1 Corinthians 1:10-31

Good morning. I greet you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a privilege to look out and see you this morning. What a privilege to sing such words together this morning and a personal word of welcome to all of you who may be visiting with us today. We are thrilled you are here. We turn now to the preaching of God’s Word, and I invite you to turn with me to Paul’s first Corinthian letter in the New Testament appropriately identified as, some would say, One Corinthians, the British. We will stick with First Corinthians.

I’m going to begin reading at verse 10. “I appeal to you brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you but that you be united in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, ‘I follow Paul or I follow Apollos’ or ‘I follow Cephas’ or ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I think God that I baptized none of you except Christus and Gaius so that no one may say you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discerning of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where’s the scribe? Where’s the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews  demand signs and Greek seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.

Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not to bring to nothing. Things that are so that no human being may boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:10-31). This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. An incredible passage. It’s one of the key texts in Scripture for me that defines the gospel in my entire understanding of the New Testament and furthermore of biblical theology. It’s one of those texts that caught me early in life, and has captivated me ever since.

I returned to it in my mind over and over and over again. It’s like a touchstone. It’s there when I read another text, I think of First Corinthians chapter one when I hear a conversation, I think of First Corinthians chapter one. As I’m reading the history of the Christian Church over and over again, I will see something and it makes me think of First Corinthians chapter one. More commonly, I read criticisms and denials of Christianity and what I see is First Corinthians chapter one, I hear empty religious chatter that is pseudo Christianity and what echoes in my ear is First Corinthians chapter one. Now there are other key texts, Romans chapter one, John chapter one, passages that just grab a hold of me and ever since I was very young have a firm grip on me. They’re like columns on the portico of my house of theology.

These particular texts, they call me back, time and time again. Of late, I have been thinking about one dimension in this text that due to circumstances has come very much to mind. I wanted to read the entirety of that passage, and of course we could have begun in the very beginning of the letter for the sake of time. I didn’t begin with Paul’s greetings and I didn’t speak of his warmth to the Corinthian congregation. The background of this, however,  is his pastoral concern about the Corinthian congregation because of the divisions in the church, trouble in the church, confusion in the church, you know that we’re skipping over that to get to Paul’s unbelievable apostolic declaration that follows. It’s contextual. All of Paul’s letters are contextual. It’s one of the reasons why we call this the Corinthian correspondence. First and second Corinthians, we know there were other letters because Paul makes reference to them, other letters to Corinth.

This letter is tied to Corinth. It’s a specific community. Yes, more importantly it’s a specific congregation. They’re in the early church, but the Holy Spirit intended for the church throughout the ages to have this text as Holy Scripture. Where we began, Paul’s making an appeal, and there is a shift in the passage. He’s making an appeal for unity in the faith, unity in the gospel of Jesus Christ precisely because there is disunity, and it’s a disunity that threatens the witness of the church and the preaching of the church. There’s a certain kind of disunity that doesn’t pose a horrifying problem.

I mean we can differ on some of our understandings of eschatology. I think in common we must understand an historical, physical, victorious, bodily return of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory to judge the nations and to fulfill all Scripture. But when I was a very young evangelical Christian, I heard people offering different understandings of exactly how might that happen, and I quickly determined that the pre millennialist were right, and I stand on that. But I quickly discovered that I had friends who saw otherwise, friends in the gospel, friends with deep substance, faithful friends.  There could be eschatological positions that would threaten the unity of the church. But there are all kinds of different, we could have an entire seminar in this room with some very fruitful discussion, come in as friends and leave as friends, come in united in the gospel and leave united in the gospel. But there are other doctrines, there are other issues of which that is not true. They’re far closer to the center of the Christian faith. Confusion or division on these things would be fatal. But it’s not just doctrine, it is the entirety of the life of the church.

Churches will find just about anything to argue about. That’s human nature. You drive down streets. I enjoy telling students, I could take you down a street in Louisville and tell you what is memorable about that church, and often it’s not peace. And some fights are worth having, and there’s stories on that too. You can look down and there’s  First church, Second church, Third and a quarter church. We can divide in so many different ways and you just say, okay, there’s a story there. Maybe that was important and necessary, maybe it wasn’t.

