18 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. 19 For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.”
20 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? 21 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. 22 For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
26 For consider your calling, brothers, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. 27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, 28 and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may abolish the things that are, 29 so that no flesh may boast before God. 30 But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, 31 so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1: 18-31 LSB
1 Corinthians 1: 18-31
Jim Packer died at the age of 93. Jim Packer understood what was going on in the church, even at his age. Listen to what he wrote in a preface to A Christian Directory. A Christian Directory was written by Richard Baxter back in the 1600s, a Puritan. In his introduction Packer characterized evangelicalism this way: “Ego-centric, zany, simplistic, degenerate, half magic spell nonsense, which is all the world sees when it watches religious TV or looks directly at the professed evangelical community.” Packer went on to say, “Our how-to’s – how to have a wonderful family, better sex, financial success in a Christian way, how to cope with grief, life passages, crises, fears, frustrating relationships, and what not else – gives us formula to be followed a series of supposedly simple actions on our part in the manner of” – and I love this – “painting by numbers.” He compared that to the great work of Richard Baxter, and he had written his Ph.D. dissertation at Oxford on Baxter. And Baxter was the one who said, “I preach as a dying man to dying men.”
J. I. Packer compared contemporary evangelicalism with Richard Baxter, who in the Christian Directory alone, one book, wrote more than a million words on the interpretation and application of the Word of God. Packer said, “That book is a high level of intelligent Bible-based, theologically integrated wisdom with unfailing, unimpaired clarity that is dazzling to the mind.” Where do people go for dazzling interpretations of Scripture? Where do they go for Bible teaching that is highly accurate, intelligent, theologically rich, sound, integrated, clear, and dazzling in its truthfulness?
My other friend R. C. Sproul died in December of 2017, and he said, “Our culture is embedded in proud mediocrity. That should be obvious to everyone.” He said, “While there are still hard-working scholastic minds in science and technology and researchers doing hard and tedious labor in the fields, the culture has in general settled for what is quick and cheap: junk music, junk art, and junk thinking. Our culture is far too easily satisfied and entertained. Excellence, truth, and real beauty are the great triad of virtues that are now replaced by funny, cool, and cute.” R. C. said, “We get mediocrity because we want it. We actually crave it.”
Paul predicted this would happen, that there would be a time when men would want to have their ears tickled. There’s a lot of that now. There is clearly a trend to eliminate the transcendent, to eliminate the biblical, to eliminate the theological, the profound, the demanding truth of Scripture, and feed the mediocrity-hungered crowds with a mediocre message and mediocre preaching, so that the church accepts and legitimizes the superficiality that people want.
Pop culture Christianity serves nonbelievers just fine. People don’t want to take the Bible seriously, so why should the church take it seriously? Pastors seek cleverness, creativity and style rather than demanding and rigorous study of Scripture. How far we have fallen.
I like to go back to the Puritans, sixteenth and seventeenth century powerful preachers called Puritans because their goal was to purify the church in England. They were so faithful that in 1662 all of them were ejected from their churches in what is called the Great Ejection. There are all kinds of stories of how they were executed for their faithfulness to the Word of God being proclaimed to a religious environment that had no interest in it. - J Mac from GTY Why the World Rejects God's Word
V. 18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing - I often think a lot about how contrast is beauty, whether a giant rock or mountain range rising at the other end of a long plain, or a piebald Ball Python, a Hypancistrus L46, an African Zebra, or a person with vitiligo, the contrasts are stunning. One that is even more beautiful but so overlooked, is the cross, because in order to truly perceive it one must perceive the back drop to which they are blind to. Think about it, Immanuel (God With Us), must come into the world as an infant, live a sinless life in a place that is rancid with sin, where there is nothing untouched by it, and those made in the image of God are so marred as to have fallen into and become the backdrop. They don't smell the rot of it, though they are aware of death and decay, but the god they believe in would never say that this is the wages of sin, and they are so deeply entrenched in it that they call sin true beauty and rebellion against reason they call freedom. Dead men do not see the reality of the back drop, so the cross remains imperceivable to them. Christ saw it most clearly, and He came anyway.
