Well, let's turn our attention to God's Word this morning. You can see in your bulletin our passage, 1 Corinthians 1. So if you have your Bibles, let's turn to that passage. The bulletin says it's verses 18 through 31, and that's sort of true, but I'm going to do something rather unusual. I'm just going to read one verse. When's the last time you had that happen, right? I'm going to expand out and, of course, touch on other verses as we go, but I think sometimes it's helpful just to hear one and one only to let it sink in what we're going to be doing today. And then we'll unpack it in the surrounding context. And of course, this is a verse that's well known. I trust all of you have heard this verse many times, but sometimes when you hear it afresh in light of our current context, it has a fresh meaning for us. So let's listen as God speaks to us today. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18. 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. Amen. Let's pray and ask God to bless the reading of his word this morning. Lord, we confess, Lord, that it's hard to be in a world where your word is looked at as foolishness. But Lord, we pray that you'd give us wisdom as we seek to be faithful in your calling to us to still engage that world. And Lord, let us remember as we do so that even though the world looks at your word as foolish, it is the very good news, the gospel. While sitting here this morning, you already know what I'm about to tell you. And that is, it is hard being a believer in the world today. Whether you've been walking with God for five years or for 50 years, you know that it's not easy to be a Christian in our world. We feel pushed and pulled and pressed in upon. Sometimes we feel like outsiders, marginalized, sort of cut off, even persecuted. And it's difficult being a Christian in our world today. But you know, of all the things that are hard about being a Christian today, there's one I think that stands out above all the rest, and that is the way that our faith is viewed as intellectually deficient. It is academically bankrupt, if you will. People look at our faith and say, you Christians believe the craziest things, foolish things, ridiculous things, things that no normal people believe. And if you think about it a moment this morning, we do believe all kinds of things. that it may be hard for people to believe. I mean, we believe in an invisible God that you cannot see or at least empirically prove like our world wants us to. We believe in spiritual entities. We believe in angels and demons. We believe in miraculous interventions. We believe that seas can be parted. axe heads can float and that the sun can stop in the sky. We believe that diseases can be healed and demons can be exercised and people can be raised from the dead. And then above all that, we believe in a moral code that our world looks at as sort of outdated and antiquated and unattainable and maybe even prudish. And then above and beyond that, we have a moral code that's looked at as offensive and narrow and maybe even dogmatic. And you Christians believe that you're right and everybody else is wrong. Now, as you hear that long laundry list this morning, you're thinking, wow, why do I believe in Christianity, right? In fact, you're probably sitting there, and no doubt there's this little tickle in the back of your mind, and you're thinking, it is hard sometimes to be a Christian. And why does it seem like the smartest people in the world are the very ones who aren't Christians? Why does it seem like the intellectual elites are the very ones who don't believe? World view is so compelling, why don't more people follow it? Now if you hear that sort of laundry list of critiques and you wonder in your own mind why we believe what we believe, and you wonder why the intellectual elites don't follow suit, you would be in exactly the same situation as the Corinthian church. When Paul wrote this letter to Corinth, you have to understand the setting they found themselves in. Corinth was not far from Athens. It was actually in its own right a philosophical hub They prided themselves on sort of keeping up with the latest philosophies that would come in and go out, and they were always tracking to make sure that they were the sharpest thinkers. And there was a sort of a philosophical community there where they would sort of analyze and critique ideas. And then Christianity came to Corinth, and a church started in Corinth, and the gospel began to grow in Corinth. But finally, the Christians in Corinth looked at Paul and said, hold on a second, Paul. If this Christianity thing is so true, then why is it that the scribes and the scholars and the philosophers don't believe? Christianity is true, why does it seem like the smartest people don't believe it? The Corinthian Church is ironically in a very similar situation that we are today in 2019. So this little passage Verse 18 and around it has a lot to say to us today about what it looks like to make it in a world that's so hostile to the Christian faith. So here's what we want to do. We want to break down this text and also look at some of the surrounding verses and notice that Paul's going to help us do this. Paul's going to help us. It really makes it what I'll call make some adjustments, right? In ourselves. And as we make some adjustments, he's saying, you need to make these three adjustments today. If you're going to make it in a hostile world, faithful to Christ, in his gospel. So let's just jump right in. Make sure your Bibles are open there to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Certainly verse 18 is going to be the centerpiece, but we're going to look out at some other verses surrounding this as well. So what's the first