- The title of this
class, just to make sure, they do that on planes, you know. They say, "This is the
plane going to Florida. If you're not going to Florida,
you're on the wrong plane." This class here is 1 Corinthians, Practical Letter for a Troubled Church. If that's not the class you came in for then there are other classes being taught throughout the building. As you know, I normally
teach a Book of the Bible one verse at a time. You know, we do verse by
verse, passage by passage, work our way through the entire Book. But I'm not going to be doing this for this particular Letter. Instead, I've chosen
key passages throughout the First Letter to Corinthians and we'll be developing those as we go from week to week. So for lesson number one
we're going to be focusing on Chapter 1, Versus 18 to
31 of the First Chapter, a lesson entitled The Foolishness of God. The Foolishness of God. So I would ask you to open
your Bibles to 1 Corinthians. We'll be staying in that book. I think everyone has, or
there should be enough, there should be enough lesson notes, for those who like to take notes and just follow along in that way. I think we have enough. If we don't Bob can go
print off some more. And I would ask the class, if this is the class that
you're going to be in I would ask, as a little bit of homework, that you read 1 Corinthians on your own, so you can be familiar
with the entire Book as we work our way through it, so you kind of refresh your mind in your regular Bible reading. And so we'll begin in 1
Corinthians with our study. Now to better understand this lesson and all the lessons that follow it, I suppose it'd be helpful if we, if we had a little background about the particular congregation that we're talking about in Corinth and why Paul wrote to
this particular church in the first place. So just a little geographical
and historical background, help us to set the scene here. Corinth was a commercial center of Greece. It was the commercial center of Greece, about 50 miles west of the city of Athens, and it was four times the
size of the city of Athens. It had a population at the
time of 400 thousand people, making it the fourth largest
and fourth richest city in the Roman Empire. So it was a pretty important city. Also, as we know, those of you who have
studied this Book before, it was also a Pagan city. A lot of wickedness in that city. And it was here in the
years of 52, 53 A.D. that Paul established a church right in the shadow of
Athenian philosophy. The Greeks held Athena, the patron of Athens, or the goddess, the
patron goddess of Athens. She was the goddess of
the arts and crafts. She was the patron of the city of Athens. She was the goddess of wisdom. As a matter of fact, some
philosophers accredited to her the creation of the world. By her wisdom, they said
the world was created. Well after establishing this congregation and moving on to other
works, Paul that is, a delegation of people
from the city of Corinth, from that church came to him with news of serious
divisions and problems that had arisen in the Corinthian Church. And so 1 Corinthians is
one of several Letters that Paul wrote to this church in order to deal with its many problems. One of the main problems
stemmed from the fact that this church was made up mostly of Greek or Gentile converts. And the problem there
was that unlike the Jews who were well trained in moral living and religious worship to God. You know the Jews had,
they had long history of right living of moral living. They had been trained by the Scriptures for that kind of lifestyle. But the Greeks, they came
from an extremely immoral and sexual background. And they had many false
ideas about God and religion which had been planted in them by a long history of Greek philosophers and Pagan religious teachers. So you're taking these two people that come from two very
different backgrounds culturally, but they also come from an
extremely different background morally. One well trained, well versed
in the morality of Scripture. The other a very immoral,
as a matter of fact, some of their practices, the Greeks, some of their practices, as
far as religion is concerned, involved sexual immorality which was anathema to the Jews, of course. So because of this
mixture, because of trying to meld these two groups together they had a lot of difficulty in adapting to the Christian lifestyle
than the Jews did. They were either slow in maturing or they tried to mesh
their former Pagan ideas and philosophies with the teachings and the practices of
Christ, whereas the Jews, there was less of a problem in Corinth as far as this was concerned. And so a delegation from
Corinth reported problems with sexual immorality and poor conduct during worship, they were
misusing spiritual gifts, and of course, there was
the very dangerous issue of divisiveness. So in writing to them about
all of these problems, Paul tackles the issue
of divisiveness first, seeing it as the most dangerous. He doesn't talk first, he will talk later on
about sexual immorality and all these other issues, but the first thing that he tackles is the problem of divisiveness. You know, if the church divides, there's no other opportunity