…8Drip down, O heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth open up that salvation may sprout and righteousness spring up with it; I, the LORD, have created it. 9Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker— one clay pot among many. Does the clay ask the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘He has no hands’? 10Woe to him who says to his father, ‘What have you begotten?’ or to his mother, ‘What have you brought forth?’ ”… Isaiah 45: 8-10
1And the LORD said to Job: 2“Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who argues with God give an answer.” 3Then Job answered the LORD:…
…4“Behold, I am insignificant. How can I reply to You? I place my hand over my mouth. 5I have spoken once, but I have no answer— twice, but I have nothing to add.” 6Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:… Job 40: 1-6
…2He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no stately form or majesty to attract us, no beauty that we should desire Him. 3He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. 4Surely He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, struck down and afflicted.… Isaiah 53: 2-4
V. 19 I will destroy the wisdom of the wise - Once you truly realize that the Bible is God's word, well, just ponder the implications of that. That is the standard, and it always was, whether I wanted it to be or not, but I tried to say it wasn't and to find a different measuring device, or backdrop so to speak. Socrates said some beautiful things, just read the Trial of Socrates and you may like me wish that he had become a Christian. The Greeks loved wisdom, and after Socrates there came Aristotle and Plato, the schools of philosophy, but you could have all the wisdom of this world, be amazing in every discipline of the sciences as well, but if you don't hear God speak when the Bible speaks, all that becomes foolishness. Macarthur makes a marvelous point, that where philosophy agrees with Scripture it is unnecessary. If you have access to the standard then that is where every thought should be taken and held up against. Instead we become in love with our own thoughts and words, and tell each other, "that's deep." Who made the mind that you use?
13Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men. 14Therefore I will again confound these people with wonder upon wonder. The wisdom of the wise will vanish, and the intelligence of the intelligent will be hidden.” 15Woe to those who dig deep to hide their plans from the LORD. In darkness they do their works and say, “Who sees us, and who will know?”… Isaiah 29: 13-15
Gary Smith - They (LEADERS OF JUDAH) act contrary to the wise instructions of God. There will be no wisdom found in all the shrewd political scheming of the so-called “intelligentsia.” In every era, God’s ways are marvelous and totally beyond natural human reasoning, yet they are plainly explained for all to understand in His revelation. If people would only listen to what God says and trust Him, the disastrous results of blindness could be avoided. (NAC -Isa)
Stanley Horton - Because of this hypocrisy and spiritual blindness, God will do something amazing and supernatural that will destroy human wisdom and intelligence and cause it to vanish because it is ineffective. Isaiah probably had in mind the Israelites’ trust in Egypt and their plan to rebel against Assyria....And godless people today still think they can solve the world’s problems. (Isaiah-Logion Press) - Precept Austin
V. 20 The wiseman, the scribe, the debater - Scribes were the scholarly, the ones who went to the great schools. I remember trying to discuss with the head of engineering an idea that one of my techs had regarding a problem, and it differed from that of a newly acquired member of her team. She waived off what I was trying to tell her and told me the gentlemen's title and that he was a "published author". I had to graciously swallow a lot of blood while trying to hold my tongue, and then quietly go back and tell my tech that we weren't going to receive any help from them. He had ruled out the direction they were going in, but he wasn't a published author, yet shortly after he was the one who resolved the issue that had been plaguing us for weeks. Jesus chose simple fishermen, people of no account, to carry the greatest message the dying would laugh at, and the believing would be saved by.
