Well, it's been quite a winter, hasn't it? Have
you seen the potholes up on Highway 96, anybody?
If you haven't, it might be worth your time just
to take a detour going home and look at them.
It's sort of like an amusement park ride. A lot
of similarities. I suppose I'll be filling them
up one of these days, but it concerns me because
I just hope the workmen are sure all the cars
are out of the potholes before they fill them.
I don't know what these things are that hang
on the back of cars in the snowy weather. You
know, behind the wheel, right on the mud flap,
slush lumps. Maybe we ought to create a word
for them. Doesn't it give you a wonderful sense
of power to be able to kick those things? My
wife sat out here in the parking lot a couple
of weeks ago and watched people come out of church
and kick them. Leave them in the parking lot
It just gives you a little bit of power doesn't
it over winter a Little bit of revenge just a
way to show winter what you think of it to be
able to kick those things off your car Well,
we're going to leave winter behind and Go many
miles to Greece as we read these words because
Corinth was located of course in ancient Greece
Its citizens prided themselves in their intellectual
heritage. They of course prided themselves in
people like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, people
like Zeno, and Epicurus. All of these great ancient
thinkers were Greeks. For hundreds of years they
had this tradition of people who were philosophers.
The Greeks loved speculation, logic, and argumentation.
John MacArthur writes that the Greeks had perhaps
50 philosophical parties or movements, 50 of
them. And each one of them had its own answers
to the questions of life. Who am I? Where did
I come from? And what is life all about? Exploring
those kinds of deep questions, the Greeks developed
sometimes very complex systems of thinking, outlining
what they thought the order of society ought
to be, or how people ought to relate to one another
or to the gods. And the Greeks had their favorite
teachers or thinkers and divided themselves in
their loyalty to them. But inevitably these human
philosophies led to error inevitably in Romans
chapter 1 it gives us the decay of a pagan civilization
I Believe that that chapter is really written
about the generation before the flood But it
applies really to every civilization without
God that turns itself from God It says for even
though they knew God They did not honor Him as
God or give thanks, but they became futile in
their speculations, and their foolish heart was
darkened. Professing to be wise, they became
fools. And so it was with the Greek civilization,
and so it is with the Western civilization of
today. Because they turned from God, they therefore
had no transcendent, objective way of measuring
what is right and wrong, what is true and what
is false. Their conclusions, though very complex
and humanly wise, were based merely upon human
opinion, and were therefore often contradictory.
Now the spirit of this Greek culture in which
these Corinthian Christians lived stuck with
them after they believed. Some of the spirit
and the values of that culture stuck with them
and like their pagan neighbors they were prone
to divide themselves over teachers and preachers
and form factions that were based upon their
own choices. Paul has talked to them about that
already we're going to pick it up in verse 18
in our reading For he says the word of the cross
is to those who are perishing foolishness 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 cleverness of the clever
I will set aside Where is the wise man? 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 through
its wisdom did not come to know God, God was
well pleased through the foolishness of the message
preached to save those who believe. For indeed,
Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom,
but we preach Christ crucified. To the Jews,
a stumbling block. And to Gentiles, foolishness.
But to those who are the call to both Jews and
Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom
of God. because the foolishness of God is wiser
than men, and the weakness of God is stronger
than men." These Corinthians still had an ear
for clever words and for sharp arguments of philosophy.
Paul warns them in verse 17 about the wisdom
of words. Which if mixed with the message of
the cross makes the gospel he says void Or empty
or it neutralizes it What he's saying is that
the gospel is not intended as a philosophical
system To appeal to the intellect Not in not
at all the gospel on the other hand is The way
of salvation meant to appeal to the human heart
Therefore, to base the message of the Gospel
on human argumentation, or to blend with it clever
speaking that is based on human reasoning, is
to rob the Gospel of its essential power. Now
Paul is now going to explain why in the paragraph
we've read. In doing so, he warns that faith
must be based upon God's wisdom, not man's. You
will notice in this paragraph that he holds up
two wisdoms. God's wisdom and man's wisdom. And
he says that faith that saves the soul must be
based upon God's wisdom, not man's. Dear people
in Corinth had trusted Christ and His redemptive
work on the cross, but they still wanted somehow
to hang on to human reason and human wisdom.
