The Bible Study Hour

Dr. James Boice: When the Apostle Paul came to Corinth to preach the gospel, he did not come with the eloquence of the Greeks or with power like that of Rome or with signs and wonders to impress the Jews. He came boldly, but in meekness, with fear and trembling.

Mark Daniels: Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. The power of God is not dependent on our persuasiveness or in great wisdom. The power of God is in the gospel, the message of the cross, an offense to the world. Join Dr. Boice as he compares the ways of the world and its so-called wisdom to the foolishness of God in His power.

Dr. James Boice: We began a study of First Corinthians. We come to verse 18 of chapter one and to the beginning of what is Paul's first major treatment of a theme in the book. It's a theme of foolishness and wisdom, the wisdom of God contrasting with the foolishness of man. It's a major section because Paul deals with that not only in the remainder of chapter one, but throughout chapter two. It's not until chapter three that he gets back to that matter of the divisions among the church at Corinth that he mentioned in the introduction.

It's an interesting connection between the introduction and particularly between the verse with which it ends, verse 17, and this new section on the wisdom and power of God, and in particular, verse 18 with which it begins. It's not so evident in the New International Version, the translation I'm using, but it is evident in the Greek language that Paul was using. In verse 17, Paul speaks of the words of human wisdom. It's plural, and the Greek word for that is the word *logos*, and the plural form *logoi*, words of human wisdom. Christ didn't send him to baptize but to preach the gospel, not with words of human wisdom. That would stick in the minds of his readers because that word *logos* was a powerful word to every Greek's ears. Their ears would pick up at that.

Now, in verse 17, Paul finishes that verse and begins verse 18, "For the message of the cross..." and although our New International Version says "message" at that point, the word is actually the same word, namely the word "word." Here it's in the singular. What Paul is saying is, "God did not send me with all of the different competing, various words of human wisdom or philosophy, but with that single word, that word of the gospel which, as he goes on to show, is the power of God unto salvation to anyone who believes."

That contrast sets up what he's going to do here. If I could give you an outline for it in advance, let me say that these verses through verse five of chapter two that we're looking at, first of all, Paul shows the failure of human wisdom, verses 18 to 20. Second, he shows the power of God's foolishness, verses 21 to 25. Third, he shows God's choice of the foolish and the weak and the nobodies to confound the wise, verses 26 through 31. Finally, he shows the implication of all of this theology for the preaching of the gospel, which takes up the first five verses of chapter two.

This first point he makes is really very significant, namely the failure of human wisdom. It was particularly appropriate in writing to a Greek church and a Greek environment because if there's anything the Greeks prided themselves on, it was wisdom. It applies to other cultures as well; certainly, the Jews had their measure of wisdom, but it was a particularly apt word to the Greeks. They boasted in their philosophy. What Paul is showing here is that God has simply undermined, destroyed, brought to nothing all of this vaunted wisdom of the world in order that by the simplicity of the gospel, which the sophisticated of that day and our day and every day call foolishness, God might actually save in a powerful way a people to the glory of His name.

Now, I don't think we have to go very far to show how foolish the foolishness of the world is. All the world calls it wisdom. The world has its philosophies, its science, its careful investigations, but the foolishness of all these things is shown in their inability to produce the kind of results that people hope and earnestly expect they'll produce. Some time ago, someone said of someone who was boasting a great deal about how smart they were, "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" I'm not sure that's a perfect retort because there could be a kind of wisdom which would be directed in other ways, but it makes a very valuable point. There ought to be some kind of connection between wisdom and results.

You see, the important point there is wisdom and results. It's not the same thing as talking about information. You can have all kinds of information; a computer can store a lot of information. But wisdom is a step beyond that. Wisdom is that which says, "From all of this information that I've gathered, all of these facts that I'm putting together, I'm able to put together a consistent picture. I'm able to see what's important and what isn't important, and on the basis of what I understand to be important, project what ought to be done." That's wisdom. If that's what wisdom is, then there ought to be a connection between wisdom and results. If you're so smart, it ought to produce something further down the road.

