1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-25
For
the word of the cross is foolishness 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 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 Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those
who are the called, 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 (NASB).
INTRODUCTION
The accounting department of
a large insurance company was working on year-end reports when computers went
down. An emergency call was put in the systems analyst. Busy with other
troubleshooting, the man didn’t appear until three hours later. Yet even then
several clerks cheered, “He is here! Our savior!”
Without
a word, the systems analyst turned to leave. Panicked, the accounting manager
cried in alarm, “Where are you going?”
“I am
leaving,” the analyst said with a smile. “I remember what you did to the last
savior.”
Dr.
Billy Graham tells a story about King Charles V who years ago was loaned a
large sum of money by a merchant in Antwerp. The note came due, but the King
was bankrupt and unable to pay. The merchant gave a great banquet for the King.
When all the guests were seated and before food was brought in, the merchant
had a large platter placed on the table before him and fire lighted on it. Then
taking the note out of his pocket, he held it in the flames until it was burned
to ashes.
Just
so, we have all been mortgaged to God. The debt was due, but we were unable to
pay. Over two thousand years ago, God invited a morally corrupt world to the
foot of the cross. Then God held your sins and mine to the flames until every
vestige of our guilt was consumed.
It is so sad that today we
do not hear sermons about the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you
think I am not telling the truth, watch Christian TV and verify for yourself.
Some preachers on TV will preach without opening the Bible to preach from it.
Today, I would like to draw your attention to “The Power of the Cross of
Christ.” Without the Cross of Christ and the subsequent resurrection, there is
no gospel to preach.
I. THE EFFECT OF THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS VV. 18-19
When Mel Gibson came out
with “The Passion of the Christ” movie, there was an outcry from Hollywood that
it was full of violence. Isn’t it ironic that Hollywood is concerned about
violence? Is it not the same Hollywood that produces multitudes of “Horror,
Sex-provocative, and Violent movies?” Since the debut of Mel Gibson’s The
Passion, Hollywood has become peace-loving organization. When another person
came out with Jesus the Superstar that made mockery of Jesus and the biblical
account, Hollywood did not utter a word. That tasteless movie was their
depiction of the life of Jesus and so they kept their peace. However, since Mel
Gibson’s Passion reflects the biblical account, all hell broke loose in
Hollywood. I think all of you know why there was an outcry against Mel
Gibson’s, The Passion of the Christ. If Mel Gibson had acted another violent
movie that had nothing to do with Christ and Christianity, Hollywood would be
applauding him. He would have won an Oscar award, but because the movie
centered on Christ’s atoning death, it was not politically correct. Every
mature Christian could see through the smokescreen that Hollywood put forward
to protest the violent content of The Passion.
Apart
from certain artistic scenes that were added to the Passion movie, the
scourging, mockery, and the painful aspect of the crucifixion are all
historically reliable. When you read the prophecies of the suffering Servant in
the Old Testament Books, especially the Book of Psalms and Isaiah 50 and 53,
you see the glimpse of what Jesus went through in real life for you and me.
Crucifixion was the most excruciating and horrendous form of punishment meted
to any person in the first century. Alexander the Great seems to have learned of
it from the Persians. Rome borrowed the idea from the Phoenicians through
Carthage, and perfected it as a means of capital punishment.
The
Romans reserved crucifixion, however, for slaves, robbers, assassins, and the
like, or for rebellious provincials. The tradition, therefore, which relates
the beheading of Paul, and Peter’s crucifixion accords well with this
distinction between peoples. Paul could not be crucified, because he was a
Roman citizen (he was born in Tarsus), hence his beheading.
This
is what precedes crucifixion. Upon receiving the death sentence, the condemned
person is flogged with a leather whip loaded with metal or bone so cruelly that
it became known as the intermediate death. The condemned person is required to
shoulder the crossbar upon which he is to be extended and carry it to the place
of his crucifixion. The condemned person wears around his neck a placard naming
his crime. At the execution site, he is stripped and tied or nailed to the
crossbar. Therefore, Jesus was stripped naked on the cross because of your sins
and mine.