to work on the other issues, and that's 2000 years ago in Corinth and the same is true today. Any church has a lot of different issues, but if there's a division in the church, boy, you can't work on
any of the other issues because people are just too
busy fighting with each other. And so in Verse 10 of
the 1st Chapter he said, "Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that you all agree and there be no divisions among you." So when we continue to read his Letter, and if we know some of the
habits of that culture, we learn the nature and
cause of the division. There was a division going on in that particular congregation. What was it about? Well, Paul talks about
some of the solutions, but you have to read between the lines to know what the problem was. Well the problem was this, in those days various trained
speakers called orators would develop a following
my staking out a position on a philosophy or a political idea and debating others on the
merits of their position. It was a little bit like King of the Hill. Anybody every play that
when they were a kid, King of the Hill? Of course, in the north
where there's a lot of snow, I remember, you know, the guy would come with the tractor and he'd plow the snow in the schoolyard and they'd
plow it all into one corner. And that thing was, you
know, like a story high, two stories high, a big snow mound, and at recess time we'd
play King of the Hill. We'd scramble up the top and then you had to fight everybody off. Then when they pulled you down somebody went on the top and
they were the King of the Hill. This is a little bit of what
was going on in Corinth. It was more an oral King of the Hill, a debating King of the Hill,
but this is what was happening. And it was this system
that Paul encountered when he was in Athens and
invited to preach on Mars Hill. It was at Mars Hills that
they'd play King of the Hill. They'd talk about new
ideas, new philosophies, new religions, and people would listen. They'd approve, they'd
disapprove, whatever. Well this sort of idea was starting to creep into the church. Now these debaters, professional debaters, would build up a following
based on their skills at public speaking and formal debate. A little bit like verbal gladiators. The better they were, the
bigger their following. And this was a social
phenomenon of the times. Well, as I said, this type of thing was beginning to happen in the church with different teachers
staking out positions which they claimed were
endorsed by an apostle or a church leader. Some of them would say, "I'm
arguing the position of Peter." And another would say, "My position is consistent
with Paul's teaching." And then, of course,
someone would come along and trump all of them and say, "Well, Yeah, but what I'm
doin', this is what Jesus, you know, what would Jesus do?" So their thing was what would Jesus say. They would stake out
that position and say, "What I'm teaching is the
truth according to Jesus," and so they were busy debating each other. Now the Greek Christians in the church were adapting a familiar
form of intellectual exercise to the practice of their faith in Christ. That's the scene, that's what was going on in that particular church. And that exercise, that phenomenon was starting to create
divisions in that congregation. So in dealing with this
problem, Paul states in Verse 17 that his
preaching was not based on cleverness of speech, and that
idea, cleverness of speech, that refers back to the
debaters and the orators: the cleverness of speech,
clever oratory, debating skills. Paul is saying, my message is not based
on clever debating skills. Paul goes on to say that this system, not only produces division, but it also makes void or empty or useless the cross of Jesus Christ. Now his idea was that by relying
on the power of persuasion and debate, in order to
convince people to believe, they took away the power of the Cross and the power of Christ
to draw people to faith. In other words, he was saying,
people are coming to faith because you're winning the argument. Has that ever happened? Have we ever done that? I've seen it, I've seen people, you know, "Okay, I'll believe, because
I've got nothing left to say to you. You've talked me into it." And this is what was happening here. In the passage that we're
going to study today, Paul shows how it is very
tempting to use human methods to bring people to Christ,
because God's method, and God's method is preaching the Cross, God's method seems so
foolish by comparison. So in Chapter 1, Versus 18 to 31, he gives the Corinthians three reasons why God's way to save people seems foolish to human understanding, and that's the core of our lesson. First of all, he says that
the message itself is foolish. The message is foolish. I mean, human beings
through their own reasoning and schemes and plans and philosophies have never been able to provide
real hope for the world. I mean there've been plenty of ideas, plenty of philosophies, plenty of schemes, but all of them fall by the
wayside sooner or later. No human system gives
