WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:24.000 I was thinking as I work on the sermon how easily it would be to frustrate you guys if I stood up here and gave a lecture on Greek philosophy. 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:55.000 Talk to you the difference between Aristotle and Plato and go through all the different forms of philosophies that have derived themselves from those two men and show you the ins and outs of each of those systems and then closed in prayer. That would be life-giving. 00:00:55.000 --> 00:01:01.000 That would be refreshing and help your marriages. 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:09.000 You would be drawn to the Lord and you would hate sin all the more. 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:29.000 It could pique your interest, maybe. It could stimulate a little bit of pride in you because you would think, wow, that's interesting. I know something I didn't know and this is what most people don't know and I know that. That could help you in that way. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:38.000 But at the end of the day, all philosophies do not assist you in any substantial ways. 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:45.000 Philosophy was influencing the church of Corinth in a pretty substantial way. 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:49.000 They were gravitating towards it because that was what was vogue. 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:52.000 That was the thing that they were saved out of. 00:01:52.000 --> 00:02:03.000 Corinth is only 45 miles away from Athens and Athens is the hub, the intellectual hub of that region. 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:11.000 The fact of the world, really. They could boast of some of the greatest minds that have ever lived. 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:22.000 They were students, if you will, of Plato and students of the philosophies that they integrated in the culture. 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:37.000 Plato actually believed that that which is invisible, the realm of the forms, is more real and more eternal than the material universe and it led to different types of people applying that to their everyday life. 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:44.000 Some of them were Epicureans and they said, hey, if the world doesn't matter, the body doesn't matter. 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:50.000 We might as well enjoy food and enjoy our lives. It's all going to perish. 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:55.000 So we might as well feed and the flesh and indulge ourselves. 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:03.000 Others said, no, if the body is bad, we must beat it in subjection and deny ourselves. 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:11.000 So you had some form of Stoicism and Epicureanism and these philosophies were impacting the church of Corinth. 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:46.000 Well, in our day, you're not going to draw a crowd by appealing to ancient philosophies, but maybe you could by putting a movie behind you and stopping the movie ever now and then and bring out some form of truth, engage the audience and draw audience in by the wisdom of the world in some form or fashion and putting the wisdom in the world in the pulpit. 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:48.000 So this is what's going on. 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:56.000 And and there's a reason churches do it is because they don't think the gospel is sufficient. 00:03:56.000 --> 00:04:10.000 And Paul is addressing a major problem in Corinth because they're divided over who's the better preacher, their first pastor, Apostle Paul, or their second pastor, Apollos. 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:22.000 And the thing about Apollos, he had a gift of speaking and he was trained in the art of speaking. 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:26.000 And the Apostle Paul himself was not that good of a preacher. 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:34.000 Now, he was wise when it comes to the things of God, but he was an eloquent like the Apostle, as was Apollos. 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:40.000 And so they're dividing over this debate of who they like best. 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:53.000 And Paul, as we saw last week, concluded that the real problem of this division is that they're using the wrong metric in their judgment of who's the better preacher. 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:57.000 They're evaluating things on worldly standards. 00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:03.000 Paul says, when I came to preach to you in verse 17, he says, I didn't come with worldly wisdom. 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:08.000 I didn't come with great oratory skills. 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:30.000 In fact, I purposely kept my focus off of philosophy, off of the method of trying to persuade people through oratory skills, kept it on the simplicity of the gospel, unless the gospel loses its efficacy or power. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:52.000 And as he's correcting them in their false evaluation of these two men, he comes to his person reason why worldly wisdom or the wisdom of man is detrimental to the power of the gospel. 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:54.000 Basically, he comes to verse 18. 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:58.000 We're going to read verse 18 through 25 of chapter one. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:07.000 And he comes to the conclusion that worldly wisdom, pagan philosophy, is in opposition to God's wisdom. 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:09.000 Read with me in verse 18. 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:18.000 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved is the power of God. 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:26.000 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:28.000 Where is the one who is wise? 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:30.000 Where is the scribe? 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:32.000 Where is the debater of this age? 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:36.000 Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:49.000 For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know through wisdom, know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:56.000 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:07:07.000 A stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:15.000 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:30.000 Now what Paul is doing is not simply saying that men think God's wisdom is foolish, nor is he simply saying God thinks the wisdom of men is foolish. 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:32.000 It's not just contrasting. 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:37.000 You think the gospel is foolishness, but God thinks philosophy is foolish. 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:40.000 That's not simply what he's doing. 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:43.000 He's more doing this. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:53.000 The very thing that you think is foolish, the gospel, is the very thing that shows that philosophy is foolish. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:08:11.000 The very thing that you despise, the very thing that you think is contemplable, the very thing that is a stumbling block to you, the very message that you look down upon as backwards, folly, foolish, ignorant. 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:13.000 That's stupid. 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:26.000 That very thing, the gospel, is the very thing God has chosen to unveil that your deep intellectual philosophies are foolish. 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:36.000 God's going to use the gospel and is using the gospel to show the folly of philosophy. 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:42.000 So we're going to look at this morning the wisdom of God's folly, the wisdom of God's folly. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:45.000 Now what do we mean by God's folly? 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:49.000 Well three times the apostle is calling the gospel folly. 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:57.000 Not because the gospel is folly, but it's deemed as folly or foolishness by those who don't believe. 00:08:57.000 --> 00:09:04.000 It says in verse 18, For the word of the cross is folly. 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:09.000 And in verse 25, the foolishness of God. 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:14.000 And another verse he says, the folly of that which we preach. 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:27.000 So three times he's looking at this gospel message of the Son of God dying on an old rugged cross in humility and shame. 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:33.000 That which the world sees is despicable. 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:39.000 That is the folly of God. 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:44.000 You see man deems the message of the cross as foolishness. 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:54.000 First Corinthians 2.14 says the natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:10:01.000 I mean you think about the wise and intellectual people of the world when they hear the gospel message. 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:08.000 They look at it as something unworthy of acceptance. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:26.000 Voltaire, the great French philosopher, says the true God cannot have been born of a girl nor died, nor be eaten in a piece of dough, nor could he have inspired a book filled with contradictions, badness, horror and superstitions. 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:33.000 Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:38.000 Voltaire did not like a gospel. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:59.000 Frederick Nietzsche, he said, the German philosopher that was contemporary with Spurgeon, he said when we hear the ancient bells rolling on Sunday morning we ask ourselves, is it really possible this for a Jew crucified two thousand years ago who said he was God's son? 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:01.000 The proof of such a claim is lacking. 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:09.000 Certainly the Christian religion is an antique idea that has come into our times. 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:16.000 The fact that the claim is to believe one can believe that such things are still believed is ridiculous. 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:29.000 Bernard Russell says, there is one very serious defect to the mind in Christ's moral character and that he is believed, that he believed in hell. 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:38.000 I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly human can believe in eternal punishment. 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:50.000 Alfred Whitehead, philosopher at Harvard, said Christianity is the greatest disaster in the history of the human race. 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:55.000 I mean, these are the best among us. 00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:03.000 These are the most intellectuals among our race. 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:08.000 These are high IQ men. 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:15.000 No doubt they were brilliant in the eyes of the world. 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:26.000 But they looked at the gospel, not the way you backwoods, arkansans look at it. 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:27.000 You love it. 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:31.000 I mean, we just sung four songs about the gospel. 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:33.000 We're celebrating it. 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:35.000 We rejoice in it. 00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:36.000 Why? 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:37.000 They would say, why? 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:47.000 Why do you come every Sunday to focus on this bloody crucifixion? 00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:50.000 It's ridiculous, they think. 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:58.000 See, if you skip down to verse 22, the Jews stumbled over the message. 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:02.000 According to them, the message of the cross was embarrassing. 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:03.000 Look at verse 22. 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:15.000 For the Jews demand a sign, demand signs and Greek seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews. 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:19.000 You see, the Jews, they demand signs and wonders. 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:21.000 You can see that through the life of Christ. 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:23.000 What sign will you now show us? 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:30.000 Remember, after he fed the five thousand, John chapter six, I mean, they just saw a mighty sign. 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:32.000 And Jesus said, I am the bread of life. 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:33.000 They go, OK, prove it. 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:35.000 What sign are you going to show us? 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:38.000 He just showed you an amazing one. 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:40.000 But we want more. 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:41.000 Give us another sign. 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:43.000 Give us another miracle. 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:48.000 We want to see you do something amazing. 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:54.000 Over and over, I wasn't capable of figuring out exactly how many times they asked. 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:56.000 The Jews asked Jesus to show us a sign. 00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:58.000 But it was repetitively. 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:06.000 It's almost every time they came to them, especially early on in the ministry, show us a sign, show us a sign. 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:12.000 And the apostle Paul recognized that of his own kinsmen that this was something they wanted. 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:14.000 They were bent towards this. 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:18.000 And it probably was because they were looking for power. 