04 The Wise Message 'Smart' People Call Foolish (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome, this is Krisan Marotta. Thank you for downloading Wednesday in the Word. This is the podcast that teaches you not only what scripture means, but how to figure it out. Today is our fourth talk in our series on 1 Corinthians. We'll be covering chapter 1, verses 18 through 25. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, or you can find them on wednesdayintheword.com slash 1 Corinthians 4. Thanks so much for downloading the podcast. To review, Paul is making an argument that started in chapter 1, verse 10 and runs through the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians. And he started by making what I call his smaller point about the divisions in the Corinthian church. And we don't want to get distracted by his first point about divisions in the church, because his primary concern is not that everyone get along and they stop bickering. Rather, the divisions reflect a bad understanding of discipleship. They reflect a bad theology. And he's saying, Don't mistake me for your teacher or rabbi. We are all disciples of Christ. I, Paul, am not the issue. The truth of the gospel is the issue. Even though I call that his smaller point, it is still an important point to make. It's just that he has a bigger point he wants to make. And that bigger point is he wants to discuss their foolishness, their lack of wisdom that has caused them to reject Paul because they don't think that he speaks with wisdom. So the situation he's responding to is that he, Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, has been rejected by a number of the folks in Corinth because he doesn't speak with wisdom, the kind of wisdom they want. He's not an eloquent debater. Paul is not really concerned that the Corinthians are rejecting him as a teacher. He is more concerned that they are rejecting his message, because he knows that his message is true, it's authoritative, and it is from Jesus. And to reject Paul's teaching because he lacks flair or style is to reject the truth of the gospel, and that is a big deal. And that's the big deal he wants to get at. Paul walks this kind of fine line in his letters to Corinth. He needs to defend himself and yet he doesn't want to talk about himself at the same time. But he has to talk about himself because he's part of the issue, and we can really see this in Second Corinthians as this issue comes to a head. Paul needs to defend his ministry, but he doesn't want to make the issue about himself. He needs to defend his authority as a chosen apostle, yet he wants to make the issue about the gospel, and he will defend the gospel he represents and preaches, and in defending that gospel, he has to defend his own authority to preach it and his understanding of it. But as we go through this section, I don't think we should view Paul as thinking that he himself is a big deal. He doesn't think he himself is a big deal, but his message is a big deal. He has been chosen by God to speak the gospel to the Gentiles. So the role God has given him to play is a big deal, and we ought to respect that role and pay attention to his words, and we'll see him defend his gospel and at the same time defend himself. So let me read first Corinthians starting in chapter one verses seventeen and going through twenty five. And I'm reading from the New American Standard Version. 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. 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 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. So in one seventeen, Paul introduces this theme of wisdom. He turns from baptism to a discussion of the wisdom of the world versus the wisdom of the gospel. In the section we looked at last time, he was talking about baptism, and he said he was glad he didn't baptize many of the folks in Corinth because he didn't want them to think he was their rabbi and that they were his disciples. And that's his minor point. He said he just said, Don't mistake me for your master because I'm not your master. Now he transitions to his major point. What did Christ send me to do? Not to baptize, he sent me to preach the gospel. So let's talk about this gospel and what Christ sent me to do, because what you Corinthians think he sent me to do is not what I ought to be doing. He did not send me to preach the gospel in wisdom of word or cleverness of speech. Now remember our background from Acts eighteen. Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, and the Corinthians have a problem with the way Paul speaks, particularly as he compares to Apollos. Apollos is an articulate, eloquent debater, and Paul, well, in the Corinthians' eyes, Paul is just kind of flat and boring. So Paul is speaking to that situation where the Corinthians are choosing form over content and they're choosing style over substance. And when Paul says he didn't send me to preach in cleverness of speech, I think that's the language of the Corinthians. That's a phrase they would use to tell Paul where he's failing. This is one seventeen again. The word translated cleverness in one seventeen is the Greek word Sophia, which is the basic meat and potatoes word for wisdom, and Paul uses it throughout this section. I think translators choose cleverness instead because it's just too jarring to say Christ didn't want me to preach with wisdom, if that just sounds too strange to us, because we know the gospel is wise. And Paul is not denying the wisdom of the gospel. In fact, he's going to defend the wisdom of the gospel. Paul does preach in wisdom, but not the kind of wisdom the Corinthians were looking for. I think we should see this phrase cleverness of speech as in quotes. He didn't send me to