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In the first letter of the Apostle Paul to the Christians at Corinth, the first chapter and the 25th verse are these words, "The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." The subject of the message, "The Foolishness of God."

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The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Corinthians, the first chapter, and the twenty-fifth verse. This is another in the sermon series entitled "Glory Through the Cross, the Foolishness of God." How strange it is that the glory of the cross is revealed through foolishness. The radiance of the cross is shown through

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foolishness, the splendor of the cross of Christ is hidden among us because it is revealed foolishness. It is not understood and accepted because it is seen as foolishness. The cross is viewed as that which makes no sense. It is seen as that that which is nonsense, it is absurd, that which is stupid and silly, the cross.

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But Paul tells us here that the cross is the foolishness of God. That's how he expresses it. And you know, we do not have a place of honor for fools. Fools are cast aside, ignored, made fun of.

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The Christians, or rather the Corinthian Christians, are for the most part Greeks. The Greeks have made a rather outstanding contribution to the world in the cultivation of the mind, the development of the intellect. In fact, the Greeks honored wisdom and listed it as one of the four cardinal virtues essential

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to living the good life. Wisdom and knowledge. Watch words, not only was this true the ancient civilization of Greece,

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but it is true of people today who engage in intellectual pursuits. Get wisdom, get knowledge, know thyself. This was the teaching of the great philosophers of antiquity.

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For you see, the Greeks were noted for their sophisticated rhetoric and their forensic oratory, their speculative philosophy expressed

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in half-splitting arguments, as well as their knowledge, which had been tested through the gristmill of experience. For the Greek world worshipped at the altar of reason what was said could be accepted if it was reasonable, if it made sense, if it were logical.

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Paul speaks to the Greek mind saying that the disciples of Jesus are fools for Christ's sake. That's the way of the cross, to be a fool for Christ's sake. To people who place great emphasis on a clever mind and a cunning tongue, to people who place

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a high-priced tag on middle-gymnastic, glittering, and persuasive rhetoric. For Paul to speak to them concerning being a fool for Christ's sake, this is rather a bitter pill for them to swallow the mind, the head. Paul seems to be more concerned about the heart than the head.

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You see, we're not going to think our way to salvation as far as being saved by our intellect, as important as it is, it is to be cultivated, it is to be developed, that is very important.

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But the kind of life that one purposes to live is, and the feeling one has toward that which is good, the heart is the seat of the emotions. Many times people can be told what is right, but they don't feel that they ought to do it.

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And Paul is concerned here about the heart. You see, the heart, Pascal says, Pascal says that it has reasons, The heart has reasons that the head doesn't know about. Now many things that we think that we ought not to do,

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but our heart tells us to do it. And so we do it because of the heart. Now the Greeks think only of fools as being pushed off in a corner.

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We think of them as being placed in mental hospitals or ignored. We jokingly have a place on the calendar, April the first as we call April Fool's Day.

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The first of April, as some do say, is set aside as all fools day. And we use that day to tolerate pranks that we play upon one another during that time,

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but not as a way of life, no, no. But here Paul has mentioned being a fool for Christ, and here later he comes and uses the words "the foolishness of God." Foolishness of God.

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He has spoken to the Corinthians saying that he does not claim to bring wisdom as the world envisions it. it is foolishness. For the preaching of the cross is foolishness. It is the foolishness of God. But the foolishness of God is wiser than men. There are those in our world today

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like the Greeks consider the preaching of the gospel foolishness. It makes no sense. What we carry on here at the church, the various churches all over the land and country, makes no sense to them. The living of the Christian life makes no sense.

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And it is foolishness to them. It's the foolishness of God. If one of us were to leave this sanctuary today, and on our way home we would find a purse with $50,000 in it,

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and the name and address of the person in it to whom it belonged and we immediately would take it to the police station and tell them that we had found this

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and the $50 cash and we would report it and leave it there there would be many who say, "You know that person was a fool." To take all that money that they found and they wouldn't talk about honesty or anything like that. They said well, that's foolishness

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Foolishness and yet that is right To return to the loser that which we find But there are those in our society and I would venture to say that if you take a vote on it it may be the overwhelming number in our society who would say that the person who did that

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is a fool, and that that way of life is foolishness. The cross, you see, is a scandal. Why honor the crucifixion? It's a disgrace.

