I was thinking this week as I thought about the task that God has called us to in this great city of Philadelphia. And I wondered: if we really knew what we were dealing with, would our response be different? It's so easy to be passive, to be thankful that you have a good church to go to where you're going to get sound preaching, to put your money in the plate, hoping that it will pay for people to do effective ministry. It's very easy to slide into a sort of 'consumerist Christianity', shopping for the kind of church that will meet your felt needs.
Ecclesiastical Macy's
It's very easy to slide into what I would call, 'ecclesiastical Macy's'. And I want to look with you at this very radical passage of Scripture; it's there in your 'Order of Worship'. It's there in 1 Corinthians 1, verses 18 through 25. But before you look there, I want to read for you a couple of quotes. These quotes really depict what we are dealing with as we seek to minister to our city, to our nation, to our culture, to our world. Here's one well-known American, speaking about the Gospels: "The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute inquiry into it, and such tricks have been played with their text and with the text of other books related to them, that we have a right from that cause to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine.
In the New Testament, there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man. And that the other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds--the Gospels. It is as easy to separate those parts as to pick out diamonds from dunghills." What a statement about the Gospel. Another quote, fasten your seatbelts: Many of the teachings of Christianity are, as well as being incredible and mythical, immoral. I would principally wish to cite the concept of vicarious redemption whereby one's own responsibilities can be flung onto a scapegoat and thereby taken away.
In my book, I would argue that I can pay your debt or even take your place in prison, but I cannot absolve you of what you actually did. This exorbitant fantasy of forgiveness is unfortunately matched by an equally extreme admonition, which is that the refusal to accept such a sublime offer may be punishable by eternal damnation. Not even the Old Testament, who speaks haughtily in recommending genocide, slavery, mutilation, and other horrors, stoops to mention the torture of the dead. Those who tell this evil story to small children are not damned by me, but have been damned by history and should be condemned by those who shrink from cruelty to children.
Do you really understand what we are dealing with? Do you really understand our task in this city? Do you understand what God has called us to, as people whose eyes are now open to the truths of the Gospel? The first quote was by Thomas Jefferson, January 24, 1814, who said he took his scissor to his Bible. The second quote is by Christopher Hitchens, a well-known modern atheist. What are we dealing with? Well, I just want to point you to two things this evening that I think are very, very important for us to understand.
The first is this: The dilemma of the Gospel...the dilemma of the Gospel; and secondly, the plight of the unbeliever. Follow with me as I read these words: For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, 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 discernment of the discerning I will thwart." (ESV) Here's the dilemma of the Gospel: That to those who most desperately need its diagnostic and its cure, who most desperately need this glorious message of personal forgiveness, and freedom, and liberation, and transformation, that message appears to them as utter foolishness.
You should not be surprised. Think with me for a moment. Isn't it true that, on the surface, to the average rationalist, which most people are, everything that attaches itself to the Gospel is just foolishness. Belief in God is foolishness; how could you ever prove such a thing? Belief in creation; hasn't science taught us differently? Belief in sin, transgression, iniquity, personal immorality; how could you believe such a thing? Belief in a virgin birth; how irrational, how foolish. Belief in the fact that God actually came to earth in the form of a man; what sense does that make?
Belief in a physical bodily resurrection; what foolishness! Belief in forgiveness, as Hitchens said; irrational. Belief in the indwelling Holy Spirit that God Almighty actually lives inside of you; what foolishness! Belief in an afterlife, belief in the authority, sufficiency, trustworthiness of the Word of God, that God has actually spoken in a book that records His words to us and is trustworthy; how foolish! We should not be surprised that the city of Philadelphia isn't running into the doors of this building; this is a temple of folly to the world.
Foolishness to Those Who Do Not Believe
It's a message that is without reason to those who do not believe. And yet, in this contrast, I again don't know if I can capture in words, that thing that looks so foolish, that makes no sense, that defies human logic and reason is actually the ultimate source of transforming power. This message is the power of God. It has the power to radically transform a life; to radically change every element of the thinking of a mind; to radically change the whole motive of a person for living; to radically change your sense of identity, and meaning, and purpose, and sense of well-being; to radically reform everything you think, and everything you do, and everything you would desire, and everything you would choose.
It has the power to literally undo you and build you again! Praise God! It is the message that every person in this world desperately needs. If you would ask me, as Tenth Presbyterian's minister to Center City, what my goal is, it is that every one of the 100,000 people in Center City, Philadelphia, would come to a personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must not, we cannot, we should not settle for anything less. This is the power of God. And I don't think we weep enough. I don't think we're provoked enough.
I don't think we're angry enough. It should break our hearts when we think that, every day, we're surrounded by masses of people who look at power, the very power that they need, the power that would rescue them, and see utter irrational, laughable foolishness, and who with mockery would say, "You don't really believe that stuff; you don't really believe that there's a God? You believe in creation? What, are you living in the 1200's? Sin? Hell? Heaven? Come on, you believe that?" Now there are two things that I want to say to you about this dilemma of the Gospel.
