The Foolishness of the Gospel

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I don’t know if any of you have ever picked up the wrong glasses before. Have you ever put on somebody else’s glasses by mistake? Anybody?

I put on somebody else’s glasses on purpose the other day because my wife always tells me, oh, when I take off my glasses and I don’t have my contacts in, I can’t see you. It kind of sounds like when Jesus was dealing with the blind man and he said, I see men like trees walking around. And so I thought, are her eyes really that much different from mine?

So I got out her glasses the other day and I’m just almost immediately nauseated. I mean, this is, okay, I’m going to, I talked about putting them on and Benjamin was going to have to lead me by hand up on stage just to make a point with these. And the point is not that my wife is blind, but it just happened that all of my family, the stars aligned where all of my family is working in children’s classes this week, so nobody was here to help me.

I put those on, I can’t see a thing. I figure that’s probably what she sees without them. That is horrible.

You put on lenses that are not made for you, and it’s going to distort everything. You put on the wrong lenses, you look at life through the wrong lenses, and it distorts everything. And that’s what we’re going to look at this morning in 1 Corinthians.

We’re not talking about actual glasses, but we’re going to talk about the lens that the Corinthians were looking at the gospel through. They were looking at the gospel through the lens of their culture. And so many of the people in Corinth were looking at the gospel through the lens of their culture, and it distorted things.

It didn’t make sense, and Paul said, quit it. I think that’s good advice for us also. So we’re going to be in 1 Corinthians 1 this morning, where we left off last week.

We’re going to start in verse 18. If you would, turn with me there. If you can’t find it or don’t have your Bible, it’ll be up on the screen for you.

but once you do find it, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, we’re going to see what Paul says about this lens of culture and how it distorts the gospel and how we have to work around that and understand that the gospel doesn’t have to make sense to the culture, it makes sense to God. So we’re going to start in verse 18 this morning, and here’s what Paul says, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. So if anybody takes offense at the title of the message, the foolishness of the cross, That doesn’t come from me, that comes from Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

For the word of the cross is foolishness 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 cleverness of the clever I will set aside. Where is the wise man?

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 through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness. But to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world, and the despised God has chosen the things that are not, so that he may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God, but by his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that just as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord. And you may be seated. So Paul’s made an interesting segue here.

If you were with us last week when we started our study of 1 Corinthians, we see in the first 17 verses that really Paul is dealing with the subject of unity in the church and the importance of the church being together and coming together around the truth, getting rid of personality conflicts and personal agendas that drive people apart, and focusing on the gospel. And he ends in verse 17 by saying, For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. What he’s saying here, he’s been talking about how you shouldn’t be part of factions, you shouldn’t say, well, I’m a follower of Paul, or I’m a follower of this guy.

He said, I didn’t come here to baptize you, as important as that is. It is the job of the church to baptize people, to follow up with their salvation, and baptize them, and disciple them. That is part of the church, but Paul is saying here, I came to preach the gospel, not to create a following after myself.

Not to collect people who were going to follow me, because I baptized them, and because I taught them with the most eloquent speeches and all this. He said, I came to preach Christ. And he makes the point that it’s not about following him, Paul. It’s not about the eloquence of Paul’s words.

It’s about the content of the gospel. And that’s where he segues into what we read this morning in verse 18 about the foolishness of the gospel compared to the wisdom of the world. And so we come here to verse 18, and he’s already making the point that his work did not depend on the power of his words.

It depends on the power of the gospel. The gospel takes center place or should take center place in our ministry individually and collectively as a church. The gospel should take center stage.

We come to verse 18 and he draws this contrast here between those perishing and those being saved. And by the way, he says to those who are being saved, it’s not as though their salvation is incomplete. Because the Bible speaks in these terms that you have been saved, you are saved.

you are being saved you will be saved it’s it’s it’s a done deal but we’re waiting for the future fulfillment of all the promises that he’s made so when he says that you who are being saved he’s not saying well it’s in the process you’re not quite there yet just saying even now you are saved and you are upheld by the the gospel by the power of christ and he’s contrasting it with those who are perishing he said there are people in our world who are perishing there are people who are saved There are these two different camps, and the distinguishing factor between them is their response to the gospel. For the word of the cross, that’s the message of the gospel. And I’m going to use the word gospel a lot through this message, just to be very clear because it is one of those church terms that we don’t always use outside in regular conversation.

