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Sermon: The Folly of Human Wisdom Date: October 25, 2020, Morning Text: 1 Corinthians 1:18–21 Series: Kingdom Community Preacher: Pastor Josh Sheldon Audio: https://storage.googleapis.com/pbc-ca-sermons/2020/201026-TheFollyOfHumanWisdom.mp3
We'll turn in your Bibles, if you would, please, to 1 Corinthians. Our text this morning is 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verses 18 to 21. Just so we keep in mind the context, I'll begin reading verse 17.
As you're turning there, you know, human wisdom, such as it is called, is eventually going to lead away from the cross of Jesus Christ, the cross of Christ wherein God has deposited as we will soon see, his power and his wisdom.
It's all in the cross, and that's why in verse 117 the Apostle Paul rejects words of eloquent wisdom as was pointed out to you a couple weeks ago by Pastor Owens. To do so, he says, would empty the cross of his power, and that doesn't mean the cross itself, but our message, my preaching, your testimony of the cross, when we put ourselves forward by relying on human technique, human wisdom, it empties our message of the power.
And why is that? It's because it would draw attention to you, or me, rather than the cross that we proclaim. So Paul, having answered guilty to the charge that he preached with simplicity, guilty to having ignored established ways of speaking, he goes on to show the folly of human wisdom.
The folly of human wisdom, man's wisdom which has been turned on its head by the cross of Jesus Christ, and that having been predicted or prophesied or typified in history as we'll see. That's where God has vested his power and his wisdom, in the cross, which overturns human wisdom and human technique.
So, 1 Corinthians 1, 18 -21. 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 is the scribe? Where is 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.
God bless the reading, and now the hearing and preaching of his word. You know, in April of 1994, about two years after I was converted, I attended something that was hosted at Stanford University. It was a debate, and I went there to hear the late Phil Johnson, who had been a professor at Bolton Law School at UC Berkeley, and a famed, a well-known apologist, debater, if you will, for the faith of Jesus Christ.
And he was debating a man, also late, William Provine, who was an evolutionary biologist, and he specialized in the history of science. And they debated about whether Darwinism is science or natural philosophy, and whether that should be taught as science in the schools.
So stay calm, I'm not going to analyze Darwinism for you. That was just the subject of this particular debate. And after the debate, there was time for questions, and people could go up to a microphone and ask either of the men there, Phil Johnson or Mr. Devine, any question they want.
And eventually, this young man went to the microphone, and you could tell by the way he approached that he had to crank up all his courage just to stand up, much less to walk over to that mic. And when he got to the microphone, and everybody was waiting for him to speak, he finally blurted out to Dr. Provine something like this.
He said, you say we came from the apes, and I think that's just dumb. It's dumb because the Bible says different. I'm not making fun, that's sort of the way he just blurted it out. Some of us were embarrassed to have the faith of Jesus Christ so poorly defended, and others, perhaps the majority, snickered because they seemed to think that was about as well as it could be defended.
The scientist, Mr. Provine, answered very nicely. He said something like this, I appreciate your commitment to your beliefs, and I'm glad that you spoke up because it's important for us to understand one another.
And I've tried myself to understand your biblical view, and Mr. Johnson here has been very instrumental in helping me in that. But just to be clear, we don't say that man came from the ape, we say that ape and man share a common ancestor.
So we need to talk on that basis. And while we can't say it's absolutely proved, the evidence we've found so far fits the theory. So again, I don't want to speak about Darwinism this morning. I want to speak about how one of these two men, Dr. Provine, well-known biologist, evolutionary biologist, well-known scientific historian, he spoke so clear and so eloquently, and polite and affirming as he was, and as unrefined as was that young gentleman's comment, that's just dumb.
Because the Bible says different. I want to ask you this morning, which one spoke the wisdom of God, and which one spoke folly? The young man clearly didn't seem to have a very high level of education.
He wasn't eloquent. He was rather rustic. He wasn't rude, but he had no sophistication. Dr. Provine, obviously the opposite in all those things. Which one spoke wisdom? Which one spoke folly? Now you all know, I can tell by the way you're nodding, you know where we're going with this.