MacArthur sums up this passage - Where are all the smart people that have the answers?” How much closer to peace is man than he was a century ago—or a millennium ago? How much closer are we to eliminating poverty, hunger, ignorance, crime, and immorality than men were in Paul’s day? Our advances in knowledge and technology and communication have not really advanced us. It is from among those who are intelligent and clever that the worst exploiters, deceivers, and oppressors come. We are more educated than our forefathers but we are not more moral. We have more means of helping each other but we are not less selfish. We have more means of communication but we do not understand each other any better. We have more psychology and education, and more crime and more war. We have not changed, except in finding more ways to express and excuse our human nature. Throughout history human wisdom has never basically changed and has never solved the basic problems of man. (1 Corinthians MacArthur New Testament Commentary) - PA
Where is the debater of this age (aion)? (the logician, the debater) - (Wuest) "Where is a learned sophist of this age, fallacious reasoner that he is?" NLT - "So where does this leave...the world's brilliant debaters?" (sunzētētēs) suits both the Greek and the Jewish disputant and doubter (Acts 6:9+ = argued; Acts 9:29+ = arguing; Acts 17:18+; Acts 28:29+). Debater (suzetetes only here in NT. Derived from suzeteo = to examine together, to disputer) means one skilled in arguing, one who questions, disputes or debates, one adept at winning public and private arguments, the closest contemporary equivalent being a lawyer. They are not skilled enough however to argue or debate with God's wisdom in the Cross of Christ! (cf Ro 3:19+ "every mouth may be closed!") - PA
Precept makes a good comparison above. Lawyers are there to win as well, and often they win at the price of the truth and the guilty go free. Judges can be bribed, but where this happens justice didn't occur, it's like a rigged election. It's the same with debate, and it is not wrong to defend the truth, but as a Christian we are also told to love our enemies. There is a problem with much debate in that some like to argue for the sake of it and hearing themselves speak. Others think they when arguments by interrupting others, talking over them, plugging there ears and turning up the music. Infants and people who never grow up will throw temper tantrums, and some will silence the truth by killing the messenger. Are you coming in order to help your fellow human being, to tell the truth, to wish for him or her the knowledge of the greatest truth? Or are you there for a mic drop moment or to drop bombs and then slap palms? It's not wrong to stand for truth, and we are commanded to, but love your neighbor as well, and if you knew the truth so well then it would actually make you humble.
…4The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the world. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God; and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 6And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, as soon as your obedience is complete.… 2 Corinthians 10: 4-6
…7rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. 8See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, which are based on human tradition and the spiritual forces of the world rather than on Christ. 9For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form.… Colossians 2: 7-9
Vs. 21-25 The world through its wisdom did not come to know God - I see a lot of people offering up books on enlightenment, books taking from various religions, from philosophy, from psychology, and sort of combining it to come up with a very amiable and pragmatic version of a god. Some just say ether, or the mystic light that binds us all, but they help you tap into the power of positivity and manifesting your dreams. Everyone is so special and self important and needs to have everyone else realize this, even if they don't work hard, aren't especially talented or useful to society, yet they need their quirks to be revered. "I am a vegan, so that is the most important thing. I am a philosopher, so I get to sit out the table with the intellectuals, and laugh at their ridiculous sayings, because agreeing makes me seem smarter. I am lazy so I surround myself with people who find it endearing and will do the work for me. I read a book by a man who claimed to have met God in person and though it differs with God's account of Himself in Scripture, I felt something so that is important. I am seen and I am heard." Human understanding is limited to time and space where we dwell. We want everything to be explainable from the material, as though time and space is all that ever existed, and to admit to God is to admit to something above our realm and reason. It is to acknowledge someone outside of time and space, Who has a Creative right over all that He has brought into being, including me. The smartest of us is going to hit a wall, no matter how much further away it seems to him; it is inconsequential in comparison to concepts that you can neither explain or explain away. The cross is the contrast between the Holy and the unholy, foolishness to the blind, unnecessary to the self righteous. You will never see it unless it is shown to you, and you will never understand the immensity of sin until you know the cross. It tells us volumes about God. He hated sin that much, so much, that in order to show us love this was the only remedy, His Son. There is nothing else satisfactory, even your attempts at earning God's love, His salvation, are all fraught with an even greater sin, the rejection of the Way that He provided. All our playing down of sin is to hide the back drop, to make the cross stand out less.
…5You welcome those who gladly do right, who remember Your ways. Surely You were angry, for we sinned. How can we be saved if we remain in our sins? 6Each of us has become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind. 7No one calls on Your name or strives to take hold of You. For You have hidden Your face from us and delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.…
Vs. 26-31 Let him who boast boast in the Lord - Yeah I am different, you know why? Because Jesus, that's why. I should be dead, but I am not, you know why? Because Jesus. If we come to see God, come to see our sin, then let us humbly exalt God, lift up the name of Jesus, for no one was ever saved by our wit. God never needed you, but you need Him.
…96I have seen a limit to all perfection, but Your commandment is without limit. 97Oh, how I love Your law! All day long it is my meditation. 98Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are always with me.… Psalm 119: 96-98
…15No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because everything I have learned from My Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose Me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit— fruit that will remain— so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He will give you. 17This is My command to you: Love one another.… John 15: 15-17
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