One of the things that I find so helpful in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence is that he weighs the heavy things versus the less heavy things. The heaviest thing of all is the most glorious thing of all, which is the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. The most important thing of all, the glorious saving cross of Christ is at the center of what Paul would have us to see here. He directs attention of the church to the cross, unflinchingly to the cross, unfailingly to the cross, consistently to the cross. If there is an issue of division, stop that. Look to the cross. Before you go any further, go to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, be reminded of what God has done for us in Christ. Be reminded of what happened on the cross. Be reminded of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ by which we are saved. He doesn’t say the other things aren’t important. There are many chapters following this in an entire letter following this, but let’s get this straight. If we get the gospel wrong, everything is wrong and nothing else matters.

But as I say, in recent days I’ve been thinking about a particular portion of this text, and that is verses 20 through 25. Paul asked the rhetorical question, “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is he? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Just stop there for a moment. In verse 18, Paul declared, “For the Word of the cross is folly, it’s foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being saved, it is the power of God.”

And then in verse 20, he says, If you ever looked around the church, the church is not made up of scoffers of the cross. The church is also not made up of a certain IQ class. There’s some Ivy League alumni in room, but they’re not here because they’re Ivy League alumni. They’re here because they are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not the faculty club at the University of California at Berkeley. Maybe you’ve noticed. Paul’s saying to the Corinthian congregation, okay, look around yourselves. Nobody got here by IQ test. Nobody got here by worldly wisdom. Now Paul, in the totality of the Pauline theological message to the church, the apostle Paul, when he is at Mars Hill, he will cite their philosophers. He’s not unlearned. He’s very learned. He’s not unwise by worldly wisdom. He is wise, but that is not the wisdom of the cross. That is not the wisdom of the gospel. That is not the wisdom of Christianity.

So Paul just reminds him bracingly and perhaps maybe a little offensively, you guys just don’t look like you got here by being valedictorian. You’re not here because of some academic achievement. You’re not here because of worldly wisdom. You’re not here because you’re one of the debaters in terms especially of the Greco-Roman tradition. I don’t see any Epicureans here. I don’t see any Sophists here. So how did you get here? Is it because of your wisdom? Is it because of worldly wisdom? No, it’s all by grace. It is the wisdom of God, in the foolishness of the cross. In verse 21: “For sense and the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. It please God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” Okay? That is one of the most tightly argued sentences and we can skip over the first part to get to the second part.

Let’s not skip over the first part because it’s an incredible sentence structure. For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. Okay? So God always knew that it would be folly to make himself known through worldly wisdom. Now the wise, we have to use that term in two different senses, don’t we? But we’re not there yet. So wise at this point means worldly wise. There is the wisdom of the cross. There is the of Christianity, the wisdom of Christ and that is above all things to be prized. But here it’s a reference to worldly wisdom.

That’s not how God chose to make himself known. You go to Mars Hill and Athens, where the philosophers are holding court. That’s not  the means God would choose to make himself known. That’s not to say they can’t reach insights. It’s not to say they can’t get anything, right? I mean even the most crazy atheist still knows how to do the math when he is in the drugstore. But in the deepest issues of life, in the revealed truths of the gospel, in the saving power of the cross of Christ, none of us gets there by worldly wisdom. And we’re not kept there by worldly wisdom. We know a wisdom, and it’s a wisdom different than and infinitely superior to the worldly wisdom. And this is why those who are committed to, absolutely steeped in, absolutely immersed in worldly wisdom don’t recognize the wisdom of the cross, and also reminds us of sin and its deceitfulness, and it reminds us of grace and the sovereignty of God, to open our eyes that they may see in our ears that they may hear because otherwise we wouldn’t get there either. Two patterns he mentions, of course you know them.

For Jews to demand signs, miracles, think of a passage like John chapter five and six, but we preach Christ crucified. So the Greeks demand signs or miracles and the Greek seek wisdom. That’s very sophisticated, highly structured argument that they recognize coming from one school or another. They recognize this internal coherence. They recognize it’s intellectual, not only brilliance but beauty just in terms of the aesthetic structure of thought. That’s not the cross. We preach Christ crucified and here’s the problem. It’s a stumbling block to just scandal on. They stumble over it. It’s just too crude. This can’t be how God would do this. And Greeks seek wisdom.

