Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church, chapter 1. Once again, it is a blessing to be able to open God's Word with you, and have the opportunity to preach His Word. This is a solemn task, and we pray for the help of the Lord in this task. 1 Corinthians, chapter 1. And let's pick up the reading with verse 10. We'll read down through the end of the chapter. Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanus. Besides, I know not whether I baptized any other. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. But unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh Not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen. Yea, and things which are not to bring to naught things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him, it's of God, but of God, are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. May the Lord seal that reading of his word to our hearts for his own namesake. Let's all pray. Oh Lord, our gracious God and eternal heavenly Father, we come before you humbly, owning our own weakness, owning our own frailty to rightly understand the word of truth that is before us. We confess our sin to you. Lord, we confess that we are a frail people, a sinful people. We have nothing to boast in other than the righteousness of Christ our Savior. And as we come to this most solemn of subjects, the cross of our Lord Jesus, I pray, Lord, that you would fill me with your Holy Spirit, that you would give me the words to say and the right spirit in which to say them. And I pray that you would give grace to the hearers, that they would be able to apply these things to their lives, that they would be able to walk in the power of the gospel. Lord, give us ears to hear, give us eyes to see, give us hearts to believe your truth. Abide with us now, O Lord, and exalt the name of our Savior. We pray these things in his name. Amen. The Corinthian church was riddled with problems. You don't have to read very far in this first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians to see that that church was shot through with everything from a divisive, proud spirit, to severe doctrinal error, to even the toleration of gross immorality in its membership. Paul has his work cut out for him, does he not, as he opens this first epistle to the Corinthians. He is writing really to answer two main inquires or two main issues that have been raised before him. There's been a letter sent to Paul by the Corinthian church asking various questions of the quorum of Christian doctrine and practice, and Paul will later on in the epistle set out to answer those questions. But there's also been a report brought to Paul by members of Chloe's household. If you look there in verse 11 of this first chapter to the Corinthians, you'll see that Paul has heard a report verbally given to him by members of Chloe's household that there are divisions. There's a proud, divisive spirit in the Corinthian church. Some are saying that they are of Cephas, or they follow Peter. Some say that they follow Paul. Others, Apollos. And some, being super spiritual, say, in opposition to the others, that they simply follow Christ. So there's a proud, divisive spirit. that these Corinthians have. And Paul is writing to address that issue here in the first chapter. In addition to this proud, divisive spirit, the Corinthians are affected as well by a great love for man's wisdom. There were many, if you look back and just understand the culture of that day, there were many traveling professional speakers that came through Corinth, and for a fee, they would give an oration, or they would give a speech, and they would advise the Corinthians on how they could advance socially, how they can improve themselves in the eyes of the world. So there's this fleshly, man-made wisdom that the Corinthians are enamored with. and they're being distracted from the main thing, the cross of Christ. So what does Paul do as he begins to address all these various issues, all these various problems in the church? He brings them back to the main thing. He brings them back to the supremacy of the cross of Jesus Christ. It was not the showy, fleshly, man-made wisdom that had saved the Corinthian believers. It was the preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And brothers and sisters, is not this message still relevant for us today in the church? As believers living in 21st century America, we do not have many of the exact, the precise problems that the Corinthians did. But it is easy even for us to have our hearts distracted from the supremacy of the cross. Our hearts are ultimately the same as the hearts of the Corinthian believers. We have the same sin nature that we battle with. Our issues at heart are the same. Many cultural matters in our own day alarm us. as well they should. But many of us, many believers can become so wrapped up in those cultural matters that they begin to lose focus from the supremacy of the cross itself. Our hearts are also so prone to pride, are they not? And it's easy for us to have a divisive party spirit and it quietly creeps into our midst. Even as believers, do we not often live as if we have moved beyond the cross, beyond the main thing, beyond the message of the gospel? We begin to assume, do we not, that we can earn God's favor on our own. Yes, we must strive for holiness, but yet do we often assume that we can sanctify ourselves, that we have something in our own strength, on our own power by which to merit God's favor. And so we need to hear once again this message over and over again, the supremacy of the cross of Jesus Christ. And that's the message that I want to spend our remaining moments together this evening. I want to spend our moments looking at the supremacy of the cross of Christ here in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. As we do that, I want to address this matter of the supremacy of Christ's cross under two central truths. Two central truths stand out as we work our way through the passage, beginning in verse 18 and down through the end of the chapter. The first of the central truths that I want to highlight from the passage before us tonight is that the cross is supreme in the message of the gospel. The cross is supreme in the message of the gospel. Look at verse 18. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. But unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. This verse, if you will, is the topic sentence of a new paragraph here in the chapter. Paul is going to pick up on a contrast that he has just laid before us back in verse 17. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, referring to the wisdom that the Corinthians were so enamored with, not with the wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. So that contrast between the cross of Christ and the wisdom of words Paul is going to develop that contrast beginning in verse 18 and working his way through the next several verses. It's as if Paul is saying here, wait just a moment, brothers and sisters at Corinth. It's not that wisdom. It's not that fleshly man-made wisdom of the world that saved you. It was the proclamation of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. When I came to you, I didn't come in the wisdom of man. I came to you in the power of the gospel. It's the power of the cross that I preached to you at the first. I refuse to manipulate you with the wisdom of man. So come back to this message of the cross." So as Paul begins to expand on this contrast between the wisdom of man's words and the power of Christ's cross, it's supremacy here in verse 18. He underscores the fact that the cross is the ultimate dividing line between those who are saved and those who are perishing. On one hand, the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. To those who are perishing, to those who are infatuated with the message of the world, the cross, the message of the gospel is foolishness. But to those of us who are saved, it is, this message is the power of God. Paul is going to appeal to both Scripture and the experience of the Corinthians in order to make this point. He appeals to Scripture, the Old Testament Scriptures, there in verse 19. He says this, "'For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.'" That is a citation, that is a quote of Isaiah 29.14. And the context of Isaiah 29 is very important for us to understand as Paul uses that here in this passage. You see, in Isaiah 29, the Lord declares that the people of Israel had drawn near to Him with their mouths. They had paid lip service with their mouths. But yet their hearts were far from from him this use of scripture Should have stung the pride of those Corinthian believers and their fascination with the showy Superficial wisdom of man they were being just like Israel of old they were giving God a form of of lip service, an external form of lip service, but yet their hearts were far from Him. God pronounces His judgment, His judgment upon the fleshly wisdom of man. But Paul not only appeals to Scripture as he deals with the Corinthians in this message, but he also appeals to their experience. Note verses 20 and 21. Paul asked these questions. Paul is saying to the believers, in your own experience, was it the proud presentation of the worldly wise man that brought you to faith? No, it was not. It was this message, this preaching of Jesus Christ, empowered by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. He's saying to these believers, isn't it foolish to boast in something that was impotent when it came to the salvation of your souls? It could never save you. It was the preaching of Christ. It was the foolishness of preaching that saved you. by which, that was the instrument by which you came to faith in Christ. That phrase, the foolishness of preaching, deserves our attention for just a moment. It's not really the easiest to understand, but really the gist of what Paul is getting at here is that Paul is not referring, he's not referring so much to the act or the form of preaching, although some preaching you certainly can say is foolish, but he's referring to the content of what is being preached. You could translate it in this way, the foolishness of what was preached or the foolishness of what we preached to you. What was that foolishness? As you see later on down in verse 23, it was the message of Christ crucified that was foolishness to the natural man, but yet it was the power and the wisdom of God to those who believed The cross, this message of the cross is the ultimate dividing line between those who are saved and those who are perishing. All the other ways in which we divide one another by social class or by race, by cultural background, all those other divisions are nothing when it comes to this message of the cross. Either you are relying upon the cross of Christ His blood and His righteousness alone for the salvation of your soul, or you are relying upon your own works, upon the wisdom, the teaching of man. The cross of Christ is the only way to be saved. I urge you, if you're unsaved with us here this evening, I urge you to the cross. I urge you not to leave tonight until you do real business with the Lord and come to embrace Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross. This