Wordly Wisdom (Part 2)

No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.

The Cross as God's Wisdom, Not Human Wisdom

For those of you who weren't here last week or the week before, Paul's focus is the cross. Do we believe in the resurrection? Yes, but the focus is the cross. God the Father punishing our sins on Jesus even though He didn't sin.

God the Father reckoning to our account, crediting to our spiritual bank account, Christ's life even though we did sin and never lived His life. Forget rationalization, forget proving things. You meet somebody from Harvard, you want to sit down with Alan Dershowitz and talk about the Bible, then don't get put back on your heels.

You say to him, do you want to talk about forgiveness and guilt and heaven and hell and atonement and being right with God? Then I have a message for you. If not, how are the patriots doing? By the way, this is why we don't accommodate the culture.

This is why we don't contextualize. How do you contextualize the cross? God isn't on trial for treason. Sinners are. And even in a courtroom, the prosecuting attorney can't go to someone who's just observing in the back row of the court as a court reporter and say, you murdered the person.

Why? Because this person's not on trial. God is never on trial either. Take a look at verse 21. For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God. That's how God designed it.

Search for eons. You'll never come up with salvation. God has to tell you, reveal to you from the outside. God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

Here's God's wisdom, the cross. Here's the world's wisdom, it passes. Which one is more powerful? Which one is more efficacious? Which one does your friend need who's not born again? I have to ask the question.

If it was about how we talked and not what we talked about it, just how articulate and smooth could you be when you would talk about an execution of the God man? Just how smoothly could you talk about Jesus's death?

Well, you can't. Push Jesus and the cross out and it would be easier for evolution to be true than for you to get to heaven. Motivation number four. Motivation number four. You should preach the cross because it's part of God's eternal plan.

It's part of God's eternal plan. Someone says, here you go in that whole sovereignty deal again, you're always preaching the sovereignty of God. I say amen to that. R .C. Sproul said, God has a favorite doctrine and it's his sovereignty.

And if you were God, it'd be your favorite doctrine too, he says. I don't know how you can not look at the Bible and go, there's sovereignty all over. You might say, well, I'm going to preach the cross, but you know what?

God's original plan before the fall, he had kind of another deal. Before the fall, before the cross, before anything else, in eternity past, God said, this is my plan. I have the end ordained who goes to heaven.

I have the means ordained, the preaching of the cross, and I have the very beginning ordained because I'm now ordaining it when the members of the triune God, Titus chapter one, father, son, and the spirit, this great, this great triune promise, redeem men through the cross.

And take a look at the verse and you'll see this part of God's plan. See if you can see it in here. You might miss it. Verse 21, for since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God.

God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. Well pleased. It is a biblical phrase, figure of speech, an idiom that means this, it is God's sovereign decree to do something.

It is God's sovereign decree to do something. Free choice of God to do this, sovereign choice of God to do this, not plan B, not plan C, not saying, you know what, I think I'm going to have my, my plan of Jesus bearing sins on the cross affected by Finney and by Pelagius and by a host of other people who are heretical.

No, God says, this is the cross and by God's own free will, God's sovereign will, God pleased. Well, there goes my notes and it goes under the pulpit. So that's why you better know your material. There goes the notes.

By God's free and sovereign grace, God chooses the way of salvation. God chooses the way of salvation. I'm going to grab my notes anyway. I might be dumb, but I'm not stupid. Listen to this similar language.

Don't turn there. Colossians 1, for it was a father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him. It was a sovereign decree of God. It was his good pleasure. It wasn't that just God says, I'm pleased.

The language of scripture, when you see well-pleased, it's often, this is my determined, sovereign, free will choice. Galatians 1, but when God, who had set me apart, Paul said, even from my mother's womb and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his son in me, the sovereign grace determined when that I was going to have my eyes open.

That's why I'm not going to get caught up into spin and selling and advertisement and Madison Avenue. If God is sovereignly decreed, you give them the cross, the preaching of the cross. Why would I now say, but God, you don't really understand our culture.