Well, there is a wisdom. The cross is infinite wisdom, but it’s not human wisdom. It’s the wisdom of God, to those who are called, effectual calling, both Jews and Greeks. Christ is the power of God and Christ is the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Therefore brothers and sisters, we are saved. If that were not true, we would be forever lost in our sins and transgressions. But it is true that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

Alright, I want to look at foolishness a little more closely, and since I am here at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Boyce College, we can dive in a little deeper into foolishness. What happened in chapel this morning? We dove deep into foolishness. I think this text invites us to go on an excursion into foolishness that does take full account of the foolishness of the first century to which Paul makes explicit reference, but it is also a pattern of foolishness that I think we need to detect in the world around us, and in particular in the theological world around us.

We speak because of this text of the foolishness of the gospel, but I think we need to recognize some specific dimensions of that foolishness. People are driving by right now on Lexington Road. There are some people who have enough perception to know maybe just by observation something’s going on in this room, but in their everyday lives they’re not troubled by anything that might go on in this room. We’re living in a time, and you can use different terms for it, but I guess the most available term is secularization. We’re living in a secular age in which most people around us do not have as their constant reference biblical Christianity. And it’s not just that they’re distant from it, they’re alienated from it.

You can’t be just neutral about the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s one of the fundamental errors of human sinful reason is to think that there’s some kind of neutrality when it comes to the cross of Christ. You are either his or you are his enemy. That’s just biblical truth. You either belong to Christ or you are the enemy of Christ. Now it is our task to share the gospel with Christ’s enemies in order that they may believe, and believing, be saved. And we need to remember that the New Testament tells us very clearly that that distinction is clear. We either belong to Christ or we are the enemies of Christ. And that is also humbling to us because that reminds us that until God called us unto Christ and we believed, we were not neutral, we were the enemies of Christ.

I don’t hear people commonly in testimony say, I was Christ’s enemy until I became his. But is that not true? That also means by the way, that in our own pattern we were just as afflicted by the foolishness indicted here as any other. But I want to speak of several patterns of foolishness here in the church, in the pulpit, in contemporary Christian theology, in the Christianity as a thing, a visible, hearable discernible thing. I’m not making an equivalence between that thing and the true church of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a thing the world thinks is Christianity. It includes a lot of things that are fundamentally not Christian. So we know that. But let’s just think in those terms for a moment. There are things said, preached, argued, asserted that we need to observe carefully.

The issue is, how do you get around the foolishness of the cross? It’s tough to get around. You certainly can’t sing what we’ve been singing, that’s out. You probably don’t want to preach or draw attention to a text that’s too messy, as in bloody, so that’s out. You take the hymnal. Now I need to explain to you, for those of you who aren’t acquainted with the term, that’s a Christian term about a book with hymns printed therein, okay? Used to be of regular necessary service to Christians before the advent of the projector. And so in those days, far, far, far in the past, which explained why there is a rack in the back of the pews here and in which you can still find a hymnal stuck in there in case you haven’t seen one. It’s like going to the Smithsonian Institution for some of you I know, but just do it. It’s fun. And here’s the other thing, it has notes in it and music in it, and I say that I don’t mean it cynically.Honestly, I understand, but I think there’s loss. I think there’s loss.

I will tell you that devotionally, a hymnal is number two for me to Scripture, and it’s because I can turn pages and see hymns that I’ve been seeing since I was a little boy and knew hymns too that are wonderful. And those hymns I can hear in my imagination when I just see them on the page. But you’re going to have to rip all kinds of pages out of that hymnal. You’re going to have to reduce the songs you sing. If you’re not going to sing about the cross, what are you going to sing about? Oh, wait just a minute. You go to a lot of evangelical churches or churches that think they’re evangelical and you’re going to hear a lot of music, you’re actually not going to hear the cross. You’re not going to hear atonement. You’re not going to hear about the blood of Christ. You’re not going to hear about the saving work of Christ. You’re going to hear about self-affirmation disguised as some form of music, worship some form of something.