poem moves on from verse 21. He moves into these next few verses, 22 through 24. He begins to really divide the group who are perishing that he had brought up back in verse 18. The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. Who are those that are perishing? Paul in verses 22 through 24 provides us with two specific groups of those who are perishing, to whom the cross, the message of the cross is foolishness. Look at verses 22 through 24. For the Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified under the Jews a stumbling block and under the Greeks foolishness. but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God." So Paul addresses two groups in these verses, the Jews and the Greeks. The Jews were those who were constantly looking for a messiah to perform great miraculous signs for them. They were looking for a king who would overturn the social and the political institutions of their day and bring in the kingdom in a very temporal, physical idea. If you remember back in Matthew 12 verses 38 and 39, Jesus is asked by the scribes and the Pharisees, teacher, rabbi, show us a sign. And the Lord Jesus responds to them. How does he respond to them? He tells them, I'm not going to give you a sign other than the sign of Jonah. For three days and three nights, Jonah was in the belly of the fish, so the son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth or in the earth. What Christ is referring to here is his own death, burial, and resurrection. That's the sign that he's going to give the Jews. It's not going to be some miraculous thing by which he overcomes the social and political institutions of their day. Rather, it is the gospel. It is his death, burial, and resurrection. That is the message that they were to receive, but yet in their unbelief, They refused. So to the Jews, the message of the gospel was, as we see in verse 23, it was a stumbling block. Second group that Paul addresses here that he refers to as those who are perishing are the Greeks. The Greeks, unlike the Jews, they wanted a show of wisdom. They wanted that rhetorical brilliance. They wanted persuasive arguments in order to induce them to believe. The message of a crucified Messiah hanging on a Roman cross was utter foolishness to them. It made no sense to them, apart from the grace of God opening their hearts, enabling them to understand. In this way, God frustrated both the expectations of the sign-demanding Jews and the wisdom-desiring Gentiles and Greeks. The emphasis here in verse 24 is upon the calling of God, but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because God has opened our eyes to the truth of the gospel, we have embraced it. Not because of our own strength, not because of our own wisdom, but because He has opened our eyes to the truth of the gospel, to the truth of the cross of Christ. You know, we are very used in our own day to seeing the cross portrayed in a very positive light. You drive down the highway and you see churches that have erected very tall crosses next to their churches. You see church sanctuaries with the cross portrayed, not commenting on the practice of such, but simply noting it. Some Christians will wear the crosses as jewelry. But yet, I think we need to understand what the message of the cross actually meant to the Corinthian culture of that day. You see, the cross was the most brutal form of execution that they had come up with in that day. It was offensive. It was so brutal and it was reserved for the most wicked criminals. It was so offensive that it was not even to be mentioned in polite company. preaching that centered upon a crucified Messiah. A Messiah crucified on that Roman cross would have been shocking to the Jews and the Greeks. Yet it was this message, this seemingly foolish message in the eyes of the world that God was pleased to use to convert his people. What seemed like foolishness, what looked like weakness to the natural man, God used as ultimate power and ultimate wisdom to convert his people. The cross stands at the center of God's infinitely wise plan of redemption. Here we find, at the cross of Christ, we find how God can be infinitely just, infinitely holy, infinitely righteous, and yet gracious and loving and merciful. As Jesus, our Savior, bore the full wrath of God, the penalty of our sins was paid as He was crushed there on the cross. What appears to man's natural wisdom as the folly of follies is actually the greatest possible display of God's wisdom. and God's power, and God destroys the foolishness, the wisdom of man. He turns man's wisdom into utter foolishness and the cross of Christ. This truth has massive application to us today. We need to remember that the cross of Christ is still going to be an offense to the unsafe person, even in our own culture. This does not mean that we should intentionally seek to be harsh or unloving. Certainly, we should always pray for grace, God's grace to speak the truth of the gospel with compassion and with love for needy souls. The offense should not be our own unkind words or actions. But yet we should remember that the message of Christ crucified is still going to offend unbelievers. It's going to offend those who are apart from God's grace. We cannot change the message of the cross to be one that does not offend man's fleshly wisdom. As sinners, sinners apart from God's grace, we assume that we can earn His favor, that we have something to add to our own salvation, something by which between the grace of God and our own work that we can work our own salvation, earn it in the sight of God. But the message that's blared from