speak with quote wisdom, quote, as you're thinking about it. He didn't send me to preach with quote unquote cleverness of speech. So Paul is saying he doesn't use the kind of wisdom the Corinthians want him to use so that the cross of Christ would not be made void, and he's going to go on to explain that in great detail, and in a sense, that's the rest of his argument. Before we look at that, let me review what we talked about in the last podcast. The Corinthians want a powerful, effective, impressive, charismatic speaker. They want Paul to be a slick, persuasive debater, more like Apollos, such that everyone in the town stops and takes notice. So they want him to be the kind of debater that all the beautiful, sophisticated people in town have to stop and pay attention to because he's just so articulate and persuasive. But in reality, Paul is easy to dismiss as foolish. Paul doesn't command the respect of the beautiful people, the people who count, and the Corinthians might use words like they want him to be dynamic or effective, attractive, persuasive, compelling, highly respected, and successful in worldly terms. And Paul's saying here, let's just stop and think about this. The gospel, the true gospel of Jesus Christ is offensive. The world doesn't like it. If I were to make my message attractive in the way you Corinthians would like it to be attractive, I would have to remove the cross from it. I think that's the idea behind the phrase so that the cross would not be made void. The cross is the heart of the gospel. The cross rightly understood is offensive, and the cross is the point that makes people dismiss it. And Paul is saying, My job is to confront the Gentiles with the truth of the cross and pray that they respond. My whole purpose is to confront people with this offensive message and let them decide what they're going to do about it. I could be more attractive and winsome. I could soft pedal the sin, hellfire, and damnation aspect of the gospel, and I could be seen as compelling and wise if only I would leave out this pesky part about you all being sinful wretches who are going to hell unless you turn to the blood of Jesus and ask forgiveness. People find that offensive. They don't want to be told they're sinful and worthy of God's wrath. But if I left that out, it wouldn't be the gospel. You can't pick and choose which parts of the gospel you want to preach. Making the gospel more superficially attractive is just not an option. I think that's what he means by the cross being nullified. And interestingly enough, when you look through church history, when a church or a denomination starts to stray from the gospel, the first doctrine that usually goes is sin and the cross. And the Corinthians are saying, Paul, you're just not using the right bait. If you would only use the right bait, you would be so much more compelling. And Paul is answering them, that's not an option. You can't mix and match. To proclaim the gospel, you have to proclaim the offensive parts. And when you proclaim the offensive part, you're going to lose people. If you want to make it more superficially attractive and get more numbers, you are losing what you're calling them to in the first place. And he's going to go on to explain what he means by this. This is one hundred eighteen. 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. Here Paul is saying, look, the issue is not crafting the message the right way. The issue is the audience. The issue is what is true of the person listening to the message. The message about the cross seems foolish to those who reject it, but to those who understand, to those whom God has given the eyes to see, the cross is the power of God for salvation. The world is divided into these two groups, those who have the eyes to see and those who don't. And changing the gospel so it suits those who are perishing, so it suits those who live in rebellion to God is not going to save anyone. You can't take the message of the cross and dress it up enough to suit the people who are perishing. All you can do is change it, but then it's not the gospel. Those who are perishing are always going to see the cross as foolishness, and there is no way to spin the gospel that's going to change that. This is a quote from Isaiah twenty nine. It was written to Israel in a time when they were in the midst of rebellion to God, and Israel was saying, We don't really need God because we can just make all the proper alliances with our neighbors and we'll be saved. And in this section in Isa through Isaiah, God is saying, You don't get it. All your wisdom is going to be set aside. Those plans of yours that you thought were so foolproof will in fact be shown to be foolish. Events will unfold that you haven't even considered yet, and all your wisdom is going to be useless. Putting your trust in armies and negotiations and alliances rather than in the living God is an incredibly foolish thing to do. You think it's wise, but it's utter folly and circumstances will prove this. What all the wise men thought was so wise will be shown to be foolish in the end. So Paul is applying that language from Isaiah to this situation, and he's essentially saying God proved the wisdom of the world to be foolish in the history of Israel, but just wait till history really unfolds. When the cross comes to its fruition, the wisdom of the world is going to be shown to be folly. What God is doing in Christ is going to show once and for all how foolish the wisdom of the world is. Then in one twenty, 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? It is through the cross of Christ that God has shown the wisdom of the world to be folly. He's saying, You think you've nailed down your paths to enlightenment. You think you can