The Foolishness of God, Part 2
1 Corinthians 1:21-28
If you have your Bible, look at 1 Corinthians Chapter 1 with me, if you will. And we'll continue our study of the foolish of God. And I want to just say at the beginning that if you weren't here last Lord's day, you will not as fully be able to grasp what we say this morning as you would have had you been here. And I trust that if this study is something that is needful in your life, you will secure the tape from last time so that you can have both parts.
I don't like to get too bogged down in repeating what we did last time and so really the two should go together. If you were here last time, many things we say now will definitely fall into place. Now you're going to understand most of it, even though you weren't here, but perhaps a few things would be missing. I don't want anybody leaving now. So stick around. We're calling this particular section the foolishness of God. The world looks at what God has revealed in the Bible and what He has done in Christ's work on the cross as foolishness.
The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians Chapter 1 clear through the end of Chapter 3 deals with this particular subject of contrasting the foolishness of God with the so-called wisdom of the world. Now you'll remember that Paul is dealing with problems in 1 Corinthians. And the problems that he deals with range all the way from Chapter 1 to Chapter 16. The first problem that he deals with is the problem of disunity in the church. And this is a very, very big problem in the church.
I was at Western Seminary in Portland on Friday and the faculty were sitting around and we were talking about the church and one of the professors, a professor in church history, said "tell me, does your church have any problems?" And I said, "yeah, we have a few." He said "well, what kind of problems do you have?" I said, "well thank the Lord we don't have a 1 Corinthians 1 problem. We don't division. But we have 1 Corinthians 2 through 16 going strong."
And I really do thank God that we aren't a 1 Corinthians 1 problem. That there is unity here. In the church at Corinth there was division. And the reason there was division was twofold. One they were identifying with human teachers and they were lining up with men like verse 12. Some were saying, "I'm of Paul," others "I'm of Apollos," others "I am of Peter or Cephus," others "I'm of Christ." And so they were creating factions. There's a second cause of division and that was these people had been saved out of a very philosophically oriented society and they had all prior to their conversion been adherence to one or another philosophy.
And when they became Christians, they maintained this kind of philosophical identity. And so you still had a group of people over here who belong to such and such a philosophy and another to another philosophy and etc., etc. and they were all believers, but they couldn't get together in real unity because they were philosophically divided. And so Paul attacks the idea of division over the basis of the world's wisdom from 1:18 on to the end of the chapter.
And he is showing them that they should never have division in the church based upon philosophy. They should never be divided over economics, over social viewpoints, over perspectives that are propounded by men's wisdom. Because all of this is null and void anyway. They are united around the wisdom of God and that is common to every believer. So there is no reason for philosophical disagreement in the church.
And you know, that can happen. You can have people who have a different philosophy arguing with other people who have a different philosophy, but in God's word is the revelation of what is true and what is wise and we need to adhere to that. And so he attacks the idea of dragging into the church philosophical viewpoints, perspective based on human wisdom, and thus dividing the fellowship into groups around this human view. Now, what it really boils down to in 1:18 to the end of the chapter is the contrast between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of men. And they are opposites. As I told you last time, you don't need philosophy because when it's right, that just means it matches the Bible. And you've got the Bible so you don't need it. And when it's wrong, you really don't need it. So you don't need it.
You only need the word of God. And so that's what he says in essence. The world's philosophy is the opposite of God's wisdom. So don't mix it in the church. You don't need it. It only corrupts. You remember how we saw that last time? It only corrupts. You see, just to give you an illustration, there's only two kinds of wisdom in the world. God's wisdom and man's wisdom, and the two are distinctly defined. And to give you what I think has to be the most concise definition anywhere, I'll point you to James Chapter 3. In James Chapter 3, verse 17 we find the definition of the wisdom of God.
