WWUTT 1436 The Despised God has Chosen (1 Corinthians 1:28)

1 Corinthians 1 .28 says that God chose the base things of the world, and the despised things, the things that are not, so that he may abolish the things that are.

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Visit our website at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in 1 Corinthians 1.

Where did I leave off last week? We'll start reading in verse 26, I'll go through verse 31.

This is in the Legacy Standard Bible. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. For consider your calling, brothers, 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, so that he may abolish the things that are.

So that no flesh may boast before God. But by his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

So that just as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the

Lord. Now, we will, God willing, finish up this chapter this week.

Today I'm only going to go as far as verse 29. So 27 was where we finished last week, we'll look at 28 and 29 today.

Back to verse 27, Paul says, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong. Remember that we're talking about, we're talking about weak things, we're talking about foolish things, we're talking about that which is according to the flesh.

So back to verse 26, for consider your calling, brothers, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.

If you have come to know Jesus Christ as Savior, you are indeed wise.

You have the greatest wisdom that there is to know, that God is creator of the cosmos, that he sits enthroned over all of creation.

The invisible God is known to you. That is the greatest wisdom that we can possess.

And a person that the world would call an uttermost fool is the wisest of kings if he possesses the knowledge that Jesus is

Lord. But all of this has come to your mind by the working of God and not by our works.

Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, I quote so very often, but really summarizes this so well.

This is like one of the Apostle Paul's greatest tweets. If you were to whittle down Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 to a tweet, this is such a good one, summarizing how we have come to salvation.

It is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no man may boast.

And notice that in this particular section, we end with Paul saying, let him who boast, boast in the

Lord. And no man may boast before God that he came to salvation because he made a decision.

He did this. He went searching for the answer and found it.

Good for you. You found your way to heaven. No one is going to be congratulated in that, in such a way on the day of glory.

We enter into heaven, praising God, not ourselves. We are singing

God's praises, not our own. You have come to salvation by the work of God.

Paul says that here. By his doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

All of this, the work of God, by grace, by his grace toward you. And being grace, you did nothing to deserve it, nothing to earn it.

By grace, you have been saved. By God's favor toward you, you have come to salvation through faith.

You believed in Christ because God was gracious to you. It began with God's grace.

By his grace, you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing.

No part of that has been your doing, grace, salvation, or faith.

It is the gift of God, not a result of our work, so that no man may boast before God.

Now, God has done this work, and he's done this through invisible things, invisible means.

That's not the way the world does things, right? Everything is tangible.

Everything has to be observed. Everything has to be proven through the senses or whatever the world will define as science and mathematics and so on and so forth to best serve their purposes.

Not what's really scientific, not what's really mathematic, but just what's best to them in order to support whatever worldly argument they're trying to put forth, right?

Like, for example, right now, the big thing is transgenderism, that a man can become a woman.

This is what our secular culture is attempting to impress upon us, and you have to accept this now basic tenet of the sexual revolution, or you are a hater and a bigot, and we're going to cancel you and destroy you, whatever.

Wherever the secular culture is headed with this, we know it's not good. Anyway, so they're pressing upon us that we have to believe this completely unscientific fact, completely unscientific, and again, what they're calling a fact, that a man can become a woman.

Anyone with basic common sense knows that cannot happen. It's never happened.

Never in the history of the world has a person born male ever transitioned and became female, not by natural means, not by any forced means.

You cannot completely restructure a person's DNA because it's right down to the molecular level.

It was decided at your conception whether you would be male or female, and that is an immutable trait.

It is an unchanging quality about you that you would always be male or always be female.

It doesn't transition. You don't change it, and we know this right down to the core of our genetic material.

You know that you are always male or you are always female, but this is not the way the world thinks because God has given much of our culture over to a depraved mind, that they would believe things as nonsensical as a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man.

Now, the world is pressing this upon us as science, and yet they will say that we

Christians are the fools because we believe in something that you cannot see.

We believe in God who is invisible. Now, part of the curse, part of God separating himself from man because we sin against God, Adam and Eve in the

Garden of Eden, sinning against God, they are banished from paradise. All of creation is cursed.

