I would want to please turn in your Bibles to 1st Corinthians chapter 1. 1st Corinthians 1, we'll be reading from verse 10 of chapter 1 to verse 5 of chapter 2. Beloved, this is God's holy and infallible Word. Please give heed to it. It is the nourishment of our souls. Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household, that there are contentions among you. Now I say this, that each of you says, I'm of Paul, or I'm of Apollos, or I'm of Cephas, or I'm of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name. Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas. Besides, I do not know whether I baptized in the other, for Christ did not send me to baptize, But to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. 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. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified to the Jews' stumbling block and to the Greeks' 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. For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise. God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen and the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that as it is written, He who glories, let him glory in the Lord. And I, brethren, when I came to you, I did not come with excellence of speech, the wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God, for I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and fear and in much trembling, and my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, That your face should not be in the wisdom of God, but in the power of God. This is God's Word. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, has it ever occurred to you that Paul the Apostle in this section of 1 Corinthians, indeed, admits in some sense the foolishness of the message of the Gospel? The foolishness also of those who believe that message. and the foolishness of those who preach it. These three things he comes out and admits. Now, of course, he's admitting these things only from a certain perspective. It is the sinner, blind, dead in his sin, who counts the gospel of Jesus Christ as foolishness. So Paul's indeed using some sarcasm here. That's obvious. Sometimes we Christians who know this text so well have a knee-jerk reaction to the sort of mockery and derision that is given to the Christian faith in our culture, various forms of media, pop culture, radio, TV, and theater, and so forth. We have this knee-jerk reaction to be angry with that, to be frustrated and rather upset with that. Some of that's warranted, to be sure. But what Paul says is that we should expect it. And we have to be careful what sort of reaction, what sort of response we give to that sort of derision that is given to the cross of Jesus Christ, the Gospel. It's the message. The way that it is preached. And how we comport ourselves as those who believe that message. I'm sure some of you have seen plenty of this in our culture, how the Christian faith, among all those religions of the world, it seems this is the one that is singled out and maligned and made fun of a lot. Not Buddhism, not Hinduism or Judaism even or Islam. Other religions have elements of the supernatural or of afterlife, things otherworldly that we might suspect human beings would not believe and would scorn and would want to make fun of those things. But it's not those other faiths that are questioned and that are so made fun of in our day and age. It is the Christian faith. Of course, it's always been like this. And we should know it and we should be aware of it and respond appropriately to it because God's Word arms us and prepares us to do so. Paul's three points, and as I mentioned just before, are the foolishness of the Gospel, The message, the foolishness of those who believe that message and the foolishness, lastly, of those who preach it. Foolishness, of course, from the eyes of man left in his sin. What is it that Paul is getting at here in saying that the Gospel message itself is foolishness in the eyes of the world? It would be helpful to just rehearse maybe briefly what the Corinthian problem was, At least briefly, in sum, what were they dealing with? There were false apostles, we know, that were confronting the church at Corinth. False teachers. Not necessarily false merely in what they were teaching, corrupting the message of the Gospel, but false teachers in the way that they presented the Gospel. Coming with selfish ambition, a spirit of rivalry and competition with other ministers, supposedly of Christ, but of course not truly ministers of Christ. And these men bringing a wisdom, that's what Paul says here, a wisdom teaching, a man-made philosophy that appeals to the Greek mind because of its high-minded ideas and the lofty way in which those ideas are expressed, captivating their audience to gain converts to themselves, not for the glory of Christ. Paul rebukes this divisive spirit at the church in Corinth. He rebukes them for dragging him into this rivalry with other ministers of Christ. Apollos, Cephas, who's Peter, the Apostle. And he then turns to a far graver problem at the Corinthian church. The problem that they have exchanged the foolishness of the message, in the eyes of the world, a foolish message for something that is glorious in the eyes of man. Something that is noble and prestigious and influential in their neighborhood. So what Paul says there in verse 17, he transitions to rebuking them for exchanging the message of the cross for the wisdom of man. He says there in verse 17, Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. See, what he is saying here is if the Corinthians were being captivated by wise, high-minded ideas by these false apostles, they must have forgotten how things were when they first believed the Gospel. They didn't at first believe in a message that appealed to man's wisdom, man's desire for power and triumph now in this world. They believed the foolish message of the cross. Foolish because it doesn't offer sinners triumph and glory now. It doesn't offer us immediate utopia. But it offers us the blood