Here is precisely the point at which the wisdom, which is actually the foolishness of the world, is found wanting. It doesn't make any difference what particular area you move in. I suppose in recent generations, a great deal of hope was put in the field of psychology and psychiatry, at least ever since Sigmund Freud. Through our great schools of psychology and the training up and practice of psychologists and psychiatrists and their discipline, we have given ourselves the idea that we've been able to gather data and understand how people function. Because we understand how they function, why they do what they do, what kind of problems they have, we therefore know how to deal with them and solve these great psychological problems that all people seem to have.

And yet, it's an obvious fact to anybody who looks around at our culture that in spite of this supposed wisdom, we have more psychological misfits today. We have more intense problems; we have more unresolved anxieties than we ever had in our history. "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" If psychology is the wisdom that's supposed to solve all things, why aren't our problems being solved? Or again, you take the field of sociology, the study of how people function not as individuals, but how they function in relation to one another in homogeneous groupings.

People, I suppose, in many of our schools today have shifted away from psychology to sociology. It seems to be a very popular discipline today, and I suppose for very logical reasons. One thing sociology does is deal with relationships and things and movements and housing and all of that thing that we kind of can get a hand on. It's a little hard to get a hand on what's happening in your head, but these are things we can deal with a little bit better, we think. Besides, we can subject all kinds of sociological phenomena to our analysis and gather data and project all sorts of things. And yet, our social problems aren't being solved; if anything, they're worse today than ever. Isn't it true, as Paul says, that God is bringing to nothing the wisdom of the world? "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

I suppose there's no greater example of the folly of this world and its profession of wisdom than in the great hope that is put and great trust that is put in the theory of evolution. Now, when I mention evolution, I don't want to deny, and certainly at the outset I want to say, that there may well be certain evolutionary relationships between things that do not in any way contradict the essence of Christianity or creation or any of those things. I think it's a complex issue. We can gather all the data we can, and if we can find relationships between them, that's all for the good. But what is really foolish about evolution, even in its supposed wisdom, is the inevitable attempt to make what has to be called, if you want to be honest, a religion of that which is essentially a theory about how things came to be.

Because we try to explain it in that way, we elevate evolution to an explanation of things that evolution can't possibly explain. A great example of that is this book and the television series by Carl Sagan called Cosmos. This is a presentation of evolutionary theory, and as such, if that's all it is, there's nothing to be objected by that. Certainly, people who believe in that should be able to present it. But what Sagan has done is make evolution more than it could possibly be. He's used it as an explanation of all things.

Here's where the folly comes in. Carl Sagan said in that series, "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be." Notice, "was, is, will be." He's using biblical language. He's saying, instead of God being the same yesterday, today, and forever, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the one who is, who was and is to come, the universe is all. It takes God's place. "It is the universe that made us," Sagan says, "and we are creatures of the cosmos." That's religious language. Or again, he even finds moral significance and moral obligation in the fact that we're so created. Our obligation, he says, "to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we sprang."

Now, I maintain that's utter foolishness. There are great errors here in Sagan's approach to things. Let me suggest a few. The first is the error of supposing that all that is is what I see. If I can't see anything spiritual, all I can see are planets and atoms and relationships between those things that I see, that's all that is. If that's all I can imagine, and that's what Sagan is talking about, that's utter foolishness because at the beginning, in a most unscientific way, it excludes the existence or the possibility of the existence of a God who stands over and beyond the creation.

Another error is the supposition that the impersonal, which the universe—the cosmos—obviously is, can somehow create the personal. You notice the personal language here. "The universe made us." No, usually when you think of making something, you think of intention, mind, purpose, all of those things. Somehow now all of this is given to an impersonal something. The impersonal something, the universe, somehow has personality in order to make us. But of course, that's not what Sagan is saying. He's saying it all happened by chance. We simply evolved. But we are persons. We have purpose. So he's saying that all of this came about somehow in an impersonal way from that which is impersonal. I maintain that's foolishness.