So Paul is telling them that to do that nullifies
the cross message, and it subverts the glory
of God. God's wisdom, he says, and man's wisdom
cannot coexist. The two are mutually exclusive.
Now he goes on to explain that. First of all,
he says he talks about the contrasting content
of the two wisdoms. The contrasting content of
the two wisdoms. Human wisdom represents any
number of ideations or schemes of thinking that
exalt human discovery. and human rationalism
over divine revelation. Human wisdom is a broad
term. It represents a lot of different human
ideas. These human ideas or understandings become
world views. And those who follow these ideas
measure reality according to these human ideas
or worldviews. Let me just quickly throw out
three that are very prominent in our world. The
one that has controlled the Western civilization
for the last number of decades is naturalism
or evolution. Naturalism precludes anything supernatural.
Prima faci, it rules out the possibility of a
divine being of God. There is no supernatural
in naturalism. Reality is based upon chance and
the survival of the fittest. Life has no ultimate
meaning to the naturalist. The goal that a naturalist
works for is some sort of globalism and world
government. for the good of man and the protection
of the environment. That's naturalism. A somewhat
similar but yet different worldview is that of
materialism. Now it's similar in that materialists
preclude anything supernatural. Reality is found
in what is material. There is no spiritual. Marxism.
is an example of a materialistic worldview. Life
has meaning only in things. And the goal of the
materialist is a new world order that is based
upon socialism. There is a third worldview, or
human philosophy, that is becoming more prominent.
And you see it creeping into the Western civilization.
Creeping in is the wrong way to say it. You see
it flooding into the Western civilization. It's
what I would term mystical spiritualism. Those
who believe in this worldview accept the supernatural.
They know that there is more than what can be
seen and felt. But they do not believe in a personal
sovereign God. to those who believe in this mystical
spiritualism, reality is found in connecting
to the spiritual through some sort of a mystical
experience. Whether that spirit will be found
within oneself, or if it be found in tapping
into some other dimension, calling upon an angel,
or someone who is supposed to be from a former
life to come and be a channel. These people believe
that reality is found in tapping into the spiritual
through a mystical experience. The meaning of
life to these people is found in becoming one
with God, small g, however that might be defined.
And the goal, really, of these people can go
one of two directions. There are those who would
believe that the goal is reincarnation into some
sort of higher existence. And then there are
others who believe that the real goal is found
in entering a new age of human harmony. Thus
we get the term new age. The St. Paul newspaper
last weekend had an amazing article regarding
how this kind of mystical spiritualism is being
accepted in the medical community. One of our
local hospitals is developing a program to incorporate,
quote, alternative healings, which embraces this
very worldview that I've just described to you.
And you need to know that all of these wisdoms
These human philosophies I just described contradict
with God's wisdom. James has this comment to
make about them. James 3 verses 15 and 16. This
wisdom, human wisdom, is not that which comes
down from above. It doesn't come from God. But
he says it's earthly, it's natural, it's demonic.
And then he goes on to say, for where jealousy
and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder
and every evil thing. Isn't it interesting that
James ties together disorder and evil living
with these kinds of human philosophies? Now we
see that in our world, but the reason I pointed
out is that in Corinth they were embracing this
human wisdom along with the gospel and it brought
strife and dissension and disorder and factions
to their church. So James and Paul agree regarding
that. And so on the one hand we have human wisdom.
The content of it is various, but all of human
thinking, all of human... Philosophical discovery
falls under this label of human wisdom that does
not come down from above. It's earthly, it's
natural, it's demonic. On the other hand, there's
God's wisdom. God's wisdom which centers on the
eternal reality of a personal sovereign God who
has entered the world in Jesus Christ through
the incarnation, and who suffered and died on
the cross as a propitiation for human sin, that
is to satisfy God's justice, and who was raised
from the dead as the victor over sin, death,
and Satan. That, my friend, is God's wisdom.
God's wisdom is His own self -disclosure. It
is God telling us about Himself, about our world,
about ourselves in the Bible. God's wisdom is
the wisdom that comes down from above and God
Himself telling us who we are, why we are here,
and what the end or the purpose of all things
is. To put it very succinctly, as Paul does here,
God's wisdom can be boiled down to two words.