Which one spoke the wisdom of God? It was the young man who had to crank up all his courage just to stand up there, and his whole defense, his whole argument against Dr. Provine with all his sophistication and his numbers and his eloquence and his education.
The young man just said, that's dumb, because the Bible says differently. We all want to sound smart, don't we? We all want to sound like we know what we're talking about. And even if you say that, no, this doesn't really concern me, no one wants to be seen as a simpleton, that I don't worry about that so much, but nobody wants to be seen as, let's say, dumb.
And yet, the very simplicity of the message of the cross of Jesus Christ is as simple as a testament to its eloquence. The cross is the power, the cross is the wisdom of God, and if you have that, then as the psalmist says, I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.
Now people might deride and snicker at you, the Corinthians certainly did, Paul, but the message of the cross of Jesus Christ, any time it is stated clearly, it is folly to a perishing world. No matter how sophisticated or how more educated or how, no matter how much more eloquent the person that you're debating with is over you, if they're speaking against the cross, they're the ones who are speaking folly, and if all you can say is to not believe the Bible's just dumb, not to be insulting, you just can't come up with another word.
If all you can say is that, then you're speaking the wisdom of God, and you need to have your confidence in that, because the wisdom of God is vested in that cross to which you are testifying. The message of the cross, clearly stated, is folly to a perishing world, but our confidence is not in ourselves, but in God, who demonstrated in history the wisdom of following what the world calls folly.
You must be confident in the message of the cross. Are you confident in it? Do you know this message of the cross that you testify about is the wisdom and power of God? Paul was sure, and God willing, this morning, you will leave here sure of it, if not more sure of it.
Look again at verse 18 of our text, chapter 1 of Corinthians, verse 18. 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. You see, there's some freedom here in this verse right away that we have.
It's not your task to resolve every objection. Your job is to simply tell. Just tell simply. Now why is that? Because the cross divides all people into these two groups that we have. These two groups are diametrically opposed.
The perishing world that calls the cross foolishness, and the Christian who calls it God's power. The word of the cross, the world looks upon it as folly. By word of the cross, Paul means it's declaration.
Word comes from the word logos, or logos, where we get logic. And Paul could have used a generic word for word, the Greek rhema, which would have meant a word, but he used logos. He chose that word to drive home the point that this is God's word, this is God's reasoning, this is God's logic with man.
It's all in the cross. They see it as folly. And that word could even be expanded to mean moronic. They see it as a moronic thing to believe in. You see it as the power of God. Now you're not going to resolve these.
It's not your job to resolve these two. You cannot bridge that gap between a world that looks upon the cross where we know we are saved, where Jesus Christ in history suffered for our sins, and a world that looks and says, well, that's ridiculous, and you say, no, it's the power of God.
That gap can only be bridged one way, and we'll develop that as we go. The Christian looks to the cross and sees what the apostle Paul says here, the word of the cross. In some of your translations, the message of the cross, the whole cross, doesn't just mean that single stick or that tree that was planted at Calvary.
It's the whole message of the cross. In Christ, God became man so that as man he might pay the price for man's sins on the cross. Jesus, God in the flesh, lived before God as perfect man, accomplishing in himself all that Adam had failed.
He, perfect and sinless, was the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world on the cross. He died on the cross and he was buried. On the third day, God raised him up for our justification, certifying that he had accepted Christ's full payment for your and my redemption on the cross.
And God's love for us is seen in the cross. God's power is seen in Jesus' resurrection. God's wisdom did not let sin go unpunished. He fully executed his wise word in his son on the cross. See, the cross is the message.
The whole cross and all that it means. The cross is the word, the logos of God. The cross is foolishness to the perishing world around you. You simply cannot reconcile that to what the scripture says is truth.
If they look and say folly, moronic, and you look at the same cross, the same event in history, and say salvation, power, wisdom from God above, how are you going to bridge that gap? You don't do it through sophisticated debates, eloquence.
You simply tell. You simply tell and you tell simply. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, died for me. You need to repent of your sins and believe in him. That's the cross. And really, that's all you need to say.
That's all you can say. Ultimately, that is your message. The foolishness that you need to rely upon because it's the wisdom of God. He says those who are perishing see it as folly. This continual headlong rush into perishing now for eternal perishing.
