tonight we turn in the bible to the book of first corinthians if you're visiting with us we are working through the book of first corinthians and tonight we come to chapter one we conclude chapter one verses 18 to the end of the chapter this is on page 12 11 in your pew bible let's give our attention tonight to the word of the lord for the word of the cross is folly 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 discernment of the discerning i will thwart where is the one who is wise where's the scribe where's the debater of this age has not god made foolish the wisdom of the world for since in the wisdom of god the world did not know god through wisdom it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of god and because of him you are in christ jesus who became to us wisdom from god righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that as it is written let the one who boasts boast in the lord may the lord bless the hearing of his word. David Wells, in his book, The Courage to be Protestant, Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergence in the Postmodern World. In that book, what he really does is show how far the problem of 1 Corinthians 1 can go. One of the chapters begins like this. it's easter morning and there lurking in the shadow shadows is a figure rarely seen in church it's superman yes superman he who leaps tall buildings and a single bound as he pursues evildoers no no wait a minute it's not him actually it's only the senior pastor the senior pastor all decked out as superman ready to communicate the gospel to a new generation. He spoke of seeing that happen. In his book, Wells is demonstrating what happened on the American evangelical landscape. There was in our time in our country a time period that churches went through a real struggle doctrinally and a growing dissatisfaction with doctrine and ignorance of biblical truths became so commonplace that what began to happen was they began to replace the church as we knew it as the church with what wells talked about as an entire marketing movement a marketing movement of doing church and churches began to treat church goers as consumers you know what happens if that begins to be the focus all the questions change you're concerned about what the consumer likes. The church is offered as a product, the people as consumers, and for this to work, you've got to give the consumer what he wants, don't you? Nothing, if it's going to work, nothing can feel churchy since those things run up against a God that becomes very difficult to market. So what happened? People began to rethink church. And stripped of all doctrinal content, the formalities of traditional church life, even the architecture, was taken out. And the mall was the new model. Every kind of ministry program room under the sun was given. The old school sermon got replaced with a personal chat from a guy on the barstool. Anything serious was replaced with a kind of format that gave the sense of entertainment. The consumer was able to choose whatever kind of music he wanted, and he could hear now and had a say, says Wells, in whatever kind of message he wanted from the barstool. With a message that was all about God being a God who can make your life to be whatever you have ever dreamed it to be. Using the old army slogan, being all that you can be. It's fascinating, Wells demonstrates that this model was dominated by a certain age group, the baby boomers. And they were so concerned, says Wells, about their young people that what began to happen is the young people didn't connect with the model. They saw it as fashionably goofy and they wanted more structure back. I raise all that tonight to kind of capture the early chapters of that book. To show, not talk about how bad everyone else is. I don't want to do that. I raise that tonight to consider a problem that is alive and well that we struggle with as a church. At the Escondido United Reformed Church, I believe we struggle with identity. who we are and what do we want to be and what way should we go when you've got everyone doing everything under the sun, that creates a lot of pressure on us. And we're concerned about perception. We're concerned about what we look like. We're concerned about being viewed as a bunch of stick-in-the-muds. And if we're honest, doesn't the question of how to retain our young people drive a lot of that? doesn't it? Why does this matter so much to me? Well, because these are pressures I feel. These are pressures you feel. I know they're real. I know it's hard. I know that it's difficult when we see these things and we see the struggles of young people. But why this is so important tonight is because one of the greatest tragedies can happen in a church that faces heavy pressure. The tragedy is that we can lose confidence in what God has put in place. We can lose confidence in the ministry that He told us and what it should be and what it's designed to be. We're not at a loss for what God has told us to do. But if a spirit of discontentment begins to fill a body, little progress will be made there. In other words, if you, you, you, you, number one who I'm talking to tonight, everyone talking to you, you, you, you, if you are not confident in the ministry that God has put in place here, what begins to happen? You begin to fill the church and you become a part of what is a dissatisfied faction in the body who can easily sit around and you're just a part of it but you're questioning it or maybe picking at it and then what begins to happen especially if we do this in front of young people they're not going to value it and then we never really diffuse the kind of