Perhaps the greatest of all foolishness is to suppose that somehow in that kind of a closed, materialistic system excluding God, moral purpose and moral obligation can come about. If I am the accident of the universe, why do I owe anybody anything? I don't. I'm not answerable to anything. How am I answerable to an impersonal universe? It just happened that way. And yet, Sagan can't live with that kind of a universe, and so he projects moral values into it. It is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

Let me say that if there were no other reason for believing what Paul says, that God has indeed done that, we have the great fact of the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus in Christian theology was God. So here is a case of man killing God when God places himself within the power of man. But look, even if you exclude the divinity of Christ, Jesus was nevertheless, by the acknowledged judgment of the majority of men and women on the face of the planet, the most perfect man who ever lived. And yet, what was the response of human beings to Him? They killed Him. Where is the folly of the so-called wisdom of the world more clearly seen than at that crucifixion?

The second section of Paul's treatment of wisdom and folly here is the power of what the world would call the foolishness of God. Later on, Paul is going to show that it's not at all foolish. As a matter of fact, it's a deep wisdom, wisdom even beyond the Apostle Paul because there are things about it that he doesn't fully understand; he says so elsewhere. Nevertheless, this gospel, this cross, which is the burden of his message and which is the burden of this book, is in the eyes of the world utterly foolish. Oh, you can talk about philosophy and learn a great deal about it and begin to talk about how men think and how women react and all of those things, and the world will say, "Oh, my, what a wise man that person is, or what a wise woman to be talking that way and to know all of that."

You can talk about sociology and evolution and various aspects of today's modern science, and people say, "Oh, my, what a brilliant person we're dealing with." But you talk about God who so loved the world that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die in order that whoever believes on Him might not perish but have everlasting life. And what does the world say? The world says, "I never heard anything so foolish in my life." And yet, that's the gospel; that's the power of God. That's what changes lives. And that's reality.

All the theories will come and go. You're in university, you know perfectly well that today's theory about psychology or sociology or science or mathematics or whatever it be is very quickly superseded by another theory. One reason, of course, is that the old theories don't work, and so you need a new theory to replace them. But you know perfectly well how passing all of that is. And yet, here is the gospel, which endures, which is based in the very nature of God, who is reality itself, and which changes lives. And the world says, "Oh, all that is foolishness."

Paul has a wonderful way of focusing this foolishness of the gospel in the cross because, as he says quite clearly, it's the cross that's the offense. You can talk in a general way about God loving us, and people aren't offended by that because after all, why not? I'm a nice person; why shouldn't God love me? Of course, He should. You can perhaps even talk about the death of an innocent man, Jesus, if you're talking about it as an example, perhaps patient endurance of suffering, a stoical attitude in the midst of the difficulties of this world, and people will say, "Yes, yes, there's a certain measure of wisdom in that. It's always good to keep a stiff upper lip when things go wrong. Yes, Jesus was certainly an example."

But talk about the cross. The cross where God, in the person of His Son, made man for our salvation, hung and bled and died, was ridiculed, and make that the center of your religion, a suffering, dying, ridiculed, despised Savior, broken in body. No, people don't want that. And yet, you see, that's the power of the gospel.

We even lose some of that today. In Paul's day, the cross was a symbol of utter shame. We don't have anything quite like it, not even the gallows or the gas chamber is quite like that. Cicero said something about the cross once, explaining how horrible it was, what a picture of revulsion it brought in everybody's mind. He said the cross, "Well, it speaks of that which is so shameful, so horrible, it should never be mentioned in polite society." It's hard to find a parallel to that today because in our polite society, we let it all hang out. We mention everything; it doesn't make any difference how bad it is. We talk about it. But what could it possibly be that could be so horrible that you don't talk about it in polite society today? Yet Cicero says that's what the cross was like. Nobody wanted to think about it. You certainly didn't want to say anything like that. And yet, Paul says what? "I glory in the cross, the cross of Christ, that's my glory." Why? Because, he says, "it is the power of God." That's where the answers are found. That's where the wisdom lies.

Then he says something else. Paul says that when he begins to think about how God works, it's not only that God has demonstrated His wisdom at the cross in what Jesus Christ achieved there, God also demonstrates His wisdom by choosing to come to Christ, the foolish things and foolish people of this world, not the wise.