and righteousness of a humiliated, crucified Savior. That's foolishness in the eyes of the world. In the eyes of those who are perishing. Paul says in chapter 2, if you look there, verse 14, The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. Man in his natural estate is blinded. He's dead in his sin, as Paul says elsewhere. For him to see what God offers in Jesus Christ and to take hold of it, he needs only the Spirit of God to change him, to give him new life in Jesus Christ. Paul says in verse 11 of the same chapter, For what man knows the things of a man except the Spirit of man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now, we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. That is the way sinners come to see that this Gospel message is not foolishness in truth, but is the wisdom of God, which avails for our salvation, for our acceptance with God. There are a number of reasons, of course, why the Gospel message is foolishness in the eyes of sinful humanity. One very obvious reason, as I alluded to before, is that this is not immediate glory and triumph offered to human beings. That's what a theology of glory, the wisdom of man, wants to offer to human beings. Paul says that's not what the Gospel offers though. It's a crucified king, the king of kings, the king of the universe, subjected to death for our sin. Two things would be very certainly true if we were left in our wisdom, left to our own devices to come to grips with our need for salvation and how we might go about attaining that salvation. One, we would not deem it necessary to deal with our sin. That's the first point, that we're sinners that before God we are worthless. Even our best works, filthy rags in His holy sight. Paul says that in verse 18, it is foolishness to those perishing. Those left in their sin can only count their sin as a non-issue. They don't see a need to deal with their depravity, with their offensiveness and their rebelliousness towards God. It takes the Spirit of God to awaken the heart to see that truth. But secondly, if we even did see a need for our sin to be dealt with, you and I should know very well as Reformed Christians what it is we would choose to do in our wisdom. We would make up for our sin in our own righteousness, offering God our own obedience and merit. That is the wisdom of man. That is what man says must be done for us to reach glory and acceptance of God. And sadly, loved ones, in our own Reformed communions even, the doctrine of justification is threatened. justification, that precious doctrine upon which the church, as Luther once said, either stands or falls. This key teaching of Scripture in which sinners find relief for their souls teaches only that we are righteous before God because of Christ's work given to us, Christ's obedience performed for us, outside of us, having nothing to do with what we can offer to God. Sanctification, another gift of God's grace, but a different gift. Something else, something not part of justification, but integrally and necessarily connected to it. But remember, loved ones, they are two gifts of God's grace given to us for the sake of Jesus Christ. See, there are brothers and sisters, if we should call them that, who want to say that justification needs to have some portion of our own merit. There's the new perspective. You may have read some of these articles in the Outlook by Cornell Venema. It's at Mars Seminary. The new perspective in one of its forms, teaching that justification really is simply a matter in Paul's writings of sinners being admitted into the covenant, such as yourself, being brought into the church freely, no prerequisites, God makes no demands on you, except that you believe in Christ. That's justification. But what's missing from that is glory. What's missing from that is eternal life. Everlasting fellowship with our triune God. That's not included, they say, in justification. For that, you need to show God your own faithfulness in the covenant, your own obedience, to be worthy of that gift. Well, that's not the Gospel, loved ones, and we must be on our guard to keep our ears open for the wisdom of man which would compromise this precious doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ. We are saved only because of Christ's work. And then after we receive that, we are changed by the Holy Spirit to be more obedient children of God. Gradually, after a long while usually, making only a small beginning in the righteousness which God commands of us. Sanctification is indeed going to make us more sure of our justification perhaps, but in no way does it make our justification more sure in itself. It does not complete Christ's work for us. Well, that is what the wisdom of man teaches. That is how it wants to corrupt the gospel. But Paul says to man, it is foolishness that we should be right with God simply by the righteousness of another. And we should be cleansed of our sin by His death. This is foolishness to the world. But Paul says that wisdom of the world which counts this as foolishness, this wisdom is destroyed by God. In His wisdom, He overturns man's counsel, man's understanding. Look at verses 19 and following again. It is written, Paul quotes from Isaiah, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. See, God is destroying the wisdom of the world in this way. He is not allowing mankind to have any resource, any talent, any ability, any worthiness. To make Himself right with God. There is nothing that we bring to offer to Him to make ourselves acceptable. So Paul says that in this revelation of the Gospel, God has an effect. Given us an anticipation of the final judgment that man left to his own righteousness is condemned, is lost, and to be destroyed. So Paul says that this wisdom of man is destroyed by God. God's wisdom says that it is only His glory, His grace, that gives us salvation. And it is therefore He alone who is to be worshipped and praised for such wonderful gift of salvation. Paul doesn't leave it here and say merely that it's the message of the cross that is a