adjustment Paul wants us to make? First, he wants you to adjust your expectations. Adjust your expectations. He wants you and I to realize that Christianity will always look foolish in the eyes of the world unless God intervenes by his spirit. Adjust your expectations. Here's what Paul knows. Paul knows that you and I have this belief in the back of our mind that is there and we don't even realize it's there. In fact, it's a belief I imagine most of us have probably grown up holding. It's a belief we've never really analyzed or thought much about, but the belief basically goes something like this. We think that if something is true, most people will believe it. What do you think about that with me for a moment? I imagine that you and I do too probably believe that we think if something is true, by golly, most people will believe it. And if most people believe something, the corollary is probably the case, which if most people believe something, then it's probably true. And we actually operate without assumption in our mind for most of our lives. We just assume that's the case. And it's precisely that line of thinking that's going to land us in a quandary. It's actually exactly that line of thinking. That's what Paul wants to push back against. In fact, I run into this all the time in my field of biblical studies. I spend a lot of time doing research in the New Testament and the Bible, and one of the most common questions I get when I go speak places is, hold on a second, if the Bible's really God's word, then why is it that most scholars have rejected it? Pretty good question, right? I mean, if the Bible is really the great book we say it is, then why is it when I look at all these scholars out there in the world, the vast majority of them don't think so. But notice what's lurking behind the question. What's lurking behind the question is exactly this assumption, this idea that if something is true, we just assume most people will probably believe it's true. And then Paul says, hold on. What you have to realize is that actually the very opposite is the case. You have to realize that your non-Christian friends, when they come to hear God's word and when they're faced with the Christian worldview, they don't step into that scenario as neutral people. They're not blank slates. It's not as if they don't have a worldview. They already have a set of assumptions and beliefs built into them, hardwired into them, and that assumption and beliefs are hardwired against God at every turn. Listen to verse 1 again, or verse 18, I should say, again in our passage. For the word of the cross is folly to them. They don't see it as something that's credible. They see it as foolishness. They see it as ridiculous. In other words, Paul is saying, look, unless God opens a person's eyes, you need to realize that they will regard Christianity as foolish. But here's the key. That has nothing to do with whether it's true. simply has to do with understanding the way people work. Now, if in fact most people reject the gospel by virtue of the fact that they are hardwired as fallen people against God and that without God's grace they will never see, what's interesting about what Paul does here is he actually takes us a little deeper into what it is that people object to about the gospel. What he does is he actually divides the whole world, which is typical of Paul, into two groups. Jews and Greeks. And Paul says, you know what? I'll tell you why they find the gospel foolish, and here's why. And he starts with the Jews, and I want you to see this in verse 23 of your passage. Skip down a few verses. It says here, starting actually in verse 22, for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews. In other words, Paul says, let me explain to you why the Jews have rejected the gospel, because it's a stumbling block to them. And it's an interesting word that Paul uses. It's the word skandalon in Greek. Now, as soon as I say the word skandalon, you're thinking, Well, that sounds like the English word scandal, and you'd be right. It's in fact exactly what Paul wants to say, is that for the Jews, the idea of a crucified Savior was utterly scandalous. It was unthinkable. There's no way God would ever do that with his Messiah. The best English word you can think of here is it would have been almost an obscene idea to suggest that God's chosen one, his Messiah, would absolutely be defeated, destroyed, and crucified by the Romans. That's not what the Messiah was supposed to do for the Jews. In the Jews' mind, the Messiah was supposed to defeat the Romans. He was supposed to throw off power. He was supposed to win, not lose. Paul says, don't you see? The Jews wanted God to show up and flex his muscles, and yet, instead of that, you get a crucified Savior. That is scandalous, and they will not believe apart from grace. Paul, though, also has something to say about the Gentiles. I don't know if you saw that in verse 22, what he calls the Greeks. What's, what's their holdup? Why is it that they don't believe? Well, he says, well, they're always seeking wisdom. Now at first glance, you're like, well, that's a pretty good thing, isn't it? What's interesting though, is the word wisdom here is this Greek word Sophia and Paul doesn't mean that they're seeking biblical wisdom. What he means is they're seeking worldly wisdom. And what he means by that is they're seeking the latest, greatest philosophies. They pride themselves on having the most acceptable ideas in the Greco-Roman world. And I can tell you this, and Paul knows this, the idea of a crucified Savior is not an acceptable idea in the Roman world. As you know, the Roman world, crucifixion, was the height of humiliation. You know, we tend to think that crucifixion