God separates himself from man. Part of that curse is that God would be difficult to see.

We don't see God. We, as descended from Adam, are born with a sin nature, and that nature in us is to rebel against God so that if God even was seen, we would still go our own way.

This is the curse. This is in the curse of who we are. This is why it says in Romans 3 that all have turned aside.

Together we have become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one person.

Now, if God were to appear before us and prove himself by appearing to us, well, it would kill us because no man can see

God and live. We are sinful, fallen creatures. We cannot stand in the presence of a holy, righteous

God. That degree of holiness, we can't even fathom it in our finite, human, sinful thinking.

But God did come to us. He came to us veiled, the incarnate

Son of God who was born of woman, who took on the likeness of sinful flesh, but he was holy and sinless, dwelled among us, lived a perfect life, becoming that perfect sacrifice for us.

He died on a cross, and there on that cross, he took upon himself the wrath of God.

And God showed that he received this sacrifice, this atonement for sins by raising him from the dead.

Whoever believes in Jesus becomes a recipient of this atonement that Christ accomplished with his death on the cross.

By faith, by the grace of God, we are saved through faith in Jesus Christ and his finished work, his death on the cross, his resurrection from the grave, that he is ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God and is coming again.

All of these things are invisible to us. It's why it requires faith. It's not blind faith.

It can all be proven. But it's something that we receive by faith. The world calls this foolish, but again, verse 27,

God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong and the base things of the world, the low things of the world, those things that the world would not call high and lofty.

Worldly people in our secular culture, they call lofty knowledge the idea that a man can become a woman.

You need to believe that. And then you're one of us. Then you're smart. Then you've got it right now.

Now you're one of us because you can believe in the impossible. Yeah, we call it impossible because we believe logic, common sense.

But a worldly debased people. Believes that this this is the ascending knowledge that we all need to aspire to, that we're all just sexual creatures, this sexual liberty.

We can do whatever it is that we want. And we've changed. Our mindset on this has changed so incredibly fast.

I remember visiting with a friend of mine. It was a missionary over in Africa. And when he was there in Africa, he did not have access to cable television while he was there in Africa.

That was when Friends, the TV show Friends, that was when they aired their controversial episode where two of the main characters.

I think I don't remember. I've never seen an episode of Friends, but two of the main characters who are women shared a kiss in this show.

And I guess that was the first lesbian kiss on television. Maybe I don't remember whatever milestone it was they accomplished through this show.

And and that happened while he was over in Africa. He gets back to the United States after the time that he spent doing missions in Africa and and sees that that was the big kind of news story and entertainment at the time, this lesbian kiss that was shared on the show

Friends. And he was astonished because he was like, nothing like this was going on when

I left. And then I come back to the United States and I see how far the depravity has gone.

I remember a show that I watched where there was this this main character, a man, and he was interested in another main character who was a woman, but she was interested in another guy.

And she starts sleeping with this guy, but she doesn't want to have a relationship with him.

Suddenly, the guy wants to get closer to her, like hold her hands and and and and like do lovey dovey things.

But she doesn't want that. She just wanted to have sex with him. And suddenly she's like turned off by this guy because he actually wants a relationship.

See, that's incredible that our culture is associating sex with pleasure, but not relationship.

It's not really a relationship yet just because two people have had sex with each other.

Whereas what does the Bible say about this relationship? The two become what?

The two become one flesh. It's the most intimate, most relational thing that a man and a woman can do with each other.

And God designed it for marriage. It is meant to be a man and a woman together in a one flesh union for life.

That is what God has designed sex for. There is most definitely a deep relationship that is happening there.

But our culture is losing that. Now, there was a time when even unchristian people knew that this is not a

Christian concept. It's a biology concept. It's just basic biology we're talking about here.

But the more depraved our culture has become, the more God has turned us over to a debased mind in which those who are not godly, who have no concept of what

Scripture says and how God designed men and women and even what he created sex for, that it's for pleasure.

Yes, but for procreation in marriage between a husband and a wife to begin a family.