Christ crucified. That is the wisdom of God.
Christ crucified. The revelation of God. Man's
wisdom is his own self -discovery. Man's wisdom
is his own rationalization. Man's wisdom is his
own experience. God's wisdom is what he has revealed
to us in Jesus Christ and in this written word,
the Bible. Therefore, the contrasting content
of the two wisdoms. But secondly, I invite you
to look with me at the conflicting appraisal
of the two wisdoms. In this paragraph, you see
humans appraising God's wisdom, and you see God
appraising human wisdom. Lost pagan people judge
God's wisdom in Christ as foolishness. Verse
18, again in verse 23, We preach Christ crucified
he says to the Gentiles or to the Greeks foolishness
This word means moronic You see the pagan Looks
for wisdom that meets his definition of what
is logical and what is reasonable and When he
hears that real wisdom is found outside of man
that is found in God. And when he hears that
this God came into this world as a human being
and died on behalf of all men to pay the price
of sin, he says, come on. You know, fairy tales
are for children. That is too simple. It is simplistic.
He says that is for half -wits. That just doesn't
make sense to me. It's too uncomplicated. It's
just too easy that one person would die for the
sins of the whole race. And joining in with the
lost pagan is the lost Jew. who, it says in verse
23, regards God's wisdom as a stumbling block.
Christ crucified to the Jew as a stumbling block.
Why is that? Because the Jew seeks for a sign.
He wants some demonstration, some proof of Messiahship.
And certainly, that could not be in being crucified.
Messiah is going to put down the armies of Rome.
Messiah is going to overthrow the oppressors
of the Jewish people and exalt Israel and rule
from Jerusalem over the nations. To think that
Christ, the Messiah, would be crucified is a
stumbling block. Do you know what it really boils
down to? The real problem with God's wisdom to
man is that God's wisdom assails his pride. God's
wisdom assaults human ego because human ego likes
to think that man is sufficient, that man is
able to find his own way, that man is able to
discover for himself what is true and what is
false. and he doesn't really need God. That's
the real problem with God's wisdom to the human.
God on the other hand makes man's wisdom foolish.
According to verse 20, the last question there
says, has not God made foolish the wisdom of
the world? That's God's appraisal. of man's wisdom,
what this means is that God shows human wisdom
for what it is, that it's part of man's problem,
not part of the solution to his condition. And
God condemns human wisdom as ineffective in eliminating
man's problems. In fact, he quotes from Isaiah
29 verse 14 in our verse 19 here. Back in that
context, Isaiah was told not to be fearful because
the military strategy that King Hezekiah and
his wise men had put together to protect Judah
from Assyria would fail. And God is reassuring
Isaiah not to be worried about that, but he says,
I will destroy the wisdom of these wise men who
are surrounding King Hezekiah. and I will deliver
my people myself and show them my power. But
in doing so, I will destroy the wisdom of the
wise and the cleverness of the clever." Now quoting
that verse, the apostle then asks several rhetorical
questions. He says, where is the wise man? Where
is the wise man? Paul may have had in mind here
the Greek philosophers. that many of these people
nearly worship. But then he says, where is the
scribe? And here Paul may have had in mind the
Jewish experts in their law. He says, where is
the debater of this age? Where is the debater
of this age? These could be Jews or Gentiles
who love to argue. Now Paul is mocking them.
He is mocking them because they are not there
to give an answer as to why man is still in the
condition that he's in. They have offered their
best and their best didn't work. So he says,
where are these worldly wise people? With all
of their complex thoughts and philosophies, what
good have they done? because man is still embroiled
in the same problem. And then Paul asks this
question, has not God made foolish the wisdom
of the world? And the answer is yes, he has.
For he has allowed the fruit of human wisdom
to become evident. And that fruit is further
decay and division and estrangement. among men.
God declares man's wisdom as foolishness. That's
His appraisal. Now why? Because human wisdom
inevitably leaves out God and His revelation.