They're going now towards their final destiny. To look upon the cross this way and say that this is foolishness, this is folly. To disbelieve it means you are a perishing one who are going to continue to perish because you don't see your salvation in the only place where it can be had, at the cross.
They're heading now towards continued perishing, towards eternal perishing, which we call hell, which is conscious, live, in the body, suffering forever. Now why is that? Does it sound unfair to you? Well, it's a very simple thing to put forth where we simply tell about the cross in simple terms.
It's because only by way of the cross can anybody escape perishing. God has not vested anything but the cross of his son, Jesus Christ, with the power to save. Because when a dying world looks to the cross and with disgust turns away, they have called it folly.
They've called God's logic moronic and they've called God a fool. And if you're here this morning and you look upon the cross as anything other than the power and the wisdom of God to save and the only place where salvation could be had, you look upon it with any view other than that.
And even if you say, well, I'm not calling it foolish, I'm just calling it something that doesn't make sense to me, no, the Bible says you're calling it foolish, you're calling God a fool. You are, as it were, looking God in the eye, which one day you shall, when you look upon Jesus' burning eye, and you're saying, well, you're a moron, God.
You called all into existence. And that's really how severe this is. And this is the warning we have here. This is all who do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And however you want to lower your view of the cross from foolishness or moronic, which is the word the Apostle Paul uses in the scripture, however you want to moderate that and make it more civil, the result is the same, eternal perishing.
If you're a believer, you must be ready to be a fool for Christ, because you're going to be seen as a fool no matter how well you proclaim the message, the world's going to see it as foolishness. Why is that?
It's because you know before you enter the fray that your message, that God's message, is going to be foolishness to those who hear it, to those who need to hear it. The Apostle Paul makes that clear.
It's foolishness to the perishing world. But it's the perishing world who needs to hear it. It's the perishing world who needs to stop thinking of it as foolishness. Now you may take comfort from what God told Samuel, for example, when they asked for a king in Israel.
He said, they have not rejected you, but they've rejected me from being king over them. So they've not rejected you, but they've rejected the cross of Jesus Christ from being their salvation, to save them from their headlong dash into eternal perishing.
But it's still you who must bear the reproach of Christ, if that is you speak for him. Don't reduce your embarrassment by trying to prove your faith is rational. No one is convinced into the kingdom by sound reasoning.
Only by the Holy Spirit can the leper's spots be changed. So this gap between you who see salvation and the perishing world that sees foolishness, that's not for us to bridge. That's not for you to reach across, and through your eloquence, through your brilliance, through your sound reasoning, through your logical arguments, to drag them across that chasm.
Brethren, brothers and sisters, you cannot do it. And God has not asked you to do it, and God has not vested in you a power to do it. You and I must do this. Tell of the cross, tell of the cross, and let God by his Spirit bridge the gap, as he did for me.
When I looked upon the cross, I said, this is the silliest thing I ever came across. And none of the people who now I call brothers and sisters, including my own wife, were able to convince me that. It was God by his Spirit, and I'm not special in this way.
Because if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning, God by his Spirit gave you faith to believe. God bridged that gap. And when you tell your friends, and your loved ones, and your neighbors, it is God who bridges the gap.
Don't rely upon yourself. Don't rely upon your wonderful, sophisticated arguments. Paul repudiated it all. He says, no, that would empty the cross of its power. That draws attention to you. That leaves people leaving a sermon, they say, wasn't that wonderful the way he wove those sentences together?
Did you see how he explained the original language? Yeah, but what was it about? It was about how bright the pastor, or the preacher, or the speaker is. Now for having a very bright pastor, speaker, you don't have that problem here this morning, do you?
And yet, you want to be remembered, not for what I said, but who I spoke for. Jesus Christ, the same for you. Just telling of the cross. Don't try to bridge that gap. Don't try to drag them into the kingdom by your arguments.
Just tell. Simply tell. This has to take pressure off of you. God did not craft his message to meet men's expectations. He didn't look down to the world to see what would work best, what exciting music would bring them in, what youth program would finally attract people, nor did he tell you to keep quiet until you're able to reconcile every question, or satisfy every objection, or squeeze his word of the cross into something sensible to this perishing world.
