When the Gospel Looks Foolish

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[0:00] Thank You Pam so you may have figured out that we're we're looking at first Corinthians today and we are the men's Bible study started reading first Corinthians and as we were reading it together I was like this is this is it you know we got to do this so we're gonna have a meandering sermon series on first Corinthians this summer because next week Ryan will be here and you know the next week something else may happen but well we'll get us through it you know one way or the other and but so if it's not on first Corinthians every week don't despair well we'll do it but it's a great book so I want to say just a few words about just to introduce the book first or the letter really the letter the first letter to the Corinthians by the Apostle Paul the people in in Corinth lived in this really cosmopolitan pagan town it was a very important town it was on an isthmus which if you like to call it a town it was a very important town it was on an isthmus which if you like geography is an isthmus is a thin stretch of land between two two larger pieces of land and there's water on either side and so actually you know the there was travel across the isthmus but then also across it as as like boats would kind of come to one side on the Aegean Sea and then they'd go out on

[1:17] the other side on the Adriatic Sea I guess and they it was easier than going around so they would actually unload the boat and they would carry all this cargo through the town of Corinth and anywhere anyone has to stop for cargo and things like that then that town is gonna get prosperous because I have to stop and eat and they have to some of that stuff will get sold there some other stuff will get picked up there so it was really commercially it was a huge center and there was about 300,000 people living there which sounds like a small town now but back then that was huge where the world's population was much smaller back then so it was one of the biggest cities in the Roman Empire so it was an important town and it as I'll get into that in a minute but I'll get into that in a minute but I'll get into it too it had some had some pagan practices that were questionable we'll get into that Paul who writes this letter had lived in Corinth for several years in fact he lived there so long he realized he needed to get a job you know like your parents you you're out of you're out of high school now and you're gonna go to college and they might just say you got to get a job now too so Paul's like oh I got to get a job so he started making

[2:20] tents so he was a tent maker and that's kind of this term we have for people who are living so that they can do ministry Paul made tents in Corinth and he knew the church he knew the people in the church and he as we saw he wasn't the only apostle to have preached to the church there was another preacher named Apollos and Apollos preached the gospel no problem there Apollos evidently was more eloquent than Paul Paul was kind of more despite his education was maybe a little maybe harder to understand when you read his books you're like oh yeah he's kind of hard to understand he's a little bit more eloquent than Paul and he was a little bit more hard to understand maybe he just he just didn't have that like radio voice you know how some people have radio voice and they can just kind of keep it going and it's smooth Apollos was great at that Paul not so much but Paul said it doesn't matter I'm preaching the gospel it doesn't matter how I say it it's what I'm saying so some of them had this high regard for Apollos some of them had a high regard for Cephas which is the name of Peter the apostle but and this is the important thing to remember despite how it starts Corinthians is a letter of correction it's a letter of correction to a super duper dysfunctional

[3:32] church that has completely given into the culture around it so let's just remember that I'm going to say that again it's a letter of correction to a very dysfunctional church that has given into the culture around us developed some really bad habits mostly by being insufficiently different insufficiently different from the town it was in Corinth was sort of uh poisoning the town was poisoning the church that was in the town in a way you could say we'll see so as we'll see as we get later on the church was condoning improper sexual relationships members of the church were suing each other in court rather than reconciling with each other there's a lot of problems right um some of them were eating food that had been sacrificed to pagan idols and that was troubling to other peoples in the church so there's just all this and um and then he got word of it he had left but he got word you saw some sort of a tattletale in their midst named Chloe Chloe's a real tattletale I heard from Chloe that some of you are doing these things good no but it was a good thing Chloe did the right thing she she sent a message to Paul said the church is falling apart after you left and uh he says okay I got I've got my work

[4:48] cut out for me I've gotta I've gotta come I've got to send a message I can't get there right now but so he's got to take them out to the woodshed a little bit you know that phrase taking somebody out to the woodshed means theoretically to kind of give them the spanking we don't do that anymore so it's a look at verbal spanking that's what's going to happen and it's not going to be fun um so one thing I want us always to be looking for when we go through this is that the answer to a lot of these problems keeps coming back not just to Jesus but to the cross of Jesus and you'll see that phrase several times the cross of Christ or the cross of Jesus so it's not just Jesus that's the answer but it's the cross the cross is the challenge and the answer to some of these dysfunctional problems that this church is having so we're going to look at we're going to start by addressing one of the first flaws of the church not just that there was conflict among church members but really the first flaw of the church was arrogance and pride based on the church's location in Corinth because it was at the crossroads of Greek thought and philosophy and how people in the church were still thinking in those terms like they didn't really internalize