Lord, aren’t you lucky that I’m here? Aren’t I glad to be here with other people like me? I mean honestly or just, be happy. Now, I don’t want to sound too cynical here because I think there are people who, with Christian knowledge actually hear more in those songs than are there. I was in a setting a couple of years ago where there was a very moving song. It was a very moving song; it was very catchy. It was one of those that you could remember and just think about it in your head until I realized there’s no gospel in it. And so I was talking to someone who was with me who was also very much attuned to these things and we both agreed there are people in this room that are reading more into those words than are there in those words. You can be almost slightly dangerously close to the gospel, and if you know the gospel, you fill in the blanks. The problem is, an awful lot of the people in that room singing those songs aren’t filling in the blanks. They don’t have a clue.

Evasion is the first method. There are those who by evasion in this first method of understanding foolishness, the manifestation of foolishness as evasion, you just don’t talk about the cross. You don’t necessarily deny it. That would be messy. You just ignore it. You just evade it. You just find a way to preach a message somehow without ever getting to the cross. And I mean the cross as God’s decisive event, substitutionary atonement, death of Christ, putting here here the entire saving work of Christ in his death, burial and resurrection, the Father raising him from the dead, or you just hear this as victory.

There’s no atonement at all. It’s simply, hey, first chapter was, we’re lost. Hey, second chapter is, we’re found. Aren’t we wonderful? Lucky people, we’ve been found! How? From what? Saved. How? From what? You wouldn’t know. The method of these is not to look too closely. You don’t want to see how the sausage is made. I mean atonement, that’s messy, right? The gospel’s pretty messy, right? Alright, so just avoid it. Just kind of hint at it. Let people fill in the blanks. The Scripture calls us to gaze upon the cross. That reminds us that it’s possible not to.

Second is domestication. You domesticate the message of the cross. In this case you can talk about the cross, but it’s a thing emptied of its power. I think there are many ways to do this, but of course when we say domestication, we really are kind of making an animal reference. You domesticate a horse. You break it so that it can be ridden by a human being on a saddle. You house break a dog, I think you know what that means, alright? In this case, by the way, the domestication of the cross means when someone actually does, maybe by accident, get deeply into the gospel and get to the cross and to the blood of Christ, it’s as if you came home and the dog had messed on the floor, because it’s offensive to those who do not believe.

There are preachers who almost miraculously escape preaching the cross because, of course if you are determined not to preach the cross, you’ve got a lot of problems, not only in the gospels and not only in the epistles, you’ve got a lot of problem in the Old Testament actually, because we’re talking about things that clearly are pointing to the cross. We’re looking at a sacrificial system that’s clearly pointing towards an ultimate sacrifice for sin. And by the way, if First Corinthians chapter one and if the gospels are bloody, let’s just say the Old Testament is bloodier, pointing to something greater. There are preachers who do everything to domesticate the cross. You can’t completely avoid these texts, so you just try to explain it. You pretty up the cross, and in preaching and in the approach, you just try to make it as pretty as possible. And this is unfortunately more possible than you might think.

Have you noticed that the top of this steeple, there’s not a cross? The top of Norton Hall, there’s not a cross. I had someone ask me one time, why is there no cross? It’s because this institution, even in its architecture, heavily influenced by Puritanism. And one of the reasons that Puritanism reformed Christianity, I’ll just say with the volume turned up, doesn’t have a cross on the top of the building is because you’re going to be putting something up there that looks pretty, and the cross is not to be presented as pretty. So, in New England, puritanism, what did you put at the top of the steeple? Well, a weather vein of course, because it’s useful in the good Puritan sense, it’s useful so you can put it up there. Of course, there are times in which you can say, maybe the institution is waiting to see which way the wind is blowing, which leads to the third method or demonstration of manifestation of foolishness.

How do you respond to the foolishness of the cross and try to get around it? You can try to avoid it by evasion. You can try to domesticate it. The other method I want to point to now is accommodation. You can try to accommodate it and I wanted to keep a parallel structure here, but here I’m talking about theological liberalism. This is what it is. This is how liberalism works. This is how you will know it when you see it, smell it when you discern it. This is how you’re going to know it’s there. It’s because the argument is we have to accommodate Christian theology to the intellectual conditions of the time. We have to accommodate Christianity to the cultural conditions of the time. Friedrich Schleiermacher in the 19th century in many ways, the father of liberal theology said in his lectures to the culture despisers of religion, there’s something you will like here. But to the culture despisers of religion, you don’t bring out a bloody cross. You bring out some kind of elevated morality. You bring out some kind of depth of existential meaning. Of course, the problem is, you got this book, and this book is very problematic, so you got to do something with this book, which is why the heart of theological liberalism is the denial of the true nature of God and the denial of God’s Word, Scripture. But you still even if just emotional attachment and just because there’s a section in the liturgy that says Bible reading, so you got to read it. What are you going to do with it?