It's Gen X, it's Gen Y, postmoderns, and we have to accommodate. We've got to contextualize. How do you accommodate and contextualize executions? We have one message. The lovely died for the unlovely, the just for the unjust.

People are like, well, you know, it hurts my self-esteem. I want your self-esteem to be hurt. Because until you realize that you are a sinner, defiled, rotten, and wretched, but something more important than that, there is this God who loves sinners.

Can you believe that? People say, well, I've never experienced love in my life. Christians have. The God of the universe has loved me in spite of who I am. Eternally, he has decreed this love and set this love on me because of Christ.

God loves me. Not because of who I am, but because of who he is. We give the cross to people. It's our only message. And they come to know God by that. Motivation number five. Motivation number five. You should preach the cross because God determines the message and methods, not the culture.

These are all kind of related concepts, but they will help drive the point. Motivation number five. You should preach the cross because God determines your methods and message, not the culture. When I grew up in the 70s, my mom listened to people on the radio.

And I remember three people that she listened to on Christian radio before she was even saved, before I was saved. She listened to Chuck Swindoll. That would have been a good choice to listen to. She listened to Jimmy Swigert.

That would have been a bad choice to listen to. And she listened to a reverend. He's not a reverend, so I won't call him that. Some Schombach. Who knows Schombach? Bruce Binney has to know. You probably got his autograph or something.

Saved by grace, right, Bruce? I have no idea where that comes from. And in those days, Campus Crusade for Christ had a little thing that you'd put on your bumper sticker with three words to kind of entice some evangelism.

Three simple words. I found it. I found it. And when you saw that on the bumper sticker of someone's car, you're supposed to pull them over at a red light. This is before carjacking and say, what'd you find?

Oh, I found Jesus. And then off you go. While I love the motivation for evangelism, and in one sense people that do it wrongly but do it have more commendation for some of us, are me, who know the right thing to do and don't do it.

But we've got to have the message and the methods. I found what? I was found by him, maybe. You know, the culture, they're inquisitive. We want to appeal to their minds. The culture likes transformation stories.

Get up and tell your testimony. What do we tell Jews and Gentiles? Well, look at verse 22. For indeed, Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom. So you know what? We accommodate the culture. So we preach signs to the Jews.

We give wisdom to the Greeks. Isn't that what we should do? Friendship evangelism. We've got to get them to like us first. But we preach, mark this, Christ crucified. Not resurrected. We know that's true.

But Christ crucified. To Jews, applause. No. Stumbling block. And to Gentiles, foolishness. Go get them. Be warm. Be filled. Everyone you know falls into one of the two categories. Religious Jews. Religious people.

People that know the Bible. And Greeks. People who don't care about the Bible. They're scientific. Everyone you know falls into one of those two categories. And you have one message to give them. What's that?

How many people can, you know. Dinosaurs really could be in the ark. Well, dinosaurs really could be in the ark. But that's not what you need to do. You can believe in dinosaurs. You can believe in intelligent design and still perish.

But you must believe in the cross. We have one message. The cross. And, by the way, most people aren't going to like it. But God tells us what to do. We don't give the culture what they want. You don't give your friends what they want.

You give them what God tells you they need. So what are the Jews? Let's look at the Jews first. This is fascinating. The Jews require a sign. We want water out of the rock. We want some manna from heaven.

We want maybe some super smart person that can speak 25 languages. And that was the culture of the day. In 45 A .D., there was a man named Thutis. And he persuaded thousands of people to leave their homes, follow him out to the Jordan, promising that at his command, Jordan would divide, and they would walk across on dry land.

Do you think the Greeks followed? Do you think the Jews followed? The Jews said, that's what we want to do. The signs. Let's follow that. In 54 A .D., a man from Egypt arrived in Jerusalem. And he said he was the prophet.

30 ,000 people followed him to the Mount of Olives. And he promised that at his word, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down. The Jews didn't want a crucified Messiah. They wanted a political victor, didn't they?

Paul says, I've only got one thing for you. And I'm not going to impress you. I'm not going to prove something to you. Here is the crucified Messiah, the only hope for salvation. You want some kind of compelling evidence?

