and then and then you'll wait for the next smart, wise guy to come through.

No, Paul is saying that this is a message that is completely alien to anything going on in this world of wisdom.

In fact, it's considered folly to those who are perishing.

The second reason why Paul used simple speech to communicate the cross, Paul quotes Isaiah 29, 14.

He's going to say, Well, God said this, so I do that, right?

He says in Isaiah 29, 14, is proof that God isn't interested in propping up human wisdom.

Let's look at it.

Verse 19.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discerning of the discer the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.

Again, Paul has said that he isn't preaching a fancy or eloquent message about the cross, lest its power be deluded.

God's work through his son Jesus isn't the fulfillment of the most brilliant of minds getting together in a room and brainstorming salvation.

The cross is an alien idea from God, and it renders the best human ideas as expired or inept.

This passage that we're looking at has, until studying it kind of in depth, is one of the passages of scripture that I did not like.

Because I grew up in kind of a a Christian setting that was kind of uh isolated itself, right?

That the world is all bad, and us Christians over here, we're gonna have our little party on the cul-de-sac, right?

We've got the Christian cul-de-sac going on, and we've got like our own Christian art and our own Christian music, which is oftentimes terrible, but I didn't know because it was a Christian cul-de-sac, that's what we call it, right?

It's like we got our own little Christian party going on.

And so as I got older and I started reading and was being exposed to the writings of non-Christians, I realized, wow, there's some really smart and good non-Christians.

And then you come along to a passage like this, and it looks like Paul's agreeing with those people that had me isolated, that the world is bad, and only Christians have the market cornered when it comes to ideas and wisdom.

And so, therefore, this passage was difficult for me.

Now, as we unpack this, I'm I think you're gonna see that Paul is not saying that an unregenerate person cannot discover truth or put truth together into really good packages to form ideas or concepts.

I don't think he's saying that at all.

But I think that he is more in the positive, affirming the message of the cross, and he's trying to divorce the Corinthian Christians from a cultural idolatry around these sophists, these wisdom speakers.

And so, again, Paul uh is pointing out this idea or this quoting from Isaiah 29, where God is saying, I'm going to destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.

In other words, God did not bring Jesus into the world or have him die on the cross because a bunch of smart people thought that would be a good idea.

It's not the the cross is an alien idea from God.

We're gonna see that over and over again, that the cross is very invasive and different from the ideas that the world comes up with.

It renders the best human ideas as expired or um inept when it comes to God's original ideal for humanity.

Not that those ideas are necessarily bad, it's just that wise people are answering questions and suggesting solutions that are so limited and short-sighted when they are compared to God's overall plan.

Now, we're gonna take a break from the the reasons that Paul is giving, and we're gonna see four questions that Paul poses.

Four questions that Paul poses.

Where's the one who is wise?

Where is the squribe?

Where's the debater of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

We could read into this, Paul saying, Where's Plato?

Where's Aristotle?

Where is Socrates?

Not that their ideas were wrong, but where are they themselves?

They've died.

Could it be that there was at this time a cultural infatuation with these sophists?

The people just loved the new philosophers and were who were coming through Corinth.

And Paul is asking for their location.

Do you see how it is?

Where are they?

Where is the one who is wise?

Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater?

Again, maybe having in the idea that these sophists would be on a track, on an itinerary track, where they wouldn't even stay in Corinth.

They wouldn't make the type of investment in a com in developing community.

They were just paid to come and deliver the latest and greatest idea.

And then they were gone.

And then they would die.

Where are they?

Now we go back to the third reason that Paul gives for his simple preaching, his simple preaching.

God's wise plan was that the world wouldn't know him through wisdom.

Again, God's wise plan was that the world would not know him through wisdom.

What does that mean?

What does that mean?

Well, let's first look at it in Scripture.

Verse 21.

And I just want to say that I think that verse 21 unlocks, it's what I would call the hermeneutical key.

It's our key to interpreting this overall passage.

He says this, for since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom.

I think that that phrase right there is what Paul is driving home.

Okay?

God was wise, and according to God's wisdom, he determined that the world would not know God through wisdom.

It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

God determined through.

Through his wisdom, that human ideas and human philosophy would not be the bridge to reconcile man with God.

We've got to step back for just a second and consider the human nature.

How are humans doing, right?

How are we doing?

Are we born into a relationship with God where God knows us perfectly and we can relate to God?

No, the Bible says that we are born into the condition of sin, where we are born separated from God.

Now that's not how God made the world, right?

In the beginning, Genesis 1 and 2 tells us that God created the world in a way where humanity and God are in perfect friendship.

And that humanity is made to be the friend of God.

And when we enjoy relationship, human relationship, we're only enjoying a taste of what we were originally made for.

We were primarily made to be the friend of God.

But that friendship died the moment that humanity rebelled against God's word, right?