Here is God's wisdom stated and defined. James 3:17 says this, "But the wisdom that is from above," now we know right away that this is supernatural wisdom. It's outside of the earth. It's unearthly. It's other worldly. It's divine. It's God's wisdom. It's from above. And He defines it. It is first, that is it supremely pure. God's wisdom brings about holiness, purity, righteousness, and then he says it's peaceable. It's make peace. It's gentle. Means it's sweet and it's reasonable. He says it's easy to be entreated. Which means it's not contentious. It's full of mercy. It forgives. It is kind. It has good fruit. It is without partiality. God's wisdom unambiguous, not shifty, doesn't play politics and isn't double-tongued. That's what he means.
And the lastly, it's without hypocrisy. It's honest, frank, straightforward, and open, doesn't beat around the bush. That's God's wisdom. What James is saying here is you can tell a person who is teaching God's wisdom because he will be pure, peaceable, gentle, free from contention, full of mercy, good fruits, won't play politics, and will be straight, open, and frank, and honest. That's God's wisdom. Now, in contrast to that, you have man's wisdom in verse 15.
"This wisdom descends not from above." Now this just plain old ungodly wisdom. This is human wisdom and it is defined in three terms. We saw these last time. Earthly, that is it is bound to the earth. It cannot know anything outside of itself, which is really a severe handicap. It's trying to pull itself up by its own bootstraps. Secondly, it is sensual. That is it is predicated on the lusts and desires of men. Thirdly, its source is demonic.
Now you see here two kinds of wisdom, worldly wisdom and divine wisdom. You'll notice something, God's wisdom does not need the addition of man's wisdom. Why would you add to supernatural wisdom something is earthly, sensual, and demonic? That would not do anything for God's wisdom, but what? Corrupt it. That's what philosophy does to revelation, through the word of revelation.
To put it even more clearly than that perhaps, Colossians Chapter 2, verse 8 says this, "Beware," now the Bible doesn't say that too many times. But when it does say that it's very, very important. "Beware," in other words, expect that you're going to run into this problem and be ready for it. "Beware lest any man spoil you, corrupt you, mess up your mind through," what, "philosophy and vain deceit." That is deceit based upon human vanity. "That is built after the tradition of men and the rudiments of the world's system and not after Christ."
Now watch out. Philosophy is built on human tradition. Philosophy is the ground work for the world's system. It is opposed to Christ, beware. Watch out for it. I've sure seen many a Christian who has gone off to the university and taken a course in philosophy and though they may not have lost their salvation, they lost just about everything else. Philosophy corrupts. "Beware lest any man mess you up, corrupt you through philosophy and the deceit of human vanity that follows the traditions of men the ground work, the basis for the world's system, which is not after Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," now watch this, "and you are," what, "complete in Him." You see, the addition of human philosophy is unnecessary. What can you add to completion? Nothing. It is finished. It is done. You do not need human philosophy.
Well, that is the viewpoint then that Paul is presenting to the Corinthian. You don't need to drag into the assembly of the believers the wisdom of men. All it will do is corrupt and divide and that is in fact, precisely what it had done. And incidentally, it also had contributed as we will see to most all of the rest of the problems in the Corinthian assembly, worldly philosophy, worldly morality, worldly concepts.
The Old Testament has some interesting things to say about this and we don't have time to go into all of it, but I would like to draw your attention to Ecclesiastes Chapter 1. Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon and it chronicles human wisdom. It says in effect what human wisdom is all about. And it's a most interesting book. And the Lord put it here for a very special purpose to show us the frustrations and the inabilities of human wisdom.
Now Solomon he was a pretty smart fellow. He says in verse 13 of Chapter 1, "Oh I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven." You see, I decided that I would apply wisdom and figure out all the answers. Verse 16, "I spoke to mine own heart saying lo, I am come to great estate and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem. Ye my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. I was so educated, there wasn't anybody as educated as I was. And I gave my heart to no wisdom. And of course, if I would know that I would know madness and folly as well, which is the opposite. But I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief and he that increaseth knowledge in increaseth sorrow." Try that some time.