Evidence that demands a verdict? No. Faithful ministers, men and women, lay people, to say, I have the cross. Some of the scribes and Pharisees answered Jesus, saying, Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.

Now, most of them would go, yeah, good. They want to see some faith. They're kind of pre-Christians. Ever hear that language? We're ministering to pre-Christians. We are? We want a sign from you. But Jesus answered, I mean, how would you like this from Jesus?

We'd like to see a sign. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign. But no sign will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus, seeking a sign from heaven to test him.

Jesus sighed deeply in his spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation. They said, therefore, to him, What do you do for a sign that we may see and believe you?

What work do you perform? He just fed 20 ,000 people. Jesus said, Truly, I say to you, It is not Moses who has given you this bread out of heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread of heaven.

You know sign seekers in your life? Give them the cross. But there are other people at the other end of the spectrum. Take a look at the passage and Greeks. This isn't a nation. Whenever you're in Italy, you do something differently.

But now you're in Greece, you do this. No. This is not a nation. This is a class of people who are influenced by 1st Alexander the Great's bringing in the language and all the culture. Affected by the Greek culture.

What do you do to those kind of people who said, We have no Bible, we have no Old Testament. What do you do to those people? Rationalize and talk and speculate. By the way, if you tried to rationalize and talk to a Greek person about the cross, the first thing they would do is say, Our number one attribute of God, the number one perfection we think of when we think of God is that He is apathetic.

Path, emotions, put an A in front of it. No emotions. He has no emotions. You can't have emotions if you're a God. Let alone Jesus is a man. Greeks think, Oh, God's a man. Jesus Christ is a man. You get thrown out for being demented.

If they could, they would throw a straight jacket on you. Jesus is God and He sleeps, He sweats, He strains, He gets tired. Sure. Celsus, who attacked Christians, said this at the end of the 2nd century, God is good and beautiful and happy, and is that which is most beautiful and best.

If He descends to men, it involves change for Him, and change from good to bad, from beauty to ugly, from happiness to unhappiness, from what is best to what is worst. Who could choose such a change? For morality, it is only nature to alter and be changed.

But for the immortal to abide in the same forever, God would never accept such change. Stupid. 50 different parties back in those days, all searching for the right answer. So what do you do? Spin the gospel, mold it, make it malleable, contextualize it, seek real authenticity and community.

Oh, I know what we do. Let's meet in the middle. You want signs, you want philosophy, I've got the gospel. Why don't we meet and we'll have some common ground. You contribute a little bit, we'll contribute a little bit.

I get a talk, then you get a talk. What would Paul think if we were going to contextualize the gospel, have common ground, come up with Manhattan Declarations and all these other ECT things, and let's just kind of get together, let's go with what we agree on and not separate by some of the distinctions.

What would Paul say? Paul would say, you need a wake-up call. You need some kind of spiritual 911. We preach what? The cross. Yes, but you know what? If you preach the cross, people are going to think you're a loon, they're going to think you're stupid, they're going to ostracize you, you're not going to get a raise at work, and your neighbors are going to think you're crazy.

Well, I'll just be like a Secret Service Christian and kind of sneak in covertly. And Paul would say, I've got a name for you. You're acting like a carnal Corinthian. It's tempting. If I meet someone, I want to establish these kind of things because I know what's coming, and what's coming is this, the crucified Messiah dying on a tree.

Take a look at verse 23. We're almost done. But we preach Christ crucified. By the way, that word crucified is a perfect participle. He is crucified in time, and he continues on now as crucified. You'll see the marks of his crucifixions if you're a Christian in heaven.

He's no political savior. To the Jews, what do they think when you preach this way? They think it is a what? Stumbling block. It's a scandal. Jesus died on the cross. Cross hangers in Deuteronomy 21 are cursed of God.

You mean to tell me we're going to worship a cursed of God one? That's like running really fast. Have you ever really run fast around the ocean, and there's a bunch of rocks, and you've stubbed your toe, and that big toe has just went whack?

