WWUTT 1433 God Chose the Foolish to Shame the Wise (1 Corinthians 1:27)

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May 5, 2021

Reading 1 Corinthians 1:27 where we are told that God chose the foolish things to shame the wise and the weak things to shame the strong. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!

00:00: Yeah, the world is going to mock us for the Gospel we believe in. For the God whom we worship, the world will call us fools.
00:08: Let them do it! For Jesus said, Blessed are you, great is your reward in heaven when we understand the text.
00:24: You are listening to When We Understand the Text, an online Bible ministry so that we may know all the riches freely given to us by God.
00:33: For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
00:39: Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of 1 Corinthians chapter 1, once again reading verses 26 -31 out of the
00:49: 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.
01:03: 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
01:17: God has chosen, the things that are not, so that he may abolish the things that are.
01:25: 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,
01:42: Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. Yesterday we considered verse 26.
01:49: Consider your calling, brothers. And I don't know that I defined calling real well yesterday.
01:55: I merely pointed back to the fact that we've got calling mentioned twice, or three times rather in the first three verses.
02:02: Paul called to be an apostle, addressing the church of God, which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints with all who in every place call on the name of our
02:14: Lord Jesus Christ. Oftentimes, whenever we use this expression called, we are talking about like an appointment that God has given to a person to do a specific task or a certain gifting that he's given to somebody, right?
02:28: Isn't that the way that you often hear called used in sort of Christian ease or church evangelical circles?
02:36: It's like, here's my calling. I am called to be a doctor. I am called to be a nurse.
02:42: I am called to stay at home. I am called to have a career. I'm called to be married.
02:49: I'm called to be single. That's the way that we'll use that word called. But here
02:55: Paul is using it simply as being called to salvation. This is the effectual calling of God through the preaching of the gospel that came to us.
03:06: That's what Paul is talking about here, addressing these Christians who have come to faith by God's mercy, by God's work, and not by our own, because he had mercy, because he showed grace to those who have come to faith and believe, not because they were wise or not because they were mighty, not because they were noble.
03:33: That's what we have in in verse 26. Consider your calling, brothers, that there were not many wise, according to the flesh, according to earthly standards, according to the people around you.
03:43: There are not many that the folks in Corinth would have called wise, not many who are mighty, not many who are noble.
03:50: Verse 27, 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 things which are strong.
04:01: You know, when we consider the apostle Paul, indeed, he had a certain nobility. He was considered a
04:07: Pharisee among Pharisees, as he shares his own testimony in Philippians chapter three.
04:14: He was the son of a Pharisee, probably even the grandson of a Pharisee. It ran long in his lineage.
04:20: And he was a very incredible Pharisee, having studied under Gamaliel, having kept the law, having been born of Israel, of a
04:31: Jewish lineage, of the tribe of Benjamin. Paul was pedigree as far as Jews go.
04:39: He was even considered elite. And yet this guy was shamed by the
04:45: Lord Jesus Christ, striking him with blindness when he appeared to him on the road to Damascus.
04:52: Paul was on his way to round up Christians to persecute them. Jesus appears to him and says, why are you persecuting me?
04:58: Paul is blind for three days. He fasts there at a house in Damascus before Ananias comes to him, shares the gospel with him, baptizes him.
05:11: The scales fall off of Paul's eyes and he's a believer and he's now an apostle of Christ, as God had said to Ananias when
05:20: Jesus spoke with him. I'm about to show him how much he is going to suffer for the sake of my name.
05:27: Paul was going to lose his rock star status as a Pharisee, and instead of being one who persecutes, he was going to be persecuted for the name that he was persecuting people under.
05:40: I didn't word that right. I don't know how to word that. He was previously persecuting
05:45: Christians. Now he become a Christian himself who would be persecuted for the sake of the name of Christ.
05:51: You know what I'm trying to say, regardless of whether I got that right. Anyway, so Paul loses the prestige that he had.
06:00: He was humbled but delighted to be for the sake of Christ because God showed mercy to him, though he had been an insolent opponent of the gospel, now a preacher of the gospel of Christ.
06:12: So though Paul was somebody who was elite, yet it was not in his wisdom. It was not in his might.
06:18: It was not in his nobility that he became a Christian, an apostle. It's only by the grace and mercy of God.
06:26: Even Paul in his own natural presence was not much to write home about.