You see, it cannot be done. It can't be done by you, anyway. Can't be done by me. The cross divides. The perishing call it folly. They call the author of our salvation a fool. And what are we supposed to do with that?
Just tell it like it is, folks. Just tell them of the Jesus Christ who saved you. Tell them about the cross. Give them the reason for the hope that you have in Christ. You know, back in Paul's day, rhetoricians, or these debaters of the age, had this five-step program that they used.
They wanted to gain attention, give you comprehension, get you to yield to their premise, retention. They wanted you to remember what they said and then take some action. Paul did away with all of that.
You know what Paul was concerned about? Comprehension. Of those five-step process that rhetoricians used to gather crowds to themselves back in that day, all he concerned himself with was comprehension.
They told clearly about Jesus Christ and salvation in him. Gaining attention, yielding, all these other things he left to God. You remember Peter in Acts chapter 2, when he stood and began to preach and the Holy Spirit came down with tongues as a flame and that huge roaring wind.
Who got their attention as the Jews were going by and heading to the temple? Did Peter? No. It was the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit of God gets their attention. The Holy Spirit of God makes you yield by giving you a new heart.
The Holy Spirit of God gives you retention. We have the scriptures, so it's all there if we don't memorize so well. It's there, you can retain it in taking action. Again, it's God's Spirit that moves us to do something about the gospel.
Comprehension. I take all the other pressures off of you in your testimony to Christ Jesus because Paul did. Just tell it simply so that people can comprehend the propositional truths, if you will, of the cross.
And if you have to, you can tell them it's just dumb to look upon the power and the wisdom of God and call it folly. And in fact, if you do that, you really are already vindicated. And this is what the Apostle Paul says in verses 19 and 20, when he says that the overturning of human technique, human wisdom, has already occurred in history.
Verses 19 and 20, 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 is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? Now both these verses have to do with God's acts in history. And they're recorded, they're actually brought forward from Isaiah chapter 29 and Isaiah 33.
If you want to turn to Isaiah 29 verse 13, I'll read a couple of verses here, and we'll talk about what this is, what this is referring to, and how Paul uses it in his argument to the Corinthians. Isaiah 29, 13, And the Lord said, Because this people draw near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men, therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder, and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.
This is a very dark time in Judah's history. Assyria has just conquered Israel, their brethren to the north, and Assyria is threatening Judah now to the south. Hezekiah is their king, he's a good king, he walked in the ways of David, it says in the scripture there's no king like him before or since.
His people are looking to Egypt for help though. As they know Assyria is threatening, they're looking to Egypt for help, and that's good political calculus. Egypt would be a strong ally against this fierce and unstoppable nation of Assyria.
By every measure, it's a wise and astute move to look to Egypt to help them against Assyria. But God says he's going to turn that wisdom on its head. And why is that? It's because looking to Egypt for help, by doing that, they've proven that all they're drawing near to God was mere lip service.
By looking to wisdom of men and ignoring God, they've proven which one they really trust. It's a commandment of men, you shall come to temple, you shall say these things, you shall draw near to God by praying this prayer.
So they do it all in this superficial way. But when push comes to shove, as we like to say, when the Assyrians are threatening, what did all that mean? Just lip service. You just drew near with your lips, you're just saying the stuff you're supposed to say, you're doing it because a man commanded you to act like you trusted God.
But in fact, when trust was demanded, when trust was required by circumstance, they looked to Egypt. Have you ever been at that kind of a crossroad? Where every fiber of your being wants to do what's smart, where you line up your options, you analyze the pluses and the minuses, you add them all together and say, bingo, here's the answer.
And then you draw near to God with your lips and you say, oh, thank you, Lord, for your spirit's leading. What great calculus this came out to be. And lo and behold, the answer is what I was hoping would be in the first place.
Oh, Lord, thank you for following me this way. This is what Judah had done. They looked north and they saw Assyria coming. They looked south and saw a likely ally and they said, oh, Lord, thank you for your brilliant strategy.
You helped us work it out. Only God hadn't. He hadn't at all. Rather, God said through Isaiah he would totally frustrate their plans because they went to their own wisdom. Remember verse 117 from 1 Corinthians, where he says, I did not come to you with words of wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross be emptied of its power.