God said, You shall not eat of this fruit.

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God's word, humanity fell and there was a breach in the relationship between God and man.

The story of the Bible from Genesis 3 onwards is the story of God intervening in human history to reconcile people back to Himself.

He is re-establishing humanity's friendship with God.

Paul here is saying that God didn't use human wisdom to mend the broken relationship between God and man.

Do you hear that?

God didn't use human wisdom to mend the broken relationship between God and man.

Think about the history of human ideas over the last 4,000 years.

Development.

Philosophers, scientists, engineers.

Those of you that are in school, oftentimes, like this when you're in an undergraduate program, you are studying the developmental history of that school of thought.

Like how where do we how where are we at now when it comes to philosophy, or where are we at when it comes to psychology or engineering, right?

You we start with like the history of that field.

We live as beneficiaries of thousands of years of men and women wrestling with difficult questions.

Our lives are relatively safe and comfortable because of smart people compiling their knowledge together to solve problems.

I was I was struck by this this week.

Every once in a while, and I'm sure this happens to you, you just kind of realize like when when we live in history, like what we have access to is like crazy, you know?

Even with this um crazy thing that's going on with the um uh the virus in China, like the fact that we live now versus 200 years ago, you know, it's like I don't know what's gonna happen with that, and it's a little bit scary.

But I'm glad I live now and not back 200 years ago and with that thing going on, right?

We are a we are we are the beneficiaries of thousands of years of wise people.

Our lives are safe and comfortable and efficient because of some amazing thinkers.

There was this um and this is the video.

I want to just show you this one-minute video of a guy who wrote a book on the evolution of uh of ideas.

My last book was called The Rational Optimist.

I don't know if anybody here read it.

It was chronicling the amazing improvements in human living standards over the last 50 years, and uh the the fact that the average person on the planet is earning three times as much as they were 50 years ago, that the uh they're living 30% longer, they're burying uh two-thirds fewer children, the greatest measure of misery anybody can think of.

And uh on the whole, people are wealthier, healthier, happier, cleverer, kinder, keep cleaner, more peaceful, freer, and more equal than than they've ever been.

Um uh and what I was interested in was why this is happening.

What what what what we're seeing around the world, this extraordinary transformation happening now much more fast, much more rapidly in Africa than than any other continent, uh a continent that people thought was not going to be able to catch up with the rest of the world and is now doing so.

Um and the the answer, of course, in a word, is innovation, which is something you guys do here, uh I imagine.

And uh so just by well way of illustration, you know, he goes on, you can w look up the uh the YouTube um video on your own if you want.

But uh I I want to contract you see, so this guy's written a book, Matt Ridley's written a book on the evolution of ideas, of which we are um beneficiaries of.

But God did not appoint human wisdom as a means of divine reconciliation.

Isn't that interesting?

God did not appoint for humans to come up with good enough ideas on how this divine breach could be reconciled.

That was just not now, God has used, and I'm grateful for what that gentleman there is talking about, of the the evolution of thought and ideas coming together.

But God did not appoint human wisdom as the means of divine reconciliation.

God did not promise Adam and Eve that humanity would be rescued from its folly once enough ideas were put together.

God did not look at the broken friendship between him and humanity and say, well, give it enough time, they'll figure it out.

The cross is not the evolution of a bunch of good ideas, is it?

It's not.

And yet the relationship that people have with wise ideas is oftentimes an expectancy that those ideas will save them.

We live in an age very similar to the Corinthians, where there's this hope and expectation that innovation is a means of salvation.

Because we have been rescued from so much by innovation, we have settled for a gospel of innovation, something that is subpar to the original plan God wanted.

And Paul comes in kind of I was gonna say he comes in like a wrecking ball.

That's not the that's not the image I wanted in the middle of preaching.

But he comes in in a destructive way and he says, he says, look, that's not, that is not how God intended for your redemption to occur through the accumulation of good ideas.

So you just think of TED Talks.

I love watching TED Talks, right?

Some of the smartest people sharing ideas, and they're short, right?

It would be great if I could be as short as a TED talk.

I know you all agree with that.

But they're short, you know, they're they're but here's the thing.

Isn't it interesting that that those people put on those those stages often?

I know Billy Graham has had shared there, and other Christians have shared, but but the the things that people are not wrestling with, the answers that are not given is like here is the the primary issue is that you are no longer a friend of God, but here's how to mend that relationship, right?

That is even when Billy Graham appeared at at Ted, it was kind of like that's silly.

You're solving a problem we don't even necessarily feel like we have.

Isn't that fascinating?

In summary, Paul was not coupling the gospel message with eloquent wisdom as another new idea that was passing through Corinth.

Paul was preaching the cross because it pleased God to save those who believed.

Well, I guess I just read that.

Let's go on to this.

The gospel is a message that is out of this world.

That's what he's gonna say next in verses 22 through 25.

The Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles.

Paul points out that the Jews are interested in signs, and the Greeks are seeking, and they're interested in wisdom.

In contrast to both, Paul is saying that Christ is preached.

Again, Paul is pointing out how different the message of the cross is from what the culture is seeking.

How different it is from what the culture is seeking.

Verse 24, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For Christians, those of us who have believed the gospel message, Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

You've got the Jews over here, they're looking kind of like the idea is um like conspiracy theorists kind of trying to put the pieces together, looking for a sign, and then you've got the the wisdom seekers, those who are kind of pursuing different ideas with the Greeks.

And Paul is like, here's this outside, alien, radical thought of the cross.

And the cross is both the power of God that the Jews are longing for, and it's the wisdom of God that the Jews are longing for.

Verse 25.

The foolishness of God, for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, wiser than the wisdom of men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

God on his worst, this is a this is um sarcasm, as if God could be foolish, or as if God could have a day where he is weak.

He's using kind of anthropomorphic language, but in other words, God on his worst day is better than humanity.

He's he's trying, again, this this these people were enmeshed within their culture, and they needed to have their hearts divorced from some of these idols that were in existence in their culture.

He's trying to separate them from that idolatry.

We would use terms like, you know, he's way out of your league, or it's beyond your grasp, or you're not up to the task.

Human wisdom, it's just it's it's does not measure up to the wisdom of God.

In conclusion, what does this have to do with division in the church?

So I would say that the church was importing an evaluative evaluative systems from the world as they considered the different pastors who had come through.

And so, Paul, by saying what he's saying about about wisdom and God's wisdom, he is pointing them back to the unifying message of the cross.

He's saying, All three of us, Apollos, Peter, myself, we are only preachers of the same message about the cross.

That message of Christ's cross, it is the epicenter of wisdom.

Shift your attention from the orator and the speaker and the delivery boy to the substance of God's wisdom.

The cross of Christ.

That is your source of unity.

Let me ask one other question.

Is Paul critical of human wisdom?

Is Paul critical of human wisdom?

Yes and no.

Paul is critical of human wisdom because it was being relied upon as an identity maker.

He's critical of human wisdom in that it is insufficient in producing the single most important answer humanity needs.

But Paul is not suggesting that all human wisdom is faulty.

Uh it is, I should say it is, just insufficient.

And our fixation and fling with human wisdom needs to be killed.

It needs to be put in its proper place.

Let's, these are the three things that I think we can do this week, just in response to this text.

First, let's evaluate the degree of anticipation and hope that we are placing upon human ideas.

There is a lot of reason.

I mean, so much knowledge has been accumulated, it is easy to idealize the evolution of thought.

It's easy, right?

I know that the way that this idolatry took form in my own life was just being so fascinated by the development of like Apple when Steve Jobs was around and he would come out with the next product, right?

It was be like, oh my gosh, this is cool.

Like he's gonna solve the world's problems by making a phone, right?

We've got to make sure that we need to evaluate the degree of anticipation and hope that we're placing upon human ideas.

Second, meditate on how Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

One of my favorite writers, Ravi Zacharias, talks about how if we place the cross at the center of our hearts, if that's the meditation in our hearts, it will remedy any disappointments that we face.

It will help us offer forgiveness in the most difficult settings.

If the cross is the center of our life, the meditation of our hearts, then it will give us an ability to love in a way that is not human.

It will impart to us a peace.

The work of the Spirit in our lives, if you will just give some time thinking about the cross of Christ, it will become to you power and it will become to you wisdom.

And I know you're thinking, well, I've got all these other things to think about.

Let me just tell you, saints, the cross is not necessarily competing against everything else you need to think about.

But if it is the overarching thought in your life, if it is central to your meditation in life, the wisdom, it's amazing the wisdom that comes through.

The wisdom of the cross and how it will, how practical it becomes.

I dare you, I dare you to allow the cross to become super practical in the problems you face.

When someone cuts you off in traffic, right?

When you're frustrated with your boss at work, right?

As you're trying to figure out something, let the cross, let the cross be, it has this incredible divine power.

Number three, talk with people about the uh the the shouldn't be in there, Jesus' crucifixion and share how his death on the cross has changed your life.

You have a testimony.

The cross has done a work in your life.

It's forgiven you, but it has become practical in your life.

You have been impacted by the power of the cross.

I would encourage you to, on a whim, talk to people at random about the cross.

Watch, just as an experiment, as a social experiment.

Watch.

Is it going to be something where it's scoffed at and it's foolishness?

Or maybe, maybe the spirit empowers you and touches that person's heart, and it becomes the power of God.

I'd encourage you to just bring up the cross in your conversations this week as we as we go about life, as we're walking along in the Uber, on the train, in the bus, whatever you're doing, take take a um experimental, do an experimental conversation with somebody about the cross.