stumbling block to Jews, their Messiah, the King of Kings, the Anointed One, the Son of David, crucified, Clearly a stumbling block. But he says straight away to the heart of the Corinthians, making it much more personal now, you too, when you first believed, you know how you were in the eyes of the world. You were foolish. You were miserable in their eyes. Their esteem was very low of you. This is what he turns to in verses 26 through 29. He says, For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, Not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise. And then in verse 28, the base things of the world, the things which are not, God has chosen. The things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. See, Paul is saying that the Corinthians, in their shame before the false teachers, that they were such a lowly people. They had forgotten that it is in fact foolishness to the world that they believe in this Gospel message. And therefore, they were fools in the sight of man, sinful man. But more than that, they were not the prestigious, they were not the powerful and the influential in their society, in their neighborhoods. They were the weak, they were the beggarly. Paul reminds them of this to shame them, that they think now they need to be something more than that. They think they need to have some certain clout in society, some level of social class to have acceptance with God or to have status in the church of Christ. Paul says here then is that God wants average Joes. He is not looking to populate His church, the body of Christ, with those who are mighty, with those who are strong, who are wealthy, who are influential, prestigious. That's the sort of social club that the world offers. What the church of Christ has for us is no social esteem, no high, lofty position in our neighborhoods. We are fools in the eyes of the world for believing in Christ. What Paul says is that God makes no demands on us that we need to become something other than that to remain in the church, to be truly pleasing to God. Well, how low do we stoop, loved ones, in offering Christ to the world, to those who are lowly and despised in our society? How despicable are those that we welcome into our churches? You may find offense at that question. You may say, wait a minute, I'm not the prestigious one. I'm not the most powerful amongst my peers. I'd like to think of myself as an average Joe, really. But you see, Paul says it is truly the lowest of the low, the despicable, the ones you're afraid to go near, those in the slums and in the alleys of our town. Christ died for these sort of sinners as well. And how dare we, in implicit ways, any more than in explicit ways, make there to be some social division as to who is allowed and permitted to come into our communion. It's a subtle temptation that confronts us, but beloved, we must do what we may according to God's Word to welcome sinners of every walk of life into our communions, into our churches. Not just the average Joes, not just those who are in social positions as low as you and I, but those who are truly the despicable of our culture. I'm not saying we need the social gospel for them. to offer them salvation from alcohol, from poverty, from hunger. That's not salvation in Scripture. It may be good for a time, but it's not salvation from the wrath of God. See, the cross of Jesus Christ must be offered to sinners. That's where salvation is found. But this cross must be offered to the lowest around us, those in the alleys and in the slums, the projects of our cities. We can't wait for churches that truly preach the Gospel to arise in those parts of our towns before these people are offered Christ Jesus. We're not called by God to minister to suburban people alone, but to go to the alleys and the slums and to offer Christ to those people as well, to make the church welcome, inviting for those sorts of people. That is what God's Word calls us to again this evening. And it demands of us more effort than we are probably used to giving. Paul doesn't stop there. He makes it not only personal for the Corinthians, that they too in the eyes of the world were foolish, that they were weak, that they were the lowly, the despised in their neighborhoods and in their cities. But he says he too in the eyes of the world was a fool. He doesn't say he was something greater. He was something greater than the teachers that they now have. He was some prestigious, influential teacher or preacher, minister of Christ. He turns in chapter 2 then to confess that he too, in the eyes of the world, was a fool, was weak. Read those verses again with me. I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you accept Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and fear and in much trembling. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Paul was not a rhetorician, an orator who offered Christ with such eloquence of speech, such highfalutin ways of speaking the message of the Gospel that sinners would not have their attention focused on the blood and righteousness of Christ, but rather on Paul. That's what he's saying here. Not that he wasn't a good teacher. Not that he didn't know how to speak. What he's teaching us is that his persuasion was not his own. It was not by his confidence, by his command of the attention of the audience, but by the Spirit of God. who used the simple message of the Gospel preached in its simplicity, in clarity, in its truth. That message preached to sinners that God promises to use for their salvation and sanctification. So Paul, when he confesses his weakness, his fear and trembling, he's confessing the difficulty of the task before him. There's prison. There is persecution. that lies in his path as a minister of Christ. And more than that, he's coming to terms with the enormity of the task that he represents Christ to sinners. And he's to care for Christ's sheep, as Christ Himself would. That is a great task that should fill any minister of the Word with fear and trembling. Paul says that it filled him with fear and trembling. And