Blood. That's the word scandal right here. One rabbi said, Sir, these and such like passages of Scripture compel us to await one who is great and glorious, and take the everlasting kingdom from the ancient of days as son of man.

But this so-called Christ of yours is without honor, without glory, so that he has even fallen into the uttermost curse that is in the law of God, Deuteronomy 21, for he was crucified. Sounds like hate speech to me, doesn't it to you?

Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. And to the Jews, stumbling block. To the Greeks, to the Gentiles, foolishness. Worshipping a crucified savior. We want might. We want strong. I'll never forget the time when I was in India, and I met this guy, and I said, well, what's your religious background?

And he told me, and I said, well, what kind of gods do you worship? What do you think a 22-year-old man would worship for gods in Pune, India? He said, I have two particular gods I worship, the god of strength and the god of virility.

Virility, sorry. How about the god of mental illness? That's what they think. Folly. Hengel said, it does not denote either a purely intellectual defect nor lack of wisdom. Something more is involved, closely akin to madness.

It's like they said of Hosea. The inspired man, Hosea 9, is demented. They said of Isaiah when he preached this message, that he was preaching a message for babies. And to whom would he interpret the message?

Those just weaned from milk, those just taken from the breast, Isaiah 28, 9. Here's a message, it's for the little infant baby. Paul, all this learning has driven you mad. Jesus, you have a demon, and you're mad.

But we, sadly me, I want to be liked. I want to be thought of with reverence, with honor, with initials in front of my name. I want to be thought of in the community like pastors used to be thought of in the community.

When there was a big deal going on, who were the people you respect in the community the most? Pastors and lawyers. And now everything's switched wrong side up, and pastors are at the very bottom. And you know what?

That's a good place to be. I have nothing to offer. I'm not smart. I'm not bright. I haven't been trained theologically. I haven't done anything in my life. This is what a layman could say. But I do know that Jesus Christ was sent by the Father, and he loved me with an everlasting love.

And he died for me, and was raised from the dead. And he offers forgiveness to all those who will look to the cross and believe. Isn't that reassuring to know you don't have to be? Should you study? Of course.

But what has been rejected by men is choice and precious in the sight of God. 1 Peter chapter 2. You meet someone who's religious or non-religious, you have the cross. You say, yeah, but if I meet a Jewish person, I talk about other things.

I don't talk about Jesus. When you meet a Jewish person, you go straight to Isaiah 53. You meet a Gentile, you go straight to Isaiah 53. Because left to themselves, they won't believe you, even if you were raised from the dead.

We'll talk about that next time. How could anybody believe with this message? And we're going to learn next week, but God. When God is working, what was repulsive to you becomes beautiful. And the light goes on, the sovereignty of God and salvation.

We come to a junction in our church that this kind of message from 1 Corinthians, this kind of preaching is going to do one of two things. It's going to make the mature say, God, thank you for the message.

Help me to be obedient to preach this message. Chop away those things in my life that make me like the world, make me like my old self. And I want to live to the glory of Christ. I'm a one-way looking Christian abandoned to God.

And it's going to take those other people who aren't thinking that way. And one of two things will happen. You'll either say to yourself, God, forgive me. I can't do it on my own. I'm weak. But would you give me the strength to be a follower of Christ Jesus as Savior and Lord?

Or you're going to say, who needs this? I need to find someplace where it's easier. And my only message for you is, I have the cross to show you. The answer is in the cross. Let's pray. Father, what a great, great God you are.

Lord, just to be caught up in the scriptures. I personally am not thinking about anything else except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And certainly, Father, we recognize that he has been raised from the dead and he'll come again soon.

We just want to be obedient and live in light of your promises by the Spirit's strength. So would you help our dear congregation and would you help me that when we meet unbelieving friends, maybe we're married to one, maybe we have friends at work.

Would you give us the courage? Would you give us the boldness? And would you give us the help so that we might be obedient to preach Christ crucified? And Father, would you protect us from ever being ashamed, for somehow backing down, somehow being weak and denying you like Peter did.

Lord, strengthen us for this hour. And Lord, we will trust in you for the outcome. In Jesus' name, amen.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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