[6:04] that the gospel was so different from Greek philosophy so we'll let's get into that and so I'll with that introduction I'll start reading first Corinthians 1 and we'll go from 18 to 31 we'll finish the chapter so it reads like this Paul the Apostle Paul writes this the message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction but we who are being saved know it is the very power of God as the scriptures say I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent so where does this leave the philosophers the scholars and the world's brilliant debaters God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish since God and his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe it is foolish to the Jews who ask for signs from heaven and it is foolish to the Greeks who seek human wisdom so when we preach that Christ was crucified the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it's all nonsense but to those called by God to salvation both Jews and Gentiles Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God this foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans and God's weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength remember dear brothers

[7:50] and sisters that few of you were wise in the world's eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you instead God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise and he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful God chose things despised by the world's things counted as nothing at all and use them to bring to nothing what the world considers important as a result no one can ever boast in the presence of God God has United you with Christ Jesus for our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself Christ made us right with God he made us pure and holy and he freed us from sin therefore as the scriptures say if you want to boast boast only about the Lord let's pray father thank you for this word we ask that you would add your blessing to it in Jesus name amen well I'm going to stop right here and kind of ask everybody here's a church that went off track it really went off track as I I mentioned just a few problems with the church but why do churches go off track some of you have been in churches that have gone off track some of I've heard but why do churches raise your hand why do churches go off track somebody has an axe to grind good thank you Brian yes others why do churches go off track

[9:23] yes George yes yeah Yeah, you're right. You're right. Exactly. No, exactly. Yeah. So Paul had gotten them off to a good start and then he's gone for a while. And then he hears that there's all sorts of problems. He's like, how does, he was probably thinking like, how did this happen? I left you in pretty good shape. Right. You know, and some of it's a few bad apples, right. Spoiled a whole lot. That can happen. If you get enough sort of critical mass of just dysfunctional people, they're going to make the whole place dysfunctional. They're going to kind of take over. Poor leadership, right. Influence of the culture, money or concerns about money. Right.

[10:25] And this loss, yeah, like this loss of generational values that can go that, you know, somebody maybe in this church, they had, they were okay. And some of them moved away or died and some new people came and they didn't, hadn't ever met Paul or hadn't ever heard the gospel preached by Paul. So churches can go off track and that's not, that's, that's a problem, but it's not unique to Corinth. And I think that's one thing we're going to see as we go through this, is that we can say, oh, those poor Corinthians, they were so stupid and bad. And the good thing that we're not like them at all, right?

[10:56] All the churches in this country and all around the world are at equal risk, and some have already plunged deeply into it, of going off track. And this has happened, and it is happening. So this is a word for us, okay? The problems in Corinth may not be the problems here, at least sort of the symptoms, but the disease is the same at the Corinth. We're going to see what that is. So there's two things going on in Corinth. We're talking about the culture of Corinth right now. This is what they were sort of baking in, marinating in. I'm trying to find some other culinary sort of metaphors to use. I'm not sure what else. Basted with.

[11:35] Frosted with. I don't know. All sorts of things. I'm hungry now. Gosh. Oh. So at least two things were going on in Corinth. One was there was this place called the Temple of Aphrodite. Doesn't that sound exciting? No. It employed hundreds of sacred prostitutes, right? So prostitution was dressed up as a form of worship, but it was actually just as horrible as regular prostitution. So it was this perverse form of worship, but it was also abusive, and it tried to sanctify human trafficking and enslavement. So the morals of this town were low, all right? There was a temple. There was a temple where you paid an offering to the temple, to the priests, and in return, you got to have sexual relations with a temple prostitute. It's purely transactional and disgusting, right? But this is what passed for religion in this town. So, you know, the church was in this town. It's difficult, right? Another was that it was steeped in Greek thought and philosophy. So this isn't unique to Corinth. But since it was one of the largest churches in the world, it was a place where you could pray. It was one of the largest and most important cities in the Roman Empire.

[12:43] It and Athens were kind of heirs to the Greek ways of thinking. So just imagine this is a town that really thought a lot of itself. We have a lot of philosophers here. We spent a lot of time in the Agora. That's the marketplace or the central place in the center of town where philosophers would hold forth and argue with each other or teach their disciples. And so this was a town that had a lot of Greek wisdom that it was proud of. And that is infecting the church, too. So that was the atmosphere that the church was within. And without something to keep them connected with the gospel of Jesus, which is as different from these two things as anything can be, really, right? The gospel of Jesus would never have anything to do with a temple prostitution type of arrangement. And it would never. It really was different from Greek philosophy in so many important ways. We'll get into that. Then there's always going to be an accommodation to the culture. And this is the culture. This is the challenge that all churches have is that here we are. We look at our church. Here we are in Los Altos. We're surrounded by Silicon Valley. We're in a deeper sense. We're surrounded by Western culture, United States culture, California culture, you name it.