The gospel is the message of Jesus Christ. It is the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, according to the scriptures. He was buried and he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. And now God offers forgiveness and salvation to us because of what Jesus Christ did by his own grace when we believe that message.

That’s the gospel. That you and I, in spite of the fact that we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, in spite of that, we can have a relationship with the Father. We can have forgiveness.

We can have a clean slate. We can have eternal life. We can have all of these things because and only because Jesus Christ bled and died on the cross to pay for it and rose again to prove it.

That’s the gospel. So when I say the gospel, I’m not talking about something you’ve never heard of before. That’s the message.

That’s the message of the gospel. He says here, the word of the cross, that’s the gospel, it’s foolishness to those who are perishing. To this group of people out in the world who are part of this group that Paul would look at and say, even now they are perishing.

They’re dead and they just don’t realize it. He says, to them the gospel is foolishness. But to those who are in this other category of being saved, they’re in the lifeboat.

They recognize that the gospel is the power of God. And there’s this contrast. And if you’ve ever gone out and shared the gospel with anybody, you’ve probably witnessed this contrast. To those of us who’ve trusted Christ, it makes perfect sense. I don’t have to understand every detail of it.

There are things about God’s word that I don’t understand. There are questions I don’t have answers to. The thing that makes the least sense to me about the gospel is why God would love us and mess with us anyway.

Why he wouldn’t just write us off. That’s what I don’t understand about the gospel. But I take it that he says, I love you anyway.

I take it as the truth. I don’t have to have the explanation. But you and I who have trusted Christ as our Savior, we have this message that Jesus died so that our sins could be forgiven.

He was punished in our place. He died in our place. We take this message, and it seems like, from the standpoint of somebody who’s trusted in that message and the Holy Spirit has done a work in us, it seems like the most natural, understandable, sensible thing in the world.

And yet, sometimes we’ll talk to somebody and maybe they’ve never heard it before, or they’ve been steeped in church culture that says you must do, you must earn, you must perform, and to them the gospel sounds like moon man talk. It makes no sense. What are you saying to me?

This is the point that he’s trying to make. To the world outside, the gospel sounds foolish. And we come to verse 19, and he gives an explanation of why this is.

When he says, it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever, I will set aside. That’s a quote from the prophet Isaiah. And then Paul asks, where is the wise man?

Where’s the debater? Where is the expert? Because God has used, God has taken the wisdom of this world.

All the expertise, all the smartness. And God in this message that seems so foolish to them has actually proven His wisdom and their foolishness. God’s work, what God does in us, what God wants to do in us, it doesn’t require, it doesn’t depend on human wisdom.

And I know that to be true because there are times that I’ve gotten here or wherever and I’ve preached my heart out and I’ve thought that’s the best I’ve ever done. And it’s just like goes over everybody’s head, crickets. And there have been times that I’ve preached or taught and I thought, well, I messed that up.

I couldn’t string a coherent sentence together to save my life. And people come to me afterwards and say, you know, God really showed me this in the text. I understand that now.

Or I know what I’m supposed to do. And I’m thinking, okay, that has to be God because that wasn’t me. Because again, I couldn’t even form a sentence.

That happens to me more times than I care to admit. But God’s work doesn’t rely on human wisdom or human cleverness. For you to share the gospel with somebody, you don’t have to have exactly the right words.

I thought for years if I could rehearse exactly the right words, the right combination of words in the right order, then everybody would trust Christ and it just doesn’t work that way. And so you think I’ve got to have all the right words. I’ve got to have all the answers before I can share Christ. Nobody’s going to listen to me because I don’t know that much.

I’m not an expert. Listen, God can use anybody because it doesn’t depend on our cleverness. And I’ll read books or listen to podcasts on preaching and techniques trying somehow to get better.

And there will be guys that will talk about, well, you need to be creative in this aspect. Preach the gospel. It doesn’t depend on how clever we are.

The Holy Spirit works in people’s hearts. Just open your mouth. Say what God’s Word says and let Him work.