fragrance of christ as we should as a church that the lord wants us to diffuse that the lord has put in place that we would diffuse the fragrance of christ and we're never going to be much of a light to those around us unless what we believe we're doing here we believe in confidence that god put this in place and that we do have the answer you don't believe that you're never really your heart's never really going to be in it here. It'll never really be in it. Tonight, Paul addresses this. I'm saying what Paul puts here. The church in Corinth fell into this pressure. Hook, line, and sinker, it adopted the pressures of the world's wisdom for doing ministry. And Paul is saying one great thing to us tonight in this whole text. Paul is saying here to them, the church in Corinth, you've not really understood the design of Christian ministry. That's what your adopting of the world's model and wisdom tells us. You see, God purposely chose to make the Christian ministry foolish to the world. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what, what? God purposely chose to choose a ministry that make you all look foolish to everyone else why does he do that because his way his wisdom and his ways he wants to to look absolutely nothing like human wisdom and worldly wisdom his power that he chose was purposely designed to appear as weak and stupid and powerless so that all glory would go to him when someone becomes saved and when we forget that and we fall into the trap of thinking that results are ours or that it's all about certain things or doing this or that we have fallen into the trap of adopting human wisdom and then pandering to what we think is most attractive to people and that empties the cross of its power paul says that's the consequence well that's where paul begins last time the corinthian church fell into the trap of following men and as they began to follow the men they had divided and ripped up the body of christ and paul begins to lead us then into from there the great problem of the church in corinth that was fueling all the other controversies in other words he started with that one but he's really leading to this tonight to show that this is the major problem in the church in corinth that led to this church just falling apart falling apart on many levels that had to be addressed and if you ever look at a church that is fueled with all kinds of divisions and problem after problem after problem after problem everything under the sun it's traced back to this this is it this is the reason they lost what is central to their existence as a church. What is that? What is that? Well, what Paul does here is explain first that very thing. What is it? It's the message. Look at verse 18. This is the whole thesis of the book. Right here. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. That's the whole point of the book. Right there. Just captured it. What Paul essentially just said was what is crucial to Christianity, what is central to Christianity is the message of the cross a message to be believed but not just any message notice how he said it it's an absurd message it's a crazy message to the world from a human point of view it makes absolutely no sense a crucified messiah that is just craziness maybe we haven't felt this as we should i mean maybe we're so used to saying jesus died on the cross jesus died on a cross do we even know what we're saying anymore i remember in college there was a class on the history of human sacrifice and it was a very a class designed to undermine christianity and the purpose was to show how barbaric religion is the idea that god a god would require appeasement through blood is a perverse cosmic abuse i mean this that would have been the summary of the class that she was showing in the history of human sacrifice and that's the perspective isn't it we we wouldn't think much of people today out sacrificing would we you ever thought about that what would we think of people out sacrificing today? Animals. You'd say they're of Satan. They're of cults. You go further, what about people out there sacrificing humans? It's barbaric. Doesn't even capture it, does it? How you would feel. And notice how what Paul is saying here, that the word of the cross, the word of the cross is folly. One pastor said crucifixion was so feared on the cross, it was a huge deterrent to crime. In other words, it was the most shameful death possible. It was cursed. The pastor said, the cross declared to Roman subjects, don't mess with us. Don't mess with us. You didn't want to go to the cross. That's hard enough. Add to the equation what we believe and who we believe was put there. God incarnate. God's almighty son. The absurdity, they thought. God's son who took on flesh and went up on that cursed instrument. That is a crazy message to the world. Now, what Paul is doing here is saying, don't you understand, Corinthians, that God gave you something and this is to be the heart of what you are about. This is the heart of Christianity. In other words, when he commissioned you guys out and he sent you apostles, the apostles would have said, and they say this, the Lord told us something. Woe to us if we don't preach Christ and Him crucified. Remember when Isaiah was called down the woes. Woe is me, I'm a man of unclean lips. What Paul was saying there is he called down upon himself the prophetic woe curse if he didn't preach this. Jesus crucified. Remember on the road to Emmaus. the eyes were blinded and they were slow to believe all that the prophets had spoken and jesus how he opened their eyes was he opened his mouth and he proclaimed he preached to them from all of the scriptures the things concerning who himself paul would say woe is me if i don't preach christ crucified he wasn't saying we don't artificially run around and and just say jesus jesus jesus jesus no he was saying this is the heart of what we're about this is the heart of our message. This defines Christianity. This is what makes the Christian faith distinctively Christian. This is who we are. We proclaim a crucified Messiah. And it's as if at this point Paul had to explain to them that God purposely chose to make it foolish to the world. That's really hard. Can you imagine this in the Greco-Roman world taking that message? I mean, all odds are against you. You're coming with an exclusive message. Think about this. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father except through me. That's about exclusive as you can get a message. He was never about putting arms around everyone just like this morning and saying, hey, guys, you know, that's fine. We're all going to get to heaven one day and everything's going to be great. It was exclusive. And they had to go take that message into a culture full of a pantheon of gods, gods that were bowed down to, gods that were powerful. And this Jesus, they were proclaiming, was put on the cursed cross of the Romans and then proclaiming that one we believe was crucified we believe is true god do you feel the challenge of that if you have it i'll just help you it won't work it can't work there's no possible way that would work you see the pressures of this and the responses of opposition you know when you're facing opposition as a church especially in that kind of culture you can only imagine what the members began to struggle with you know when you're down and out down at the market and somebody says do you go to that christian church hey there's the nutball that goes to the christian church they're crazy they sit around at their love feast the lord's supper was called a love feast do you know how they were criticized for their love feasts they're a bunch of wackos and then in pockets of corinth in daily life you know what you can imagine one of these dear brothers walks down the street and you can imagine hey there goes that christian he believes in a crucified god in justin martyrs dialogue with trifle the jew this early father he tries to prove jesus is the messiah from daniel chapter 7 and rabbi trifle responds sir these and such like passages of scripture compel us to await one who is great and glorious but this your so-called christ is without honor and glory so that he even has fallen into the uttermost curse that is in the law of god for he was crucified you know what you're believing you expect us to buy into that paul's answer god made it foolish to the world he chose a message foolish now imagine then your pressures in an environment where something is absolutely foolish what do you think your pressure would be to do tone it down not be as direct with it and what starts happening well you begin to take away the offense right you don't want to offend people because then they're not going to come into the church you don't want to say anything that you know somebody coming in might make you think them think well those people think they're better than me i mean you just go down the line here that's not going to win anyone a crucified jew from some back deadbeat town in the part of the empire sent as God's divine son who was nailed to the cross. Are you kidding? And that environment then, what happened in Corinth? Well, the pressures began to cave in on and the pressures were immense. You had this secular realm and then you headed down to the theater. And what was going on at the theater? Oh, they were great with theaters in Greco-Roman. Corinth was full of them. At the theaters, you know what they had? They had grand oratory dramas. And you could listen to these guys, and I was researching this week, and I found the five steps of persuasion in Greek oratory. Listen to this. Number one, get attention. Number two, comprehension. Number three, yielding. Number four, retention. And number five, action. All Greco-Roman rhetoric stressed the importance of one of those. Guess what it was? Yielding. In other words, you had to do whatever you could do to get them to accept the message. To accept you. You know what Cicero said? He was the great orator that lived probably, I think it was maybe 150 years previous to this, but his writings were everywhere. Cicero said, there's one statement, One of the weapons of oratory, the stamping of your foot, should be used only in the most vehement efforts at the commencement or conclusion. But it all depends on the countenance and even that the eyes bear sovereign sway. I hope I don't have eyes that bear sovereign sway. One of the real prominent principles of rhetoric is that truth is to be ambivalent. In other words, undecided. So your speech needed to sound wise and heady and complex, and it had the theoretical in it, this element of the mysterious. I mean, you could see today in Christianity what sells. If I wrote a book on the apocalypse code, I'd be a millionaire. Your speech needs to sound ambivalent, unclear, theoretical, and so that you would just hang on the words, just drop before the words, And cling to my mysteries that I hold. And then you had a whole system of those who had the Gnostic knowledge. They were the really elite ones. They had the knowledge. They knew. When you had done enough to convince them, guess what the audience would do? They would all nod in unison. You got us. We're yours. They would applause. You would have nods and applause. The apostles came to them. Paul is