Paul had an interesting experience as he traveled around the Roman world. He was a very versatile man, as you know. He was at home in three cultures. He had been raised as a Jew in what we call Turkey, essentially a Greek environment but in a Jewish home. And he was a citizen of the Roman Empire because of his parentage, his father was a citizen. So he lived in a Greek environment and he knew the Greeks, and he lived in a Jewish environment and he knew the Jews, and he knew the Roman environment in which he also lived. Everywhere he went, he preached the gospel. And he discovered, as he went about preaching the gospel, that there was a difficulty where each one of these distinct cultures was concerned.

When Paul went to the Romans, Paul was going to a people that prided themselves above all else on their strength. Romans weren't particularly boastful about their wisdom; they left that to the Greeks. Their religion, they knew that was kind of debased; they might even leave that to the Jews. But oh, they were proud of their army. Because their army was the salvation, as they saw it, of the then-known world. Their army had brought peace to the empire. Their navy had destroyed the pirates on the sea. Their army had built the roads. Their army maintained order throughout all the vast extent of the Roman Empire.

When Paul came to the Romans preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified, what did the Romans think? They said, "Crucified? A Jewish preacher hanging on a cross? Why, if there was ever a picture of utter weakness, it's that. We stand for strength. You have to be strong to get on in this world. You need money and armies and guns. Why a crucified Savior? What utter folly." And so Paul had that problem.

When Paul came to the Jews, he found something else. The Jews were a very religious people and they had a long history. And their history concerned great miracles done by God, mighty works. Paul came and he preached Christ to the Jews. And what does he say? He said, "When the Jews hear the preaching, what the Jews demand is a sign." They don't like it done that way. To them, that just isn't significant enough. They want God to come down on Mount Sinai again. They want the waters of the Red Sea to be divided. They want the walls of Jericho to fall. And here is Jesus. Oh, He did miracles, it's true. God raised Him from the dead, that's also true. But you see the offense of Jesus, that He was a man, He walked around, He acted normally, He sat down and ate, and He went to sleep, and He got tired as He walked the dusty roads of Palestine. The Jews wrinkled up their nose at that. They said, "That's not what we want. That's foolishness, to follow a Messiah like that."

And then Paul went to the Greeks, and the Greeks, as I said earlier, were very proud of their wisdom. The Greeks really were the sophisticated people in the true sense of that word, those who indulged and loved and cherished sophistry, *sophos*, the wisdom of this world. Even in the time of the Roman Empire, when the Romans were in power, when they wanted their children to be taught, they got a Greek slave to teach them. About nine out of ten of the tutors in the good homes of the Roman world were Greeks because the Greeks were considered to be wise. Paul went to the Greeks and he preached Christ crucified and raised from the dead, and what happened when he did that in Athens? They laughed at him. They laughed at him. "The resurrection? Paul, you must be crazy. Ever heard of anything so stupid as that? Talk about salvation of the mind, that makes sense. Talk about rising above all of the physical, that makes sense. But a resurrection? A crucified Christ? Paul, you must be out of your mind." And that's exactly what they said. They said he was crazy.

What did Paul do? Did Paul say, "Well, we better do a careful market survey here of the people that I'm trying to reach because it's perfectly evident that the way I'm talking to the Romans and the way I'm talking to the Jews and the way I'm talking to the Greeks just isn't getting through. What is it that the Romans value? They value strength. Well, let's talk about how strong you can be. Let's have Christian exercise classes to get you ready for the army. Let's do that and then after we establish a point of contact, then we'll begin to talk about the other things that aren't quite so popular in the Roman mind."

"When we deal with the Jews, it's obvious that we can't get very far talking about Jesus as He walked around the dusty roads of Palestine. Let's, I know, let's emphasize how about the transformation up on the mount there, you know, when Moses and Elijah came down and He was glorified before? Let's build that up. Let's put that on television. Let's open our program with that particular thing. Then when we've got them hooked, then we can talk about something else."

"And these Greeks, oh, they pride themselves in wisdom. Let's go back and read all their literature. Let's do everything we can to show that Jesus was really a philosopher, misunderstood as a Jewish itinerant evangelist. You mustn't think of Jesus being a Messiah or the Son of God or anything like that. What He really was was a wise man, a philosopher far ahead of His time."