And He’s not limited by the world’s wisdom. He says He’s going to take all that wisdom and set it aside. How many times have we seen that the experts are wrong?

A lot. Now, I’m not arguing that there’s no place for expertise. I’m not arguing that there’s no place for specializing in certain topics and listening to people.

Listen, I’ll tell you if I don’t know something, but if I tell you I know it, it’s because I know it. But in many cases, we’ve seen, especially over the last few years, the experts don’t know what’s going on. And God is not limited by the wisdom of the experts.

Because as we’re learning, we also find things that the experts thought were true were not. We thought what appeared at one point to be the wisdom of the world is something that people mock later on and say, well, that was goofy. I can’t believe anybody ever thought that.

God routinely works in ways that confound human wisdom. God routinely works in ways that defy human wisdom. Just trust God and let Him work.

Just proclaim the message of the gospel and let Him work. And if you’re thinking, well, is he talking about me? Yes, I’m talking about you.

You don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to have gone to college and seminary and studied all the ins and outs of theology. If you know that Jesus died on the cross and rose again to save sinners, then you’ve got a story to tell.

And God can use you whether you have all the right words or not. And we come to verse 21, where he talks a little more about the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world. And he says, since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God.

God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. And we can look through history, we can even look around us today, and we can see that humanity has devised all sorts of ways to try to come to God and try to understand God. And none of them work, apart from what God’s revealed to us.

But if we think, oh, if I make this sacrifice in the old days, I make this sacrifice, then I’ll earn God’s favor this way to today. If I just do this, if I say these words, then God will listen to me. There’s all sorts of human wisdom about how God works and how to know Him.

But here the Apostle Paul says none of those led to people knowing God. He says in verse 21 that even through their wisdom they did not come to know God. Any way of trying to approach God or access God through our human wisdom is always going to fall flat.

And instead God uses the message of the cross to bring us to salvation. And even in theological circles, in church circles, there’s this idea among so many that we’ve moved beyond the old teachings and the old truths. We’ve moved beyond the cross.

We’ve moved beyond the gospel. That we’re here to perfect ourselves. We’re here to perfect society.

It’s become a social justice message more than anything else. Listen, that will never lead us to a knowledge and understanding of God. The only way we come to a knowledge and understanding and experience and relationship with God is through the cross of Jesus Christ. as foolish as it may sound to people in 2023.

He said it’s the foolishness of that message that saves those who believe. And we keep using this word foolishness. So why does the cross seem so foolish?

In verses 22 and 23, we get a glimpse of that, where he talks about what the people were looking for. He said the Jews asked for signs, the Greeks searched for wisdom. The cross seemed so foolish because the Jews were looking for signs of divine power.

They were looking for the Messiah. And they had different ideas about who the Messiah was than what Jesus ended up being. I’ve been listening to these online lectures from Hillsdale College about ancient Christianity.

And it’s been really interesting how this fits together with what Paul’s talking about here. There were different groups of Judaism that some of them, they were looking for almost this superhuman figure. They were looking for, some of them, a political and military leader.

That’s what a lot of people expected. They expected somebody who was going to kick out the Romans. And then Jesus got crucified by the Romans.

So some groups of the Jews were looking at Jesus and saying, that’s the Messiah? That’s what you want me to believe? It’s foolishness to them.

Others were looking for somebody who was going to come in this supernatural judgment. They were looking for the end times Messiah. And they were missing who he was supposed to be at the first coming.

And when Jesus doesn’t come and bring that judgment, as a matter of fact, Jesus comes and corrects their understanding of the scriptures and doesn’t judge the world according to their understanding, they’re saying, wait, you want me to believe that’s the Messiah? They were looking for some kind of sign that their Messiah had come. They were looking for some kind of sign from God that their Messiah had come.

And when he gave them a sign, they ignored it. Jesus said, the only sign you’ll get is the sign of Jonah. He’s referring to the resurrection.

and they argued that away. It wasn’t a big enough sign. I still read today where people say, even if he rose again from the dead, what does that prove?

A lot? Am I missing something here? Okay, I’m listening to that guy.

If he says I’m rising from the dead in three days and then he’s verifiably dead and three days later he’s no longer dead, I’m going to at least hear him out, right? Proves a lot. The Greeks.