complete peace of mind and sure confidence in facing death. Let me ask you this, if
someone is facing death, the idea that we live in a republic, is that comforting to you? If somebody is dying from cancer, the idea that the stock market
went up 160 points today, is that very hopeful? Well, no. And mankind has not been
able through its own efforts to know the mind of God. Of course, this has not stopped one thinker after another
to offer explanations and solutions to the
mystery of life and death. So, Paul explains to the Corinthians how God's plan, how God's solution compares
to all the other solutions, compares to all the other plans,
ideas, philosophies of men. So let's go to Chapter 1 and let's read together Versus 18 to 20. He says, "For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, 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 this world?" So Paul says, you know,
the message seems foolish to the wise, to the debaters of the day. And what is God's message? Well, God's message that
through the death of one, everybody else could have eternal life. You know, we're Christians. We've heard that message a lot, but think now, back in the first century, they've just heard that
message for the first time. It seemed foolish. I mean, after all, what
possible connection could the dying of a poor Jewish carpenter have to do with the life
of a Greek businessman a thousand miles away? I mean what possible
connection could there be? Of course, he says, for
the one who believes, that this was no ordinary
Jewish carpenter, but, in fact, the Son of God. His death and his resurrection, they make a lot of sense. And they provide a message of hope that people are looking for. So let's keep reading. Verse 21 this time. "For since in the wisdom of God the world through it's 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 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." So the fact that the world
considered the message nonsense was nothing new, he said. Nothin' new about that. The world has never
understood God's message for the most part. And he talks about Jews and Greeks. Jews were not content to hear the word of prophesy fulfilled. I mean think about it for a second. The Jews, they saw Jesus fulfilling all of the prophesies
they were familiar with, but that wasn't enough. I mean the Jews knew the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament, they knew the Scriptures and here was Jesus in front of them. He was fulfilling every single prophecy that they knew about, every single thing that the prophets said that the Messiah would do, Jesus was fulfilling them day after day in front of their very eyes, but that wasn't enough. They wanted a spectacular sign. They wanted a spectacular wonder in order to be convinced
of Christ's identity. You know, they wanted a miracle like the sun standing still in the sky, or mana coming, you know they wanted
one of those miracles. It wasn't enough for them, the miracle of fulfilled prophesy, that wasn't enough for them. They wanted more. And that's what Paul
is saying for the Jews, they want a sign. And then he talks about the Greeks. The Greeks are the Gentiles, non-Jews. They wanted the mysteries explained. You know all their philosophers and all, they wanted all of
those mysteries explained. They searched for wisdom in human terms rather than the solution
offered in Christ. You know for them, it was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Die, resurrect, I get it, but
tell me about this mystery over here." [laughs] It was right in front of them, they couldn't see it. So, on the surface of it, to base your hope of eternal
life and joy on the preaching and the promise of a dead
Jew executed as a criminal, that was pretty foolish, on the surface. But Paul reminds them that
for those who did believe the wisdom and the power of God would be fully revealed to them, if you believe it would be
fully revealed in Christ. You know the Corinthians
understood what he meant, because their faith had been rewarded with great spiritual powers and gifts. They believed and what
was happening to them? Some of them could speak in tongues, in other words, unknown languages, others had the power to heal, others could prophesy
and so on and so forth. So their faith had been
rewarded with the power of God. So Paul lays out a great
truth here for his readers, and it's a truth that
applies even to us today. He says, first of all, faith comes before insight. You want insight? You have to believe first, and they were asking for
exactly the opposite. "Well, give us the insight, and if we have the insight, then we'll be led to believe." And Paul said, "No, in
works the other way around. First you have faith, then you receive the insight." Another idea, expressed
rather in the same way, believing precedes understanding. "Okay, God, if you could just
make me understand everything and all the questions, you
answer all of my questions, and you lay it all out for
me, then I'll believe in you." Ii doesn't work that way. You know why? Because He's God, and you're not. [laughs] He gets to set the rules. And then thirdly, most importantly, obedience first, rewards second. I don't know how many