meditate your way to perfection, and that you have figured out all the paths to succeed here and now, but the cross is going to show that you miss the boat. The day is coming when Jesus will be revealed in his glory as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, and where will all your wisdom be then? It will be shown to be what it is utter foolishness. The three names Paul uses here in one twenty I think are instructive. The wise man I think refers to the Greek philosopher, the one who is say studied Plato and Aristotle and knows all the ins and outs of the philosophy of his day, the wise man would have reached the highest Greek education level you could reach. And where is he? He's going to be shown to be foolish. So the wise man is the Greek idea of the wisest person. The scribe refers to the Jewish concept of the wise men. The scribe is the one who knows the law inside and out, who studied the scriptures and understands all the details of the law and can render a judgment on how the law can be kept. And even with all that he will show be shown to be foolish. Where's the debater of this age? I think that refers to the sophist or the persuasive, eloquent speaker, the man of language and powerful words that the Corinthians are craving. These three are the best the world has to offer, and who among them is going to stand before God? Which of them is going to be able to say, see, look, I was right and God was wrong? And Paul's saying, None of them, none of them are going to stand. Who among you is going to stand before God? What the Greek thinks is wise, what the Jews think is wise, it's all going to be shown to be foolish because of the cross of Christ. So how is he going to do this? Through the gospel. Look at one twenty-one. 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. This is a really interesting point to me. It's one I had never really thought about. God could have made the world in such a way that the intellectual elite would be the first ones to find their way to God, but he didn't. God made the intellectual elite the road to nowhere. The human race is really smart. We have learned a lot, we've created and developed a lot, but we are blind to a large part of reality, and that is the truth about God. And what Paul is saying is you may learn a lot about a certain type of wisdom in intellectual pursuits, scientific discovery, psychological understanding, but it's not going to save you. No matter how much we learn and discover, it doesn't get us to God. And from God's perspective, that's a great indictment on the world's wisdom. I mean, how smart can you be if you miss the author and creator of the universe? How wise can I be if I'm at the top of my field, but I fail to recognize God? I think that's the great scandal of human endeavors. We should have found God. All our scientific discovery and our research ought to have led us to the author of the universe. All our exploration, our wisdom, our knowledge, our discovery, it should lead us to the author of creation. And if we were truly wise, it would. God is actually not that hard to find. A healthy, reasoning, functioning mind ought to discover God, but by and large we don't, because we are rebellious, stubborn people who reject the truth about God that is right under our noses. The fact of the matter is we don't want the truth about God to be the truth about God. And here Paul is saying God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. Now Paul is not saying that the gospel is irrational. I don't think Paul is saying that the gospel is foolish, and I don't think Paul is saying we have no reason to believe what we believe. What he is saying is that the world around us thinks the gospel is foolish. They think the cross is meaningless, but why should that bother God? God is quite happy to save his people with a message that the world thinks is foolish. And Paul's saying, You Corinthians want me to speak in a way that is appealing to the world, but look where the world's wisdom got them. Nowhere. God is quite happy to save his people with a message that looks silly to the world. God doesn't care whether the world thinks his message is wise or not. The fact of the matter is the gospel is wise. It is the truth, and God is content to save his people through a message that the rest of the world thinks is foolish. God doesn't get converts by changing the message to make it seem wise in the world's eyes. God gets converts by changing people's hearts so that they see and understand the wisdom of the gospel message. Now at this point in Paul's ministry, Paul has a lot of experience with presenting the gospel to both Jews and Greeks and watching how they react to it, and this is what he goes on to talk about next. Look at verses twenty two through twenty five. For indeed Jews ask for a sign 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. Let's stop and think about the message that Paul preaches and why it gets the kind of reaction he describes here. He doesn't go into much detail about what his message is. He refers to his message as the word of the cross in one hundred eighteen and as Christ crucified here in one hundred twenty three, and he doesn't go into detail about what his message is. He expects them to understand it. He was with them for eighteen months, and he expects them to know the message he preached. So his shorthand to refer to the gospel is Christ crucified. And that's interesting. First, it tells us that his message is about Christ. Now the word Christ is the Greek word for anointed one. It is the Greek word that corresponds to the Hebrew word Messiah, and that word is rooted in the promises of the Old Testament. The promises made to David that a king of Israel who was descended from David