06:33: He wasn't somebody that you would have stood in the presence of the apostle Paul and thought, wow, this is a powerful guy.
06:40: I mean, look at how tall he stands. He's good looking. He's got a strong voice. What great arguments he presents.
06:47: You wouldn't have thought that about Paul. In fact, it is said of him, and he writes this to the Corinthians in 2nd
06:52: Corinthians 1010, that he was weak of speech and of stature. So hence why earlier where he said that there were divisions that were going on in the church in Corinth because some of them were saying,
07:03: I am of Paul and I of Apollos and I of Cephas and I of Christ. There was different qualities about those four names that Corinthians were latching themselves onto, but they were all superficial things.
07:15: They had nothing to do with the teaching. It was all fleshly. It was all fleshly driven, because with Paul, he writes weighty things in his letters.
07:26: Well, with Apollos, he's like the most gifted speaker on the planet at that particular time.
07:32: Cephas is an apostle of Jesus who actually was with Jesus during his life and death and resurrection.
07:38: But then you have the attachment to Christ himself, which was not because he was the son of God, because if the if the
07:46: Greeks there in Corinth had seen Jesus in the flesh, they would have been impressed with him either.
07:52: We're told about Christ in Isaiah 53 that that there was nothing about his presence that impressed anybody.
07:59: In fact, he was one from whom men hide their faces, as it says there in Isaiah 53.
08:05: He was not the white guy with the long flowing locks of hair taller than the rest of his disciples, wearing a white robe and a purple sash that we often see depicted in pictures, paintings and even in films and movies.
08:17: That's not what Jesus looked like. He was a Galilean. He had olive skin and probably wasn't very tall at all.
08:26: In fact, there was nothing about him that made him stand out from the rest of his disciples. Judas had to tell the
08:31: Pharisees and everybody that was going to be coming with the Pharisees to arrest Jesus.
08:37: He had to tell them the one I kiss is the man. They would not have even recognized him just by appearance, though some of them had seen him before.
08:45: They still needed somebody to point out to them which one exactly was Jesus, lest any of the other disciples step forward and go, no,
08:53: I'm Jesus, to try to protect him. Judas signified which one was Christ, betraying him with a kiss.
09:01: There was nothing to Jesus appearance that was impressive. And had Jesus walked right into Corinth and preached there, the
09:10: Corinthians would not have been impressed with him either. So everything that they liked about either
09:15: Paul or Apollos or Peter or Christ, it was all superficial. It had nothing to do with the message of the gospel.
09:22: And Paul pointing out to them that you go right back to the basic things of the gospel. This is foolishness to the rest of the world.
09:28: It's not going to impress anybody. You came to faith not because you were impressed with something and not because you yourselves were impressive, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world, verse twenty seven, to shame the wise.
09:45: God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.
09:52: God chose Paul, who probably was not the most impressive
09:58: Pharisee, maybe on paper. Yeah. To show just the power of God, the power of the
10:05: Holy Spirit in a person's life to transform them from who Paul was into who he became as an apostle of Jesus Christ.
10:12: Certainly the power of God is demonstrated in that sense. But as far as like a speaker or a teacher goes,
10:19: Paul may not have been that guy full of zeal. Absolutely. But but was not the the the teacher that you would have been clamoring to hear, not the most impressive speaker in the world, based on what
10:29: Paul said about himself in Second Corinthians ten, ten. And yet God is using this man to shame those that the world would otherwise say is wise.
10:40: I've heard R .C. Sproul say this about the apostle Paul, and I tend to agree with him. Paul was the smartest man on the planet at the time of his ministry.
10:49: There was nobody on Earth smarter than the apostle Paul. You talk about the kind of knowledge that he possessed as a
10:56: Pharisee. And I've shared with you before I I would bank on it that Paul had the entire
11:03: Old Testament memorized. He knew all of it. The law, the prophets, the history books, all of it.
11:11: He had it memorized to be this rock star status of a Pharisee that he was may not have been the most eloquent speaker in the world, may not have had the most incredible voice.
11:20: But but he was a very, very learned man, somebody who studied under Gamaliel, who was a very popular teacher at that particular time.
11:29: This was a guy who had a lot to inherit. But regarding his own intellect, his own intelligence, the knowledge that he possessed, what did
11:37: Paul say about it when he shared his own testimony in Philippians chapter three? He said, I count all these things as rubbish, even the righteousness he possessed as one who had kept the law.