times I've seen people who have not obeyed the Gospel, pray, "Lord if you do
this and if you do that, then I'll do this." We even do that sometimes, but I've seen people who've
not obeyed the Gospel, kind of trying to bargaining with God. "You know, if you do
this, if you, you know, reward me in this and answer
my prayer, this and that, well then I'll believe, I'll
repent and I'll be baptized." That never works. It's not the way it works. So for those who accepted
Jesus in faith and obedience, what seemed foolish to the world became through experience and insight, the wisdom and the power of God. These Christians, here
in Corinth, they believed and then they saw the power
of God working in them, not visa versa. Okay, another reason why God's
way to save man is foolish. The messengers were foolish. So the message was foolish and the messengers were foolish. Read along with me. Let's pick it up in Verse 26. He said, "For consider
your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the
foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the
weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of
the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God." You know we've talked about people who try to change the world. What kind of tools do people use to change the world? Well, they try to change
the world with power, military power. Or they try to change the
world with intelligence, a new philosophy, or a new social system. Or they try to change
the world with religion. New prophets they come and they go. They come and they go. Now these are the types that create waves and magazines write about, and history notes their achievements. You know, you'll get it Time Magazine, the 100 Greatest Influencers,
you know, the top 100, the most influential
woman, or man, or system. You know, the newspapers
write about these people. Now Paul says in contrast,
the messengers of the Gospel, and the recipients of the message, apostles and their
disciples and the Christians that follow throughout the ages, he said, "They have no such credentials." He says, there're not many wise, there are some wise, but
they're not many, he says. There's some great thinkers. You know, we have many
books, but not many, there're not many who are powerful, not many who are rich. There are some. I've known Christian millionaires, but, boy, they're in the minority. Paul says that God has deliberately, and the key word is deliberately. It's not like He didn't have a choice. He deliberately chose the weak and the lowly and the powerless to bring the message that
ultimately changes peoples' lives in ways no, other, message, or system can. So the messengers may seem
foolish in the eyes of the world, but the results of their message in the lives of those who believe cannot be denied. You think about the person who brought you to Christ in some way. And I'm sure all of us
have a different story. Could've been a spouse or a friend or the local youth
minister or just a teacher, something like that. Think about that person. Were they powerful? Were they wealthy? Were they influencers in the world? Were they movers and shakers? Probably a homemaker or some guy that was, you know, working in a local factory, or a school teacher or, even a minister, you know,
we don't have any power. It was a person like that. But can you deny the power of change that has taken place in your life because they brought the Message to you? Absolutely not. Their power and wisdom
was a message to the world that God could take something weak and something despised
and something foolish and transform it into something powerful and holy and wise. Something that the great
leaders of the world had failed to do, with all of their abilities. Failed because of the
method that they use, and yet they consider
God's methods foolish. They laugh at our method
but our method works. It actually changes lives. Okay, third thing. We need to move here, we're almost done. In comparison to the world's solution, our message and our
messengers are foolish, and the third thing,
the method, was foolish. God's method is foolish. Lets finish reading the
passage that we're studying. Verse 30 says, "But by His
doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and
righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that, just as it is written, 'Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.'" We agree that God's
ways are not man's ways. What does it say Romans 11:33? "How unsearchable are his judgments, how unfathomable are his ways." Man is either reasonable and logical, looking for the connections
between everything, or he's totally selfish and hedonistic, searching only for the
pleasure and satisfaction that life can bring. You know, we're either Dr. Spock up there with no feelings, you know, pure logic, or we're Playboy. We want just gratification of our senses. Humans fluctuate between
these two extremes, and they judge in those terms, but God is spiritual. He does things on another plain beyond human reasoning or feeling. How many times have I heard people say about God working in their life. "It didn't make any sense.