Chapter 2, verse 1, "I said in my heart come now, I will test thee with mirth. Therefore enjoy pleasure." Now notice what happens here. He says, I looked for wisdom and I found it. When I summed up all my wisdom, I had nothing but a troubled Spirit, because the more I knew the sadder I got. You know why? Because the more of human wisdom you know, if you're honest, the less you really know. And the more you realize that what you really need to know you can't know. And that's grieving.
And so I said I know what I'll do, I'll cover up my dilemma by just living it up, verse 1. "So I'll test with mirth and enjoy pleasure and I did and behold this also is," what, "vanity. I said of laughter, it is mad of mirth, what good does it do?" I know what I'll do I'll get bombed. Verse 3, "I saw it in mine heart to give myself to wine." Well, that's...this is a really good insight into typical modern man. But that didn't do him any good either. "I know what I'll do, I made for myself," verse 4, "great works. I build houses, I planted vineyards, I made gardens and orchards and trees in them of all kinds of fruits. I made pools of water to water there with the wood that bringeth forth trees. I've got servants and maidens and had servants born in my house. I had great possessions of the herds and the flocks of all that were in Jerusalem before me." Folks, there you just about have the philosophy of the world.
How are you going to cope with the fact that after you've learned everything, you've learned nothing? One, just live it up, live in pleasure. If that doesn't work, get stoned. If that doesn't work, go crazy on work and self promotion and gain and possessions and lose yourself in that. And money, verse 8, "I gathered silver and gold and the treasure of kings and the provinces and then I liked music, so I started in on that. I got men singers and women singers and musical instruments and all that kind of stuff." And boy don't you kid yourself, isn't music a pacifier for our culture today?
You can't go anywhere without hearing music. People can't exist without it. They don't want to live with their own thoughts, they've got have somebody putting other thoughts in their mind. And so verse 9, a modest statement, "So I was great." Well, it's true. "And I increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem and my wisdom remain with me." Whatever he learned, he remembered. "Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy." Anything I wanted, I got. Anything I wanted, I got.
You know, some people that's what they want. They get to the place where they can have anything they want. Anything they want, he had it. "And my heart rejoiced in everything I did." This was the portion of all my labor. And I looked on all that my hands had wrought all the works. And on the labor that I labored to do and behold all was vanity, again. And vexation of Spirit. There was no profit under the sun. And I turned to myself to behold wisdom and madness and folly for what can the man do that cometh after the king?" I mean, what could I do now? I mean, I've done it all, right? I looked at myself and I said well, here you are Solomon and you've done it all. What are you going to do now? There's nothing else to do.
"Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly." I mean, it's better to be smart than dumb. "And the wise man," verse 14, "eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And I perceived also that one event happen to them all." I said, you know, wisdom is better than folly, but you know what? They both ended up the same way. Smart people and dumb people. "Then said I in my heart," look at this verse 15, "as it happens to the fool, so it happens even to me. Why am I then more wise?" Is that amazing? The wisest man that ever lived said when all came to an end, I was a fool. See? That's human wisdom.
A lot of good it does you. But you know the whole world is busy building itself on human wisdom. Jesus said in Matthew Chapter 7, he said, "You know what a wise does? He builds his house on a," what, "on a rock." And who's a rock? God is a rock. And the floods came and the rains came and the floods descended and what happened? The winds blew and the house that was built on the rock stayed firm. "But the foolish man he built his life on the shifting sands of human wisdom and when it all came down the house was washed away." It's a clear contrast people between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of men. All the wisdom of men ever does is change the truth of God into a lie.
Now this passage, come back now to 1 Corinthians 1:18, this passage compares the wisdom of God with the wisdom of men. And it gives us five reasons why God's wisdom is superior to man's wisdom. Five reasons why God's wisdom is superior to man's wisdom. Number one, we're reviewing it's permanence. In verses 19 and 20, Paul says that God's wisdom is superior to man's wisdom because God's wisdom is permanent. And he doesn't make that statement. He doesn't say God's wisdom is permanent. But he shows man's wisdom to be impermanent. And therein is the contrast. Notice verse 19. "For it is written I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. I will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." You see he says human wisdom when all is said and done will be destroyed. It will be brought to nothing.