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The person who hangs there between two thieves is a criminal. He has been condemned by the court. And it is written in the law of God, "A hanged man is accursed of God. Why hold up the cross?"

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The cross is an emblem of suffering and shame. world has had enough of suffering and violence. Why honor the cross? That is a way of foolishness. So the Greeks do not believe you see in a God that that can feel. They say that to Paul a God that can feel that enters into our world who

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feels with us. No, no, that kind of God who is able to sympathize with us, who shares our mutual woes, who suffers with us, the God who feels with us is affected by our feelings, is ruled by us, and he is weak, and we cannot believe in a God like that. All that is rubbish. It's foolishness. Paul exclaims, "Ah, friends, it

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pleased God to save the world through the foolishness of preaching, for the preaching of the cross is the foolishness of God." Cross. The cross, you see is a symbol of humility, of humiliation, and naturally there is that part of us that cries out, "I don't want to be humiliated. I don't want to be made

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a fool of. I don't want to be embarrassed and most of us are inclined to become very argumentative and defensive and you know why? It's because of pride. The pride in us says don't you take that You tell them off

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Don't don't take that but the way of the cross the glory of the cross mind you is in humiliation That in the humiliation for God's sake

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One is elevated he humbled himself and became obedient even to the death of the cross and because he did it God has Exalted him and has given him a name above every name. And so if we would understand the cross The glory of the cross is in suffering in shame in

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Reconciliation Blessed are the poor That's what God says to us blessed are the poor For theirs is the kingdom but the world says that that's foolishness

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The world would say blessed are the rich God says blessed are they that mourn For they shall be comforted The world says that's foolishness. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever

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The world says blessed are they who eat drink and be merry God says blessed are the meek For they shall inherit the earth and the world says no no that's foolishness blessed are those who are

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proud For they shall win their way Through the arrogance of power Now why should God wrap himself up in human flesh and enter his world through the

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back door and be born in a lowly cattle shed. That just does not make sense. Why should the God of all power take on the weaknesses of humanity and suffer and be tempted in all things just as we are. That seems foolishness. Why should the God who is rich become poor? Why should God permit himself to be crucified

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on a cross? It is foolishness. What we are going to do as we live the life of Christ is to somehow take upon us that foolishness which is of God. You see, what would we do if we had our way? Would we try to tame the truth of God in order to have it to make sense to us? Would we change the Beatitudes? Make it more

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reasonable, palatable for us, simplified, take the cross and remove the scandal. See he wasn't crucified on an altar in a cathedral. He wasn't crucified on a cross between two candlesticks, but he was crucified on a cross between two thieves. And that is the glory we talk about "in the cross of

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Christ I glory" but what does it mean to each one of us as we somehow sing these words "in the cross of Christ I glory" and yet the cross is the foolishness of God. Glory and the foolishness of God. My brothers and sisters, the foolishness of God is expressed in forgiveness.

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I read the other day of a man who was a minister, who had a wife, and it became known in the congregation that his wife was unfaithful to him. and they had several children, and they knew that these were not his children. And then in the course of time, it became noised about and generally publicly known

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that she was following the ways of a prostitute. And so the minister had to give up the church. and she went off with another man. And then after a time the word came to him

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that she was in town, and that she was in jail, and that she was also pregnant. And he went down and paid the bail fee and said to her, "Come on, let's go home."

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Now that's foolishness, according to the way the world sees it. That's foolishness. I know of a woman who was teaching school and she came home one day and she saw a note there from her husband that he was gone. He left and he'd gone off with some younger woman

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and he went off and she never saw him or heard from him for many years. And then she came home one day from school and she found him there.

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And she accepted him right there, Let him stay there until he died just a short time ago. Now most of us would say that's foolishness. That's the forgiveness of God.