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:24.000 There weren't so much trying to be intellectuals like the Greek philosophers. 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:26.000 But they probably was. 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:30.000 They viewed themselves as superior to the Gentiles. 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:35.000 And they were tired of being subjugated to foreign nations. 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:38.000 They were ready for the Messiah to come with power. 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:46.000 They wanted a powerful king to come in order to free them from the Romans and to exalt them in the process. 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:58.000 One of the problems with the Pharisees, you know, is they were looking for the Messiah and they rejected him because they thought the Messiah would choose them to help rule and reign with him as they conquered the nations. 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:00.000 And so they wanted power. 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:03.000 They were looking for power. 00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:09.000 I look back through their history and they could look at the miracles that God had done throughout their history. 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:18.000 And the Gentiles had no such miracles throughout their history. 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:23.000 And in the process, I think they become proud for. 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:30.000 It is in this desire for power, for miracles. 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:37.000 They stumbled over the weakness of the man Jesus Christ. 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:41.000 Here's a man that didn't have a home. 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:44.000 And when you looked at him, you didn't go, man, this is a mighty king. 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:48.000 You looked at him like, who are you? You're from Nazareth? 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:50.000 Nothing good comes from Nazareth. 00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:59.000 So they're already despising, look down their nose because Christ wasn't what they were looking for. 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:04.000 They didn't understand how he was a servant. 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:08.000 They was willing to serve and be humble. 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:12.000 He was a poor man that didn't make sense to them. 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:18.000 A king would be rich and powerful and he would put people into subjection underneath him. 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:24.000 But Christ came lowly and meek and humble. 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:28.000 They would say, where is this ruler who serves? 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:30.000 Why is he so humble? 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:34.000 And what's this thing about a cross? 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:38.000 You're going the wrong direction, Jesus. 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:43.000 You're to be elevated. Why are you demoting yourself and humbling yourself? 00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:47.000 Why would you be put to death? 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:55.000 Why would you be subjugated to being conquered by your enemies rather than ruling over your enemies? 00:16:55.000 --> 00:17:05.000 You see, they're looking at this message of their Messiah dying, a bloody, kind of a pitiful, shameful and embarrassing death. 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:08.000 And that was a stumbling block to them. 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:11.000 David predicted it. 00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:16.000 He says, let your table be a snare. 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:24.000 Paul picks this up in Romans 11.9 and David said, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block. 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:26.000 What does this mean? 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:29.000 Well, the Jews were giving a head start. 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:31.000 They were given the oracles of God. 00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:33.000 They had the gospel in the Old Testament. 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:37.000 The way you would look at it is the goal is to get to heaven above. 00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:39.000 And so they have a starting block. 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:44.000 They have a table that elevates them above the Gentiles. 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:46.000 So they're being given a head start. 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:50.000 They'd be given these outward blessings that benefited them. 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:53.000 And the Gentiles forever had no gospel. 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:56.000 So they were kind of behind the curve. 00:17:56.000 --> 00:18:00.000 And so here they're, think of a race and you're getting a head start. 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:08.000 I think of this table as elevating you a little bit closer to heaven and you're a little bit kind of get this head start up to heaven. 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:13.000 So you're racing to God and you got this table elevates you lift you up. 00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:22.000 And the very thing that was designed to point them to Christ and to elevate them became the very thing that was a snare, a very thing that they stumbled over. 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:26.000 They stumbled over the rock. 00:18:26.000 --> 00:18:30.000 Oh, here's the cornerstone. 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:36.000 And they tripped over Christ, their table, their head start. 00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:38.000 How did this happen? 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:46.000 They should have saw through Isaiah 50 and all the Psalms, they should have saw that Christ would be a suffering servant. 00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:48.000 But they couldn't perceive that. 00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:49.000 They couldn't receive that. 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:51.000 They couldn't understand that. 00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:54.000 They just saw a conquering king. 00:18:54.000 --> 00:19:03.000 And in the process, when the suffering servant came to them, had all the signs of being the Messiah, they rejected him. 00:19:03.000 --> 00:19:05.000 They picked up the stone. 00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:16.000 It was a perfect cornerstone perfected and they looked and examined the cornerstone that the stone that Christ was in God chose the chosen cornerstone. 00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:20.000 And God says here, use this to build your foundation. 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:23.000 The Jews looked and met and they rejected it. 