When a
person is crucified death is slow in coming, except the soldiers hurry it by
breaking the crucified man’s leg (John 19:31). Crucifixion, therefore, was
abhorrent to the Jews (1 Cor. 1:23; Gal. 3:13), but no less to the Romans.
Since the cross is reserved for criminals and those that God has accursed, it
symbolizes the suffering, shame, and humiliation that Jesus endured (Heb. 12:2)
for you and me, indicating the depth to which Jesus was willing to go to lift
up the worst and lowest of humanity.
By
Jesus’ death on the cross, Christianity has become a religion of the cross.
Today the cross has become a fashion. Some of you wear necklace with a cross on
it. Some people have bracelets that have the cross on it. Some people have the
symbol of the cross around their car’s driving mirror. Nevertheless, in the day
of Jesus the cross was not something to be proud of. The cross is the
equivalent of the electric chair, the gas chamber, firing squad, lethal injection,
and death by hanging today. Even today only bad people and hardened criminals
die such a horrific death. However, that was the way Jesus died for you and me.
When you look at the way Jesus died, from a human point of view you would say
what a waste, what a failure, and what a foolish thing to do. However, the
Bible says that the folly of God, with its message of the cross is God’s way of
setting aside and destroying human wisdom. From of old God’s way of doing
things has stood in contrast with that suggested by human wisdom (Psalm 33:10).
People always think that their way is right (Prov. 14:12; 16:25). However, God
confutes human wisdom; He reduces their system to nothing. In the context of
this passage, there is no difference between human wisdom and intelligence.
Neither human wisdom nor intelligence can stand before God. What the apostle
Paul is saying is that what God promised in the Old Testament (Isaiah 29:14) to
destroy human wisdom, He has accomplished it through the cross of Christ.
Therefore in the cross the promised great reversal has been played before human
eyes in its ultimate way. It is on the cross that Jesus destroys the works of
the devil, “disarming the powers and authorities, and making a public spectacle
of them, and triumphing over them” (Col. 2:15).
The
racist sheriff who locked Martin Luther King, Jr. in jail cells, the Soviet who
deported Solzhenitsyn, the Filipinos who murdered Benigno Aquino, the South
African authorities who imprisoned Nelson Mandela—all these people thought they
were solving a problem, yet instead all of them ended up unmasking their own
violence and injustice. Moral power can have a disarming effect.
When
Jesus died even a wicked Roman soldier was moved to exclaim, “Surely this
man was the Son of God” (Matt. 27:54 )! He saw the contrast between his
brutal colleagues and their victim, who forgave them in His dying gasp.
Sometimes I marvel at the self-restraint God continues to demonstrate
throughout history, allowing the Idi Amins, Hitlers, Stalins, Saddam Husseins,
and Osama bin Ladens to have their own way for so long. However, nothing
compares with the self-restraint that God showed that dark Friday in Jerusalem.
With every lash of the whip, every fibrous crunch of fist against flesh, Jesus
might have replayed the Temptation in the wilderness and in Gethsemane. A host
of angels were awaiting Jesus’ command on that Friday when He was hanging on
the cross. One word, and the ordeal would end, but Jesus restrained Himself. He
did not utter that word, but instead died for you and me. One of His words at
the cross was “I thirst!” and even then He turned down the vinegar wine
offered as an anesthetic; the irony of one who had made gallons of wine for a
wedding party, who has spoken of living water that would quench all thirst
forever, dying with a swollen tongue and the sour smell of a spilled vinegar on
His beard. As always even on the cross Jesus was thinking about others. He was
thinking about you and me. He forgave the men who had carried out His
crucifixion. He arranged care for His mother, Mary, and He welcomed a shriven
and repentant thief into paradise.
A
missionary was asked, “Give us proof of the transforming power of the cross.”