That's what God created this for. And when a person does not know those things, it's almost like the default mechanism of a person in this depraved culture is to believe that sex is only for pleasure and not for relationship.

And again, the more depraved our culture becomes, the further and further away it goes from a knowledge even of basic biology, because God is turning this culture over to a depraved mind.

The culture will say that it's common sense for people in the culture to say that sex is just for pleasure.

It's nonsense that you would suggest that it's for procreation. Now, that's not what

Paul is talking about here in 1 Corinthians 1. I'm going off on several rabbit trails here just to show you what the world says is wise, the world's wisdom, what it looks like.

We see how unwise and ridiculously depravely foolish the world can be.

Depravely foolish? I think I made that up. Just how foolish and depraved the world is.

There we go. Anyway, so I'm just providing examples of how foolish the world can be, and it's just getting all the more foolish as God is turning this secular culture over to its own depravity.

What Paul is talking about here in 1 Corinthians 1 is not having a certain understanding of sexuality.

It's not having a certain understanding of marriage. It's not having a certain understanding of manhood and womanhood.

What Paul is talking about here is having an understanding of God, a right understanding of God, and God has chosen those things that the world calls foolish so that by his doing, verse 30, you are in Christ Jesus.

He has chosen the base things of the world, those things that are low, those things that the world does not value at all.

Worldly people, secular society, the godless, the pagans, they don't value these things.

God has chosen those things, the things that are not. So as I was making a reference to God has chosen the invisible, right?

He has chosen the things that are not so that he may abolish the things that are.

What are the things that are? That's everything that we see in the world around us. A day is coming in which it will all be judged.

It will all be destroyed. It will all be consumed with fire. These things that the world values and holds dear will vanish by the breath of his mouth, at the sound of the trumpet, at the appearance of his return.

It will all be gone like that because God has that kind of power and that kind of authority as he spoke all things into existence so he can speak all things out of existence.

Now we have a certain order that these things go in according to what scripture says. I'm just simply trying to give to you the power of God.

By his power, all things came into existence. Speaking a word by his power, all things can go out of existence.

Speaking a word. It's in second Thessalonians 2 8 where it says that Christ is going to destroy the lawless one will kill him with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.

It will happen that fast. He can do it that quickly. As all things came into existence in the big bang, you know, bang, it was

Jesus said, let there be and bang. It was okay as he could do it that quickly. He can also take it out that quickly.

This is the power of God. So God has chosen the base things of the world and the despised things, the things that are not so that he may abolish the things that are.

It is through Christ, through his death and his resurrection that God is going to judge the world.

We read in Colossians 1 20. He is making peace by the blood of his cross, making peace means that he will remove and destroy his enemies.

And in Acts chapter 17 verse 31, where Paul is preaching at the Areopagus, he says that God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Even through the resurrection of Jesus, God will judge the world with the base things of the world.

The despised God has chosen Jesus. For Jesus was despised, was he not?

Isaiah 53 3. He was despised and we esteemed him not. The world despises him even now.

And yet it is the despised God has chosen the things that are not so that he may abolish the things that are.

And we are saved from that judgment when we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we live.

And these events that we talk about here, the creation of the world, the crucifixion of the son of God, his resurrection from the dead, all of these things are proven and affirmed through the scriptures.

So again, this is not blind faith, but it is still by faith, right? You've not seen these things and you've never seen

God. You believe in God and it is credited to you as righteousness as it was with Abraham.

So it is with every follower of Jesus. Hebrews 11 verses one through three. Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen for by it.

The people of old received their commendation by faith. We understand that the universe was created by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

Later on, we're talking about Moses verse twenty four by faith. Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward by faith.

He left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.

And likewise, we endure in the present because we have seen him who is invisible.

How have we seen God? We have seen him through the revelation of Jesus Christ as shown to us in the word of God, the

Bible. We have seen God through the Bible, and it is by faith in these words that have been given to us and the

Holy Spirit poured into our hearts that we may hear and understand. It is by faith, not of our works.

By grace, you are saved through faith, and this is the gift of God.

Let me close with these words. 1 Timothy 1 .17, to the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only

God, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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