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:25.000 No, this is not sufficient. 00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.000 This is a poor stone that went into the discard pile. 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:35.000 They were they stumbled over Christ. 00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:46.000 And many people today still stumble over the weakness of Christ, the humility of Christ, the blood of Christ, the shamelessness of Christ. 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:47.000 You're going to be a Christian. 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:51.000 You have to be willing to follow Christ and his humility. 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:54.000 You have to be willing to deny yourself. 00:19:54.000 --> 00:19:55.000 You say, well, I want to be great. 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.000 I want to be, you know, I want to be one of the intellectuals of the world. 00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:04.000 Well, if you want to follow Christ, you're going to be despised by the world. 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:07.000 You're going to be rejected as he was rejected. 00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:10.000 And this message is hard to receive. 00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:12.000 But this is the message of the cross. 00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:14.000 This is the message of the crucifixion. 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:20.000 If you want Christ, you too must pick up your cross and follow him. 00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:22.000 Is this a message that you like? 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:24.000 No, the Jews did not like that one. 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:29.000 They didn't want to go to a cross with Christ. 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:33.000 So they stumbled. 00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:40.000 But as they sought signs and wonders, the Greeks, they sought wisdom. 00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:45.000 We see that for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom. 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:52.000 The Greeks were concerned about philosophy. 00:20:52.000 --> 00:21:00.000 As we know, Athens had produced some of the greatest minds in the history of the world. 00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:08.000 So the Greeks placed their identity in believing that they were intellectually superior to the rest of the world. 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:11.000 And here comes this message of the gospel. 00:21:11.000 --> 00:21:13.000 It's not what they're expecting. 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:36.000 In fact, to understand why they do this as folly, especially if Platonism is the philosophy of the day that says that which is invisible is greater and more real than that which is physical, then how can you explain that Christ had a body? 00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:44.000 This idea of suffering in a human flesh is the very thing that the Athenians laughed about. 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:54.000 Remember before he came to Corinth, he was in Athens and he preached the cross and he says at Mars Hill, he gathered up a crowd and he preached to them and reasoned with them. 00:21:54.000 --> 00:21:59.000 And they all listened to him until he got to the cross, until he got to the resurrection. 00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:03.000 And it says, then they begin to mock him and make fun of him. 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:09.000 They viewed it as folly. You're saying God took on human flesh and died. 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:14.000 It had to be raised from the dead and he's got a physical body. 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:17.000 That's ridiculous. 00:22:17.000 --> 00:22:19.000 That doesn't make sense. 00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:29.000 We know that the physical world is is insuffier to the world of ideas and the abstract realm. 00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:34.000 And you're making God into a human being who died. 00:22:34.000 --> 00:22:41.000 And they looked at this message as folly in his foolishness. 00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:53.000 You see, the gospel message many will shy away from, not talk about because the world's not going to receive it. 00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:57.000 They're not going to see the beauty and the glory and the wisdom in it. 00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:03.000 They view it as folly and foolish and something to reject and stumble over. 00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:05.000 That's the folly of God. 00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:12.000 But now that we've seen the folly of God, which is the cross, let's look at the wisdom of God. 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:18.000 The wisdom of God in the wisdom of God, he reveals the foolishness of man's wisdom. 00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:21.000 We see this in verse 19. 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:26.000 God's wisdom destroys man's wisdom. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:34.000 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. 00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:40.000 You see, he's quoting Isaiah, Isaiah 29, where the Isaiah is prophesying. 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:45.000 Of course, Isaiah is not living too far away from Aristotle and Plato. 00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:56.000 And see, you got all this wisdom of the world circulating and here's Isaiah saying the wisdom of the world will vanish away. 00:23:56.000 --> 00:23:59.000 It's all vanity. 00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:05.000 It might capture your mind and it might give you a sense that you're you're smart. 00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.000 It might stimulate your curiosity and these things. 00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:13.000 But at the end, it has no lasting value. 00:24:13.000 --> 00:24:16.000 He says I will destroy the wisdom of the rise. 00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:19.000 In other words, I will bring it to nothing. 00:24:19.000 --> 00:24:24.000 You think about the wisest men the world has ever produced. 00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:30.000 All their wisdom comes to in the end of the day to nothing but vanity. 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:33.000 You see, philosophers think themselves to be wise. 00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:40.000 They take pride in their profession and they see themselves as superior to the rest of us. 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:47.000 Frederick Nietzsche despised the common man. 00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:51.000 He wouldn't associate with anyone that wasn't. 00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:56.000 He even other professors he deemed as insevere. 00:24:56.000 --> 00:25:02.000 There was only like two or three people that he felt could engage him intellectually. 