The Gospel and Human wisdom

This sermon was preached on July 14, 2013

The Bible does not turn away from this reality: that the gospel may not make sense to everyone. 
But neither does it turn away from another truth...

Intro. To Corinthians     

"All of this evidence together suggests that Paul's Corinth was at once the New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas of the ancient world."

The Gospel as a contradiction to human wisdom (1:18-25)

He pointed out that the gospel is not a form of Sophia (human wisdom).

Its message of a crucified Messiah does not appeal to human wisdom

18 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.

The message of the Cross, when people hear it, it produces opposite effects in those who are on the way to perdition and in those on the way to glory.

19 As the Scriptures say,“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise

    and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”

Paul's quotation of Isaiah 29:14 shows that it has always been God's method to expose the folly of merely human wisdom.

20 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.

"In 1^st -century Corinth, 'wisdom' was not understood to be practical skill in living under the fear of the Lord (as in Proverbs), nor was it perceived to be some combination of intuition, insight, and people smarts (today in the West).

Rather, wisdom was a public philosophy, a well-articulated world-view that made sense of life and ordered the choices, values, and priorities of those who adopted it.  The 'wise man,' then, was someone who adopted and defended one of the many competing public world-views-  they claimed to be able to 'make sense' out of life and death and the universe."

21 Since God in 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.

Human reasoning does not enable people to get to know God nor does it deliver them from their sins.

These benefits come only through the "foolishness" (in the eyes of the natural man) of the message preached, namely, the gospel.

22 It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom.

The Jews characteristically asked for signs as demonstrations of God's power. In contrast, the message of the Cross seemed to be a demonstration of weakness, specifically, Jesus' inability to save Himself from death.

Likewise the Greeks typically respected wisdom, an explanation of things that was reasonable and made sense. However the message of the Cross did not appear to make sense.

23 So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.

 A crucified Messiah was a stumbling block to the Jews because they regarded Messiah as the Person on whom God's blessing rested to the greatest degree (Isa. 11:2).  However, Jesus' executioners hung Him on a tree, the sure proof that God had cursed Him (Gal. 3:13).

But it is precisely the depth of this scandal and folly that we must appreciate if we are to understand both why the Corinthians were moving away from it toward wisdom and why it was well over a century before the cross appears among Christians as a symbol of their faith."

24 But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles,

Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Christ is the instrument of God's power in conquering the forces of evil and delivering people from their control.

The wisdom literature of the Old Testament personified wisdom as God's agent in revelation, creation, and redemption. Jesus Christ personally is that wisdom because He is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.

25 This foolish plan of God (the gospel of the Cross) is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness, in the eyes of unbelievers, is stronger than the greatest of human strength.

Conclusion:

The preaching of the cross alone has the power to set people free."