the hill of Calvary is that we are really that bad, that we are dead in our trespasses and sins, that we have nothing to offer God in our own strength, that we cannot contribute one iota to our own salvation. At the heart of the gospel message is the truth that the shameless, perfect son of God was shamefully slaughtered by men of wicked hearts and wicked hands on the cross. That it was not merely the condemning cries of the Jews or the torturing actions of the Roman soldiers that are guilty of this deed, but that it was my sin, that it's our sin that held him there until it was accomplished. Thus, the message of the cross is going to offend man's wisdom, shame man's pride, and prick his conscience. But praise God, he is still pleased to use this message to save his people from their sin. Let us pray for the grace and the wisdom that we need to speak the gospel boldly to the unsaved around us and to show its power by the humility of our own lives. So we've seen, first of all, that the cross is supreme in the message of the gospel. But secondly, The second truth I want us to see from the passage before us is that the cross is supreme in the calling of the church. The cross is supreme in the calling of the church. We see that beginning in verse 26. In verse 26, Paul is going to transition from elaborating on the message of the cross itself to the identity of those called by God. Look at verse 26. We have already seen that the message of the cross itself demonstrates that God's wisdom overcomes man's wisdom. But here in verse 26, we see another part, another way in which God's wisdom destroys that of man or man's natural expectations. We see this both in who are called, the identity of those who are called, and also what these called ones boast in, what they glory in. So first, those who are called. Verse 26 tells us that God has not called many of the wise, the mighty, the noble of this world to be his people. The phrase, after the flesh, that Paul uses there in verse 26 could be translated according to human standards or from a human perspective. The believers that God has called into His church do not primarily come from those viewed by the world as wise, as wealthy, or powerful. We need to be careful here. Because Paul is not saying that we need to be intentionally anti-intellectual or that we need to intentionally live below the poverty line or intentionally abase ourselves in those ways. But we need to understand, as one commentator said, that Paul's point is that being wise or influential or well-born cannot possibly be a criterion of being a Christian or of being spiritual. In the days of the great evangelist George Whitefield, it said of the Countess of Huntington, that she pithily, she pithily put it this way, that she was saved by an M. The scriptures do not state that not any noble ones are called, but rather that not many, many noble ones are called. So the bottom line here that we see before us is that the church is composed of believers of varied income levels, of varied cultural and racial backgrounds. and is not to be characterized and dominated by those who are wise, wealthy, and powerful according to the world's standards." And again, this shows the wisdom of God as we see the reason for this in verses 27 through 29. Note verse 27. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen. Yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. Once again, we see that God has chosen to frustrate the pretentious expectations of foolish men. God has called people who are insignificant and weak in the eyes of the world. In many cases, His grace bypasses the rich and the powerful of the world in order to save the nobodies. and bring them into his church and use them there to make much of his name to spread forth the beauty, the glory of his great name. God does this to demolish human pride and to bring all the glory and salvation to himself. One Christian pastor has noted that God delights to prick all the pretensions of this rebellious world. Where proud men and women parade their mighty intellects, God chooses the simple. Where wealthy people assess each other on the basis of their respective holdings, God chooses the poor. Where self-centered leaders lust for power, God chooses the nobodies. God in his gracious sovereignty has ordered the composition of his church as verse 29 declares us, so that no flesh can glory in his presence. Certainly the Lord does use some Christians who have wealth or have even much wisdom in the eyes of the world. That's not in itself a bad thing, but the point that the apostle is getting at is that so much of the church is composed by those who are weak and insignificant in the eyes of the world. What's the bottom line? What's the point that the apostle is getting at as he writes under inspiration? So that no flesh can glory in God's presence. So that no one can come before the Lord and claim their own wisdom, claim their own strength as the reason for why they were called. It's all of God's gracious sovereignty. And brothers and sisters, this truth is incredibly encouraging to our hearts. You may think of yourself as weak, as insignificant, that you really, you may think you don't have much to offer the Lord, offer the work of the gospel, even offer the church. But remember, believer and friend, that He delights to use weak instruments to show forth His strength. He delights to take that which appears to the world as foolish and frustrate the wisdom of the world and show forth His glory and His might and His power. In the opening verses of 1 Corinthians chapter 2, the next chapter there, Paul tells the Corinthian believers