Lest everything I say about God be seen as lip service. Lest I point you to me and my wisdom and not the cross of Jesus Christ, where God has vested his wisdom. This is exactly what's happening in Judah at this time, which is why Paul borrows from it, the way Paul brings it forward and shows how wisdom of man is overturned.
No, God had said through Isaiah that he'd totally frustrate all this. And then in Isaiah chapter 36, we have Assyria coming to the gates of Jerusalem. Egypt never came to their aid because Egypt was afraid of Assyria, and rightly so.
But it was the Lord who had kept them away. It was God who left his people alone in David's city, surrounded by a foe they could do nothing against. It's like, look out from your ramparts and see what comes of your wisdom.
There they are surrounding you. Look at the danger you're in with all your astute political calculus. There's that army that nobody has ever defeated. There's your human wisdom. There's looking to the cross and calling it folly.
Well back to the history, King Hezekiah does next what he ought to have done first. He prays. With worldly wisdom, he had allowed his ambassadors to make an alliance. Now he turns to folly. Finally he turns to folly, and on his knees, he prays to God.
Isaiah 37 has part of his prayer this way. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations in their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire. For they were no gods but the work of men's hands, wood and stone.
Therefore they were destroyed. So now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord. We don't know what the people said when he did this.
But it must have made them wonder, like, shouldn't a king lead an army? Shouldn't you be doing something smart again? Like getting the bowmen up on the ramparts, shouldn't we at least shoot a volley of arrows at our enemy?
Let's negotiate. Let's do something. Let's do anything. Anything. But this foolishness of our king, our leader, just praying. Don't just kneel there. Do something. Well of course, the Lord heard the folly of the cross, if you will.
That night he foolishly sent his angel who killed 185 ,000 Assyrians. The folly of prayer brought about a complete overturn of human wisdom. This is what the Apostle Paul says about the cross. Folly in men's eyes, ridiculous to look there for salvation, moronic to believe in heaven and hell, foolishness to trust a God you cannot see who sent a son who died disgracefully on a disgraceful cross.
And yet, and yet, God raised his son from the dead by that great power of God, by the same God who said, let there be, and everything that is became what is from nothing that was. The God who said to his son, arise, and up from the grave he arose.
The God who said to you, believe, and his word will make you a new creation. That God, folly to the perishing world that believes science over faith, that believes in what is observable over the spirits leading.
That's how he turned human wisdom into utter foolishness. He did it in history, in Judah's time, under King Hezekiah. I want to say that this wisdom that we're speaking of this morning is the wisdom of God in saving men, saving sinners, saving men and women who come to faith in his son.
We're not speaking of denying all the advantages of the ingenuity with which man has, man has as a gift of God. The same Hezekiah had a boil that was fatal. Can you imagine having a boil that is fatal?
I imagine something like gangrene, there's so much infection there that should it burst it would then go through the bloodstream and kill him. He prayed for more time and the Lord healed him. Foolishly, he prayed to God for more time and he got 15 more years.
Now, do you remember how God healed him? A poultice or a cake of raisin that the prophet Isaiah put on there and God used that to heal him. Now, I've never had a boil like that and I hope you haven't either, but for my part and I'm sure for your part, if I had such a thing as a boil that could end my life, I'd want 21st century antibiotics that would end it rather than it ending me.
The wisdom Paul speaks of here is not abandoning all human wisdom in ingenuity and technology where God has us. The wisdom Paul speaks of is God's wisdom in saving men. The power of God to save men's souls as a type, and a type only means a preview of sorts, of what it means to trust God's folly rather than men's wisdom, that historical incident is instructive to us.
Paul saw this short piece of Israel's history as the opening act in God's saving drama. So have you ever been where Hezekiah was? Have you ever been there where God has stripped away from you every resource and every option until all that you're left with is the foolishness of praying to a God you cannot see?
And I say foolishness, of course, in quotes. The world would look upon it as foolishness, but what are you doing? On your knees, looking to the power of God for help, looking to His Word for direction.
Have you ever been there where Hezekiah was? Where God finally stripped away all your other options until all you had, and I say all again in quotes if you will, was God, faith in His Son Jesus Christ.