saying, we chose to do none of that on purpose. In other words, they didn't replace the pulpit for a stage. The pulpit was back in Nehemiah back in the day when they raised up the platform of wood and Ezra preached from it. In other words, the message was straightforward. It was plain. It was aimed at making, the goal was, and this is what the goal should be today, to make the message so clear for you that yielding is not our responsibility. Your yielding to the message doesn't belong to us. Our job is to make it clear, and the yielding belongs to who? The Holy Spirit. That's what he says. He's going to say that in the next section. Look, you guys, the natural man's not going to accept your message. The natural man doesn't receive the things of the Spirit of God. He can't do it. Because why? He doesn't have the Holy Spirit. So, if you're getting people to accept it with human wisdom, guess what you're getting? False conversions. And he says God's wisdom mocks all this, for it's written, verse 19, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. He quotes Isaiah 29. Do you know that's when Israel went to Egypt for help and God was indicting them? You can't go to the world to do ministry. I'm destroying that wisdom. What I'm doing through you, I'm destroying that wisdom. And so he goes on and he almost does, God does here a mock. A mock so that you would see he who is in the heavens is laughing at the world. Where is the one who's wise? Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Can the greatest thinkers today really understand God's wisdom? No, the greatest wisdom, the greatest thinkers of the world today can't understand the Bible. The philosophers, the debaters, the world's wise, they don't get it. They can't get it. And Paul's saying, you know why? Because God chose it to be foolishness to them. So in other words, the preaching of the cross was designed to bring about a separation. What do I mean? Here's where the rubber meets the road. In preaching a foolish message to the world before the world, God's going to show great power. How? In you. In other words, He's going to set apart a bunch of people who are mesmerized by this who are taken by this who so see their sin and so see their need and understand they can't get over all the days of their life god's amazing love that he put his son there and poured out his wrath on the cross because of our sins thinking so much about his great love that he would do it for them and give them a place in the kingdom they can't get over that. That's his power. Growing in holy awe of the Lord, growing in love for him, growing in the gospel, growing in what they've understood, growing now in holiness. And that message overtakes a sinner's heart right there. There was no human wisdom in it. There was no human pizzazz. There was no human power. God said, when I save somebody, I'm not using that stuff. I refuse to use that stuff because i want my glory in this you think sometimes as a church we struggle with this it's hard you feel these pressures and when there's no limits today in christianity as to what can be done i mean there's none anymore and we ask the question how will we remain this great question, effective. When everything else to us seems so much more appealing and because of that pressure, we're so much in fear of how people are viewing us and will we be viewed as too negative? You know, it's like this morning. Did you notice how Jesus was a party spoiler? I mean, that's why that guy blurted out, blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom. The guy was trying to, you know, Jesus, let's get off this. That's the pressure. And Paul is saying, listen, when you became a Christian, you made a conscious choice to be a part of something that you promised that you would follow Him and that you would take a stand and being antithetical to the world in your ministry. Its system, what it values, the two realms can't be joined together. They run on totally different systems, totally different ideas, totally different messages, totally different outcomes. And do you know that God's intention and design is that in the preaching of the cross, He wants to make a great separation? You know He wants to do that? How is that seen? Well, he says here, it always pleased him to save with this foolish means. A man standing up, it shows no power. This just doesn't seem to be powerful. But it demonstrates, now this is it tonight, that those who know this power are taken with it. But the separation comes in. Those who don't know this power are always looking for something else and they're never satisfied, they're never finding. That's the separation. Those who know the power are saying, stay there. That's where we know life comes. Those who don't know this power are always dissatisfied and wanting something else. That's the divide. That's what Paul says. He says, listen, look at the Jews. What are they after? Signs. What was Jesus constantly saying about the Jews? you guys always want me to put on a show for you unless you people see something wow you'll never believe and then you you start thinking well what does that say about the whole modern signs and signs movement jews request signs greeks are all after how much the experiential happened how they they were taken captive, how they felt. Human wisdom. And Paul is saying the divide is the cross. It's a stumbling block. To those who are being saved, it's the power of God. But to those, you see, notice what he says, who aren't. It's utterly foolishness. You know, I'm all about and I want to have a great experience with music. i love good music i want to be able to sing well i'm about