GLENN'S BIBLE STUDY
Title: THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS
by Pastor Glenn Pease
THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS
Based on I Cor. 1:18-31
By Pastor Glenn Pease
The mayor and other dignitaries were looking into the vast pit dug
for the new hospital to be built. The town half-wit came up and gazed into
the pit, and asked the mayor what he was going to do with this big hole.
The mayor decided to humor him and said, "We are going to round up all the
fools in town and pile them in there." The half-wit thought a moment and
then said, "Whose gonna be left to cover um up?"
Even a half-wit
knows that in some sense all men are fools, but I have to confess I never
really realized to what degree this is true until I studied what the Bible
says about fools and foolishness. The subject is so vast, and the evidence
is so overwhelming that only a fool would deny that all men are fools.
This does not sound very nice, however, and so it is wise for us to see
there is a positive side to being a fool. So much so, that Paul in I Cor.
3:18 urges Christians to be fools, and in 4:10 he says, "We are fools for
Christ."
To add to the paradox of being a Christian fool, Paul in this passage
of I Cor. 1:18-31 glories in Christian folly, and links almost everything
of Christian nobility to foolishness. He writes of the foolishness of the
cross; the foolishness of wisdom, and the foolishness of preaching, and
most shocking of all, for it seems to border on blasphemy, Paul even writes
in verse 25 of the foolishness of God. Then he says in verse 27 that God
chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. And the foolish
things are the Christians.
So what it comes down to is this: All
men are in some sense fools, but since all are not fools in the same way,
we have to make a distinction between worldly fools and wise fools.The worldly
fools are those who feel so wise they have no need of light from God. These
fools say in their hearts that there is no God. Man is the measure of all
things, and He determines His own destiny. They say science and human philosophy
is all we need to produce a utopia. We do not need the Bible or God to
create our own heaven.
The wise fool, in contrast, recognizes that
human wisdom is so limited, and so there is a need for wisdom from above.
They are seen as fools from the point of view of the worldly fool. God,
however, sees them as wise, and so the two perspectives make them wise fools-
that is people who seem to choose foolishness and trust in foolishness,
but because it is the foolishness of God, they are wise. So what we have
here is a study in relativity. The worldly wise who reject God's revelation
are, in relation to eternal truth, fools. Those, however, who choose the
way of God are seen as fools, in relation to the way of the world, but in
fact, they are the truly wise. Type one fools seem wise to men, but are
fools to God. Type 2 fools seems fools to men, but are wise to God. So
wisdom and folly are relative to whose perspective you are seeing them from.
Paul's whole battle with the Corinthians was to get them to stop being wise
before the world and fools before God, and to reverse that to being fools
before the world, and wise before God. The goal of the Christian is to
become a wise fool. The Corinthians were missing this mark because they
came from a long tradition of philosophers who had all the answers. As
Greeks they were considered a wise people. The result was, the church was
in chaos because of all the pride of worldly wisdom. Some thought Paul
was the best. Others that it was Peter, and still others that Apollos was
number one. Some said they were all wrong, and we follow Jesus only. The
church was divided because, in their pride, they were deciding what was
best. They were also picking and choosing the gifts they felt were best.
In pride Christians can set themselves up as the judge of what is wise and
what is foolish, and in so doing they make their human judgment, rather
than God's revelation, the basis for their value system, and this is folly.
If human reason is going to be the standard of judgment, then the whole
plan of God is nothing but foolishness, and nothing is more foolish than
the foolishness of the cross. Just look at the evidence of its folly.
1. The innocent dying for the guilty.
2. The folly of having a way out and not taking it.
3. The folly of having power to destroy your enemy, but letting them destroy
you.
4. The folly of surrender to a foe you could easily conquer.
5. The folly of suffering when comfort and pleasure is at your command.
6. The folly of having the power to do miracles, and yet do nothing.
7. The folly of having an eloquent defense and yet not opening your mouth.
8. The folly of going to hell when you never had to leave heaven.
9. The folly of volunteering for a job that is certain death.
10. The folly of being God and yet letting mere men push you around.
11. The folly of forgiving those most worthy of judgment.
We could go on, but I am sure you get the point. The cross is pure
foolishness from a rational point of view. It is nonsense, and a ridiculous
way for God to go about saving man from the perspective of the worldly wise.
An intelligent lost man is scandalized by the cross. He feels that only
fools can be Christians if they buy into the foolishness of the cross.
When Paul gave his testimony and told of the death and resurrection of Christ,
the procurator Festes interrupted him in Acts 26:24 and said to him, "You
are out of your mind, Paul! Your great learning is driving you insane."