And it is God's revelation that provides the
very answers that man is seeking. Who am I? How
did I get here? And what is life about? You close
the Bible and set it aside and look in any other
direction and you come to foolishness. Now having
looked at the contrasting content of the two
wisdoms and the conflicting appraisals because
each calls the other foolish, let's examine the
contrary outcome. of the two wisdoms. Consider
with me first the tragic outcome of man's wisdom.
Man's wisdom does not help temporally or eternally.
Now when I talk about man's wisdom, I want to
just step back for a moment and make it clear
to you that I am not talking about intellectual
pursuits and scientific investigations and achievements.
that have helped all of us. When I talk about
human wisdom, I am not talking about the progress
that we've made in medicine or in agriculture
or technology or manufacturing or any of the
other areas that all of us benefit from. What
I'm talking about, rather, is the philosophical
wisdom that forms the world's beliefs and its
values and its objectives. That's what I'm talking
about by human wisdom. Man's philosophies have
failed to create a utopian society. Man's wisdom
has failed to create a better human being. In
fact, it's just the opposite. We can ask, like
Paul did in that day, where are all the smart
people in our world, the elite of our society?
The wise intellects. who have claimed to have
had all of the answers. Where are they? Where
are these ones who for years have told us, for
example, that if we just spend more on education
without God, that it would produce the best educational
system in the world? That if we just spend more
on education without God, we will have better
people who will be able to compete in a global
society. In fact, what is happening to the education
system of America since we shut God out 35, 40
years ago? It has done nothing but go that direction.
It has declined. And it will continue to do that.
But where are these people who for years have
claimed just spend more money on education? You'll
get the product you want. Where are those who
have told us that if we just have more sex education
in the schools we will solve teenage pregnancy
and reduce sexual activity and STDs, sexually
transmitted diseases. Sexual activity is on the
increase. There are more STDs today than ever
before. It's estimated that one -fifth of all
Americans have a sexually transmitted disease.
Well, where are all these philosophers who said,
well, all you have to do is teach people the
facts. It hasn't worked. Where are the social
planners who told us if only we would spend massive
amounts of money on government programs, we would
end poverty? Where are the wise people of the
1960s who told us if we would just do that, we
would have a great society? We're seeing now
that their so -called great society is not so
great after all. By the way, do you know what
the most dangerous place in America is? The most
dangerous place in America? It's not living next
to some atomic energy facility. The most dangerous
place in America is not even the inner city.
in some gang neighborhood. The most dangerous
place in America today is in the university classroom,
where you have these same human wisdoms that
have proven to be failures taught over and over
and over again to our students. That's the most
dangerous place in America. Where are the politicians,
the judges, and the bureaucrats who asserted
a few years ago that Busting school students
would end discrimination and improve education.
Where are they? Where are the smart people who
just a few years ago told us if we would have
affirmative action we would end racism in America?
I submit to you that there is more racism in
America today than there ever has been. More
deep feelings about racial and ethnic divisions
today. after affirmative action. Where are those
who claim that we could educate and rehabilitate
violent criminals and reduce crime, reduce our
prison population? We have more people in prison
today than we've ever had in prison. It hasn't
worked. Where are these social engineers, these
great society politicians, these educational
reformers? who have used our society for their
experiments of worldly wisdom and have brought
upon us our present societal tragedy. My point
is this. Many of these people have been sincere.
I'm not mocking them for that. But I mock them
because their ideas are wrong. They produce no
lasting good. And yet today we have people who
are pressing for the legalization of drugs, for
homosexual marriage, for throwing more money
into failed government programs, all of which
are rooted in man's corrupt and unreliable thinking.
But that's not the worst of it. That's not the
worst of it. The worst of the outcome of human
wisdom It's found first in verse 21. The world
through its wisdom did not come to know God.
The greater tragedy of human wisdom is that it
does not bring anyone into a relationship with
God. Now God and His wisdom established it that
way so that man cannot be truly independent of
God and self -sufficient. And going with that
is what is said in verse 18, that man's wisdom
leaves its inheritance in a state of perishing.