is going to rule over Israel and all the nations forever. He's going to establish justice and righteousness and rule over God's creation. All the enemies of God will be destroyed, and all God's people will live in peace and holiness with God. So the central part of Paul's message is that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, is the Messiah. He is the one who will inherit the throne of David and bring the world under the rule of God. So Jesus, the Christ, the anointed one, is the one who will bring the world into justice and peace and establish God's rule over all creation. But the other part of his message is Christ crucified. Jesus, who is the Messiah, is also the one who was nailed to a cross, died, and was resurrected. And the That's the part I think that looks foolish. Kings don't establish their rule by dying. They end their rule by dying. How can a savior die? How can he save us when he didn't save himself? And at first glance, Christ crucified seems foolish. But it's not foolish if we stop and think about what kind of a savior we need. What in fact is our real problem? The root problem we have all of humanity is our evil and our guilt before God. That's the supreme life or death issue that must be solved. Because we are sinful and rebellious, we are under the rule of death, we have lost any right to expect God to deal with us favorably. We are rebels against him, each and every one of us. We don't do what's right, even when we know the right thing to do, we don't do it. That's who we are, apart from the grace of God. The cross is God's solution to that problem of our sin and evil. In the cross, we see God's judgment over our sin, and we also see God's mercy to sinners. The cross is a huge deal. At the cross, God is saying, I know what your real problem is. It is death. It is sin, evil, and rebellion, and this is my solution. My son is dying in your place. He is paying the penalty for your sin, and because of his willing sacrifice, I will forgive you for your sins and bring you into the kingdom. Because Christ bought us God's mercy, we have hope that God will ultimately forgive us and free us from sin. We have hope that we will one day be freed from everything that makes life tragic and difficult and futile now because of the cross. The cross is the solution to our real deepest, biggest problem. And Paul has a lot of experience in preaching this message and he knows the kinds of responses he's going to get. The Jews have somewhat of an advantage. They know the Old Testament, they know the promises of deliverance through a coming Messiah, and they are waiting and looking for that Messiah to come. But they are seeking for signs. Seeking signs is not a bad thing in and of itself. God sent signs with the ministry of Jesus, and he sent signs with the ministry of Jesus' apostles. The signs confirmed that Jesus was in fact who he said he was, that he was the Christ, and the signs confirmed his apostles. So the miraculous signs said, Yes, I God am behind this message, and you know I'm behind it because of these signs. So it's not wrong to want a sign. It's not wrong to ask a prophet or a teacher, are you really from God and how would I know? The problem is that the message that went with the signs is not the message the Jews were looking for. They saw the signs, but they didn't like the cross. They wanted the signs to accompany a Messiah that made sense to them, like a great political leader or a mighty king who would deliver them from Rome. The Messiah was to bring justice to the world with Israel at the head of the line. He was not supposed to die on a cross like a common criminal. I mean, what more evidence do you need that he was under the curse of God? Why should we listen to a message about Jesus? He was a nobody from nowhere. We want a sign to accompany a person of great power and prestige and political might. And that's what was wrong with their signs. They were looking for the wrong kind of Messiah. The Gentiles, on the other hand, or the Greeks, are looking for wisdom. They're attracted to the guy who can spin the crowd and win the argument through eloquence. But this gospel of a crucified Christ is not attractive, impressive material. It's not the kind of thing you can preach and everyone reacts, oh wow, that's really impressive. You can't rally behind a guy who's apparently dead, who was publicly shamed and humiliated and died like a common criminal. That's not, in the Greeks' eyes, an intellectually respectable position. In and of itself, then, the message of Christ crucified is going to be a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. The cross is not the kind of Messiah the Jews were expecting, and the cross is not the kind of philosophy the Greeks want. Who does end up believing this message? The called, those whom God has called to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the ones who are looking for the power of God at work and recognize it in the cross. How much more power can there be than reaching out to sinners like us and saving us from eternal destruction? How much more power do we need to see than reaching out with both justice and mercy, with judgment and forgiveness and grace and mercy? That's power. That's the power of God that saves us. You see the wisdom of God on the cross. We see both his judgment and his mercy, and we see the kind of salvation we really need. We see the penalty for our sins taken and paid by another, and we see the infinite wisdom and love and mercy of God in the cross. Then 125, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men, this is another one of those phrases that gets distorted when taken out of context. Paul is not saying the gospel is foolish or weak. He is saying that the wise