Are you there even now? Your best option is the one that's going to be seen as folly, folly to the watching and perishing world. But on your knees before the throne of grace is where you find true wisdom, the wisdom that is from above, that is pure, that's James 3 .17.
Looking to the cross, the power of God, which Ephesians 1 .19 says, the power that God exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead is the same power that it works towards you who believe. Oh, brethren, do you believe in this thing, this cross, this power of God that's looked upon as folly?
Go now. Go first to Him. Trust Him in the simplicity of the cross and strip yourself of all human methodology and all the constructs and all the calculus and all the astuteness that we put up front. Go to Him now before He strips it all away, because He will, as He did to Judah.
In verse 20, we have the aftermath of the Lord's overturn of human wisdom. He says, where is the one who is wise? This is chapter 1, verse 20 of 1 Corinthians. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe?
Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Now, for this one, you need to turn to Isaiah 33, 18. It's going to sound a little different. I'm not going to reconcile these two for you, but this is where Paul is borrowing from.
Isaiah 33, 18, your heart will muse on the terror. Where is he who counted? Where is he who weighed? Excuse me, this tribute. Where is he who counted the towers? You see, in the aftermath of Hezekiah's prayer, in the folly of the bent knee, the abandonment of human wisdom, disowning what would seem to be astute, God made foolish man's wisdom, worldly wisdom, all that political maneuvering that they had done to bring them.
Do you remember what God did? After Hezekiah prayed, after the folly of prayer, God sent his angel, who that night killed 185 ,000 of the Assyrians. That is how God destroyed the wisdom of man, the wisdom of the wise, the discernment of the discerning.
So what Isaiah is saying is where is the one who counted out the towers that Assyria was going to gain? Where is that smart guy, that humanly wise guy who was getting ready to count the tribute that we were going to have to give to Assyria?
That wisdom has been destroyed. History records it. What was left of the mighty Assyrian army went home shame-faced, perhaps for the first time in their history. Human wisdom then, the way Paul uses this, human wisdom heard his death knell when Jesus Christ came back to life.
Human wisdom had wagged its tongues at him as he suffered, at Jesus Christ as he was on the cross, pinned to the tree. Do you remember the Pharisees calling out taunts against him, wagging their tongue at him as Psalm 22 prophesied?
Well, God foolishly held him there until the last iota of his wrath, wrath at your sin and wrath at my sin, had been exhausted. Human wisdom heard it is finished and they buried him. God in his folly rested from his work of reconciling the world to himself by his son's suffering, while man in his wisdom went on about his business, even the apostles went back to fishing.
Of course, there is no folly in God. I've been saying it that way to catch your attention. There is no folly in God, of course not. The perishing world thinks of the cross that way. The cross, which is the power and the wisdom of God, they call folly.
Are you one who thinks that? Do you look at your Christian wife or husband and just sort of tolerate his or her foolishness? Well, understand this, it's not them, it is not me, it's not any other follower of Jesus Christ who believes in the virgin birth, who believes in his sacrificial death, who believes in Christ's resurrection and soon coming return.
It's not any one of those who you're calling foolish. It's God. It's God. You're looking God right in the face. You are hearing of his most marvelous work in sending Christ Jesus to the cross and raising him from the dead and you with a great guffaw and a snort and a bellow are calling God a fool.
A moron. Think of the danger. Think of the horrible consequence of looking at the creator of everything and speaking like that to him. Of course, when you're able to see God and you answer for a life of perishing by looking to the cross and calling it folly, calling it moronic, by then it's too late.
The time to repent is now. The time to come to Christ Jesus and look to the cross where he suffered for your sins is now while you yet have breath. Repent this day. Repent this moment. And let God be the one who bridges you from folly to wisdom.
From perishing to salvation. I can't do that. Your husband, your wife, no man can do this. But God in his mercy grants repentance and gives a new heart and bridges that gap by making you able to believe, making you want to believe.
That young man who spoke after the debate had it exactly right. He wasn't wise by human reckoning. He wasn't eloquent. He wasn't even really very articulate, but he got it right. That's just dumb. And eternally dangerous.
The cross is the power of God to save. He who raised Jesus from the dead can raise you from the dead. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1 says you're born dead in trespass and sins. Trespasses against God's holiness, sins against his law.