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That's the forgiveness of God. We'd call it foolishness. And I hear many people saying day after day, "No, Reverend, I'll never be that weak."

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I'll never be that weak. But that is the weakness of God for us. That's the weakness of God for us. How many parents have we seen?

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I've seen them time and time again of a boy who just kept getting in trouble, just getting in trouble, getting in trouble, and they'd go out time and time again with their meager earnings and get him out of jail and I've even seen them market the only property that they have in order to get that child out of jail and lose it

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trying to save that boy. These aren't some fairy tales, this is life. That if somehow we are really going to live according to the way God wants us to live, that we can somehow experience the foolishness of God in forgiveness and you know that's the way God treats us we treat him just like those people all of

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us somehow have done things that we ought not to have done and when we look at our record we have many blemishes there. Every one of us. You know sometimes people want to point to the preacher and they want to point to the deacon but you can point to yourself. [laughter] In other words, you're going to--

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every one of us will have to stand before God, and our record will be there, and every one of us somehow-- we have many things against us,

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but somehow God is always forgiving us. And so the foolishness of God is wiser than men,

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Because that foolishness is the means of our salvation. That's the foolishness that comes to us through the cross. You know why it's a cross? It's not easy to do that. It wasn't easy for that minister who had given up his church, who had been disgraced in that community, to go there to that jail

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and take that wife back into the home and love her. That wasn't easy. That's a cross. It wasn't easy for that dear woman who was teaching school, who had had her heart pierced by the absence of that husband over many years, and when he finally came back to accept him as if nothing had happened. That wasn't easy. That's a cross. That's a cross.

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It's never easy for parents who somehow give themselves time and time again, and all of that meager earnings for a child that goes astray and never seems to appreciate what they're doing. That's not easy. When you do that, you're experiencing something of the foolishness of God, who somehow out of His grace, out of His grace, out of His

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abundant grace out of His love and mercy expressed in His grace that God opens Himself up and God empties Himself, gives all that He has, empties Himself and gives His only begotten Son to come down and walk among us and live the life of righteousness in our midst and somehow be crucified on a cross and condemned to die. God's only son! That's the problem!

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Foolishness of God expressed in the suffering, being willing to suffer for goodness sake. accepts the foolishness of humankind. Can't you see the loving Father? The boy has gone out into a far country and wasted the Father's substance and righteous living, but can't you see the Father waiting for him to come home?

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waiting and patiently waiting there, looking for that boy to change and finally the boy comes to himself and says, "I'm going home." And he takes the road home and the father says, "Welcome." "Welcome home!" and he says to the serpents, "Prepare the fetid calf for this my son that was dead is now alive." And kill the fetid calf, put shoes on his feet and a ring on his finger and let us make merry.

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That's an expression of the foolishness of God. Cross. Cross. Cross. And Paul says to the Greeks, "There are still some Greeks among us who make fun of that. They say that makes good preaching, but that's not good living, but that's the way of God."

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The foolishness of God is expressed in the cross. If God saw fit in the cross to somehow humiliate himself, he humbled and humiliated himself, and in humbling and humiliating himself, he somehow reached as low as we can go in order to lift us to where he wants us to be.

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Foolishness of love, foolishness of grace, foolishness of forgiveness. Paul says that we ought to become fools for Christ's sake. We ought to become fools. Some of us are afraid to say amen.

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Because we are wondering what somebody else is going to think. They're going to look around and wonder, "Who is that back there saying amen up there?" "Oh, they're saying amen." So we don't want them to look around because of what we think they may say.

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Some of us are afraid to do what is right because we are somehow caught up in a group where everybody's doing this and we don't want them to think that we are an oddball. So we want to go along with the crowd. You know I'm not an angel.

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But the cross, the way of the cross is the foolishness of God that we are willing to be made a fool of for Christ's sake. And that's the way it was with the early Christians. They accepted the cross. They accepted the humiliation. They accepted the shame. They accepted the fact that they would be made a fool of for Christ's sake.