It was complete foolishness to them. This class talks about the followers of Plato. And there was this idea that they weren’t even necessarily looking at all the Greek gods.

They believed that there may have been a supreme power in the universe. Maybe even higher than the other Greek gods. And they could get an understanding of him through wisdom and philosophy.

But the idea that he would stoop so low as to come and have anything to do with us, was just beyond their comprehension. And then you have the message of the cross where we’re saying God the Son became a human being in order to die for human beings. And they’re saying, that does not compute.

That makes no sense. Like when my wife told me, I don’t like chocolate ice cream. I said, can you use all those words in that order like that?

This makes no sense. The Greeks were looking at this idea that God had become a person and they’re saying that that’s not how this works. It was foolishness to them.

So Paul is being very deliberate when he keeps using this word foolishness that all of these people were looking at the message of the gospel through their philosophies, through their religious traditions. They were looking through their lenses that were not the right lenses and to them the gospel was all distorted and didn’t make sense. So while the Jews were looking for some powerful messianic figure who was going to whoop up on the Romans or the pagans or the sinners, and the Greeks were looking for something higher that they could access through their own reason, Christianity comes along and preaches that there is a Savior who was God-made flesh who was killed on a Roman cross and rose again three days later.

We are preaching a message that to the world does not make sense. For the Jews, it didn’t fit their expectations of the Messiah. That’s why he says in verse 23 it’s a stumbling block to them.

For the Greeks, it didn’t fit their expectations of divine knowledge. That’s why he says it’s foolishness to them in verse 23. But in verse 24, to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For those who have heard and believed, they recognize that Jesus reveals both God’s power and his wisdom. The cross was not a defeat for God. It was not a defeat for Jesus Christ. It was the ultimate victory.

It was what he came here to do. The idea that God became a man and died on the cross is not foolishness. It’s the wisest plan ever devised in history or before history.

And anything that says otherwise is what’s really foolish. And so he says in verse 25, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. God’s plan surpasses anything that man could devise.

When God looks to humanity like his plan is at its most foolish, it’s still wiser than anything we could come up with. And when God looks to humanity like he’s weak, he’s still stronger than we ever could be. And his message still has more power to save than anything and everything that we could devise.

Now, what do we do with this? What do we do with this idea? Because we’re not running around, most of us as far as I know, chasing platonic philosophy of the Greeks, and we’re not with the Pharisees.

What do we do with this? We recognize that in our culture, there’s still a tendency to look at the gospel through our culture, through that lens, and distort the gospel, and it looks foolish. And we could go through numerous examples this morning, but I’ll give you two that I think are the most prevalent.

There used to be, it may not be as big as it used to be, I don’t know, but there used to be a certain segment of the population that insisted you have to do something to earn your salvation. You have to do something to earn your place with God. And they would look at this idea where the gospel says, no, Jesus paid for all of it for you.

No, no, nothing’s free. I’ve got to do something. I know, I’ll go to church.

I’ll give money. I’ll try harder. I’ll try to be a good person.

And this idea that we’re preaching that Jesus Christ paid for all of it. Now, it’s not free. It cost Him a lot.

But He offers it freely to us. But we preach this message that Jesus Christ freely offers salvation. And it just, sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to people.

There was a man at my first church that I pled with for years. And I think I’ve told you this story. But I used to ask him, do you know where you would go if you were to die today?

Well, I hope to heaven. Okay, I want you to have hope, but that’s not where I want you to use that word. I want you to know, why would God let you into heaven?

Well, I try to be a good person. And we would go over and over and over and over the free offer of salvation that Jesus Christ made. And up to the time that I left, it just never seemed to get through.

But a lot of us are told in Western civilization, be self-reliant, be independent, earn your way. And we look at the gospel through that lens and we distort it. It is something that we’ve got to earn.

There’s also a segment of our population that looks at the gospel and says, what do you mean that I’m a sinner? Who are you to tell me? Who is God to tell me?

Or the God I worship would be okay with it. Well, the God you worship might be okay with it, but that doesn’t mean he’s the same God that’s in here. My Jesus would do this.