That's foolishness to the world to tell a living, breathing soul that they're dead. But it's true. The living, breathing world is now in the process of perishing. It's rushing headlong into its final resting place.
And this is you. If you see in the cross of Jesus Christ, nothing but myth, nothing but a fable, nothing but a vestige of a long past era of superstition, a crutch that modern man no longer needs. But if you will repent of your sins, if you will ask God's forgiveness, if you will believe that on that cross Jesus died for you and that God raised him on the third day, you will be saved.
You will believe this. May sound like folly now, but it is the power of God to save. Finally, verse 21 in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. 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.
We preach folly and proudly. Not proud in and of ourselves. Not proud of any technique or any eloquence that we can gender up here. Rather, proud because we boast in what? We boast in the cross of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ once prayed, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things, and these things are the truth of the gospel, that if you believe in your heart that Jesus died for your sins, if you believe in your heart that God raised him on the third day, you will be saved.
You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to the little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will that he revealed them not to those whose sophistication and eloquence makes them proud, but to little children, just silly little children, folly kind of people like me or like you.
Simple, foolishly simple, but the very wisdom of God. People look for salvation in so many ways. Some meditate their way towards it and find salvation in their inner peace. That's man's wisdom. God says there is no peace for the wicked.
And without Christ Jesus, you are wicked. Some try to make themselves right by doing good things or by avoiding bad things, and that again is man's wisdom. That's the old proverb that we all have where we ask the guy, what about God's law have you violated?
Well, only the small ones, only a few times when I was a kid, we've all heard that before. So I'm going to be saved. God wouldn't hurt me because I only did some really small sins a long time ago. Man's wisdom.
God turns all that on his head. The scripture says, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. The world rushes into eternal perishing. They are dying because they lack wisdom, not human, but divine wisdom.
Wisdom you now think of as folly, as foolish, as moronic. When Peter preached the folly of the cross for his first time, some 3 ,000 men believed. Do you remember that in Acts chapter 2? Some 3 ,000 men were believed and were saved, but what did others say?
These men are drunk. They've had too much wine at 9 o 'clock in the morning. Folly, they said. This foolishness. I don't want to hear it. No, they were not drunk. No, he was not speaking foolishness. He was speaking in plain and simple terms the gospel of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ and the cross on which he died for your sins.
The very wisdom, the very power of God. God has vested his power and his wisdom in the cross, the whole cross. From before all time it was planted at Calvary. Before the world was created and before man had sinned, God the Father had decreed that God the Son would go to that cross as man and four men would die for their sins and God by the Spirit would raise him up again on the third day.
That's our message. That's your foolish message. That's the simple message, devoid of all human technique. Can they comprehend it? Yes. People can understand what you're saying. Can they believe it? That's up to God.
Can you bridge the gap between their seeing it as a foolish message and you wanting them to see it as the wisdom of God? You cannot. Paul even says, here's the dividing line. Here's the cross that divides all peoples into the perishing and the saved.
But you still must tell because your confidence is not in the telling. It's in the God of whom you are telling. Your confidence is not in your technique or your eloquence or your sophistication or your logical reasoning.
But simply in the foolishness of the cross and the Holy Spirit of God to bring that one, maybe kicking and screaming as it was with me for a number of years, but finally into the kingdom of God. That's our message.
That's the message we proclaim. We proclaim it without flourishes of eloquence or rhetorical sleight of hand but in its simplicity. That's God's wisdom. That's the wisdom of the cross where there's salvation.
In Proverbs chapter 8 and verse 32, wisdom speaks as a person. Wisdom personified says, And now, O sons, listen to me. Blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise and do not neglect it.
Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who fails to find me injures himself, and all who hate me love death.
Are you Christian? Do you believe this message of the cross? Praise God. Tell it simply. Rely upon God to bring the power of the cross to the person you tell. Do you not believe this cross? Do you look upon it as foolishness?
The scripture says, All who love, all who hate me, excuse me, all who call the cross foolishness, love death. I pray that you would repent this day. Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you again for bringing us together and for the admonishments that we have in your word.
And thank you, Father, that we can look to your word and there find instruction. I pray that by the simplicity of the cross and the message that we preach, that you and your wisdom would save many. For we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.