[13:53] Plus all the other cultures of people who have come here from other countries and are living here, which is wonderful. But that when you walk in the door, you should look in your pocket. You know, you walk in the door. I have it. I have a tiny screw in my pocket that I found over here. It was really shiny. And I like I'm going to keep that. I like that. That's how I am. I always collecting hardware like this could come in handy someday. And it never does. But anyways, in your pocket, you brought a little bit of culture in with you. Some of you brought a backpack. Maybe I don't know. Some of you brought a giant suitcase. It depends. You know, what did you bring with you? You brought a little bit of American individualism with you, didn't you? Did you bring a little bit of Swedish stuff with you? Did you bring a little bit of Japanese stuff with you? You know what I'm saying? Did you bring a little bit? Did you bring some culture of yours with you? And here it is with you. And it seems completely normal to you. And it is. It's yours. It's great on some level. But at some level, you might, when the church does its business together, you might go, well, we should do it like we did back in Sweden. Or we should, we should, the church should be a little more American.

[14:59] You know, we should have, we should, we should have the First Amendment here in the church. Well, yeah, we should. But no, we shouldn't. You know what I mean? Like there's. There's some things that you could bring with you in here. You could bring all your politics in here with you. And guess what? Not all of you are on the same page politically. So that could be fun. Right? So you could bring all that in here with you. And at some point, you have to be aware of what's in your pocket. I've got a tiny screw in my pocket. But I should, I should actually check my pockets every time I come into the church and go, what did I bring in here with me? What, what baggage have I brought in here that I'm going to put on everybody else's back? That doesn't actually belong here. Which really isn't part of the gospel. Which you can't find any basis for in the scriptures at all. But here I'm going to act like it is. Okay? I'm not saying everybody here is doing this right this second. But I'm saying that happens in every church. And in some churches it's quite accelerated. And that's maybe what was happening in this church in Corinth. They were bringing a little bit of Greek philosophy with them in there. Or they were looking at their neighbors going with very low morals saying, oh, well, that's okay.

[16:01] And so there was, there's a, Paul has to confront a member of this church who's sleeping with his mother. And the church thinks it's great. How could that be? Well, because they had been accommodating to this low moral culture for so long, it didn't even seem strange to them. And he's like, no, no, no, you can't, you can't do that. You have to be different from the culture around you. So it can, it can happen. It's happening in American churches. And the politics on both sides are actually coming into churches and actually tearing up churches. So more on that later. I keep saying later. And you're like, when is the later? Never. Never. No, it'll come. It'll come. It'll come. So what's the antidote? Like Paul, you know, we're, and we're just going to barely get into it, but the antidote to this cultural encroachment into the church at the hands of the people who go to the church, right? So the people are, the people in a way are the problem because they're bringing this culture with them and they think it's normal. And they think the church should look like this, but the gospel says it shouldn't.

[17:01] Paul, Paul really only starts to answer that question about what's the antidote. But the beginning of that antidote is the antidote. And it is that the gospel of Jesus can't really be compared to the kind of wisdom that the Greeks favor. So that's kind of his main thesis in this section that we were looking at today is that Greek wisdom will not help you understand the gospel. In fact, Greek wisdom, if you follow it too much, it makes the gospel look ridiculous.

[17:31] Whereas actually the gospel makes Greek wisdom look ridiculous in God's eyes. And so these two, these two things can't be, you can't make a sandwich out of them and it tastes any good at all. Okay. You see what I'm saying? You cannot combine these ingredients and come up with anything really that great. They are so different. And this is what Paul has to say. These things are really different. You can't use Greek philosophy to understand the Christian gospel. You can't do it. They're completely different, right? So the, and really that was his challenge when he was in Corinth. He was preaching the gospel and the people are like, this doesn't sound like Greek philosophy. He said, no, no, no. And he's like, it's not, this is not Greek philosophy at all. This is quite different. And we'll get into it. And we're going to get into it just in a minute and how it is different, right?

[18:15] But it looks like foolishness to them. And there is another group of people who are also, as he says, looking for something from the gospel and not finding it. He says that the Jews are looking for great signs or wonders so that they can believe. And this is kind of a theme of the gospel of John is that Jesus is saying, you know, there's signs and wonders that people experience. And they expect because they'll believe. And sometimes he does signs and wonders so they'll believe. But sometimes he says, I'm not going to give you any signs and wonders. You need to believe because of what, because I'm saying it, you know? And so what is it that looks like foolishness to the Greeks and weakness to the Jews? The Jews want power and the Greeks want wisdom. And Paul says, I'm going to give you something, but it looks like foolishness and it looks like weakness. It looks like the opposite of the thing that you're looking for.

[19:05] And verse 23 is one to memorize. I don't know if Nathan, you can put verse 23 up there. This is one to memorize. It doesn't roll off the tongue, but it encapsulates so much. Verse 23 reads like this. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Greeks or the Gentiles say it's all nonsense. I'm going to read the same thing from the NIV. You can put that away now, Nathan, if you're willing.