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And just as Christ accepted the foolishness of man and was willing to be made a fool of for our sake, we should be willing to be made a fool of for Christ's sake. And they saw how these people acted. And they called them Christians.

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They weren't honoring them. They were poking fun at them. Oh, these are Christians over there. See how funny they act? These are Christians. Look how queer they are. These are queer people. They're Christians. They're like Christ.

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And they laughed at them. But you see that the cross that is an emblem of suffering and shame it becomes for the Christian a badge of honor and glory So that we glory through our tribulations, we glory through our suffering, we glory when people seem to try to make a fool of us for Christ's sake.

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That's what it means if we're going to celebrate the life of Christ and His suffering. It means that we're willing to suffer. And too often, this age of comfort and convenience, we're more concerned about comfort. One brother said, "Mr. Reverend," said, "You know, I would like to be a member up there."

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But at that time, we didn't have any cushions in the pew. And he said, "You see, your pews are too hard." You see, and so he didn't want to become a member of the family of God. of God, then when we did get pews with cushions, he still didn't become a man

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because that's really not it. And even if he had come because of the cushions, he'd miss, he would have missed the glory of the cross. Cross, cross is suffering. And somehow that way of suffering is redemptive. And somehow when we draw near to the cross, we find out that the ground is level at the foot of the cross when we get near to the cross and we

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we begin to grasp something of the suffering of God for our salvation. Cross. Cross! Suffering. You know if there's anything in my life that has been redemptive it's somehow to see the suffering that my mother went through for me. She suffered. The doctor announced to her that she had cancer. I was just nine

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years of age and she went through the surgery and she was saved. She couldn't raise her arm and yet she went on washing, washing and washing and washing clothes that many times were saved up a one week and two weeks and sometimes several families would join in and put their clothes together and she went on

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washing and getting eight dollars a week so she could send me to college to say and I don't want you to have to live the way I did and when I saw that I when I went to school I said I have to do my best I have to do my best when I think about the suffering that's back behind me that somehow

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has made it possible for me to be where I am. I've got to do my best. And when we think about the suffering of God for us to be where we are, we ought to do our best.

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That's the foolishness of God that He tolerates us when we're doing our worst. Foolishness of God. We ought to follow Jesus Christ and if we follow him we're going to take up the cross. Peter said, "You know I don't even want to die like he died. I'm not worthy." He said he went to the cross with his head up.

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When they got ready to crucify him he said, "No don't do me like that." He said, "Turn the cross and let my head be down because I'm not near as worthy." The foolishness of God. Cross. Wherever Jesus leads. But no matter how humiliating, how many of us talk to somebody about being a Christian? Not many of us.

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Not many of us. We think that's just the preacher's job. Oh, we'll come and we'll serve, we'll do that, but to go out and talk to somebody about being a Christian, oh no, no, not me, Reverend. Somebody may hurt my feelings.

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Some of us don't even want to make a phone call about coming to a class because you know Reverend, my feelings were hurt. I don't want to be calling up these people, these people because my feelings were hurt. Think about Christ's feelings. And follow Him!

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Not the preacher, not the deacon, not any circle leader, not any individual, but Christ! On Christ the solid rock I stand, all of the ground is seeking sand. Follow Christ, follow Christ the cross. It stands on a hill called Calvary.

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Far above all of the wrecks of time, the cross stands there. Follow Christ who's on that cross through floods and flames. If Jesus lead, I'll follow where he goes. Hinder me not will be my cry, though earth and hell oppose.

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We come now to extend the blessed invitation to those who would accept Christ, Christ of the Cross. [MUSIC PLAYING] [Music]

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A cross upon which Jesus died Is a shelter in which we can hide And its grace so free is sufficient for me. And deep is its fountain, as wide as the sea.

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There's room at the cross for you. There's room at the cross for you. No, there's still room for one. ♪ Yes, there's room at the top for you ♪

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♪ There's room at the top for you ♪ [Music] [music ends] [BLANK_AUDIO]