My Jesus would support this. We have a weakened view of sin in our culture, And it distorts the gospel. Because if you eliminate sin, what do we need to be saved from?

And what’s the urgency? And so if we come to the gospel with these rose-colored glasses, it says we’re all okay. We don’t understand the purpose of the gospel.

The truth is we’ve all sinned against God. The truth is no matter how unpleasant it is to hear, we are all broken before Him. What makes that message so incredible, though, is that He loved us anyway.

And He’s there ready to forgive and to put the broken pieces back together and to remake us into what He intended us to be. And those aren’t the only distortions. We could spend the rest of the day, maybe we’ll talk about some more of those tonight in our Q&A session.

But we could talk all day about the ways our culture can distort the gospel. But just understand, any baggage that we bring with us to the culture that makes the gospel not make sense is something that we need to work through and not change the gospel to accommodate. And so we come to verse 26, and Paul says, consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.

He says, look at yourselves. Look at your calling in Christ. Who here belongs to Christ because you were wise enough? Keep your hands up.

I’m paraphrasing. Keep your hands up. How many of you are here because you’re noble, because you’re deserving?

How many of you belong to Christ because you’re strong enough? If he were preaching that to him, he’d say, no, no, keep your hands up while I count them. No hands across the room.

We know who we are. they were not in Christ because of their wisdom or their might or their nobility. He says in verse 27, God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

And God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen the things that are not so that he may nullify the things that are. Now that does not mean that he’s calling every believer the weak and the base and the foolish, although the world may look at us that way. But he’s saying God can use anybody.

And so what if you’re not up there with Plato and the Greek philosophers? So what if you’re not up there with the Pharisees? He said, you belong to Jesus Christ. And God can use you.

Yes, God can use the message of the gospel preached by somebody who knows very little even to confound the Pharisees. I was in the truck the other day with my kids and there was a clip played on the radio. This preacher preaching a message about Zacchaeus.

It was about 30 seconds of the message. And Madeline said, wait, isn’t the story of Zacchaeus about repentance? Yeah.

So wasn’t he wrong in like everything he just said? Yes, baby, he was. Congratulations, you know more than that so-called preacher.

We’re talking full-on heresy. Not just, oh, he made a mistake, I’ve done that. Full-on heresy.

He said, congratulations, you know more than that man with all his degrees and everything. My little daughter about to start fifth grade. God can speak through anybody.

And if you don’t measure up to somebody else, it doesn’t matter. God can still use you. Because ultimately in this, God has chosen the weak things of the world.

God has chosen the foolish things of the world. God has chosen this message that confounds the wisdom of the scholars. This message that endures all the people who have pronounced its untimely death.

God uses this message still to save people, still to save sinners from their sins and bring them into a relationship with Himself. And because He does that, because He works in ways that don’t fit with our wisdom and our might and our nobility, God deserves all the credit. That’s why He comes in the end saying that so that no man may boast before God.

He’s saying you’re not a believer because you earned it. You don’t belong to Christ because you earned it. You’re not saved because you earned it.

But also the world out there needs to know they’re not saved because they reasoned their way there. They’re not saved because they pushed their way there. They’re not saved because they did something to earn God’s favor.

They are saved because Jesus Christ did what no one else could do and did it on their behalf so that he deserves the credit. He deserves the glory for saving us. And he ends up saying, as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.

And you and I, you and I need to look for the places that we distort the gospel in our thinking. Look at the places where we say the gospel just doesn’t make sense because I don’t believe this or this or this. We need to recognize those things that distort the gospel and recognize that even if we think it sounds crazy, even if God doesn’t make sense to us, he’s wiser than we are.

He gets the credit. And we need to present the gospel to people understanding that God can use us and understanding that he gets the credit for saving. And that message is so simple as I presented at the beginning of this today, that we’ve all sinned against God.

Jesus Christ came and took our punishment even though we didn’t deserve him to do that he came and took our punishment he died in our place and he rose again three days later to prove it and now God offers forgiveness and salvation not because of anything you do or earn or deserve but simply believing that Jesus Christ paid for your sin in full if you believe that you can ask him this morning for that salvation for that clean start that fresh start that he offers that eternal life you can have all of it if you simply believe and ask him