You know perfectly well that Paul didn't do that. When he preached to the Romans, he preached Christ crucified in weakness, but the power of God. When he preached to the Jews, he preached Christ who came not as a sign, but to die and give His life a ransom for many and the power of God. When he preached to the Greeks, he didn't preach Christ the wisdom of man, but Christ the simple gospel, the simple Savior who died in order that we might be saved. And that was the power of God to the Greeks as well as to the Jews and as well as to the Romans.

That, of course, brings me to the final point that he develops in the first verses of chapter two, the implications of this for the preaching of the gospel. Because you see Paul, understanding that the power of God was to be found not in the power of man or the wisdom of man but in the simple gospel and the preaching of the cross, made it his great determination to preach the cross. So he says quite clearly that when he came to Corinth, the Greek city, refounded again by the Romans and therefore a Roman city as well, he did not come with Greek eloquence or superior wisdom as a Greek philosopher may have done, but rather as one who proclaimed the simple testimony from God, namely Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Moreover, says Paul, "When I came, I did not come in power like a Roman might have come. I did not come as a conquering general. I didn't enter Corinth as Julius Caesar." No, he says, "I came in weakness and fear and in much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but they were with the demonstration of the Spirit's power because I preach Christ."

You see, it's the same thing today. I suppose there's a place, although we have to be very careful in our culture, for establishing some kind of contact with the way people are thinking. Certainly, we have the tools of technology available to us. If we have radio, it's nice to be able to use that and printing, so we can produce books and television; we can have television programs. Nothing in scripture says you can't do that.

But we have to remember, you see, that the power of God is not in the technology. The power of God is not in how persuasive we can be. The power of God is not in how wise we can be so we can look up to our preachers and say, "Oh, they're smarter than the people in the universities." It's not that. The power of God is in the simple gospel. Jesus is the Son of God and He died for you. That's the gospel.

And that's why, you see, God can take a person who is of very humble ability. God can take a person who stutters as he speaks as I often do when I'm tired, somebody who has, as we would say, none of the gifts that would ever get him by in the world. But if he's faithful to that gospel and he shares it and he preaches it, God operates in power through that gospel and God changes lives.

What psychology can't do and what sociology can't do and what scientific theories can't do, God through the power of the gospel does. He integrates it. He takes this fact and this fact and this fact of your experience, all churning around in your mind, and he shows it has meaning at the cross of Christ because there you find yourself to be a sinner, one who can't save yourself. And you find God to be a God of love who is the Savior of sinners just like you. And you find the power of Jesus to reach down and even change your own rebellious, hardened, sinful mind and humble you and make you into the kind of person who is a replica of God's own Son, Jesus Christ.

And isn't that what it's all about? Isn't that the wisdom of God? What makes better sense than that? That though we do not know Him, somewhere there is a God and that God has made us. Even though we have ruined ourselves by our sin, that God loves us and has not given up. That God who created us in His image is working through the cross, the death of His Son, to restore that image in you and make you one who is going to live with Him for all eternity. You don't find that in Cosmos, but you find it in the word of God. Let us pray.

Our Father, we confess our ignorance of many things, but we thank You that by Your grace You have given us knowledge of this great fact of the gospel, which though foolish in the eyes of those who are perishing, is that ultimate wisdom to all who come to Christ. Amen and Amen.

Mark Daniels: You're listening to The Bible Study Hour, featuring the teaching of Dr. James Boice. The Apostle Paul minces no words in referring to those who cut themselves off from God and make their own rules as fools. Find out what happens to those who follow that path in our free CD entitled Fools. It's another message by Dr. Boice. This free CD offer is our gift to you. Simply call 1-800-488-1888 and we'll be happy to send you a copy of Fools. That number again is 1-800-488-1888.

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How has The Bible Study Hour impacted your life? Be sure to tell a friend first, and then tell us. Our entire staff would be greatly encouraged by your words when you call or write. Our email address is contact@thebiblestudyhour.org. I'm Mark Daniels. Glad you could listen in today. "But God." Two small words, but words that carry a great significance. Two small words that are filled with hope because they stand in contrast to the foolishness of man and the plans he devises through human wisdom. Join Dr. Boice as he compares the foolishness of the escapades of men with the wisdom of the Almighty God. That's next time on The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.