Paul responds in verse 25, "I am not insane...What I am saying is true and
reasonable. So what we have here is the worldly fool meeting the wise fool,
and each fool feels the other is a fool indeed. And the point is, both
are right from their point of view.
The village screwball met a friend coming down the sidewalk, and he
said, "Tell me which is the other side of the street." The friend said,
"The other side is over there" pointing to the other side. "That's funny,"
said the screwball, "That's what I thought too,
but I was just over there and the lady there said it was over here." Such
a paradox of both sides being the other side can drive a screwball batty,
but this is the paradox of life. Both sides of the argument of what is
wise are fools from the perspective of the other side, and Paul's advice
then is to be a fool for Christ. Be willing to seem like a fool for the
sake of Christ. We are so concerned about being accepted that we do not
like to be seen as a fool. But the more concerned we are about being respectable
to the world, the less we are concerned about being faithful to the wisdom
of God.
We are so easily conformed to the world, and we lose our sense of mission
which is to confront the world with the foolishness of God.
In the
eyes of the wise
Don't be cool, be a fool.
It may be a loss,
And you'll suffer pain,
But this is the cross
That leads to gain.
Gain that goes beyond the worldly clever,
For it is gain that lasts forever.
We are called, not just to
be April fools, but perpetual fools. If we never identify with the foolishness
of the cross, and always conform to the wisdom of the world, we will still
be fools, but not the kind we are called to be. Christians are not beyond
the risk of being
worldly fools. A pastor was leaving town, and he told the church secretary
he did not have his sermon titles yet for the bulletin, so she could just
put in something like, the pastor speaks. What about the evening service
she asked? He said he was speaking from Psa. 14 which begins with the words,
"The fool has said in his heart there is no God." The pastor told her to
just make up a title. So she did, and when the bulletin came out it said-
Morning-The Pastor Speaks.
Evening-What The Fool Said.
In the light of our study, however, it does not need to be seen as
embarrassing, for Paul calls himself a fool for Christ, and his ministry
for Christ he calls, the foolishness of preaching.
Someone said, "You can fool some of the people all the time, and all
of the people some of the time, but most of the time they will make fools
of themselves." Warren Hammer said, "No woman really makes a fool of a
man-she merely gives him the opportunity to develop his natural capacities."
A young preacher traveling with a Gospel team preached to a Wisconsin congregation,
and after the service a Scandinavian saint grabbed his hand and said, "That
was a wonderful message." Trying to be humble he responded, "It was just
Jesus." "No" said the saint, "It wasn't that good." It can be foolish
to attribute all we do to the Lord, for if it was the Lord it would be a
whole lot better.
Pastor Wally Klandrud of Phoenix tells of his
first hospital call. He wanted it to be perfect, and so he studied all
the do's and don'ts of hospital visitation. Nervously he entered the patients
room. There was a woman in her eighty's, and the nurse had told him she
was senile. He was just about to share some words of comfort when she leaped
up on the bed without a stitch of clothing. He tried to keep his composer,
and asked her if he could help. "Gotta go to the bathroom," she responded.
The pastor ran into the hall way to look for a nurse, but none was in sight.
He was in a panic, and ran back to his impatient
patient and said, "Mam, there is nobody out there, but I'll be back next
week." As he fled out the door he heard her scream, "Young man I can't
wait till next week!"
True stories like this are endless that reveal
the fallibility that can happen even when we desire sincerely to be tools
of God. Instead of tools, God gets fools. Unfortunately, not every foolish
thing Christian do is funny. We have studied Peter and his many mistakes,
and one of them was that he felt it was foolish for Jesus to talk about
dying. The Christian can see the foolishness of the cross just like the
world sees it, and that is what Peter was seeing. God's ways are so different
than man's, that if we get caught up in the wisdom of the world, even as
Christians, the ways of God will seem foolish and impractical.
Pastor Vajda of St. Louis tells of his organist who would always slip
down the back stairs to the basement just before the sermon began, and then
return just before it ended. During one of his Lenten services as the organ
ceased, he stepped to the pulpit and began with a gripping illustration.
At the height of a battle in the Civil War a young soldier thought the command
was to charge. He leaped out of the trench with the regimental flag and
started running across no mans land toward enemy fire. When the captain
saw that other soldiers were following the flag bearer, he shouted at the
top of his voice, "Come back here you fool!" As he paused, everyone could
hear the clatter of footsteps as the organist came flying back up the steps
to take her place at the organ. That was not his intention at all, but
he notes that she never again left the organ during a sermon.