The word of the cross is to those who are perishing,
foolishness. Those who follow human wisdom say
the cross is foolishness and they continue to
be eternally ruined. They live in a perpetual
acute state needing rescue. That's the outcome
of human wisdom. And God allows human wisdom
to bear its fruit so that we can all see how
foolish it is. One of the philosophers that have
greatly affected America The Western civilization
is the German Friedrich Schliermacher. He is
sometimes called the father of liberalism, theological
liberalism in particular. The story is told that
one day he was sitting as an old man on a city
park bench and a policeman thinking this old
man to be a vagrant went over to him and shook
him and said, who are you? And this wise one
of the world answered honestly and said, I wish
I knew. That's human wisdom, friends. And that's
where it leads to despair and to lostness in
the end. What about the outcome of God's wisdom?
I have good news. God's wisdom is just the opposite.
It is the power of God to save men from perishing.
That is, those who believe, verse 21. Those who
place their faith in it. Those who turn away
from human wisdom and embrace the cross. For
them, the message of that cross is the power
of salvation. These are the ones, it says in
verse 24, who are the called. That is those that
God calls out of human lostness to embrace the
cross. He's going to talk more about that, and
we'll get into that next week, what it means
to be the called. So let me just leave it at
that point this morning. It may be that you are
here and you have embraced human wisdom in the
past and you sense in your heart the calling
of God to embrace Jesus Christ as your Lord and
Savior. Believe on Him and you will know the
power of God to save. God's wisdom produces results
that are definite and lasting because it brings
about a relationship with God that human searching
can never achieve. That's why Paul said to the
Romans, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,
for it is the power of God unto salvation to
everyone who believes, to the Jew as well as
to the Greek. I can tell you that wherever the
principles of God's revelation have been heeded
has resulted also in man's temporal good. You
go back and you trace the great universities
of this country, and they nearly all go back,
to men who founded them in order to proclaim
the glory of God and to advance the gospel of
Jesus Christ. And I'm talking about Harvard and
Yale, etc., etc. They are far from their roots
today. Go back and look at who brought the hospitals,
who brings the healing to the world. It's not
the human wisdom. It is those who bring the gospel
of Jesus Christ. Who are those who are delivering
the pagan people from their terrors and from
the abuse of their lives and the oppression that
they feel? It's not the humanist anthropologists.
It is the missionaries who are bringing the gospel
of Jesus Christ who are delivering them from
their darkness. Forever, God's revelation has
been heeded. It has resulted not only in eternal
good, but temporal good. Human wisdom can offer
ideas and opinions. It may even occasionally
help diagnose the human condition. It may suggest
solutions. But the problem with human wisdom
is this. It has a fatal weakness, and that is
it cannot change the human heart. It can go to
a neighborhood and say the problem here is poverty.
Well, that's partly true. It can say we need
to infuse lots of money into this neighborhood.
Is that the solution? It can look at our society
and say this society is racist. And what we need
to do is to order this change or that change
by government decree. Is that the solution? No.
You see, all of these things come back to the
human heart. Human wisdom, for whatever label
on it you want to, is incapable of changing a
person's nature. It cannot deal with the depravity
of the heart. And that's why Paul concludes,
as he does in verse 25, that the foolishness
of God is wiser than men. And the so -called
weakness of God is stronger than men. Because
Christ crucified is the power of God and the
wisdom of God. It seems like foolishness and
weakness to man, but man cannot transcend it.
That's why you and I can say with Paul that we
never need to be embarrassed by the gospel. We
never need to be ashamed of the cross. We never
need to wonder if the world is right. All we
have to do is look around. John MacArthur says
the simplicity of the gospel gives the complexity
of human reason promises what the complexity
of human reason promises, but it never delivers.
When we come down in the world's eyes to the
cross, God will raise us up to eternal life.
I like those words that come out of the song
El Shaddai that say God's most mighty work was
done through the, what, did I know? The frailty
of the Son. The weakness of Christ, crucified.
God's most mighty work. And we sing, I need no
other argument. I need no other plea. It is enough
that Jesus died and that He died for me. So I
close with this final and crucial question for
you. Which wisdom forms the choices of your life?
God's wisdom or man's wisdom? In what have you
chosen to trust your salvation? Man's wisdom?