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:05.000 And on his deathbed, he would say stuff like this. 00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:15.000 I'll write such good books and he would just read his books over and over again and just delight in his wisdom. 00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:22.000 He would come so arrogant and prideful and eventually went insane. 00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:29.000 You see, if you don't know the Lord, you may think you're smart. 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:34.000 You're no Plato or you're no Aristotle. 00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:37.000 But even they turn out to be fools. 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:40.000 Who do you think you are? 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.000 Who do you think your wisdom will bring you in the day of life? 00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:48.000 There may be someone here that's challenging the gospel and say I don't believe in that. 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:51.000 I won't receive that. I reject that. 00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:57.000 You've got something you're replacing the gospel with and think through that. 00:25:57.000 --> 00:26:03.000 God is looking at your conception, your worldview and all the things that you're putting together. 00:26:03.000 --> 00:26:10.000 And he goes, how foolish, how silly, how ridiculous. 00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:12.000 It will bring you to nothing. 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:13.000 It will lead you nowhere. 00:26:13.000 --> 00:26:18.000 It will not help your life in any substantial way. 00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:19.000 It's not going to save your soul. 00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:21.000 It's not going to free you from guilt. 00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:22.000 Now, I'm convinced of this. 00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:27.000 I'm convinced that philosophy exists to get rid of God. 00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:32.000 I believe that man has universal guilt and he knows there's a personal God. 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:34.000 God's revealed that to them in nature. 00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:36.000 Man knows there's a personal God. 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:42.000 And what philosophers do, they take what they know that's freely given to them in natural revelation. 00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:43.000 And they set it aside. 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:47.000 They have enough knowledge and the beginning of wisdom is to fear God. 00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:49.000 But they don't fear God. 00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:50.000 They reject God. 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:52.000 They suppress what they know. 00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:57.000 And in the suppression of what they know, they build their own intellectual system of thinking. 00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:05.000 They're trying to figure out the world's knowledge and get a system that it can explain everything. 00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:12.000 And they view themselves as capable of explaining the existence of all things. 00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:21.000 But in the end, no matter how they do it and what ways they seek to arrive to their conclusion, they can't get to a personal God. 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:22.000 But that's okay for them. 00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:24.000 They don't want a personal God. 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:30.000 In the suppressing of God's knowledge, if there's not a personal God, there's no guilt. 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:38.000 But the problem is, even for the philosophers, when he goes to sleep and when he wakes up, he's still guilty and he knows it. 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:52.000 And you today, you may be rejecting God and you may have in your mind an intellectual argument to say why God doesn't exist or why my parents are crazy. 00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:58.000 You cannot deny you have guilt within your heart. 00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:04.000 And no matter how much scheming you have, the guilt still screams at you. 00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:12.000 No matter how well you suppress the knowledge of God, the knowledge of God still speaks to you and condemns you. 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:18.000 You see, the philosophies and your thinking will come to nothing. 00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:26.000 We see in verse 20, the apostle Paul is saying, Corinthians, you're gravitating towards this. 00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:28.000 You're influenced by this. 00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:30.000 But where is the one who is wise? 00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:32.000 Where is the scribe? 00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:33.000 Where is the debater of this age? 00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:37.000 Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 00:28:37.000 --> 00:28:41.000 You know, it's like Paul starts mocking a little bit. 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:43.000 He's asking these rhetorical questions. 00:28:43.000 --> 00:28:44.000 Where's the wise one? 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:45.000 Where's the scribe? 00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:46.000 Where's the debater? 00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:50.000 Where's the, you know, where's Socrates at? 00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:52.000 Where's his disciples at? 00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:55.000 Now, he could be saying, he could be implying three things. 00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.000 He's kind of asking for a debate. 00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:02.000 Let me debate them, come and rise and let's talk about this. 00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:04.000 I don't think he's doing that. 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:11.000 Secondly, he could be saying here in the Church of Corinth, where's the wise one? 00:29:11.000 --> 00:29:13.000 Where's the philosophers? 00:29:13.000 --> 00:29:15.000 Where's the professors? 00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:16.000 Where's the scribes? 00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:20.000 You see, we learn later, not many were wise, not many were noble. 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:23.000 You're just a bunch of farmers. 00:29:23.000 --> 00:29:25.000 You know, you're not the intellectuals. 00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:31.000 You're deemed as the low IQ people. 00:29:31.000 --> 00:29:38.000 The Church has not filled it with the, typically, the rich, the noble, and the wise. 00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:39.000 So where are they at? 00:29:39.000 --> 00:29:45.000 You're trying to gravitate to that, but hey, they're not here. 00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:55.000 Oh, and I think primarily he is saying the pagan philosophers, all their knowledge and all their wisdom does not lead to salvation. 