And then he flings out a challenge for anybody to contradict that. He says "where is the wise," verse 20. "Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world." And he says the wise, the scribe, and the disputer and he talks about the three areas of human understanding. The wise, that's philosophy. The scribe, that's literature. The disputer, that's rhetoric. Call out your philosophers, call out your writers, call out your orders, let them contradict this.
Let all of the philosophies of the past have come to nothing. That all of the wisdom of men has resulted in no changes in the world. The same problems exist in a manifold sense. Where are the wise people? Where are the writers? Where are the people who speak with great oratorical genius? Where are all of these answer men? God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. And in the sense that God has frustrated it that it runs to its limits and still comes up zero it's foolishness. What do men need? Men need life, eternal. Men need the forgiveness of sin. Men need to know God.
Human wisdom can't forgive sin. It can't give life eternal and it can't bring men to God. When it's all said and done, it can't do anything, except as we said last time make comfortable people who are sinning. God allowed men to follow their own wisdom. He gave them that choice. And in all the pursuits of their own wisdom they came up with no answers, frustration. And God stepped in and made their wisdom foolish by what He did. What did He do? He forgave sin. He granted eternal life and He ushered men into the knowledge of Himself.
He did what men in all their wisdom couldn't do. And He did it by such a foolish thing the cross of Jesus Christ. That's not a complex philosophical thing. It's a simple, simple historical fact. And so they're wise only in their own eyes and only for a brief time. God's wisdom is permanent. Second thing, and this where we'll go for today. God's wisdom is superior to man's wisdom because not only of its permanence, but it's power. Verse 21. It's power. You see the problem with man's wisdom is it's nice to sit around and talk about it, but it can't do anything. Have you ever noticed that?
People don't get changed lives from it. It doesn't transform people. It doesn't forgive sin. It doesn't make new creatures. It doesn't usher people into the presence of God. It doesn't do anything like that. It gives people an intellectual satisfaction that they can pare it out a certain thing. I remember sitting down one time on a college campus with a guy and he said to me, "I understand your philosophy is the philosophy of Jesus Christ." I said, "No," I said, "I...it's not a philosophy, it's the truth." "Well," he said, "that's debatable." "Well," I said, "it might be debatable to you, but it isn't debatable really." I said "what view do you hold?" He says, "Well, I'm convinced that the proper perspective is yen yang." Now at the time I wasn't real hip on what yen yang was. I have since become a little more acquainted with yen yang. Yen yang is the philosophy of opposites. And this is what this student proceeded to say. He said, "You see," and he drew in the sand, he drew a circle, and he said, "you see this circle, you draw the circle and then you put a sort of put an S in the middle." It looks like Safeway sign. "You sort of put an S in the middle with a circle. Then you put another circle inside each of those two halves. One-half is black with a white circle, the other half is white with a black circle." He said, "you see, that's yen yang."
And I thought to myself, if any man be in yen yang, he is no, no, no. He's not going to make it. I said "what do you mean?" He said, "well, don't you see it? It's the philosophy of opposites. You see that if there's an up, there has to be a down. If there's an in, there has to be an out. If there's a good, there has to be a bad. This is the philosophy of opposites. Don't you see?" I said, "I see, I see. But so what?" That was the whole thing. I said, "well, great, what did that do for you?" You know what it did for him? It just gave him a little intellectual game that he could play and it gave him a little piece of ego that he could use to show somebody what he knew. That's all. Didn't change his life a bit.
He had no power. Doesn't have any power at all. And the world looks at the gospel and says how foolish, but verse 21 says, "Since in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God," and we went into that in detail last time, "it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save." Do you see something here people? What the men of the world couldn't do when all of the composite of the their wisdom was put together, God did. He saved men. From what? From their sins, their meaninglessness, from Satan, He saved them. Rescued them. Delivered them into His own presence. Forgave their sin, gave them life eternal. That's what He did.
