Foolish Wisdom
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Cascades Fellowship CRC, JX MI
October 19, 2008
Series: The Church in Crisis
There is a major flaw in Christianity that no one seems to want to talk about. It is the elephant in the room, the gorilla in the corner, the unsightly blemish on the face that everyone stares at but nobody names. We all feel it, we all sense it, and most of us either look away altogether or we try to figure out some middle road – a way that we can address this problem and still sound credible.
You know what it is? The Christian message sounds like foolishness. This is not a new problem; in fact it has been with the church from its earliest years. Paul, that great Apostle and missionary, faced just such a problem as he proclaimed the Gospel among the Gentiles. Remember what happened to him in Athens? He spoke at Mars Hill among those who made their lives by debating the deeper issues of existence. They had overheard what Paul was teaching in the marketplace and grew curious about this strange idea of a resurrection from the dead. So they invited Paul to come and present arguments at one of their gatherings. Do you remember the outcome? A few believed and some even said they would like to hear more some other time, but that was by no means the full judgment. Some openly sneered at the message of the Gospel. The overall sense you get from Acts 17, where this story is found, is that Paul was at best tolerated and at worst he was seen as a kook who entertained them with wild stories and speculations. It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the Gospel Paul preached.
And then there was the Corinthian church. The church in Corinth was in a hard spot from the very beginning. Paul came there after leaving Athens, maybe even feeling a bit beat up after his run-in at Mars Hill. Sure, he rejoiced with the few who believed – it was a tough place to plant a church – but there is no doubt he was rubbed a little raw by the ridicule he’d received. So Paul comes in a little roughed up.
He begins his ministry there as he has in every town – he goes first to the Jews – to the synagogue – to reason from the Scriptures how Jesus is the promised Messiah and call the people to repentance and belief. Again, he’s reviled. So Paul turned to the Gentiles there and began to see the seed of the Gospel taking root and producing a harvest.
At this point, all things seem copasetic – a church is being planted, leaders are being trained, God is being glorified; hallelujah, amen! Paul hangs out in Corinth for some time – in other words, he really gets to know these people; he loves them and he loves what he is seeing. Spiritual gifts are popping up everywhere; these people really seem to get it, they are equipped for every good work. So Paul heads out to his next port of call.
Now I said earlier that Corinth was a hard spot from the beginning, but based on what I just said, it doesn’t seem that hard, does it? If every outreach effort went the way Corinth did, we’d be busting at the gills. But it wasn’t getting the people of Corinth to a place of faith that was the problem, it was keeping them there.
Corinth was a crossroads – both by land and sea. Located on a major trade route and having two navigable harbors, it was a happening place. It was also the capital of the Achaia province and the seat for the Roman proconsul. It was the New York of its day, a place of great wealth and prosperity and a place of diverse culture.
And it was a place of great wickedness, as you might imagine. Anytime you get that many people in one place with that much wealth flowing around, bad stuff begins to happen. And it didn’t help that there was a temple there to Aphrodite, goddess of erotic love. Aphrodite’s temple was located on a hill in the midst of the city, a very visible location and had 1,000 temple prostitutes for carrying out the ritual sex that celebrated the goddess.
Folks, this place was a cesspool – not just a den of iniquity, it was the whole building. Now, on top of this, the Corinthians shared with Athens the Greek thirst for knowledge, so they were always impressed by a well-reasoned argument.
This is the environment the church was supposed to thrive in – one notorious for its immorality and that is full of people seeking whatever appears as wisdom. To be honest with you, it sounds a lot like modern North America. Rach did a google search for children songs the other day or something like that, it was something incredibly innocent and got hits for all kinds of sex stuff. Our society has become obsessed with sex – we have stripped it of its sacredness and made it a hollow imitation of what God intended it to be.
And we have also become a nation of seekers – that’s what Post-Modern thought is all about; opening oneself to the possibilities, validating every bit of seeming wisdom as valuable and true, even if contradictory. Each person doing what seems right in his or her own eyes; living out the mantra of Mulan, “Follow your heart,” forgetting that the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure, who can understand it?
In reality, we are seeing Romans 1 come to life; where people are constantly exchanging the truth for a lie, worshipping the creature or creation rather than the Creator and so we are becoming enamored with our own version of “truth.” Our similarity to the Corinthian culture is both striking and frightening, but not without hope, as we shall see as we continue our study of 1st Corinthians.
We call it 1st Corinthians, but in reality, it is likely that it is 2nd Corinthians – or the second letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthian church. We know from passages in 1st Corinthians, that an exchange of letters had been going on between the Apostle and the church in Corinth. He’d received word of some goings on in the church and was seeking to address them. Then, Chloe’s people showed up talking about some divisions going on in the church – divisions that were based on the personalities of some of the teachers in the church. Apparently, people were fighting over who was the best teacher and it was leading to the formation of cliques.
So Paul sits down to write this letter to the Church in Corinth, wanting to put an end to this nonsense right away. And there were some other issues we’ll talk about later that he wanted to give some attention – stuff, as I mentioned earlier, he’d read in letters he’d received. But he begins with the whole “my-teacher-is-better-than-your-teacher” thing.