00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:57.000 It doesn't help them. 00:29:57.000 --> 00:29:59.000 It doesn't help them at the end of the day. 00:29:59.000 --> 00:30:01.000 Where are they at? 00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:05.000 What good has this brought to them? 00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:11.000 All the wisdom of Aristotle, what good did it do to him on the day of his death? 00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:14.000 He died like every other man. 00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:17.000 His sins went with him. 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:24.000 Where is the worldly wisdom that led this so-called wisdom of the world? 00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:26.000 What has been the outcome of this? 00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:30.000 You know, think about where philosophy has brought us. 00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:38.000 Humanism, materialism, a maze of contradictions, post-modernism, relativity, meaninglessness, hopelessness. 00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:46.000 You know, classic philosophy led to modern philosophy, and out of modern philosophy led to post-modern philosophy. 00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:48.000 And it's not like these are disconnected. 00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:57.000 What happened in the modern period, they come to the conclusion, if we're building off the foundation of Plato and Aristotle, then we really don't have a God. 00:30:57.000 --> 00:30:59.000 And so in the modern period, they rejected God. 00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:01.000 They become deists and atheists. 00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:11.000 And after you reject God, based upon the foundation of the ancient philosophers, all you have left in the modern time is, wait a minute, if there's no God, there's no meaning and there's no purpose. 00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:22.000 And the end conclusion of all of human wisdom is meaninglessness, nihilism, that life means nothing. 00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:23.000 This is where it brings you. 00:31:23.000 --> 00:31:24.000 Where are the scribes? 00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:25.000 Where are the philosophers? 00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:26.000 Where does it bring you? 00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:27.000 Where does it help you? 00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:28.000 Does it comfort you? 00:31:28.000 --> 00:31:31.000 At night, when you go to bed, does it help you relieve your conscience? 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:33.000 Does it save your soul from your sins? 00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:35.000 Does it make you right with God? 00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:46.000 These are the ultimate questions of life, and the wisdom of the world ends up leaving you empty and helpless. 00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:48.000 You see, we see this in verse 21. 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:56.000 The wisdom of God, in God's wisdom, man's wisdom is incapable of leaving man to God. 00:31:56.000 --> 00:31:57.000 Look at verse 21. 00:31:57.000 --> 00:32:02.000 Persistence in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. 00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:06.000 I mean, think of this as how wise God is. 00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:13.000 He says, the only way you're going to get to me, if you submit to me, you submit to Revelation. 00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:19.000 I'm going to communicate myself freely to you in nature and in the Bible. 00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:21.000 It's not up to you to figure me out. 00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:25.000 This is not according to your intellectual ability to demonstrate that I exist. 00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:30.000 You're not going to get to me if you think that you can get to me on your own powers. 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:36.000 The only way you're going to get to me if you submit to me, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. 00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:43.000 And so God, in His wisdom, says, I'm going to make it so that you and your wisdom cannot know me. 00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:45.000 And that's how wise God is. 00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:51.000 He's going to leave man to his own wisdom, and the wisdom of man only leads him into greater darkness. 00:32:51.000 --> 00:32:56.000 It leads man away from God, not to God. 00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:58.000 And that's why God is wise. 00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:02.000 If you reject me, you're going to go further away from me. 00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:05.000 You will not get to me. 00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:11.000 And this is the wisdom of God in revealing how foolish the wisdom of man is. 00:33:11.000 --> 00:33:19.000 You see, it was God's wisdom that man and his wisdom cannot know God. 00:33:19.000 --> 00:33:36.000 Not only is every philosophy inherently inconsistent with itself, the way to God is you submit to what you already know. 00:33:36.000 --> 00:33:44.000 Third, in the wisdom of God, God uses his folly to save those who believe. 00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:49.000 Look at verse 21. 00:33:49.000 --> 00:33:58.000 It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:08.000 That is, God uses the very thing that the world deems as foolish to expose the actual fullestness of their wisdom. 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:14.000 Now, could you imagine if you were Noah building an ark? 00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:22.000 I mean, you're building this huge, massive boat, and it's taken you years to build. 00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:25.000 Imagine people walking by, you know, they've never seen rain. 00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:28.000 I mean, it's never rained the day of their life. 00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:35.000 And they're watching Noah build this large boat, and it must have been hard. 00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:38.000 And look at that thing. 00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:40.000 How ridiculous has Noah become? 00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:42.000 He's lost it. 00:34:42.000 --> 00:34:44.000 This boat is ridiculous. 00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:45.000 What are you going to use this for? 00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:47.000 Is this a house? 00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:48.000 What do you mean, float? 00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:51.000 There's no rivers around here. 00:34:51.000 --> 00:35:02.000 I mean, could you imagine they're mocking this thing, they're ridiculing it, they're shaming Noah for this that he's doing? 00:35:02.000 --> 00:35:14.000 And then one day it starts raining, and the very thing they laughed at, the very thing they mocked, that very boat was the very thing that saved Noah. 00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:20.000 You know, this is what Paul is saying. 