And the world by all of its wisdom didn't know God, couldn't know God. The God by the foolishness of preaching, something like the cross so objective, so simple, so uncomplicated, had the power to generate eternal life, forgive sin, and wisdom of men could never do it. You see God's wisdom is powerful. Now notice at the end of verse 21, we have to note this, "the foolishness of preaching saves them that believe." There is a human response required and that is faith.
You see how that militates against the idea of wisdom? Paul didn't say in Romans 1:16, The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to all those who can figure it out. To all of those who can understand it's nuances and complexities. "It's the power of God to all those who," what, "believe." And one man came to Jesus and said Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. What he was saying was I believe a little bit. Is that good enough? And it was good enough. It isn't a question of figuring out. When you start trying to figure out the mind of God, that's when you get into trouble. Try to figure out all the little nuances of the gospel and you're going to really be in a lot of trouble. Believe it and accept it, that's the key.
All right, so it's powerful. He reiterates the same thought in the verses that follow, verses 22-25. And he's still talking about power here. Look at verse 22. "Since the Jews require a sign and Greek seek after wisdom, we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block and the Gentiles foolishness." Now notice this, he says here we are in the world and we're preaching this simple message of the cross. God in Human flesh comes into the world, He lives, does miracles, proves Himself to be God, dies on the cross, sheds His blood, bears the punishment for our sin, rises from the dead. We keep preaching this message. And we keep telling people this is the apex of history. This is the theme of the universe. This is the salvation of men. This is the wisdom of God, etc., etc., and they say oh ridiculous, ridiculous, stupidities. Now why did they reject it? Well, he says verse 22, "The Jews require a sign."
Now here was the problem with the Jews. They had to have a supernatural proof for everything. Everything. This is characteristic. Their constant demand was this, "what sign showest thou?" What they were really saying was do a trick. Do something really super magic. And if Jesus had done some magical cartwheels and pulled off some real stupendous things then He would have begun something that he never could have stopped. But He did his miracles really for His disciples because miracles only solidify the faith of people who already believe. People who don't believe will find a way to explain them away believe me.
Believe me. You think about the blind man in the gospel of John. You know, it takes a whole chapter, a whole chapter and the Pharisees by the time the whole chapter's done, they've researched the whole thing. They're still convinced the guy wasn't really made to see. In fact, they say oh it must be somebody different. And they finally go to him and say now wait a minute, are you the guy? I'm the guy. We don't believe you. They find his mother and dad. Is this your son who was born blind? That's the guy. Well, what happened to him? I don't know what happened to him. And they say to the man, well, who is this person. He can't be somebody from God. And he says to them, you're telling me that. You know that He has opened my eyes and you're asking me whether He's from God.
Pretty obvious isn't it. The end of it was antagonism and hatred toward Christ. The world does not have the mentality to except the supernatural to being with because the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him and he will reason them away. That's why today we don't we need miracles all the time to convince people who don't believe. That's an act of God in their lives. Jesus did miracles in front of the disciples to convince them who already believed of His power which was exhibited then and would be exhibited in their lives and, in fact, he said "greater things shall you do than I have done."
But they always wanted a sign. Matthew 16, the Pharisees and Sadducees came and they said well, we want a sign and Jesus said in verse 4, "there shall no sign be given this wicked and adulterous generation, except the sign of Jonah." Which meant Jesus would die three days in the grave and arise. And when He rose from the dead, you know what they did? They bribed the soldiers to say that they stole His body and that He didn't really rise. That's how blind they were. They didn't want to believe.
So the Jews required a sign. Now the Greeks, you see they were different. They sought wisdom. Now the Greek wouldn't say oh do something supernatural. He would say now let me figure this out. God becomes man, oh no, no, no. No, that can't be. No, no, philosophically you see that doesn't work. And then on a cross bearing, sitting on a...no, no, no. No, see you have two viewpoints. Here you have the