11:48: He said, I count all of this rubbish for the surpassing greatness of Christ, because all of those things are to the praise of of Saul, the
11:56: Pharisee, not to Jesus Christ, the Lord. Paul said, I count all of that as nothing so that Christ would be proclaimed, that he would be praised.
12:07: Previously, we have read that in verse twenty three, we preach Christ crucified to Jews, a stumbling block and a
12:15: Gentile's foolishness. And then when we get to chapter two, Paul is going to say, when I came to you, brothers,
12:20: I did not come with superiority of word or of wisdom proclaiming to you the witness of God. I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
12:33: It is not about what amazing thing man can accomplish. It is about what
12:39: God has accomplished through the things that the world would call foolish. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, to make
12:50: God in human flesh, the son of a carpenter in a little bitty dinky town.
12:57: Yeah, it was the city of David. It was where David was born and grew up,
13:03: Bethlehem. But it wasn't in the palace, which was where Jesus deserved to be born.
13:08: And that was where the Jews expected their king of kings to come from. It was going to be a royal lineage. He was going to be born in the palace.
13:15: Jesus was from a royal lineage, but he was born in a shepherd's town over here in Bethlehem.
13:21: His family moves to Nazareth, which is where he learns the trade of his father, his earthly father,
13:29: Joseph, who was a carpenter. When Jesus begins his earthly ministry and he calls his first disciples,
13:36: Nathaniel is one of those who is called to come and see this prophet who's come from Nazareth.
13:41: Nathaniel replies, can anything good come out of Nazareth, a town of such insignificance?
13:48: There was nothing about who Jesus was descended from, descended from David.
13:54: Absolutely. But but not like of a royal line that is sitting on the throne. It was of a family that no one paid much attention to in a little bitty town that nobody paid any attention to.
14:06: This is where Jesus was from. There was nothing about him that from a worldly perspective that was wise, that was mighty or that was noble.
14:16: God took the most humble beginnings for the incarnate son of God to be born, to be born and laid in a manger, an animal's feeding trough.
14:28: The first audience at the birth of the Messiah are shepherds who live out in a field. Jesus grows up the son of a carpenter, lives in peasants towns.
14:37: When he begins his earthly ministry, his disciples are largely uneducated men. Nothing impressive about those disciples either.
14:46: He is wrongly accused at his trial. Nobody comes to his defense.
14:52: He is beaten. He is stripped. He is hung on a thief's cross naked again, being crucified.
15:02: The most shameful, most, most horrific form of punishment at that time. And this is being done to a man who's done nothing wrong.
15:11: People pass by him as he's hanging on the cross, they wag their heads at him. He dies. He's taken down.
15:17: He's wrapped in burial cloths. He's put in a tomb. And of course, he rises again from the dead.
15:23: But all the way up to that point, all of these things about Jesus, nothing impressive about any of that, taking the lowliest things of the world.
15:32: And God is using these things to shame the wise and achieve his perfect plan.
15:38: God had ordained that Pontius Pilate and Herod would conspire together to murder the son of God and the
15:46: Jews and the Gentiles along with them to fulfill what God by his hand had ordained would take place for the salvation of his elect whom
15:56: God had chosen from before the foundation of the world, not by our will, but by God's will, is all of these things accomplished.
16:04: God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. I recently shared the gospel on Twitter.
16:11: Here is what I said. You are a sinner in desperate need of a savior. Jesus Christ is that savior who saves you from sin, death and the wrath of God.
16:22: Repent, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.
16:28: Here's some of the responses that I got to that. Been there, done that. It's a blank life of oppression.
16:36: No, thanks. So glad that I got out of that lifestyle. Another person here calls herself
16:42: Jazz Mom, whatever. Gods are for children. Had this comment here, says from Cutie Tana.
16:51: But who defines sin? Because the whole system seems a bit weird to me. Somebody rightly responded to her and said, well,
16:57: God defines sin. It's in the Bible. Somebody sent me a quote from Richard Dawkins, right?
17:03: The famed atheist who won a humanist award, humanist of the year, like 20 years ago or something like that.
17:10: Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, he said this. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in.