men of our age see the gospel as weak and foolish, but what wise men of our age dismiss as foolish is actually wiser than their wisdom. What men dismiss as weak is more powerful than all their power put together. Remember, Paul is answering the question, why do I still preach this message of Christ crucified that you find so embarrassing? Why don't I use the kind of surefire material that would make me seem wise to the world? And he's answering because that kind of message is not the gospel. I would have to take the gospel and turn it into something else to preach that kind of message. To win the crowd the way you Corinthians want me to do it, I would have to twist the gospel into something it is not, and that is not my job. God has no interest in making the gospel attractive in the world's eyes. If you think I'm foolish and unimpressive because of it, then you are dismissing the wisdom of God for the wisdom of the world. It's impressive to me how much peer pressure Paul is resisting. Winning the approval of the crowd is really seductive. It is very tempting to want the approval of the world around you. And we all know when we go to work, when we're with friends, there are things that all of us can say and do that help us get along with those who are not believers. And we want to please people. We want others to think well of us and to fit in. And here is Paul writing to a church that he founded, and they're embarrassed by him, and they just want him to change and become more impressive to the world. But he founded that church. I mean, that's really got to be a powerful temptation to want their approval. It would be very tempting to find a way to kind of make everyone happy and win their approval, and yet Paul says, no, I'm not gonna do that. Paul is saying there's no middle ground between the cross and the world. There are some lines we dare not cross. And I think in many ways we're all gonna face the same temptation he faced. We're gonna face the temptation to change the gospel so that we fit in. And the question we're gonna have to ask ourselves at times is are we willing to look foolish in the world's eyes? So to wrap this up, let's think about some of the implications for the way we preach the gospel today. First, Paul is not saying that there is anything wrong with being articulate or eloquent. And I would argue that Paul himself is actually quite eloquent. First Corinthians is eloquent, it's just not the kind of eloquence the Corinthians wanted. The issue is success in the world's eyes, and the Corinthians found this message of the gospel embarrassing because the intellectual elite of their town weren't buying it. And Paul's saying that's always going to happen. That's not the kind of eloquence we want. So I think we need to take seriously this idea of not packaging the gospel in a way that makes it less offensive to the world. That's not the kind of eloquence we want. The gospel is offensive, and we dare not make it light and fluffy to make it acceptable to the world. Second, I don't think Paul is against using reason to defend and explain the gospel. Acts tells us that Paul was reasoning in the synagogue in Corinth. Reason supports the truth. We need to listen and consider reason and give thoughtful answers to people who ask. Paul is not in any way denouncing reason or logic. He's saying in the end, the world is not going to be reasonable. They're going to reject God. You can't judge the gospel by how effective it is because we are sinful people who will reject the gospel unless God opens our eyes. So we don't want to change it to get a response. In the end, only those who are called are going to believe. And finally, the heart of the gospel is the cross. The gospel is not a message about prosperity, it's not a message about ethics, it's not a message about social justice or racial reconciliation. The gospel is not a message about how to be a nice or a better person. The gospel is about the cross. Our problem is sin and the solution is the cross. Our real problem is our rebellion to God and the solution is found in the blood of Christ. Any message that takes sin and the cross out of the gospel is not the gospel. And I think that's really relevant today because we are being told that the cross is an archaic message, that it's just too violent, it's too bloody. We need a peacemaker savior. To reach modern ears, we have to preach God loves you, not God loves you in spite of your sin, just God loves you just the way you are. We don't want anything about an innocent man dying on the cross. We need peace, love, and reconciliation, not blood and resurrection. And yet that's not the gospel. The gospel is about the cross, and the cross is offensive to the world, but it is the power of God for salvation for those of us who believe. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to apply serious Bible study to real life and to help you learn how to improve your Bible study. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please do me a favor and take a minute to leave a positive rating or review on your favorite podcast platform. It really does help people find the podcast. And please tell your friends about this. It's very easy to subscribe. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com and click on subscribe, and it will show you how. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates, my favorite musician, and you can find more of his music and his CDs on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for listening today. I'm Kristan Marata, and I hope you'll join me next week for Wednesday and the Word. In the meantime, I hope you find some time to visit my website, Wednesdayandtheword.com, and take advantage of some of my free Bible study materials.