He replied, “When I arrived in the Fiji group, my first duty was to bury the
hands, arms, feet, and hearts of eighty victims whose bodies had been roasted
and eaten at a cannibal feast. I lived to see those very cannibals, who had
taken part in such horrible feasts, gathered about the Lord ’s Table!” That is
the transforming power of the cross.
II. THE EXPOSURE OF THE FOLLY OF
HUMAN
WISDOM VV. 20-22
In verse 20 the apostle Paul
asks series of rhetorical questions. He is saying that in view of what God has
done in the cross, what is left of the wise of this present age? Where now are
all the teachers of wisdom, both Jew and Greek. God has not simply discarded
the wisdom of the world or shown it to be foolish; He has also made it foolish.
Paul does not leave any doubt that God has rejected all that rests merely on
human wisdom. God in His divine wisdom chose to save people by the way of the
cross and not by any other way. Therefore, if you are trying to be saved and
enter into heaven by any other means apart from the cross of Christ, I would
like to submit to you that you have missed God’s only means of salvation. Any
preaching or teaching that does not point people to the cross of Christ is no
gospel at all. Sadly, many people have never acclaimed the gospel as a
masterpiece of wisdom. To the natural man the message of the cross does not
make sense.
Ladies
and gentlemen, I would like to submit to you that what God is doing in the
world can only be understood by revelation through the Holy Spirit (John 1:11-13;
Matt. 11:25). A God discovered by human wisdom will be both a projection of
human fallenness and a source of human pride, and this constitutes the worship
of the creature, not the Creator. The false gods of the wise are seldom
gracious to the undeserving, and they tend to make considerable demands on the
ability of people to understand them.
On
the contrary, God was pleased to bring us into proper relationship with Himself
through the foolishness of what was preached. The content of the message that
Paul and the apostles preached, and we ought to preach in our post-modern world is the message of a
crucified Messiah. And the purpose of God in our preaching of the crucified
Messiah is to save those who believe. When the Bible talks about “believe” it
does not simply mean giving assent to, it means putting your whole trust as
well. Therefore, in speaking to Corinthians, who were Greeks and lovers of
human wisdom, Paul insists that salvation does not come through “wisdom” but
through the foolishness of the event of the cross of Christ. And because the
cross stands contrary to human wisdom, it is for those who believe; for those
who will take the risk and put their whole trust in God to save them.
Instead for the Jews to simply believe in the finished work of
Christ, they demanded miraculous signs. Despite the many miracles that Jesus
performed, the unbelieving Jews continue to demand miracles from Him (Matt.
12:38; 16:1, 4; Mark 8:11-12; John 6:30). They insisted, “Authenticate
yourself; validate your messianic credentials with powerful displays.” Who
could blame them for such demands? After all, they had been down for a long
time and were looking for a mighty deliverer. They knew how God had acted in
the past with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Their idolatry was that
they now had God completely figured out; He would simply repeat the miracle of
the Exodus, and this time with greater splendor. That is what some Africans do
today. They say give me a vision. Look at me and prophesy to me; give me a
revelation and I will believe. They want to follow Christ in their own terms as
such, some of them are being duped and their quest has not ended. God has given
us His Son Jesus Christ, who died and rose again from the dead; He has given us
His holy Word, the Bible; He has given us His Holy Spirit who has come to live
in us. He has also given us the community of believers. Are these not enough to
help you walk by faith with Christ? Why do some of you still demand vision,
revelation, and prophecy? You are not different from the Jews who demanded
miracles. To them a crucified Messiah is a contradiction in terms.
Paul
says, not only do the Jews demand miracles; the Greeks also search for wisdom.
All Greeks were zealous for every kind of learning. They were absorbed in
speculative philosophy. No names were more honored among the Greeks than their
outstanding thinkers. The Greeks were proud of their intellectual prowess and
they found no place in their heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. However,
philosophy cannot save anybody. Therefore, the idolatry of the Greeks was that
they conceive God as ultimate Reason. These are the two basic idolatries; and
they are ever with us. The demand for power and the insistence on wisdom are
the basic idolatries of our fallen world.