that but i've repeatedly heard in my eight years over ministry you know if the music's not good you know how will we ever build the church or what will our young people think well i've given a lot of thought to that And as much as I want good music, I know this, music keeps nobody in a church. Music, you know, whether you're singing hymns or whether you're singing 30 minutes of a praise band, it's not saving anyone. Never do I find in Scripture that God says through the power of the song people are delivered you could imagine what you would do with that if that were the case paul says it's through the foolishness of the message preached and if that's the point then he goes on and he says we'll close with this you see it in your own callings don't you know this in your own lives you you can testify to this, Paul says. Look at your own callings tonight. What are your callings about? Well, how many philosophers are sitting here? How many Hollywood stars are sitting here tonight? How many Fortune 500s? How many Einsteins? I'm not so much talking about ability. I believe a lot of you are very intelligent, okay? But I'm talking about what's recognized as valuable by the world. Can you imagine if God said, I'm going to build my church with what's popular with this world? He could keep our young people in here tonight if he put Michael Jordan in the pew. You know, Michael Jordan said that. I read an article years ago, Michael Jordan said, you know, I don't go to church because I know if I go to church, all eyes will be on me. How sad. It was a cop-out, but he understood the problem, didn't he? God's house would then be built for the elite. But the kingdom principle is that of what? Grace. And if it's grace, it's not going to borrow from the world. It's not going to borrow from anything worldly. So Paul says in verse 27, look at your callings. He chose the foolish, the weak, the base, things that are despised in the world. Things he has chosen. You're the ones he's chosen to fill the Escondido URC with. and I don't see you on all the news every night. Would you be bothered if I call you nobodies tonight? I mean, I don't know. Your own callings demonstrate it. And my theory today is why the church is in such disarray and why in the whole history of the Christian church we're losing more people than ever and more young people than ever. It's not just a reform problem. It's because the church is all about quick fixes their own way and they're not listening to God. And they're talking about the wrong things. And this section closes by saying, here's your wisdom, brothers and sisters, it's Christ. That's God's wisdom. Being joined to Him, you have everything. Notice what he says here. Look at Him. Who are you identifying with? You're identifying with somebody born in a manger. You're identifying with someone who his whole life, he didn't have a place to put his head. You're identifying with somebody who the world hated. They didn't receive him. You're identifying with someone that the world took and they nailed up to a cross and they crucified the Lord of glory. That's who you have purposely chosen to identify with. God's son crucified and that's your victory. There's your victory. There's God's wisdom. In him, you have righteousness. In Him, you have all the sanctification you'll ever need. In Him, you have redemption from the wrath to come. You've got it all. You lack nothing. So glory in Him. Take delight in Him. We need that recovered today. And I close with this. Gideon one day, I told the elders I was going to use this one because I used this for devotions the other night. Gideon went to battle against the Midianites. Remember how many men he started with, boys and girls? 32,000. God said, no, send 22,000 home. What, what? Then I want you to take those 10 down by the lake and whoever laps like a dog, set them apart to me. 300. he puts in their hands trumpets jars and torches he says go surround it and all of a sudden they when god tells them they start yelling and they they break the jars and they blow the trumpets and they hold up the fire you know they hold up the fire loud and the whole army self defeats itself and the other armies come back of Israel, what did you do? Why didn't you take us? Well, why didn't God want them taken with? Because no glory would have belonged to the Lord. Is that not true for the church? When we proclaim in preaching Christ crucified, God by His Spirit, think about the confidence that if we had this kind of confidence in what we do, God by His Spirit regenerates hearts. And we saw that and gave glory to the Lord. You know, think about the beautiful confidence that would develop and the witness we would have amongst a whole bunch of, yes, churches today searching for answers. We don't need Egyptians to help us keep our young people. We need to be here with confidence to receive God's powerful message of the cross. And watch the Lord win your battle in your homes, in your lives, in this church, and in your young people's lives. Watch the Lord win the battle for you. Stand still and see the salvation of your God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we ask forgiveness that we have not always had confidence in what you have put in place. I have been so guilty of that, even as a pastor. And I'm the first one to lead the charge in asking for forgiveness for that. And asking, Lord, that all of us would have the right priorities in your ministry. That's what this book challenges us with. And that we would treasure what you treasure and have confidence in what you have told us you will bless. The foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.