00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:33.000 You laugh at this bloody crucifixion, this shameful death of Jesus, how God took on human flesh and he died a weak man. 00:35:33.000 --> 00:35:44.000 He emptied himself of, if you would, of his power and became so weak that he perished. 00:35:44.000 --> 00:35:48.000 You think that's silly? 00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:51.000 Well, that's not the only thing, that's not the very message that saves us. 00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:56.000 That's the very message that exposes your folly. 00:35:56.000 --> 00:35:59.000 You see, three times he repeats this. 00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:07.000 In verse 18 it says, For the word of the cross is fallen to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved is the power of God. 00:36:07.000 --> 00:36:13.000 Verse 21, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:22.000 Then in verse 24, But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 00:36:22.000 --> 00:36:33.000 You see, this very message that you despise is the very message that is the power and wisdom of God. 00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:44.000 You know, you think about the gospel, it really solves the greatest dilemma in the world, how God can be just and merciful. 00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:48.000 Now, philosophy had no solution for that. 00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:56.000 They ran from God, they suppressed the knowledge of God because they had guilt, but they understood God to be a just God. 00:36:56.000 --> 00:37:03.000 And therefore, if God is just and they're unjust, then they have no salvation, no solution. 00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:07.000 They had no way to free themselves from the wrath of God. 00:37:07.000 --> 00:37:10.000 Intellectually, the only thing they could do is act like God doesn't exist. 00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.000 They have to prove that if He doesn't exist, He's more abstract idea. 00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:16.000 He's an impersonable force. 00:37:16.000 --> 00:37:18.000 He's not a personal being. 00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:27.000 If they can get rid of a personal God, maybe their conscience would be not so convicting. 00:37:27.000 --> 00:37:35.000 But here's the gospel, the very thing that actually I think philosophy is trying to do, the gospel does without contradictions. 00:37:35.000 --> 00:38:21.000 It shows how God can be just and how He can save us from our sins, how He can take someone like you, someone who's resisted God and run from God and despises God and viewed God as foolish and in the Word of God as foolish, He can take you and your foolishness and save you because of this wonderful message, because of Christ died in your place, because this very God who's just and holy can take care of justice and holiness through the very death of a substitute, through the death of His Son. 00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:26.000 You see, this is the most amazing message in the world. 00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:33.000 And you and I might be attempted to be ashamed of it because the world looks at it and despises it. 00:38:33.000 --> 00:38:40.000 We may want to run from it and it's like, let's not talk about that. 00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.000 You know, you can talk about every weird belief in the world and people will give you an ear. 00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:52.000 You bring the gospel in and they somehow think you're nuts. 00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:56.000 But Paul says I'm not ashamed of the gospel. 00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:58.000 I'm not ashamed of it. 00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:00.000 I'm not coming to preach something else. 00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:09.000 I'm not having to integrate my message with philosophy to somehow grab the intellectuals and make them curious and somehow hook them in and eventually maybe throw the gospel in. 00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:14.000 Eventually, I don't have to have signs and wonders. 00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:16.000 You know, there's two temptations that we have. 00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:18.000 It's just like the Greeks and the Jews. 00:39:18.000 --> 00:39:20.000 We're prone to one or the other. 00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:31.000 There's a group of us that are prone to intellectualism and we would prefer, you know, these very neat, nice, tidy lectures and all the worship to be nice. 00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:34.000 No amens, you know, that's too charismatic. 00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:36.000 We want it very structural. 00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:39.000 So we love education. 00:39:39.000 --> 00:39:41.000 We love intellectualism. 00:39:41.000 --> 00:39:42.000 We're prone to that. 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:44.000 And when we hear intellectual sermons, we gravitate them. 00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:46.000 It's like, man, that was wonderful. 00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:49.000 The other side of us were more like Charismatics. 00:39:49.000 --> 00:39:50.000 We're more like Jews. 00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:52.000 We want emotionalism. 00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:53.000 We want power. 00:39:53.000 --> 00:39:55.000 We want to see signs and wonders. 00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:57.000 We want something to be spectacular. 00:39:57.000 --> 00:40:00.000 We want to go away going, wow, wow, what power? 00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:02.000 What signs and wonders? 00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:03.000 What's amazing? 00:40:03.000 --> 00:40:07.000 So you got both of that in our culture today. 00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:21.000 And so what the church is seeking to do, they're seeking to substitute the gospel with intellectualism or substitute the gospel with charismatic chaos or looking for something to appeal to people, entertain people. 00:40:21.000 --> 00:40:24.000 Paul says, I don't come preaching that way. 00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:34.000 I'm keeping my message focused on this message of cross, of Christ crucify. 00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:35.000 Why? 00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.000 Why focus on this when most of the world is going to reject it? 00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:48.000 He says, because those who do believe, or unbelievers, those who are perishing, find they reject it. 00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:55.000 But for those who do believe, it is both the power and the wisdom of God. 00:40:55.000 --> 00:41:00.000 It's the very gospel message that has saved your soul. 00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:12.000 What message was it that caused you, it worked within you power to turn from sin to the living God? 00:41:12.000 --> 00:41:22.000 It wasn't a message that we find in the writings of Plato or Aristotle. 