This
is in essence what Paul is saying to the Corinthians-"Get back here you
fools. You are following the way of worldly wisdom which to God is foolishness.
Come back to the foolishness of God which is true wisdom. It is wiser to
let the world think of you as fools,
than to let God think of you as fools." Somebody is always going to have
you on their fools list, but only a fool would choose to be on God's list.
Be a fool for Christ, and be on God's list of those who are truly wise.
The truly wise are those who are fools for Christ, and care about people
who don't care about anyone but themselves. Paul poured his life out for
people who were self-centered and worldly wise, and they only rejected him
and sought to kill him. Paul still cared and did all he could to win them
to Christ by the foolishness of preaching.
Billy Graham tells of the first time he ever preached. It was in a
little Baptist church in Florida. 32 people were there, and he thought
he had plenty to say. He had four sermons he thought were 40 to 50 minutes
each. But he was so nervous he preached all four sermons in 8 minutes.
That was the foolishness of preaching. But one little boy in the congregation
received Christ, and he realized God can use even our foolishness to accomplish
the wisest things that can happen on earth. He tells of one of his evangelists
who spoke at a university in Costa Rica. A student came up after and said
she was a Marxist, and she laughed and scorned the message he was preaching.
The evangelist said, "Before you leave do you mind if I pray for you?"
What folly, to ask if you can pray for one who is mocking you. She was
shocked and said, "I guess it couldn't do any harm." So he began to pray,
and as he did tears of compassion began to trickle down his cheeks. When
he finished, the Marxist was in tears also. She said, "No one ever cared
enough for me to shed a tear. I'll listen to what you have to say." She
heard the Gospel and received Christ as her Savior.
This is the
kind of fool Jesus wants. He wants those who will be fool enough to care
about people who don't deserve to be cared about. It is foolishness to
waste your life caring about lost people. It is foolishness to leave the
99 and risk injury, and who knows what abuse, to go after that one stupid
sheep who has gone astray. Worldly wisdom would say stay with the odds;
don't risk yourself for the stray. But those who are fools for Christ, who
understand the foolishness of the cross, will go, for it is this kind of
foolishness that saved them. God was in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself. God had the power to condemn the world, and let His Son go free.
Instead He let Him die so the guilty might go free. This is the foolishness
of God, and the foolishness of the cross. William Stidger wrote,
I saw God bear His soul one day
Where all the earth might see
The stark and naked heart of Him
On lonely Calvary.
There was a crimson sky of blood
And over head a storm;
When lightening slit the clouds
And light engulfed His form.
Beyond the storm a rainbow lent
A light to every clod,
For on that cross mine eyes beheld
The naked soul of God.
No man would be such a God for they consider it foolishness to suffer
for the folly of others. If God was not foolish from man's perspective
there would be no cross, and no way for man to be forgiven and reconciled
to God. Thank God for such foolishness. All Christian celebrations are
really celebrations of the foolishness of God. He had the freedom to just
forget fallen man, but He chose to send His Son that they might be redeemed.
To magnify the folly of God's plan, it is all based on grace. He pays a
high price, and then instead of reaping a huge profit, he gives away the
salvation he purchased for free. Jesus could have been the richest king
that ever lived. He could have made a mile high palace with streets of
gold and walls filled with jewels. He could have had heaven on earth had
he charged as little as a thousand dollars each. Every living soul would
slave in order to save that much to get into the kingdom.
There is no such plan, however, for salvation is free, and whosoever
will may come and drink freely from the fountain of life. Jesus had the
greatest money maker of all time at His fingertips, and He gave it away.
From the worldly perspective this was nothing but sheer folly. But without
the foolishness of the cross there is no answer to the folly of this fallen
world. A Polish Jew who had been converted to Christ was asked how he could
see his people killed and still believe in the love of God. He saw the
blood of his dearest friends stain the streets of his town, but this was
his response, "As I looked at that man upon the cross I knew I must make
up my mind once and for all, and either take my stand beside him, and share
in his undefeated faith in God, or else fall finally into a bottomless pit
of bitterness, hatred, and unutterable despair." He was saying, unless
there is a God willing to suffer for this loss world, there is no hope,
and life has no meaning. But if there is such a God, as we see in Jesus
on the cross, then nothing evil can do can rob us of hope.
This is why men like Jim Elliot risk their lives and die to get the
message of the cross to the pagan world. He said, "He is no fool who gives
what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." May God help us to be
fools for Christ and share with this lost world the foolishness of the cross.
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