that he came to them in weakness and fear and in much trembling. His speech and his preaching was not with the enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power. And that's an encouragement even to my own heart, that what the Lord uses, he uses weak instruments, he uses the things that are viewed as foolish in the eyes of the world to exalt his own name, to bring all the glory and salvation to himself. So that's the identity of those who are called. They are often the weak and the insignificant of the world, so that no flesh will glory in the presence of God. And as we conclude this evening, I want us to see, lastly here, what these called ones boast in. What these believers whom God has called, what is their boast? What do they glory in? Look at verse 30. But of him, of God, are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. In verse 30, the apostle declares that true wisdom from God is to be the boast of the Corinthian believers and our boast as well. The wisdom from God is, you can understand that phrase, the wisdom, that Christ of God is made unto us wisdom. You can understand righteousness, sanctification, and redemption as that which qualifies that wisdom from God. You could read the verse in this way. The wisdom from God is namely justification, sanctification, and redemption. Because of our union with Jesus Christ by virtue of his life, death, and resurrection, We are justified, we are sanctified in Him, and we anticipate the final completion of redemption when we are made perfect in holiness, in body and soul. In short, everything we need to save us, to keep us, to sanctify us, To present us one day perfect in body and soul is found in Christ. Now our own efforts are necessary in sanctification. We must strive for holiness. We must put sin to death. We must put on Christ. But what we need to understand here is that our boast is in Christ alone. All that is necessary for us to live, all that we need for life and for godliness is found in Christ. And this is a message that we need to come back to time and again. How often do we find ourselves trying to strive after holiness, trying to strive after godliness and our own strength? We need to understand who we are in Christ. That in Him we are justified. In Him we have the power for sanctification by virtue of our union with Him. And that one day we anticipate the final redemption of all things. Redemption when it's used in that sort of series. Righteousness and sanctification and redemption. It anticipates that last day when Christ returns to make all things new, when we will be changed body and soul, perfectly being conformed into His image for His glory. And so what do we boast in? Verse 31, according as it is written, referring back to Jeremiah chapter 9, the Apostle Paul declares, Do not boast in man's wisdom. Do not boast in man's pride or anything that man can do. Boast in the cross of Christ alone. Remember what Paul said in Galatians 6.14, The cross of Christ is supreme in the message of the gospel. The message that we hold dear of the cross, the gospel of Christ, is not a message that man's wisdom concocted. It's not a message that we came up with. Rather, it is a message that centers on the wisdom of God and the cross of Christ. As the Lord Jesus absorbed the full wrath of God against our sins, His blood, His righteousness alone has saved us. The cross is also supreme in our identity and calling as believers. We need to remember this truth. It is the message of the gospel. It is the cross of Christ that brings us together. It's not because we are all the same in every other area. It's because we have a common salvation by faith alone in Christ alone. That's what unites us as believers. That's what we center around. Our boast together as a body is in the Lord Jesus Christ and His cross alone. My burden for you all, brothers and sisters, is that you would never lose the wonder. That you would never lose the wonder. of all that God has done for you in Christ. That it would define our relationships one with another and that we would spread the message of the cross to the lost around us. May the words that we sing and worship together right before the sermon be the message that truly grips our hearts. The cross He bore, that our Savior bore, is life and health, though shame and death to Him. His people's hope, His people's wealth, their everlasting theme. May the Lord bless His word to our hearts. Let's all pray. Oh Lord, our gracious God, we thank you for the message of the cross. Lord, we thank you that we have not contrived a clever message, a clever way to save ourselves, but we thank you that you have stooped in grace to redeem us. We thank you for our Savior, the Lord Jesus. We thank you for his finished work on Calvary's cross. We thank you for redeeming us, for opening our ears to the preaching and the preaching of your word, unstopping our ears, opening our eyes to the truth and the beauty of Christ our Savior. Thank you for giving us hearts to believe this gospel message. And I pray, Lord, that it would continue to be the thing that we glory in, not our own strength, not our own wisdom, but the glory of the gospel alone. And Lord, I pray for any among us who are outside of Christ, Lord, who have never bowed the knee to Christ as their savior and king. Lord, will you not come near tonight, convict them of their sin, open their eyes to their own frailty and helplessness apart from Christ and bring them to yourself? Lord, abide with us. Lord, I pray that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit would be with us now and forever, for your glory alone. Amen.