Now, if you or I were trying to bring two parties together we would probably sit down with them and help them see all the common ground they shared; your both Corinthians, you both have believed on the name of Jesus Christ, etc. And to some extent that is what Paul does. But there is another thing that’s going on here that becomes clearer later on in the letter. There was a crisis of confidence in the church – a crisis about what they believed to be true. Paul’s authority as an Apostle was being openly questioned because he was not as eloquent as some of these other teachers. These guys were more hip, more relevant, more wise…. In other words, when compared to all the philosophies and world views the Corinthians were hearing, the Gospel of Jesus Christ sounded just too simple, too silly to be taken seriously. Listen to 1 Corinthians 1:17, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”
Not with words of human wisdom; in other words, not with complex theological systems that dazzle the mind with their intricacies. What Paul was getting at is that the power of the Gospel did not rest on the rhetoric of the person presenting it – its effectiveness doesn’t depend on the eloquence of the messenger. Put plainly, the Gospel doesn’t have to be dressed up – we don’t have to spruce it up with whatever passes for the wisdom of the day. Just be clear, plain-spoken, the rest is up to God.
But the Corinthians were beginning to build cults of personality, locating the power of the message in the messenger. Like so many people after them, they were having trouble simply believing the message of the Gospel. They wanted to add something to it; to make it sexy, to give it sparkle. They were trying to find a way to make it popular so that it could be used as a means of status or identity. They wanted something – someone – they could point to and brag about, but the Gospel Paul preached didn’t leave any room for bragging. In fact the Gospel Paul preached was downright embarrassing.
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. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher 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 know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
I am going to be honest with you – one of my concerns about the church today is our constant scrambling for popular heroes. We practically deify anyone of the faith who rises to national prominence. During the Colombine tragedy, one of the murdered refused to renounce her faith even with a gun barrel in her face. Stories of her courage spread like wildfire through the Christian community and so did the merchandise. Songs were composed, books written, websites started – there were profits made over this. I am not saying that we should not be challenged by this girl’s faith or that we shouldn’t have heroes of the faith. Hebrews 11 and 12 all but command us to look to those who ran the race of faith well for encouragement and strength. But I am saying that when we make any one person bigger than the message – bigger than the Gospel, as if the Gospel’s effectiveness depends on them, their presence, their preaching style – we tread dangerous ground. Anytime we try to raise the status of the Gospel by pointing to anyone other than Jesus Christ we venture into the minefield of idolatry and we diminish the cross.
The question is why do we do this? The answer is simple, but hard to hear. We don’t believe the Gospel can stand on its own. Like the Corinthians, we find the Gospel wanting. We think it is too easily debunked by the academic or too impractical for the down-to-earth. Because we cannot offer proofs for the existence of God and see evidence of what we might term as “good” in the person who reviles God, we hesitate to speak the truth – to simply tell them that they are sin-sick and Jesus is the only cure.
Because we live in a society that has elevated tolerance to the highest good, the Gospel sounds intolerant in our own ears, so we hedge around the truth that salvation is found only in Jesus. The reality is we try to make the Gospel sound intelligent or attractive or hip … why, because we have bought the lie that people like Bill Maher sell. You have to be a simpleton to believe the Gospel. You have to have a screw loose, have a low IQ, need to grasp at fables to make sense of the world.
It is lie from the pit of hell, and we have bought it. So we try to dress up the Gospel, make it contemporary – we try to sell it, to pitch it, like it is some fashion fad we’re trying to get ignited. But Paul tells the Corinthians, “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.” In other words, what seems wise to the world leads you no where – God planned it that way. You cannot work your way to God – you can never be good enough. You cannot reason your way there – you will never be smart enough to fully perceive God. You cannot ritual yourself there – no altered state, no sacrifice you can offer will open the gates to heaven. You have to follow the way that God has mapped out – the road to Calvary.
And that just seems too narrow, too foolish to be true. But here’s the deal – there is no other way. You know why? If there were, people would take it, no matter how hard it was, just so that they could gain credit, could earn God’s love and respect. If there were another way, people would take it so that they could brag about earning their own way. I would take that way and I suspect that everyone of you would take it also, because then you would be doing something, taking charge, gaining control and you would not have to be dependent on anyone else – not even God.
But Paul tells us that option isn’t left open to us.
Jews demand miraculous 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…. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him.
You see, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you’re not here today because you were the brightest, the wealthiest, the smartest, the strongest or the most popular – in fact, according to Paul there is a good chance you were or are none of these things. How’s that for an esteem booster? You’re here to today because God called you – before the foundation of the world he predestined you to be conformed to the image of his Son. You’re not here today because a miraculous sign or a well reasoned argument; you’re here because God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
People of God, we don’t have to spruce the Gospel up – we don’t have to make it hip or cool. Our job is to simply tell the story as clearly as possible – the power resides in the Gospel, not in our eloquence. We share it – we plant the seeds – its God’s job to prosper it. We need to preach it in all its foolishness. It is the only true wisdom.