III. THE EXTREME DIVINE CONTRADICTION VV. 23-25
To the seekers of signs and
wisdom the apostle Paul now presents the ultimate divine contradiction: “But
we preach Christ crucified.” Rather than giving the Jews the miracles and
Greeks wisdom they demand, and God has plenty of them, they get weakness and
folly. In the mind of the Jews and the Greeks, Messiah meant power, splendor,
and triumph. However, crucifixion meant weakness, humiliation, and defeat.
According to them, how could victory come out of a cross? Little wonder that
both the Jew and Greek were scandalized by the Christian message. During the
Roman times crucifixion was the ultimate penalty, reserved mainly for
rebellious subjects of various kinds (insurrectionists and the like) and
slaves. Jesus died as a state criminal, a scandal to Jew, Greek, and Christian
alike. To the Jews the message of a crucified Messiah was the ultimate scandal.
There was simply no way a crucified Messiah would fit the understanding of the
Jews in their understanding of God or Scripture. Hence, a stumbling block to
Jews. The Jews did not read Isaiah 50 and 53 with discernment. To the Gentiles
the message of “Christ crucified” was a pernicious superstition and utter
foolishness.
One would argue, since the
Jews seek signs and the Greeks look for wisdom, and since God is all-powerful
and all-wise, why not give them signs and wisdom, rather than the preaching of
a Messiah who died on a cross, which would offend them both? God’s answer is
that (1) the foolish business of a crucified Messiah was in fact the ultimate
expression of God’s power and wisdom, and (2) as such it is available for those
whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks. Do you understand what Paul is
teaching us here? He is saying that salvation is a calling from God; it is a
gift from God to us; it is a revelation from God. In other words, you cannot understand
the death of Christ on the cross and the salvation God has given to you unless
God reveals it to you. Today God is calling some of you to come to Christ. He
wants to give you the gift of salvation through the death of Christ on the
cross. When you look at the death of Christ from merely human perspective, the
central message of the Christian gospel always appears as folly. Nevertheless,
Christ is the wisdom of God because He is the power of God for the salvation of
everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16). God is both wiser and more powerful than
mere human beings. In the cross God outsmarts His human creatures and thereby
nullifies their wisdom. You and I are left with awful risk: trust God and be
saved, or keep pretending and perish. Jesus Christ is still the dividing line
between two segments of humanity. We have two
choices: Reject His sacrificial death for our sins and be lost for eternity, or
trust His work on the cross and receive eternal life.
Police
officer Peter O'Hanlon was patrolling on night duty in a town in northern
Britain when he heard a quivering cry. Turning in the direction it came from,
he saw a little boy in the shadows sitting on a doorstep. With tears rolling
down his cheeks, the boy said, "I am lost. Please take me home."
The policeman began naming street after street, trying to
help the boy remember where he lived. When that failed, he repeated the names
of the shops and hotels in the area, but all without success. Then he
remembered that in the center of the town was a church with a large white cross
towering high above the surrounding landscape. He pointed to it and said,
"Do you live anywhere near that?" The boy's face immediately
brightened. "Yes, take me to the cross. I can find my way home from
there!" Likewise, the cross of Christ directs lost people to their eternal
home. The cross of Christ is God's compass pointing the way to heaven. The way
of the cross leads home.
At the cross Jesus shouted His last word, "Tetelesthai,"
"It is finished." Jesus
accomplished your salvation and mine at the cross. Ladies and gentlemen, the
cross was not a period in the life of Jesus, but a comma. On the third day,
Jesus rose again from the dead, declaring to the entire universe that He has
won the victory over hatred, sin, Satan, and death. Glory be to God.
Jesus is calling some of you to come to the cross for
salvation. Some of you need to come to the cross of Christ and lay your burden
at the foot of the cross and ask Jesus to care of them.
*If
the messages from this blog have been a blessing to you and you want to
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KENADARKWA LLC
Kennedy A. Adarkwa, PhD
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KENADARKWA LLC
Kennedy A. Adarkwa, PhD
6402 Redding Court
Arlington, TX 76001