he says that his method of communicating the Gospel was proper, was fitting for that message of the Gospel which was humiliating for Christ to suffer and die on a cross. Not to give us glory and triumph now, but to offer us after a long road of sanctification and discipline, glory where He is with the Father. See, that's not the Gospel that the wisdom of the world has. And Paul's message was fitting or his method of communicating the Gospel was fitting for that message. That's what he's getting at here. And when he says, I preached only Christ crucified, I determined to know nothing else. It's not to say that he only preaches the cross, that he's only preaching the Savior of man hanging on Calvary, but that the way that he preaches is suitable and is proper to that message of Christ, the Gospel message. Loved ones, we have to be also on our guard that we do not go after those supposed preachers of the Word who are offering gimmicks and tricks to persuade man of his need to be a Christian, to draw people into the church, to make them part of their own club, really. See, the Gospel must be preached in its simplicity, in its truthfulness. It is really a simple message. It's not incredibly difficult because of centuries of heresy and false teaching, it may take some time and a great deal of effort to say what the Gospel is not. But to say what it is, Christ crucified, His righteousness offered to sinners freely by the grace of God to be received in faith alone. That is a simple message. And Paul says that it does not need to be buttressed and supported, girded up by the wisdom of man, drama, all sorts of performances of oratorical, emotion-twisting sermons that some of you no doubt have seen, at least on TV, if not in person. It's not in need of dance and of puppet shows. One preacher opened a child's book, a children's story, and read that to his congregation. He said that was the preaching of the Gospel. He closed the book and sat down. That's nonsense, loved ones. You as Reformed Christians may think, oh, we're aware of that here. There's no flowery, eloquent things going on in our worship, but our tendency, loved ones, is to go after those things still. We want glory now. We're tempted with it constantly to compromise the pure worship of God. God's Word admonishes us. The Spirit of God promises us this evening. God promises to work for your salvation only through the preaching of the Word. Namely, and especially through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Unadorned. Not with our wisdom, with our eloquence, with our power. Our tricks and gimmicks. That is what Paul is teaching us here. And it is this way in the plan of God for one purpose. That sinners might be saved. I take that back for two. That sinners might be saved. And secondly, that God alone would get the glory. So loved ones, when you want unbelievers to receive the gospel, to become Christians like you, to become believers in Jesus Christ, count on nothing else but the pure preaching of the word which you hear in this church and in the other faithful churches of Jesus Christ. Commend those. Know where they are. Know which churches you can commend to those who are lost in their sin. If they're curious where they should go to church, invite them. Bring them here where they will hear the hearty preaching of the Word, Christ crucified. For it is here that God promises to work for our salvation. So we can be trusting and be thankful that indeed we are receiving the power of His kingdom. Though it may not appear in our wisdom, He promises it nonetheless. And we should pray that by His Spirit He would open our eyes further to that truth. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Let us pray. Our great God and Heavenly Father, we do praise You for giving us the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, that it did not depend on our wisdom in any way, lest we should be completely left perishing in our sin. Father, we thank You that You reached out to us as miserable, as lowly and despised as we were, not merely in the eyes of the world, but as we were deserving of wrath and condemnation in Your sight. Lord, You did not leave us in that estate, but You rescued us. You gave us a Savior whose righteousness alone is able to save us to the uttermost. We thank You for giving us His obedience, His suffering and death, and the power of His resurrection by Your Spirit uniting us to our Savior. We pray, Lord, that by Your Spirit You would open our hearts to receive Your Word this evening with humility and to offer up to You repentance, godly sorrow for the ways in which we may subtly arrogate to ourselves some worth, some glory, some honor that we're deserving of. Or Lord, that we might make ourselves out to be better than those who are without the Gospel in our neighborhoods. Lord, convict us and show us that we are not and that it is they too who must receive Christ and hear the Gospel preached in all its fullness. As foolish as that may be, in the eyes of the world, it is Your power. And we ask that that power of Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, by Your Spirit would be here working in our midst by the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, that You would call the young people in this congregation to make professions of faith as Peter has this evening. We give You glory, God, that You are faithful to the covenant, that You call the adults, the parents among us, but You also call the little ones. We pray, Father, that the foolishness of the Gospel in the eyes of man would not cause any to be ashamed of what they confess in this church. Help us to be proud and to boast and to glory not in ourselves, not in what we have found, not in what we have earned, but what You have given us by Your grace alone, even the righteousness of Christ Jesus, perfect redemption and sanctification by Your Spirit. Lord, bind Your Word to our hearts and help us to live in greater faithfulness for your glory and for the good of your people. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.