When I was a theology student, I came to see what was going on in theological liberalism and the effort to turn the cross into a mere picture of God’s love. Christ is victim, but he’s willing to play the part of the victim just to show us how much God loves us. It was not the father’s intention that the Son be crucified, but nonetheless, in a demonstration of divine love, Christ goes to the cross, and this is why you will find some in theological liberalism, particularly in the early 20th century in the British tradition which is wildly influential in the United States, you would have people who would say it’s a sacrifice of sorts, but it is not substitution. It’s a sacrifice and it’s supposed to be a picture, an extremely moving picture of the love of God towards us and how are we defined? We are God’s children, and this picture is to draw us to Christ. There is no sin, which is a barrier. There’s no holy God as judge. There is no predicament of lostness. It is just the acquisition of additional meaning. Prettify it up. C.H. Dodd, I remember reading him when I was a first year seminary student, making a distinction between propitiation and expiation and you know what you, his professor of New Testament, everybody quoted C.H. Dodd.

But then I started looking at it and realized if this is true, the preaching I have known as the preaching of the cross isn’t necessary or was overwrought, especially in pointing to propitiation. Of course, the problem is  that Paul says that’s exactly what it is. The New Testament says that’s exactly what it is. It is propitiation, not mere expiation. It is the propitiation of a holy and righteous God whose righteous wrath is fully satisfied, his justice as fully satisfied in the atonement accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not just a washing, it is payment in full, in the substitutionary death of the very son of God.

A lot of theological liberalism has now found a way just to avoid the cross altogether, and some of this has taken place in my lifetime. I think theological liberalism and I mean here, genuine theological liberalism, the real thing, even when I was young, it still had to make some reference to these things. Now it makes no reference to them at all. The year I became president of Southern Seminary, a woman by the name of Dolores Williams, a professor at Union Theological Seminary, so this is for me, this is history. This is when I first stepped into the pulpit here as the president of this institution. The very year, 30 plus years ago, Dolores Williams got up at a conference called Re-Imagining God. Now you got a problem if your conference is entitled, re-Imagining God. But speaking of the cross, she said, “I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff,” and she’s a professor at a theological seminary. We don’t need people hanging on crosses, okay? We don’t, by the way, have people hanging on crosses for our atonement. We have one man on a cross. We don’t need blood dripping and weird stuff.

Just recently a GoFundMe account was started to raise money for an oil portrait of Dolores Williams on the campus of Union Theological Seminary in New York City for “her trailblazing contribution to theology.” Trailblazing, you know what trail she’s blazing, as far away from the cross as you can get, as fast as you can get there, people hanging on those crosses, blood dripping and weird stuff. I can remember as a theology student reading by Harry Emerson Fosdick, whose church was right next door to Union Theological Seminary, the Riverside Church and Harry Emerson Fosdick. I thought his liberalism was that he would say that the cross says bad things about Christians that we’re making too much of it. I was completely shocked when I actually read Harry Emerson fos and Fosdick said, the problem with the preaching of the cross is that it says bad things about God.

It asserts horrible things about the Father because you can’t read the New Testament without understanding that Christ didn’t jump on the cross. He was crucified by the express will of the Father, crucified by sinful men, but by the Father’s will. Second Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake, he made him. That is the Father made the son, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him might become the righteousness of God.” Romans 3:25. Similarly, we come to see this summary of the gospel speaking of Christ “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.” 

The Father put him forward.It says bad things about the Father. Fosdick said that you would say he would demand blood atonement. No loving father would demand blood atonement, but God Almighty, the eternal Father demanded blood atonement, and he provided blood atonement through the perfect obedience of his son. 

