Sermon Tone Analysis

If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 1:18.

We will read the text today in three different parts, so just keep your seats and follow along in your copy of God’s Holy Word:

Foolish Message

For about a year and a half, Paul was in the city of Corinth, a large, thriving port city fixated on a certain social hierarchy—the wise and influential were at the top.

Just listen to some of the Corinthian catch-phrases of that day:

“The wise man is king.”

“To the wise man, all things belong.”

The citizens of Corinth weren’t obsessed with wisdom alone; it’s clear “the Greeks were intoxicated with fine words”—concerned not so much with the truth of what what said as they were with the articulacy and cleverness with which it was said.

It was among these people—the best and the brightest, the wisdom-obsessed, the eloquent and articulate—it was among these people that Paul came preaching.

He came preaching the gospel, the Good News about Jesus.

Paul came to these wise Corinthians with a message they would not get; a message that was not geared to their sensibilities; a message that was the opposite of their conception of wisdom.

The message of the cross—preaching Christ crucified—is a foolish message.

From a worldly perspective, the message of the cross, the word (the logos) of the cross is completely backwards and upsidedown.

It makes no sense.

It’s illogical.

N.T. Wright: “The Christian Good News is all about God dying on a garbage-heap at the wrong end of the Empire.

It’s all about God babbling nonsense to a room full of philosophers.

It’s all about the true God confronting the world of their power and prestige and overthrowing it in order to set up His own kingdom—a kingdom in which the weak and the foolish find themselves just as welcome as the strong and the wise, if not more so.

Think back to Jesus and the people He befriended.

And ask: “Isn’t Paul merely being utterly loyal to His master?”

There’s a very real contrast between worldly wisdom and the wisdom of God.

Wisdom is the word sophia.

Sophisticated, Sophomore, Philosopher—all related words.

Paul makes clear what has always been the case (he quotes from the old prophet Isaiah) proclaiming the age-old truth: God’s way stands in contrast with human wisdom.

People always think their way is right, but God confutes their “wisdom”; He reduces their systems to nothing.

There’s a very real contrast between worldly wisdom and the wisdom of the world.

Paul’s not combatting good advice:“Change the oil in your car and rotate your tires, eat your vegetables, speak when you’re spoken to...”; what Paul is combatting is what we must take a stand against here and now: the assumption that there’s any way to know God but through the message of the cross.

God—in His wisdom—chose to save people by the way of the cross and by no other way.

God was pleased...

This is God’s free and sovereign choice.

It was never God’s plan that people should come to know Him by their exercise of wisdom.

Corinthians, Greeks, New Yorkers, Rich Hill-ians, sophisticates—no one could ever logic their way into a relationship with God.

God was pleased to reveal Himself in a much different way, a way that would seem the height of foolishness.

Paul even calls it that—through the foolishness of what was preached.

God reveals Himself and the way of salvation—the only way of salvation—through the crucified Lamb of God.

To the natural man, the message of the cross doesn’t make a lick of sense.

The message preached says God saves us through crucified Savior.

Worldly wisdom believes the way would be through some conquering hero, marching victorious into the city, defeating the enemy through force.

But this is not God’s way.

This is not how our King operates.

“Jesus is not the type of King that conquers by shedding the blood of His enemies; He is the type of King that conquers by shedding His own blood for His enemies.” - Kevin DeYoung

Christ crucified is a scandalous message; it’s a stumbling block (skandalon) to the Jews.

It’s foolishness to the Greeks.

And this is just exactly what God intended.

It pleased Him, the upsidedown nature of it all.

It’s foolishness to those who are perishing,

To those whom God has called...

Those who believe are those who have been called by God.

The message is the power of God for those who are being saved.

It’s a glorious, scandalous, saving, foolish message.

Insignificant Believers

Think of what you were when you were called—that has to be one of Paul’s best lines.

Paul wants his brothers and sisters to think back to what they were when the good Lord brought them out of darkness into His marvelous light.

God could have concentrated on the intelligent, outstanding people in the Corinthian society, but instead God chose people with little to commend from a worldly standpoint.

You see, salvation, by its very nature, does not depend on human values or achievement (if it did, even a little, salvation would cease to be salvation and would instead be merit).

Even those in the Corinthian church who might have been justly admired could not begin to claim that they had been chosen because of any good in them.

Paul doesn’t say none of them were wise or influential or of noble birth; he says “not many were.”

The vast majority of them were nothing special.

Now, I’m not going to point out the wise or influential among us.

I’m not going to single out the nobility here in the room this morning because that’s not the point (and because I’m pretty sure none of us are nobility, though my beautiful Meghann is quick to remind me that she is the 13th or 31st great-granddaughter of the Emperor Charlemagne).

Not many of the Corinthians were(and, dare I say, not many of us are) anything to write home about; nothing special or standout (from a worldly perspective).

None of them are going to have a star with their name next to their handprints memorialized in concrete in Corinthian Hollywood.

And here’s the thing: that’s not the point.

It doesn’t matter who they are or how impressive they might be; it’s not about them.

It’s all a matter of God’s sovereign call and choice.

It’s the choice of God.

And God is pleased, He’s pleased to choose the foolish, the weak, the lowly, the despised, the things that are not.

He’s pleased to choose first those the world would choose last.

God chose a wandering Aramean named Abram to be the father of His people.

He chose the last and least of Jesse’s sons to be king of His people.

It suited our Savior just fine to have the not-good-enoughs be His disciples, and then to chose Paul as one of His apostles, Paul the murdering persecutor of the Church.

He’s pleased to choose those the world would pass by.

I bet, in some way, you can see this applies directly to you.

I know it does me.

I was certain I’d never speak without a serious impediment (as I’m sure the handful of speech pathologists that worked with me did).

I was in 6th grade before I could properly say my name.

I wonder if the Lord didn’t smile and say: “Here’s a little bit of fun foolishness; let’s make him a preacher.”

The Lord is, all the time, working through the foolish, the weak, the lowly, the despised; He’s working through them for His good pleasure and for the glory of His name.

It’s obvious the Lord has a plan for our good friend, Desiree Ferguson; the world might look at her and dismiss her, write her off as weak or lowly.

But God choose her; and she’s going to set the world on fire for Him;

You, friend: the world may consider you foolish or weak or lowly or despised, but God chose you in Christ and the Lord who called you will use you.

It’s important for us to see ourselves from God’s perspective.

We are all rather insignificant.

The Corinthians, for all their high and lofty thoughts about themselves, were insignificant.

It did not matter who they were, how high and mighty they thought themselves, what their last name was, or whose numbers they had in their Rolodex; they did not warrant God’s affection.

God didn’t choose them because they were the popular kids.

They were “nobodies”, but God made them “somebodies”—not the sort of “somebodies” the world would recognize as such, but the only kind of “somebodies” that truly matter.

God has taken the initiative—100% of the initiative in it all.

The Christian gospel is a matter of grace from start to finish.

We are “nobodies”, insignificant.

Jesus alone is significant.

We have nothing about which to boast.

When we realize that, we’ll boast in the Lord and what He’s done for us in Christ.

Jesus has become for us wisdom from God.

We have right-standing with God because of what Jesus has done: “He’s my one Defense, my Righteousness.”

Jesus is our righteousness, our only hope.

We could never attain holiness in our own strength, but Christ is holiness.

Regardless how wise or important we may be, we cannot accomplish redemption for ourselves.

Good thing Jesus is redemption—full and free.

God’s view of power is upside-down.