First is this: you and I must guard this treasure in our own hearts. We must understand that our hearts have been opened to truth and power. We must not be lulled into timidity, and fear, and silence. We must not be embarrassed at this message. I think it happens to us. I think we can become a secret order of the saints, afraid to speak into the lives of people who would mock the Gospel, the truth that is their rescue. We cannot let that happen. Second, although Paul presents to us this dilemma of the Gospel, he never ever, in this passage, even gets close to hinting that we abandon this message for a more marketable message.
Your job is not to get out a planer and plane off the harsh ends of the Gospel so it's a little bit easier to market it to people who think it's foolish. You and I must not do that. We must retain an allegiance to the clarity and truthfulness of the Gospel, as sharp as those edges may be. If anything, this passage is a call to a faithful proclamation of this truth. I think it's sad the way the cross has been reduced to therapy to help you deal with your felt needs as if Jesus is more a psychologist than a Redeemer.
We must be careful that we are not timid, and we do not, somehow, distort this glorious transforming message in our zeal to get a hearing. Well, that's the dilemma of the Gospel. I want to say one other thing; notice the quote from Isaiah, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." That is a purpose statement. One of the purposes of the cross is that the cross would decimate, would expose human wisdom, because the cross redefines everything. It redefines human identity; it redefines human meaning and purpose; it redefines morality; it redefines your reason for existence; it redefines spirituality; it redefines wisdom.
The cross is the ultimate redefiner of everything that is. It exposes the inadequacy of human wisdom. And that transition of that quote really sets up the next point. Not only, in this passage, are we confronted with the dilemma the Gospel; we're confronted with the plight of the unbeliever. Here's his plight. His lens, his single lens on all that is, get this, is his own wisdom. He's got no other tool. He's got no other vehicle but his own wisdom. Now notice, that's why these rhetorical questions: Where is the one who is wise?
Where Is the Debater of This Age?
Where is the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. (ESV) Now this plight, in order to understand what we're talking about here, is that I'm seeking to understand life, and my only lens that I have on life is my own wisdom. To understand that plight, I want to take you to Genesis 3. Would you look there with me?
You'll have to grab that church Bible. I think this is worth doing. Let me begin with verse 1: Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'"
But the serpent said the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." [Now pay very careful attention to what comes next.] So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, [Now listen to what's next.] and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise... (ESV) Now think about this; by the hardwiring of the Creator, Adam and Eve were not created to figure out life independently.
They weren't invested with the natural ability, by their own experience - thinking, research, analysis - to know what needed to be known. They were created as dependent human beings. Now you know this is true, because in Genesis 1, even though Adam and Eve are perfect people living in a perfect world, living in perfect relationship with God, God did not think that they could figure it out on their own. And so immediately upon creating them, God speaks truth to these dependent creatures. Now what Eve is actually seeking to do, one of the things that attracts her at this moment, is that thought that there is a possibility of autonomous wisdom--that's the quest.
It's wisdom that doesn't depend on God. It's wisdom outside of God. It's buying into the belief that I can know and understand what needs to be known and what needs to be understood apart from dependency on the revelation of God. Now here's what Scripture teaches us. This is very radical--that wisdom is not first an outline, or a theology, or a book; Wisdom is a Person, and His name is Jesus. We read that in the beginning, "In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." And you receive wisdom; you come to know and understand as you are drawn by God's grace into a personal relationship with the One who is Wisdom.
You don't get wisdom by independent autonomous research or experience; you get wisdom by adoption, by relationship, to the One who is wise. Now, go back to your 'Order of Worship' there in 1 Corinthians. You see what the wise person of the world, the average person that is depending on his wisdom, he is actually in the midst of a futile task because what he actually needs to know of life, he cannot know by his own wisdom. What is the ultimate thing that he needs to know? You can say it in a word, three letters, begins with a 'G' and ends with a 'd' - God.
He needs to know God because his life was about what? Relationship with God. It's as if, imagine, a person is looking through a pair of glasses that has been painted black. He'll never see what he needs to see because what he's looking for doesn't have the capability of revealing to him what he needs to see. Now God has ordained to give sight to blind eyes through the foolishness of the faithful proclamation of the Gospel which we must not abandon. Notice Paul strengthens his argument; look at verse 22.
Christ the Power of God
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (ESV) Now Paul does an interesting thing here; he uses the Jews and the Greeks as case studies for two approaches to wisdom that are defective. The Jews sort of stand for the empiricists. They're the people who say, "Show it to me. Let me experience it. Let me bring it into my laboratory, and I can measure it, and I can quantify it, and I can touch it, and taste it, and smell it, and feel it, and hear it; I'll believe."
And the empiricists, the person who sort of takes the scientific hypothesis as his Scripture, will never arrive at the Gospel. Now that doesn't mean these people don't have any knowledge; it doesn't mean they don't discover things about the universe; it means the ultimate truth of truths that the cross presents, they will never get through the road of empiricism. Now, the second group is the Greeks. The Greeks are the philosophers, and they say. "If you can give it to me in a logical syllogism, that's without logical break, if I can analyze it intellectually, and if the argument is consistent, I will believe it."