[19:31] And this is a little bit more familiar. Probably because you might have read the NIV a little bit more. And I'll start at verse 22. This is what Paul says. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom.

[19:44] But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom and the weakness of God. The strength of God is stronger than man's strength.

[20:07] So the cross is the thing that is so confounding to the culture the church finds itself in. And it's also the way that the church maintains its mission inside the culture. As long as the church stays connected to the cross, it's going to be a little more immune to the culture infiltrating into it. And so the cross is really the center of it all. And we keep saying that. The cross is the center of it all. So think of it this way. The cross is foolishness because it doesn't have any of the categories of Greek philosophy. It doesn't involve Jesus teaching great things or elevating humans. Although he actually does. They just can't see it, right?

[20:43] The Greeks believed in something called the good life. If I'm moral and if I'm well educated and if I pay attention to good philosophy, then I'm going to have the good life. And it's very much about elevating myself by my own efforts. Do you get that? This is Greek philosophy. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to have the good life by studying hard and acting right. And this is not unfamiliar to any of us. It sounds like it could be a lot of cultures would say something quite like that.

[21:14] Jesus says that won't work because you can't do it. You're not smart enough and you're not good enough. You can't do it. It's not possible for you to have a good life apart from me, apart from the power of the spirit that changes you. And so the Greeks would look at that and go, no, no. Our whole system is based on us being able to figure this out ourselves and elevate ourselves to a better life by our own learning and our own efforts. And the cross says, no, that only happens at the cross because of the work of somebody else, not you.

[21:47] And so they'd be saying, well, so then are we supposed to give up? And the answer is yes, but in a different way. And they're like, this doesn't make any sense. They would just say, this doesn't make any sense. This doesn't make any sense. This philosophy sounds all wrong. So it's foolishness to the Greeks. OK, so that's how the cross is foolishness to the Greeks, right?

[22:05] And the cross is also weakness to the Jews. The Jews were looking for great signs, great power, some person to come along and marshal this giant army and defeat all their enemies. But what happens at the cross?

[22:19] The leader of the movement is executed. That doesn't look like power at all. That doesn't look like strength. That looks like weakness. That looks like, yeah, he did not. He didn't. He did not get enough people to follow him to stop that. And if he could have called down the angels from heaven to stop that, why didn't he do that? And if he didn't do that, then he must not really be who he said he was. Now, we have to understand then that anyone who thinks this doesn't believe in the resurrection, right? Because if they really did believe in the resurrection, they'd have to go, oh, oh, he was right. He was right. So we have to set aside the resurrection for this. And people would look at the cross apart from the resurrection and say, that was a total defeat. That was total weakness. That was total failure. Like if you were to grade the movement, like A is he overthrows the Romans and F is he got killed by the Romans. They'd be like, he gets an F minus because he was killed by the Romans. All his friends ran away.

[23:16] And he was tortured to death. And he didn't even curse them while he was dying. He tried to forgive them. Like how weak? What a wuss. You know, they're like, this guy is nobody to follow. So Paul says, you know, the Greeks are looking for wisdom. The Jews are looking for signs and power. But all God gives you, if that's what you're looking for in Jesus, all you're going to see is foolishness and weakness, right?

[23:43] So those are the two objections in Corinth. This is the challenge for the church. Greek Corinth and Jewish Corinth. The gospel is either foolishness or it's weakness. And Paul says, you're right. To those who are perishing is either foolishness or weakness. But to those who have been transformed is the wisdom of God and it's the power of God. And that's something I want us to explore eventually someday because I'm a little frightened by this word. But I think it's something we need to embrace somehow in some good way. Is that the cross is the power of God that's been made available to us in some amazing way. Not for us to abuse. Not for us to control other people. Not for us to, you know, dominate anyone else. That's not how that power is meant to work. That's not how it's meant to be used. But still that the power of God is accessible to us in the cross of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit is something that we need to lean into. Because I think we've been afraid to touch it or use it or be employed by it. Do you see what I'm saying? Like this is something that could kind of, you know, if we really are weak.

[24:48] But God isn't weak. And so we should, if God tells us to move in power, in his power, we should do it. What that looks like, I don't know. I can't tell you right now. So that's the place we're going to stop here. Actually going to stop. I want us to point forward though because there's more to come. I can't possibly cover it all today. How does the church get out of the wilderness of cultural accommodation? And how does the church get out of the wilderness of dysfunction? That's kind of going to be the question that we're going to ask ourselves. And the answer is the cross. It always comes back to the cross. And that's going to be the topic going forward. But this lays the foundation. Let's pray.

[25:33] Fathers, thank you again for this word. Thank you for the cross of Jesus Christ. For the wisdom of it and the power of it. And Lord, put that wisdom and power into our pockets. And let us walk out of here with that in our pockets, Lord. Amen.