God’s Foolish Plan
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Introduction
Love those old hymns, do you know this one?
In a prison far away, stood an old electric chair...
At the lethal injection, at the lethal injection where I first saw the light...
There’s room in the gas chamber for you...
You say that’s foolishness, and I say you’re right, the foolishness and embarrassment and offensiveness that 2000 years of idealizing the cross has almost washed out of the Gospel message.
When the Apostle Paul was on his missionary journeys the cross was not a sheik decorating item, nor an elegant piece of jewelry to hang around your neck... It was an instrument of torture and execution reserved for the most cruel offenders. Jews of that day refused even to speak of the cross in polite company.
Sharing the story of Jesus had a different feeling and received different reactions then. "I’d like to tell you about a friend of mine, a prisoner who was executed in the electric chair for you, and if you just believe in him you can be saved...
I don’t know about you, but I’m routing for electric chair pendants to replace WWJD bracelets as the next hot item in Christian fashion. Why? because I think it might do us some good to regain some of the controversy of the cross.
But you know in some ways the good news about Jesus is just as offensive today as it was back then.
Proposition: In our New Testament reading Paul notes two groups of people offended by the message of the cross back then and I think that in some form those groups exist today...
Transition: Or at least the reasons they were offended are still here with us. In fact I believe some of us here may have these same reservations about God’s chosen plan of salvation. So I think it would do us some good today to look at those two groups and see if there may be some reflection of them, and of the barriers between them and Christ, in us.
The first group is the Jews and the complaint that they have with God’s plan is that it is...
Weakness
Paul notes in verse 22 of our text that the Jews who rejected Christ were looking for miraculous signs. Now this is not just any miraculous signs, Because Jesus certainly provided some, no what they were looking for were symbols of power, as a people who had continuously been beaten down on the world stage they were looking at the prophecies of Messiah and dreaming of a supernaturally powerful king... A conquering king who would subdue the world and make Israel dominant...
What they were not looking for was someone to die an embarrassing death on a cross of all things and then say He was doing it for them. This kind of Messiah, I can hear them say, we don’t need.
Consequently Paul says the message of the cross was a stumbling block to them. It was the epitome of weakness, murdered at the hands of the Roman oppressors.
Worse yet the message of the cross demanded they admit weakness on their own part, weakness in the area they considered themselves to be strongest. If Jesus supposedly died for their sins then that means they weren’t doing a good enough job on their own. And they believed they were, they were righteous in their own eyes, they were chosen, they were obedient to the law. Someone to pay for our sins, they thought, we don’t need.
ILLUSTRATION: The other day I got in big trouble with my four year old. I had committed the unthinkable offense of zipping her jacket. "Daddy, you weren’t supposed to zip it, I wanted to do it myself," she wailed. The Jews Paul refers to reacted to the message of the cross with that same spirit... "Died to save me? I wanted to do it myself"
They wanted a powerful, worthy savior and one who would acknowledge them as worthy too. But Paul says in verse 27 that God chose people who were powerless in themselves to shame those who were powerful.
Now we may not have the same problems with the shame of the cross that the Jews of Paul’s day did, but you know there is still something that rankles the human spirit about the need for a savior, about having to admit our moral bankruptcy, there’s something in us that longs for God to affirm that we’ve lived a good life worthy of his favor.
Some time ago I was called upon to counsel with someone who was had gotten some bad medical news and was perhaps facing the final chapter of his life. It soon became clear that his most urgent desire was to explain why his life wasn’t really as bad as it seems, I tried repeatedly to share the Good news that he didn’t have to be good enough for God, because through the cross Christ had become righteousness for him as Paul says in verse 30. But over and over again he kept coming back to his own illustration of God’s scales where he would weigh the good and bad of his life and determine if he merited eternity in heaven... what he needed me for was to assure him that he had enough good in him to make the final cut.
This man had been raised in a church that preached the gospel as far as I know yet that same spirit that kept the Jews of Paul’s day from receiving the Gospel with Joy was binding him, what about you? Have you surrendered your illusions of your goodness for the Strength Christ displayed in His weakness?
The other group of people that Paul mentions as having a problem with the cross was the Greeks and their
complaint was that it was...
Foolishness
And that’s a problem because they valued Wisdom above all else. The Greeks had a great tradition of learning, of thinking great thoughts they believed that with great wisdom every mystery of the world would be solved and that if a society could educate it’s people enough then they could reach a state of utopia, heaven on earth.
The message that a simple Jewish carpenter had died on a cross and somehow thereby saved the whole world, let alone that he supposedly came back from the grave, was just a truckload of so much foolishness to them. Give us a teacher who enlightens the world, who teaches them to draw upon their inner strength and shows us the path to enlightenment.
But Paul says in verse 25 that this foolish plan of God’s is wiser than the wisest of human plans, why? Because it works, truth is the ultimate wisdom. No matter how smart a person sounds if their philosophy is wrong, that is foolishness, and no matter how foolish a thing sounds, if it is correct it’s wisdom.
God’s plan of salvation is wise because it is the only one that could deliver the needed goods. Man had sinned, breaking relationship with God, God is just demanding payment for sin, the wages of sin was death, yet because all had sinned there was none who could pay the price--only God was sinless, and so God became a man to pay the price for sin in order to satisfy what Justice demanded.
Crazy? Maybe but it worked and it was the only thing that could.
ILLUSTRATION: Fill a glass to the brim with water, place a piece of glossy cardboard on the top so it is "sealed" with water. Promise that when turned over this "lid" will hold the water in. Hold the lid tightly to the glass until inverted and let go--the lid will in fact hold the water in the glass. (hold it as you turn the glass upright)
It doesn’t matter if it seems foolish. If it works it’s wise.
God’s plan works. But still some of us think it sounds a little too strange, and we like the Greeks of Paul’s day can let our own notions of "Wisdom" keep us from God’s Grace.
CONCLUSION:
Here’s the good news
23-24 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.
30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
It doesn’t matter what might have kept you from embracing the message of the cross up ’til now. Whether you’ve been striving to save yourself or whether you’ve just struggled to believe that the message is true. If God is tugging on your heart strings today you can receive Christ in his wisdom and power, He has become your salvation if you will simply put your trust in what he has done to pay the price for your sins.