And so, by the exercise of consistent logic, I filter what I think is true or false. And you won't, by that philosophical, analytical, intellectual pursuit, arrive at the truths of the Gospel. It doesn't work. Here's why, because I was never hardwired to depend on my wisdom as my sole basis for knowing. I was created to be dependent on revelation. And that's actually argued in this passage; verse 18, it's says, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."
Look at verse 21, "...it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe." Verse 24, "...but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Three times Paul is arguing God must act in divine revelation to open your eyes to illumine you to the truth. God has to break through and help you to see what, apart from your grace, His grace, you would never see. Now, here's what this means. We must never go out of these doors, and mock, and put down the unbeliever.
We must never be harshly critical and judgmental of his arrogance and his folly. We are only different because of the shocking illumination of glorious grace, that's it, because, we too, are fools apart from that grace. In fact, some of you here weren't raised in Christian homes, and you know very well the experience of hearing the message of the Gospel and just thinking that it was craziness. We must never be arrogant. I want to say a second thing. We must guard, as believers, against the pride of knowledge as if somehow we are Christian PhD's, and we've achieved this wisdom on our own.
What we've been given is an undeserved gift. We must remember who we are, our deep dependence on grace. I've said this to you before, "No one gives grace better to another than a person who is deeply convinced he needs it himself." But to those who God calls and, in calling them, opens their eyes to the beauty of the Gospel, what does Paul say? Both the empiricist and the philosophers, God opens their eyes and, all of a sudden, what they would have called foolish by means of research and logic, they now celebrate as the power of God.
What a sweet statement that is. Verse 25 is in your Bible, in case you just didn't get the point. If with all of Paul's discussion of the inadequacy of human wisdom to grasp the glorious message of the Gospel, he ends this way, "For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." You know he's not arguing that God is foolish, but if God was capable of being foolish, His most foolish moment would be infinitely wiser than your most stunning moment of wisdom.
What Should You Do?
His greatest moment of weakness would be infinitely more powerful than your most amazing moment of strength. Well, what should you do as a result of hearing these truths? Can I suggest some things to you? First, right now, you know what you should be doing? You should be celebrating grace because we, too, would be looking at the cross, and we would be saying, "You don't actually want me to believe that do you?" apart from the operation of God's grace. Second thing, we ought to respond with a great sense of personal motivation.
You are surrounded, every day, by people who are looking at very significant things with glasses that have been painted black. And you have an opportunity in relationship with those people to begin to incarnate the Gospel in the way that you live, to be a person of kindness, and gentleness, and faithfulness, and patience, and service, and justice, and mercy. You're actually, as you're living that way, you are beginning to preach the Gospel; but by living that way, you begin to soften this person.
I love I Peter where it talks about somebody coming to you and asking you of the hope that's within you. They've seen something in your life, and they begin to question what you're about. Are you living an outward life? Are you seeking to build relationships with people, looking for that opportunity to begin to proclaim this life-transforming message? Third thing, can you, this evening, speak to an individual the message of the Gospel with clarity and biblical consistency? If the first point is that we need vision, we need to look at our world and our city and see it as it is, and our hearts need to be broken.
If secondly, we need to make a commitment to be part of what God is doing in the city, to live outward lives, to look for those opportunities, to speak this message, even if we're mocked, even if we're rejected, because it is the power of God, then you and I need to be serious about training. We want to do anything we can to sharpen our skills for ministry in our city so we can engage people with the truths of the Gospel. There's one final thing I have to say. You may be here this evening, and you still question the truthfulness of the cross.
Oh, maybe you're afraid to talk about it, but you may be haunted by doubt. Maybe there are times when you, in your mind, actually move toward mocking these truths. Maybe you're here, and you say, "Oh, I want to believe, but I'm just riddled with fear, I'm riddled with doubt." I would invite you, "Cry out for help of the One who is, alone, able to give you light--that One who came, who lived a perfect life, who died a substitutionary death, so that you may be forgiven, who rose again to give to you the gift of eternal life, is tender and kind.
He says, "The bruised reed he will not break; the smoking flax he will not quench. He that comes to me, I will not turn away." Cry out, "Give me eyes; I long to see." May we be used of God to see more and more of our neighbors, and our friends, and our coworkers, no longer look at the cross and see folly, but wrap their arms around the cross because they've realized, it is power. Let's pray: Oh, Lord, we are moved in this moment with the blessing and privilege of grace. We sit here as people who have all of the capacity to be utter fools, but You have come to us, and You've opened our eyes and opened our hearts, and You have helped us to see and experience the transforming power of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And You have not just called us to Your family, but You've called us to Your work. And, Lord, may we understand what we're dealing with and look at our city with the eyes of the Gospel, commit ourselves to lifestyles of openness, and love, and ministry, and train ourselves to represent You with consistency and clarity. And we pray that every citizen of this city would come to a personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. In His name, we pray, Amen.