00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:29.000 The thing that changed your life and continues to change your life is the message of the cross. 00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:34.000 That caused you to pick up your own cross and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. 00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:41.000 It's the message of the cross that changes your marriages, changes your life, husbands. 00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:47.000 The most sanctifying message you can hear is not a message on marriage. 00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:58.000 The most sanctifying sermon you can hear is a message of Jesus denying Himself, dying for His bride. 00:41:58.000 --> 00:42:15.000 Hearing the acts of Christ and His humility and the moments of embarrassment and shame, are you willing to take that same message onto yourself and say, I love my wife in the way that Christ loved the church. 00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:18.000 I'm willing to be mocked and ridiculed. 00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:23.000 I'm willing to take on this shame and disgrace. 00:42:23.000 --> 00:42:25.000 I'm willing to be a humble servant for my wife. 00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:27.000 You see, that's a message that changes us. 00:42:27.000 --> 00:42:30.000 It's not the message of the world. 00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:33.000 It's the message of power. 00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:44.000 It's the message that will sanctify our lives in every area of our lives. 00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:49.000 You see, it pleased God through the folly of that which we preach to save those who believe. 00:42:49.000 --> 00:42:56.000 This is the message that will bring forth conversion. 00:42:56.000 --> 00:42:59.000 You know, that's why we sing about it. 00:42:59.000 --> 00:43:07.000 For some, it's folly, but we see the glory of God in it. 00:43:07.000 --> 00:43:11.000 I'm amazed at God's glory. 00:43:11.000 --> 00:43:22.000 And sometimes I think of His glory as His eternal glory that He's had, that the Son of God has had with the Father from the beginning. 00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:31.000 Then think about when He created the angels and the angels stand before Jesus, the Son of God, and say, Holy, Holy, Holy. 00:43:31.000 --> 00:43:39.000 And think of all the majesty and the splendor and the light that shines forth from His very being. 00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:41.000 That's glory. 00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:50.000 But you know, another aspect of that glory is that that God who has that glory made Himself of no reputation. 00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:58.000 And dealt that glory and humbled Himself and became a servant. 00:43:58.000 --> 00:44:03.000 And not just a servant, but a servant that was willing to die for you and for your sins. 00:44:03.000 --> 00:44:11.000 You and I who mocked Him, remember there was two men on the side of the cross, they were both mocking Him. 00:44:11.000 --> 00:44:20.000 And those who mocked Him, this God of glory humbled Himself to save. 00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.000 Now that is glory. 00:44:24.000 --> 00:44:26.000 That's worth singing about. 00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:29.000 That's worth praising God for. 00:44:29.000 --> 00:44:33.000 You see, this is the wisdom and the power of God. 00:44:33.000 --> 00:44:35.000 And let me end with the conclusion. 00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.000 I think Paul brings everything, ties it all together in verse 25. 00:44:39.000 --> 00:44:41.000 This is his conclusion. 00:44:41.000 --> 00:44:45.000 This is the main point of this passage. 00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:52.000 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 00:44:52.000 --> 00:44:57.000 You see, the weakness of God is His death. 00:44:57.000 --> 00:45:00.000 That's what he said at his most weak moment. 00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:07.000 But at that very weak moment, it's more powerful than all the might of the world put together. 00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:15.000 The foolishness of God is the idea that God, very God, would die for man. 00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:17.000 That's foolish. 00:45:17.000 --> 00:45:26.000 You see, that is wiser than all the wisdom of the world put together. 00:45:26.000 --> 00:45:30.000 Here's some application for us to consider. 00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:38.000 One, never be ashamed of the gospel. 00:45:38.000 --> 00:45:49.000 Two, never try to make the message of the cross more intellectually appealing. 00:45:49.000 --> 00:45:59.000 Three, you never have to take and put artificial power and signs and wonders to the gospel. 00:45:59.000 --> 00:46:11.000 It's the gospel itself, not the preacher, or the art I preach, or the performance of the service that saves sinners. 00:46:11.000 --> 00:46:20.000 It's the message of the gospel. 00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:27.000 Fourth, do not despise the day of small things. 00:46:27.000 --> 00:46:37.000 You see, God has chosen the weak, the base, the despised, to put to shame the wise, the strong of this world. 00:46:37.000 --> 00:46:43.000 Right now, you may be going through something that you just don't understand, and it's humbling you. 00:46:43.000 --> 00:46:50.000 It's exposing your pride, or it's unveling that you have no power that you think you had. 00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:57.000 In your own estimation, you're becoming smaller and smaller and smaller. 00:46:57.000 --> 00:47:01.000 You're going, Lord, I don't know how much more of this I can handle. 00:47:01.000 --> 00:47:13.000 I'm being stripped and stripped and stripped, and I'm getting so low, becoming so debased. 00:47:13.000 --> 00:47:15.000 These days are not glorious. 00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:17.000 These days are difficult. 00:47:17.000 --> 00:47:21.000 These days I do not enjoy. 00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:33.000 Do not despise those days, because God has chosen these very days, these hardships, the weakness, your weakness, and the difficulties that you experience. 00:47:33.000 --> 00:47:39.000 He's chosen to bring forth His power in your weakness. 00:47:39.000 --> 00:47:41.000 Let's pray. 00:47:41.000 --> 00:47:46.000 Dear Lord, we're so grateful for the beautiful gospel of the message. 00:47:46.000 --> 00:47:48.000 We reject the wisdom of this world. 00:47:48.000 --> 00:47:49.000 We see it as folly. 00:47:49.000 --> 00:47:52.000 More importantly, you deem it as folly. 00:47:52.000 --> 00:47:58.000 But your wisdom, dear God, is saving, refreshing, nourishing, wonderful. 00:47:58.000 --> 00:48:06.000 We praise you for the message of the cross, the crucifixion, the death, even the weakness of your Son. 00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:13.000 He who was rich, He became poor, and we thank you for His poverty. 00:48:13.000 --> 00:48:16.000 Lord, we thank you for His sufferings. 00:48:16.000 --> 00:48:28.000 May you be given all the glory, all the power, all the majesty from our hearts and from our voices for the great wisdom and power you have revealed to us and your Son. 00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:30.000 Amen. 00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:32.000 . 00:48:32.000 --> 00:48:37.000 See you next time.