17:18: Some of us just go one God further. You know, the funny thing about that quote, that was exactly what the
17:24: Romans said about the Christians in the first century. When they made fun of Christians for being atheists, they called them that because Christians believed in one
17:34: God. How many gods did the Romans believe in? A lot, a lot of gods. But because the
17:40: Christians believed in one God, they were called atheists. Isn't that funny that the atheists are using an argument that the
17:46: Romans were using 2 ,000 years ago? So Richard Dawkins comment is neither original nor is it even logical.
17:55: We believe in God, so we're not actually atheists. The Romans got it wrong 2 ,000 years ago.
18:00: So does Richard Dawkins. This person, nameless, anonymous person says Jesus is just someone whose mom told him he was special.
18:08: See, isn't that very worldly? That's according to the flesh, right? This guy named
18:13: Riley says, hard pass. Tried that for 15 years of my life. I will never get them back.
18:19: Another guy named Michael. He said, you've been nominated for hypocrite of the day. And then he's got this graphic on all this stuff that he says that I've done, which makes me a hypocrite.
18:27: None of that stuff was accurate. This let's see person. I'm not even going to mention their name because it's it's crass.
18:35: Anyway, saying, who are you to judge me? This person named Crimson mixing teaching about salvation with fear mongering.
18:41: You're not a pastor. You're a bully and a hypocrite. Anyway, on and on it goes, mocking the message of the gospel, right?
18:47: Why are they mocking the gospel? Because they think that they're higher than God. They think that they know better than God.
18:55: God use these things in the world, the foolish things of the world to shame those who think that they are wise.
19:02: God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.
19:09: As I mentioned yesterday, a lot of us clamor for the things that we believe are wise, that the world says is wise.
19:16: We clamor for the things that the world says is strong. We try to get over having to ever suffer for anything, especially suffer for our faith.
19:26: Can't we be popular for our faith instead of having to suffer for the faith? But James says in James one to consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its perfect result so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
19:49: When we scoff at the idea that we could ever go through suffering for the sake of the name of Christ, we are scoffing at the perfect plan of God, that we would go through suffering so that we might be made in the image of Christ, that we might share in his sufferings.
20:08: That's the way Paul describes it in Romans chapter eight. We share in the sufferings of Christ that makes us more like Christ so that we may be more than conquerors through him who loves us.
20:19: It's all to the exaltation and the glory of God, not about our comfort, but for his glory.
20:26: So let us rejoice in these things, not trying to shape the message of the gospel or the things of the
20:34: Bible so that they will be more palatable to the world or that the world would find them more attractive.
20:39: We've already been told here that the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. It doesn't matter how we dress it up to us who are being saved.
20:48: It is the power of God. May we rejoice that God's name is highly exalted, not ours, not any work that we do that is here on this earth.
20:58: We should rejoice when the world scoffs at us and mocks us for the name of Christ, because it's when we're weak that he's strong.
21:09: And Jesus promises us in Matthew chapter five, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
21:22: Rejoice and be glad for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Here is the the wonderful, rich lineage that we share in as Christians, we share in those same promises that have been given to the
21:35: Old Testament faithful, that have been given to the apostles, that have been given to the great names we read about in the New Testament.
21:40: Great, not because the world calls them great, but because Christ has made them great for the exaltation of his great name.
21:50: And so we have been forgiven our sins, John says this in first John, he has forgiven your sins for his name's sake.
21:59: Let's rejoice in that, that Christ's name may be exalted. Amen. Heavenly Father, help us to be humble in these things, knowing that you have chosen the foolish things of the world.
22:11: So, of course, the world is going to think that we're fools for the God whom we worship.
22:18: You have chosen the weak things of the world to shame those who would otherwise be strong.
22:25: The judgment of God is coming against this wicked and perverse generation who are thumping their chests and and turning up their noses at how high and mighty they are.
22:36: May they hear the message of the gospel and be brought low, humbling ourselves before God and at the proper time, you will exalt us for the greatness of your name.
22:48: May we not be ashamed of this gospel that we proclaim, for it was by this gospel that we've come to faith and we who were weak have been made strong in Christ.
23:00: We have been saved so that we may take this message of the gospel to the world and many others would hear the good news of Jesus Christ and turn from sin and glorify
23:10: God on the day of visitation. Be with us, Lord Jesus. Make us in your image.
23:16: It's in your name we pray. Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the
23:21: Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.
23:27: Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.