Man's way? There are many ways that seem right
unto a man, but they end there over the ways
of death. There was a company owner a number
of years ago now who wanted somehow to illustrate
to his employees the gospel. He was a Christian.
He looked for ways to do this and so one one
day he put out a notice to his many employees
and he said Any employee who comes to my office
on such -and -such a date between 11 and 12 o
'clock in the morning and brings to me a list
of his indebtedness and It's total I will pay
it for him And so on that day, as 11 o 'clock
began to come around, his employees gathered
in the street around the place where the man's
office was. None of them had prepared anything.
They were talking about the offer and whether
he meant it or not and would anybody be foolish
enough to believe it anyway. And 11 o 'clock
came and nobody entered the door. 1115, 1130,
1145, and finally one man dashed out of the crowd
with the paper in his hand and ran in through
the door. And he went into the man's office.
He put down the paper. And he said, is this the
list of all your debts? He said, yes, it is.
And his employer immediately pulled out his checkbook
and wrote him a check for the whole amount. He
said, because you have believed my promise, I
deliver you of your debt. And he was the only
one out of all the employees that had the nerve
to believe what the employer had promised. In
Jesus Christ crucified, God has made the provision
available for the sins of all men. But it is
only those who believe, who claim the promise,
who will be saved, and the rest will go on perishing.
Which wisdom are you trusting for your salvation?
And if you are saved, which wisdom is it that
you are looking toward for your life? Listen
to the wisdom in our music today. How much of
it is God's wisdom? And yet that's what we allow
to come into our minds and wash over our hearts
all the time. Who do you go to for counsel? Do
you go to your friend whose life is already in
ruins and expect him or her to give you counsel
that's going to be godly? Or do you go to the
Bible? Do you go to someone who's a godly person
and say, help me see? what the issues of my life
are. Whose wisdom are you listening to? Are you
listening to the talk shows on television? God
help you. Are you listening to the radio talk
shows and hoping to find there some human wisdom
to direct your life? You will surely end up wrecked.
Whose wisdom forms the choices of your life?
That's what Paul wants you to answer today. because
your life depends upon it and may be your eternity.
Let's pray. In just a moment, we're going to
sing a closing hymn. And as we sing, I'm going
to invite anyone who... to have prayer with me
to come forward. We're going to form a little
prayer circle after others have been dismissed
and praying. I don't know what your issue may
be. It may be that you need to be saved, that
you've not trusted the gospel. Or it may be that
as a Christian you've been listening to bad counsel
and God's put his finger upon it this morning
and you know that and you want to come just to
pray and to turn away from that worldly counsel.
As we sing 471 in just a moment, I'm going to
invite you to come and, as I say, we'll have
a prayer of dismissal and then those who come
can pray with me. Lord, I pray that today, having
heard this message, none of us will trust in
human wisdom for the direction of our lives or
the salvation of our souls. But may we see the
life -changing power of the gospel of Christ
crucified and trust in Him alone. Purify our
lives where we have trusted in man's thinking.
Show us where we have erred and bring us back
to trusting what you have said alone. We pray
in Jesus' name, amen. 471 says the way of Christ
crucified leads home. And I invite you to sing
with me at least the first verse and chorus of
471. Please slip out quickly if God is laying
it on your heart to come for prayer. Let's stand,
please. I must lead to go home by the way of
the cross. There's no other way but this. I shall
ne 'er get sight of the gates of life in the
way of the cross. Just the chorus, please. I'm
just curious, before we go, how many of you think
that perhaps there's a possibility that your
thinking has been tainted a little bit by human
wisdom? Would you lift your hand? Lots of honest
people. All of us have been affected by it. And
that's why it's so important for us to be in
the Word. To allow the Word to cleanse our minds
of the kinds of human wisdom that we pick up
in so very many different ways. So this week,
let's ask God to show us. where we are thinking
wrongly. Because that thinking wrongly will lead
us to behave wrongly. Let's ask God to get our
minds focused on Jesus and on the truth of God.
Now Lord may it be so as we go our ways and to
that end I pray your blessing upon this entire
congregation that we may think Christianly. That
we may think of Christ. crucified, the wisdom
and the power of God. Amen.