The fourth evasion is psychologization. The therapeutic, and this is again it comes in waves, but even recently we just said the cross will add meaning to your life. You know what? The cross does not add meaning to your life. Sorry. If you say about the cross that it adds meaning to your life, you don’t know the cross. The cross doesn’t add meaning to your life. The cross becomes the meaning of your life in the cross of Christ. I glory at the cross. At the cross we’re drawn back to the cross because the cross is the message of our salvation. It is the saving act of God for our redemption.

The preaching of the cross, and I know this is a little bit dated, but I want to tell you it does come in waves and I sense another wave of this coming. Robert Schuler, now dead, the preacher in Orange County, California in the Crystal Cathedral. I had the opportunity to get to know him. We appeared on some television programs together opposing one another, but he invited me to come to the Crystal Cathedral for a tour and who could turn that down? Robert Schuler, I came to believe, was absolutely sincere. That’s the scary thing I came to believe. He was absolutely sincere and he said “What we need to preach is that the cross simply and exclusively tells you how much God loves you.”

That’s not light years from the preaching of the cross. It’s just sort of the reversal of the preaching of the cross. That’s why it’s so seductive. Yes, it does tell us that God loves us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. Yes, it is the love of God made manifest, but it’s not because we’re such wonderful people. Shuler actually turned it around so that the cross is supposed to build our self-esteem. If I can read the New Testament, I don’t think the cross is to build our self-esteem. 

The fifth way is demythologization. See, you get some of you know what that is. You’ve heard about it. If not, you got a new word you can use, demythologization.  The argument that the mythological world of the Bible needs to be simplified, we see through the myth and we see the essence of the thing. Rudolph Boltzmann, the German theologian, he said that the world is driven by different mythical world pictures. Christianity, biblical Christianity points to a specific mythological world picture. He said of the cross that it represents a sacrificial and juristic analysis. He said it has existential meaning. In other words, there’s meaning in there that can apply to us in our modern, hyper-modern situation. We need to encounter the cross. We need to understand there’s a certain revelation in the cross, although it’s an indeterminate revelation. What we should see in it, Bookman said, is authenticity. Authenticity. Do you look at the cross? Do you sing about the cross and say, what I find there is authenticity and by the way, the authenticity of what? The authenticity of basically whatever you want to be authentic. You, be you. So much for take up your cross and follow me. 

Finally, I want to say that I think another evasion of the cross we need to recognize as prosperity theology, and again, this doesn’t go away, it’s just in waves. It’s there. Even recently, we see it on television and we see people who are now being promoted as Christian leaders, and I’ll just tell you, I think they’re false prophets and false prophetesses. I think a lot of it, there’s not enough theology there in the case of some of them to indict them for heresy. But you see it and all around, they’re popular so many places. They got the big tabernacles and temples all over America, but what they preach is simply the reversal of First Corinthians chapter one.

Now, a lot of these buildings, these pulpits, these churches, there’s really no danger of outright heresy because that would require some level of theology. It’s just affirmation. The promise of the gospel is that God loves us and wants us rich, healthy, and wealthy. I wanted to speak from this text this morning just to remind us that when we read First Corinthians chapter one and when we read that the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God, we need to remember that this is as relevant as it was in Corinth when Paul, by the Holy Spirit wrote this letter. It is as relevant to Christian ministry to the preaching of the gospel. It’s as relevant to our own theological considerations, our own gospel analysis as it was when Paul wrote this letter by the Holy Spirit.

If God has called you to preach, he’s called you to preach this gospel, not to pretty it up, but to preach it in all of its power, to preach the cross, to preach it in the simplicity of the message of the cross, but in the power of the message of the cross so that sinners may hear that gospel and believe and believing, be saved. It’s important we recognize whether we are preaching or listening, that every single Christian sermon has to come down to the question. Is this the wisdom of the world or the foolishness of the cross? Because brothers and sisters, fellow sinners saved by grace, it’s going to be one or the other. Father, we are thankful for this Word beyond our own words. Thank you for making us face the gospel. Thank you for inspiring the apostle Paul by your Spirit to make us look squarely at this issue and turn neither to the left nor to the right from the glory of the cross. Father, we pray that you will bless your church in the preaching of your Word. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.