18-3-18, 1 Cor. 2:3-5, War of Wisdoms Pt. 2, The Wisdom of the Cross

SERIES INTRODUCTION

Sages and Stooges: Having the Right Kind of Wisdom & Being the Right Kind of Fool

In this series, we are going to talk about wisdom and folly. Obviously, we all like to be wise and none of us want to be fools. We want to be sages instead of stooges. We want to make good decisions in life about important things like our families, careers, money, and especially our souls.

How will you know if we’ve succeeded in being wise? Generally, results reveal if you made wise decisions or not. Wisdom results in gain and folly results in loss. Really, wisdom and folly are best judged in hindsight.Wise people make educated guesses which tend to yield good results. Fools make decisions on ignorance, emotion, impulse, and wishful thinking and end up suffering loss. We want to make decisions that in the end prove to be wise.

So, how do we learn to be wise? You find a teacher. However, be careful, what is wise to one person is foolish to another. Even fools think what their are doing is wise. You have to consider the source.Scripture teaches that there are two sources of wisdom, but only one is legitimate. There is the world’s wisdom and God’s wisdom. These contradict each other. In the end, only God’s wisdom will prove to be wise. But, worldly wisdom is incredibly attractive. It sounds so good on so may subjects. but in the end it results in loss.My hope with this series, is that you will learn to identify and choose to follow God’s wisdom. If you trust it, you will have everything you could possibly want in the end.

INTRODUCTION

This week and next week I want to dig into the differences between the world’s wisdom and God’s wisdom. This week we are going to take a good look at the features of worldly wisdom.

BOOK

CONTEXT

The church in Corinth became a troubled congregation. Paul evangelized Corinth and helped to establish a church there during his second missionary journey. Many Jewish and Gentile Corinthians experienced the mighty power of Christ and were born again.

Paul spent 18 months in Corinth teaching the Christians about the Scriptures and showing them how to live a life worthy of the gospel of Christ.

However, after Paul left…cultural forces, divisive personalities, and false teachers invaded the congregation.

The Corinthians lost their focus on Christ and became intrigued with worldly wisdom. As a result, they became divisive, haughty, and they adopted attitudes and actions which were in conflict with the wisdom of God.

They were getting off track and they were heading toward loss.Paul writes to them to help them to get back to the right perspective...

Lastly, on Resurrection Sunday, we’re going to see that Paul calls on us to boast in the wisdom of God, specifically, the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.