A Word in Season: Divine Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:21)

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Do you trust God? Do you trust him to save you? Do you trust him to save others who call upon the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ? Do you trust him enough not only to rest in his good news of Christ Jesus, even though the world despises it and rejects it, and even to hold that out to that same world with the confidence that whoever believes in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ will be saved? Paul wrote to the Corinthians who were in a situation where they were facing some of those same pressures.

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Perhaps the gospel did not seem to them able to compete in a world full of impressive characters and great claims.

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They were a people already inclined to prefer the debates and the discussions to the decisions, the conversations to the conclusions.

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And Paul wants them to grasp that that message in which they have put their trust, that that word of the cross which they are to proclaim to others, that these are things which will sustain their weight even though others have no regard for them.

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And so he asks, where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age?

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Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through wisdom did not know

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God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

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God ordered things so that the wisdom of this world would not be sufficient to bring them to God.

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God in his perfect understanding, in his infinite insight, in his ability to make all things hold together as he intends for them to hold together, ordained that all the wisdom of the world would not be enough to bring men to a saving knowledge of himself.

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But it also pleased him that through the foolishness of the message preached, he would save those who believe.

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It was God's sovereign purpose. It was his eternal design. It is in accordance with his gracious power that this foolish message, however the world may esteem it, the truth of a crucified

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Jesus, the reality of a messiah who suffered under God's curse in order to set his people free, that this message that the world esteems pointless and worthless and empty, nonsensical and moronic, should actually be the power and wisdom of God for salvation.

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Now we need to trust God for ourselves. We need to believe that however unsatisfactory, however shallow and shabby, however strange and foolish the message of the cross may appear in the eyes of the world, this is the one by whom

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God has determined to save his believing people. There is no salvation in any other name.

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It is only by coming to and clinging to the Lord Christ that sinners like me and you can be delivered from our sins.

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And that message, despite its apparent folly in the eyes of the world, that is

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God's purposeful design, that is God's wise provision, that is

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God's saving intent. Let us not then buy into the folly of the world.

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Let us not rely upon our own wit and wisdom to try and find a way whereby we can come to know

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God for salvation. God has provided such a way, having ordained that no other way could ever be discovered or provided.

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It is the only method of salvation. It is the only message that a true preacher will ever proclaim.

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And not only then do we need to believe it for ourselves, but we need to have confidence in it as the means whereby

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God will bring his people to himself. After all, it worked in Corinth, didn't it?

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It worked in this city that was the moral sinkhole of the ancient world. It's worked with me and with you if you're a

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Christian. You heard the message of the cross, the word of a crucified Christ, and you trusted in him and you have been cleansed and brought back to God.

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Why then should we not go with absolute confidence and speak this word of the cross to any and all around us, to our family members, to our friends, to our neighbors, to our colleagues, to whomever it may be, confident not in their wisdom to discern it, confident not in their intellect to grasp it, not in their goodness to make up what is lacking in it, but in the wisdom and power of God to save those who believe in his crucified