I, you know, it just, well there I was, and there it happened. I don't know how it, you know, God sure works in mysterious ways." Well, he does. There's no, you know, cause
and effect, you can't, you can't figure it out. The method used to save man
from the consequences of sin, which are guilt and shame
and fear and suffering, and ultimately death and condemnation. That's what sin does, right? Remember the last time you sinned, I mean really sinned? How'd you feel? You feel good about that? No, usually we feel, stupid. We're even ashamed to
acknowledge the dumb things that we've done, the bad
things, the shameful things that we've done, that's what sin does. So the method used by God
doesn't answer to man's reason or feelings, because
it's not subject to logic. It is rather foolish if you
compare it to man's standards. The method is called imputation, and the motivation is
unconditional love of God. That's God's method. The method of dealing with our sins is called imputation
and I'll explain that. Paul summarizes the idea
of imputation in Verse 30 by saying that all of
the things we need to be in order to be saved from death. So what do we need to be, in
order to be saved from death? Well, we need to be wise. We need to be knowledgeable. we need to be righteous,
which means acceptable to God. We need to be sanctified,
which means pure. We need to be redeemed,
which means free from sin. We need all of those things
in order to be saved. So how does God accomplish this? Well, Jesus becomes all
of these things for us, and through faith in him,
these things are imputed, or they're put on us as
if we truly possess them and thus we become saved. It's like a coat that
covers you from head to toe, and that coat, that garment is called righteousness, purity, redemption, wisdom, so on and so forth. Jesus removes the coat
and he puts it on us. That's imputation, to put upon. That's how we're saved. That's God's method. So Jesus obtains these things through a perfect human life: a sacrificial death, a
miraculous resurrection, and then we get them
because we believe in Him. This believing we can do that. We can't do the knowledge part. We can't do the pure part. We can't do the righteousness part. We can't do the free from sin part. We can do them to a certain degree, but we can't do them in the quality and the quantity necessary to save us. We can't! We're unable to do it. So Jesus does it for us and then, through our
association with Him, He imputes those qualities that He has, to the degree that He has them, onto ourselves. It make no sense, does it? It absolutely makes no sense whatsoever. And so things that we as
humans could never obtain through any method, like absolute purity, absolute righteousness with God, absolute freedom from sin of any kind, absolute knowledge of God, God gives it to us freely because we are associated with Christ. You know that term, "in Christ." That means our link to, I'm associated with Christ. And how am I associated with Christ? Through faith. Jesus obtains them through
a perfect human life, a sacrificial death, a
miraculous resurrection, and, as I said, we get them
because we believe in Him. And why based on faith? Because that's the only
thing we're able to do! We're able to believe. That we can do! So God gives to us the
thing that we can do. We can believe. And He has devised this
way of doing things because He continues
to love those who hate and disobey Him. Man would have never figured this out, and continues to laugh at this method as the solution to man's
problems to this very day. The method seems foolish, but for those are in Christ, it is a solution for which
they continually praise, or they boast in the Lord. I don't boast in anything else, except what God has done for me. You know, I think the greatest
insult to me as an individual in this society is to be
considered irrelevant. It seems that the serious people who are in charge of solving
the problems of the world would put preachers at the
very bottom of the list of those who might offer a solution to the hate and the
fear and the unhappiness and the disorder. And one reason why many, you know, that's one
reason why a lot of men don't go into ministry. They don't like feeling, irrelevant. They don't like feeling powerless, because men, you know, they like to fix and so on and so forth, but preachers are really, in this world, they have no power of this world. We don't exercise any of that power. We are irrelevant or foolish because our message requires
belief in what is unseen. We're irrelevant or foolish because our messengers
are without influence or power or prestige. We are irrelevant and foolish because our method
demands the relinquishing of human effort in favor
of total dependence on God. And yet, and yet for those who believe, the unseen has become real
and powerful in their lives. For those who believe, the method has removed the fear and guilt, and replaced it with hope
and a sense of meaning and purpose in life. For those who believe, this has resulted in
themselves becoming messengers for the foolish things of God, confounding the wise and
the powerful in this world. I remember when I left my job, and I told my boss at Smith and Nephew that I was going off to become a minister. And his words to me were,
"Well, we were just about to promote you to this position, to become more powerful, more
influential in the company. You'll be able to supervise a whole area of people." And what he was doing was, he might not of done it consciously, but what he was saying was, "You're going to be doing
something where you have no power, and I'm offering you something
where you will be able to wield power." It was quite a temptation at the time. You know, I think we should rejoice if we're considered foolish or irrelevant because this means that they
have at least recognized us for what we truly are, [laughs] Christians. Jesus says we should
rejoice if we are persecuted for being his disciples. Being considered foolish
and irrelevant is a form of persecution. So how does the world see you? Are you one of its own? Wise, strong, noble, relevant? Or are you one of the foolish ones that believes in God's
message and method preached by one of his messengers? How will you resolve your fears? Your judgment? Your eternal life? Are we going to rely on ourselves? Will we just ignore it? Or will we let the
foolishness of God clothe us with forgiveness and
salvation and eternal life? If we believe in Jesus,
and God's work through Him, then we are one of the foolish ones, but the foolish ones see the power of God
working in their lives.
