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GRACE IN THE MESS: The Foolishness of God
1 Cor. 1:18-25
When I was in Athens recently, pretty cool to be able to say that. I was able to check off one of my bucket list items by visiting the Parthenon on top of the Acropolis, but what I didn’t know was that there were the remains of at least 3 temples on the Acropolis. And when we were entering the main area, I looked back over my shoulder and was able to see Mars Hill where Paul preached his sermon from Acts 17.
And in the background, I saw another temple and the remains of several other temples. They had a temple for every imaginable god and, as you know, even one for the unknown god.
If you look at Greek and Roman mythology and all the gods, they created they were at best flawed slightly stronger humans.
My friends, let me tell you something about our God. Our God is way more than a weak human and perfect in all His ways. He is limitless in power, limitless in knowledge, full of wisdom, mercy and love, perfect in complete holiness. That is my God!
Let me make this statement: Human wisdom is completely inferior to the wisdom of God!
You see, without an absolute standard for truth, the ideas of right and wrong are based upon human opinion. You see the problem here, right? If it’s based on human opinion, which human? Can we even find 2 that would completely agree?
You see the Greeks loved philosophy and Corinth was in Greece. Philosophy, at best, is good when it agrees with Scripture. When it doesn’t agree with Scripture is may be deceptive. The key is that it is much more valuable to know Scripture than it is to know philosophy.
Humanity is caught up with human opinion when it should be caught up with learning God’s opinion. Our tendency is to look to everything but God.
The problem of humanity is that we always think more highly of ourselves than we should and more lowly of God than we should. This is how we can make so many things into a god.
This is why we read in:
Romans 1:25, “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
Human ingenuity can come up with some pretty cool things, like indoor plumbing. How many of you under the age of 30 ever used an outhouse?
I grew up on the lake, and all our cabin had was a little two seat outhouse. I could never think of what good the second seat was for. Plumbing…good. Human wisdom has done a lot.
But when it comes to the important questions, “Where did we come from?” “Where are we going?” “What’s right and what’s wrong?” To these questions human wisdom has no answers.
The Superiority of God’s Wisdom v. 18
1 Corinthians 1:18, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
God sending His son to die on a cross in some forsaken little country in the middle of a wasteland. That makes absolutely no sense………..to the world.
The world struggles with a plan of salvation that leaves no room for man’s merit, for attainment, for achievements. We want to have some part some say in how good we are when in reality we are totally depraved. We are sinners, period!
The message of the cross is the entire gospel message. It is the death on the cross to pay the price of our sin and it is the burial and resurrection which defeats death and brings us new life.
THAT’S THE POWER OF GOD!
Now, this message is hard. When Jesus told Peter of His coming death how did Peter react?
Matthew 16:22-23, “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Jesus told Peter of God’s plan of salvation and Peter was rejecting it. This was a stumbling block and Jesus rebukes Peter for voicing Satan’s rejection of God’s plan.
The plan of salvation is THE POWER OF GOD.
So, Paul makes this declaration that God’s wisdom is superior to man’s wisdom and now he is going to provide us with:
5 Reasons why God’s Wisdom is Superior!
Paul does this in 1 Corinthians 1:19-2:5 so today we will look at the first 2 reasons.
- The permanence of God’s wisdom. V. 19-20
1 Corinthians 1:19-20, “For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”
Paul is quoting Isaiah 29:14 here. It is a prophecy that won’t see complete fulfillment until the end times as we see in Revelation 17:14. But there was also a direct reason for Isaiah’s prophecy when he was speaking to the Israel leaders.
Isaiah was pointing to this concept that God’s wisdom was superior to mans and Isaiah records how that wisdom had a practical application for their time. In Isaiah 37:36 Isaiah speaks of the battle that is recorded in 2 Kings 17.
In this battle God’s sends 1 single angel that kills 185,000 Assyrians. God fought the battle while the Israel’s slept. The Israelis wanted to be able to rationally figure out how they could fight the battle when God says ‘trust Me’ I’ll fight the battle for you.
Jeremiah 8:9, “The wise will be put to shame; they will be dismayed and trapped. Since they have rejected the word of the Lord, what kind of wisdom do they have?”
God’s wisdom will last forever while that of this world will simply fade away.
The 2nd reason why God’s wisdom is superior.
- The power of God’s wisdom. V. 21-25
1 Corinthians 1:21-25, “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
Here it is: God choose to use what the world thinks of as foolishness to save the world. We can trade:
- Poverty for riches.
- Sin for righteousness.
- Despair for hope.
- Death for life.
You see, the simplicity of God delivers what the combined wisdom of all of humanity can’t!
Nature itself declares the greatness of God! Look at a mountain without wonder, look at a sunset without admiration, look at the depth of space without awe…I challenge you.
In this all of man’s wisdom doesn’t lead us to the simplicity of the cross.
Paul shows us here in verse 22 that the Jews demanded signs and the Greeks wanted wisdom. Let’s look at this closer.
First, the Jews wanted signs. They wanted miracles to prove He was Messiah. But here is the thing, Jesus did miracles. Many of which were done in the presence of those who would persecute Him.
Jesus healed a blind man who had been blind from birth and everyone knew he was blind, but now he saw. These leaders saw this man, knew this man to have been blind his entire life, but refused to believe that the man who healed him was who He claimed to be.
The stumbling block for the Jews is that they could not accept the idea of a crucified Messiah. Their idea was that Messiah would be the conquering hero…only.
We know that Jesus will be the conquering hero when He comes the second time, but sin needed to be dealt with first.
The Greeks wanted intellectual proof, something they could figure out for themselves. Something they could debate and rationalize. They were in it for the exciting new ideas, the intellectual novelty rather than a sincere desire for the truth.
Their desire for proof is an excuse for not believing in the gospel.
Both Jew and Greek would find an excuse not to believe.
Jesus is a stumbling block to the unbelieving Jew, but Savior to the believing Jew.
Jesus is foolishness to the unbelieving Greek, but Redeemer to the believing Greek.
The message of the cross is this: Son becomes man, dies for our sin, is raised from the dead to raise us to life!