Seaford Baptist Church Blog

Last night at Fusion, we continued to look at 1 Corinthians 1:18-21 for the second straight week. While we focus on verse 18 last week, we focused on verses 19-21 last night. The theme of last week was that the Cross divides. On one side you have those who see the Gospel as folly and on the other side you have people who see the Gospel as the power of God to save the lost. This week we talked about how the Cross conquers and saves.

Paul quotes Isaiah 29:14 in 1 Corinthians 1:19. Throughout all of Scripture, we see God destroying the wisdom of the world with His wisdom. In 2 Kings 5, God takes a powerful Syrian named Naaman and makes him bob up and down in a river seven times in order to be healed from his skin disease. In Acts 9, He takes the very Paul that is writing to Corinth and blinds him with a vision. In the midst of all of Naaman’s rank and all of Paul’s religiosity, they were left in a position where they needed good, biblical child-like faith. In quoting this verse from Isaiah, Paul is simply highlighting a theme of the Bible. God shames the wise with what is base, God shames the strong with what is weak.

This leads into Paul calling out three figures from his own society that still exist in ours today.

Where is the wise man?

The wise men of Paul’s society were the Sophists, Platonists, Stoics, and Hedonists. Our students many not encounter a Stoic when they are walking their halls at school each day, but I know who they do encounter. They encounter the friend or teacher that says science has won the day and faith is no longer needed. They know the evolutionist who has evolved right out of their relationship with the Church. They know the person who is educated to the point of being a bit offended by a God of holiness who judges with righteousness.

Many in our society today believe that they don’t have to worry about the grave because their education has taught them that the grave is just a hole in the ground. However, they have a sin problem that books, degrees, and knowledge cannot fix. Knowledge is good when it is rooted in Jesus and His Word, but knowledge in itself will not save a faithless man.

Where is the scribe?

Scribes were the teachers of the law. They were the religious elite of Paul’s day. Where is the religious man? Paul is obviously writing with a Jewish scribe in mind, but we have plenty of religion men today as well. Whether it is Buddhism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Atheism, Agnosticism, or Jehovah’s Witnesses–there are a lot of people trying to work their way to some sort of spiritual freedom. You can work and work and work, but in the end, when the grave calls, how has your work dealt with the debt you have in righteousness court with a holy God? It won’t.

For example, let’s say there is a man who is caught speeding. He was going 90 in a school zone. He is facing heavy fines and maybe even a little jail time because this isn’t his first rodeo. He can stand in front of the judge and list off all of the good things he does outside of speeding, but any judge who has been sworn to uphold the law will punish the transgression. God is no different. If you break the eternal law of an eternal God, there must be eternal punishment.

Where is the debater of this age?

In the ancient world, debaters were movie stars. Everyone wanted to hear these guys talk and see them debate. They lived their lives based on these celebrities and their words. Little has changed. There are more students in our schools living in light of the messages of Eminem, Kim Kardashian, Brad Pitt, the Jersey Shore crew, and MTV as a whole than the message of the Bible. If that wasn’t true, our schools would look a whole lot different. Here is a line that hurts: If that wasn’t the case in our own student ministry, our student ministry would look a whole lot different. Ouch.

But these celebrities can’t even save themselves from their own sin. When I stand in the check-out line at the grocery store I am surrounded by stories in tabloids about how these people’s lives are absolutely falling apart. How can we expect them to save anyone else from their sin? Even Oprah. Especially Oprah.

In all of these questions Paul is saying, where is your power? All of these things that people rely on for hope and salvation are empty. The Cross, the thing that the world calls folly, conquers that which the world calls wisdom. My prayer is that last night our students heard that and stopped putting faith in some of the things that they had knowingly or unknowingly been relying upon for hope and salvation.

Finally, in verse 21, Paul tells us about how God is pleased to save people through this s0-called foolish message. Why is that? Why does God want to save through a message the world sees as foolish. I think the answer is found in 1 Corinthians 1:27-29. It is how God works. He knows that no human can boast in His presence in anything but Jesus because when we look at the Gospel, who else would get credit for our salvation? We were dead in sin, no chance of salvation, no ability to respond to God and He called us our of darkness to have faith in the Son He sent when we were still His enemies. God has designed His plan of salvation for His glory. The Cross conquers and the Cross saves for the glory of God and the good of His people.