Sermon Cloud

June 1, 2008

Garfield Community Church

Are You Smarter Than God?

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Have you seen the television show, “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader”? It's a great show. Contestants try to answer 10 questions of varying grade level difficulty like first grade grammar, second grade geography, third grade math, etc. They also have children that are there to help them. If you make it through all 10 questions, you get to answer the million dollar question. With this one there is no help. It is funny to watch some of the kid's faces when these adult contestants come up with some of their answers. It's also funny to see the contestant's faces when they realize they got one wrong, but the 9 year old next to them saved them with the right answer. It's funny because the seemingly smarter of the two should be the adult. However, frequently it's the kid that knows the answer.

Did you know the Bible addresses this? Let's take a look at our scripture passage this morning.

18 For the message 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 bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”

20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, 24 but to those who are 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.

Verse 25 says, “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” You know, I've been in ministry, in one fashion or another, for a long time. I've had the opportunity to work with a lot of people. Have you ever noticed how we're trying to figure something out? We're always asking, “Why?”. That's not a bad thing. It only gets bad when we start to over think something. When we start to try and make sense out of the nonsensical.

I did not grow up in a Christian home. We did have a few bibles in our house though. In the late 60s and early 70s that was typical in America. Whether you believed or not, the family had a bible somewhere, if you could find it. I remember when I was 6 or 7 years old, pulling out a red King James bible my mother had. She had been given it by my grandfather I believe. I sat down to read it one day. I know that sounds funny. I didn't know what was drawing me to it. I do now. It was the one time I opened a bible until I was 21 years old. Anyway, I remember reading the beginnings of Genesis. Within reading the first few chapters of Genesis, I remember vividly closing the bible weeping and asking, “Why did you have to die? Why did you have to die?” I cried like this for probably half an hour or so in the recliner in our living room in a small apartment in Chesterfield, Connecticut. I then put the bible away and never touched one again, until I was 21.

What's amazing is that I didn't read anything about Christ. I didn't have any Christian upbringing or training. I didn't grow up with bible stories. Yet, somehow the Holy Spirit spoke to me as I read about the Creator and His creation.

In the world's mind, in man's mind, that doesn't make sense. How could I know? There's only one answer. God was speaking to me. The Creator of everything spoke to a small child.

Our passage this morning says in verse 18 “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are saved it is the power of God.” I never told that story about myself until after I got saved. And, even then, I was careful who I told it to. I didn't want people to think I was crazy. I was afraid of what man would think of me or how man would label me. I didn't want to be thought of as a fool.

The message of the cross is foolishness to the world. The world is okay with the “eye for an eye” doctrine. That makes sense to man. It fulfills our selfish desire for revenge. However, what doesn't make sense to this world is that one could die for all past present and future, paying the price for all of us. That's ridiculous in the world's understanding. I thin the world's understanding is a touch off, don't you?

The first bit of foolishness the world sees in the cross is the fact that it's supposedly God's son that was hanging there. The world is so engrossed in themselves and their own wisdom that they can't take it on faith and the testimony of thousands that Jesus Christ was and is God's own son. Josh McDowell set out to prove that very thing. He set out to prove that the historical figure Jesus Christ was just a wise teacher. Guess what? He got saved. He has become one of the foremost authorities on Jesus Christ and His ministry then and now.

The passage says in verse 22 that the Jews were seeking a sign. While Jesus was hanging on the cross the Jews wanted a miraculous sign to prove that He was the Son of God. They didn't get it. They didn't understand. In all of their wisdom and teaching they missed the fact that one would come and die for all of humanity building a bridge to cross the chasm that man's sin created between us and God.

Paul then goes on to say in the same verse that the Greeks were looking for wisdom. They were too busy trying to reason their way to God, and someone hanging on a cross was ridiculous. What would that do? There's no correlation, in their mind.

You know both of these sounds like it's all about them. Hey, what do you know, it was. They were both being selfish in their own right. They were both missing what God was doing. What God was doing didn't make sense in their puny little minds so it must not be God.

Verse 19 quotes Isaiah 29:14. God says through the prophet Isaiah, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.” The NIV says it like this, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

Man has a bad habit of trying to make sense out of what God is doing. We waste our time trying to make sense out of the tragedies that occur in our lives. Don't get me wrong. I think we need to study why things go wrong when it is of our own design. Cranes crashing down onto busy streets. That's a good thing for us to investigate and figure out why it happened. We made it, we need to figure out why it fell apart, and hopefully we will do that with the leading and prompting of the Holy Spirit. However, trying to figure out why a monster of a father would imprison his daughter in a dungeon and father 7 children with her all the while lying to his wife saying that she left and abandoned them. There's no figuring that out. There's a spiritual problem there. We need to pray for that family. We need to ask God to intervene in that family. We need to ask God to heal that family.

There's no understanding for the world when it comes to the cross. The world doesn't get it. The world is being lied to by Satan and they are dismissing the message of the cross as ridiculous. We know otherwise. However, we know otherwise not because we figured it out, but because we allowed God to reveal to us His plan for us, His plan for humanity. Once we allow God to reveal His plan to us, it becomes clear. Not because we figured it out, but because God grants us the wisdom necessary to understand His plan.

The thing that God gave us that the world thinks is the biggest foolishness is the method in which we share His plan for humanity, preaching. Preaching the message of God, in Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit. It's a stumbling block to the Jew, or today those that are religious, but do not have a relationship with God, and it's foolishness to the Greek, or today the educated, the scientists, the ones who believe only in what they can see, touch, smell, taste, and hear. There is no faith, therefore they cannot understand and so they think it's foolishness.

Do you have a relationship with the Creator of the universe? Do you rely on him for your every need and understanding? By accepting His gift to humanity, we rely wholly on Him. By accepting God's wisdom, we are called to have faith in Him and proclaim it, whether people believe or not. That's there problem. We're to preach. We're to be ready in season and out of season. We're not to worry about what the world will think of us. We're just needing to please God with our devotion and desire to do the work He has for each one of us.