is about causing pain. Now there's some truth in that. There's certainly as far as forms of torture invented in the ancient world, crucifixion would be near the top of the list. I don't think anyone would doubt that, but that's actually not the main point of crucifixion. The main point of crucifixion for Romans is humiliation. It was to put on display someone as utterly unworthy, rejected and banished. And they put them in public places for that exact reason. Why, if you wanted to just torture someone, you could do that in private, but with crucifixion, they do it in public. You imagine going to a Roman and saying, oh, I want you to worship a crucified savior. They'd look at you like you had two heads. What, what, what, why? That doesn't make sense. That's not what wisdom is in our mind. It's interesting years ago, uh, and in my field, I get to discover these things cause they, they sort of come to me naturally, but there was an archeological dig outside the city of Rome not long ago. And in this archaeological dig, they were uncovering an ancient Roman wall, actually dated back to about the second century after Christ. And as they uncovered this ancient Roman wall, the archaeologists began to realize that written on it was graffiti. And if you think people writing on walls in the modern day is a new thing, think again, right? People have been writing on walls for thousands of years. And in this particular scenario, they saw, as they uncovered this Roman wall, someone had drawn a picture of a cross. and a person hanging on the cross. But the person hanging on the cross had the head of a donkey. And then below the cross was a figure of a man bowing down in worship. And then the person who wrote the graffiti in Greek wrote above this whole scene, Alexa Menos worships his God. Now, Alexa Menos is just the Roman name, Greek name for Alex, okay? And apparently Alexa Menos was a Christian. And what was this graffiti designed to do? To mock him! Look at Alexa Menos, worships his God, the Savior on the cross, and having the head of a donkey was a sign in the Roman world of humiliation. And what you see in this Roman graffiti is exactly what the Romans believed about the cross. They already knew before you even told them that any idea of a crucified Savior is ruled out from the outset. What's Paul's point? Here's Paul's point. He's like, don't you realize that when you present the gospel to someone, it runs against everything they already believe? Ever wonder what man would do if they made up their own religion? What if people could just create their own religion? What would it look like? Imagine, it's not hard to imagine. It'd probably be a religion where man doesn't really need God very much at all. And God's there when you might call on him from time to time, but you don't really need them. If a man created his own religion or probably a place where he can figure most things out on his own, if man were to create a religion, there'd be no wrath, no sin, no judgment, certainly no heaven and hell. If. If man were to create a religion, God would be pretty laid back in heaven, sort of this old grandpa figure, just wants you to be happy and to live whatever lifestyle you want. If man were to create a religion, it'd probably be a religion where he gets the glory and the credit. And if there's anyone doing any saving, that man would save himself. If humans would create a religion, it would look nothing like Christianity. And Paul's point is, don't you see, when you present the gospel to that, what are your expectations exactly? It requires a supernatural intervention of God for someone to break out of that and embrace the gospel. Now, praise to God that he does those supernatural interventions, right? And he does save people. But Paul wants you to adjust your expectations. Don't be surprised at the rejection of the gospel by the world, even in great numbers. It's got nothing to do with whether it's true. Now, Paul has a second adjustment this morning he wants us to make, not just adjusting our expectations, but secondly, and this is important too, he wants us to adjust our thinking. He wants us to adjust our minds for a moment. He wants us to realize, contrary to what we might initially think, that it's actually non-Christian thinking that's foolish, not Christian thinking. And here's where I think Paul is anticipating a misunderstanding. As soon as you say the word of the cross is folly, as soon as you say the word of the cross is foolishness, I think Paul recognizes that there's some believers out there that might think it's actually foolish. It's almost like there's some believers out there that might respond by saying, okay, well I guess I just have a foolish faith, I guess I just have a nonsensical religion, but I guess it's the best I've got and it works for me, and so I guess I'll just stick with it anyway. And Paul wants to just put the brakes on and go, hold on a second. You misunderstood me. When I said the word of the cross is foolish, I didn't mean it was actually intellectually foolish. I just meant it's intellectually foolish in the eyes of the world. And in fact, and this is what Paul does secondly here. In fact, Paul says, I want you to realize that the real foolish thinking is not Christian thinking. The real foolish thinking is actually non-Christian thinking. The people with an intellectual problem are not Christians. The people with intellectual problem are non-Christians. In other words, Paul wants to say there's a bit of a paradox going on. It looks like Christianity is foolish, but actually the opposite is the case. Christianity, as Paul will show, is intellectually robust. Christianity actually makes sense. Christianity can explain what we see in the world. Christianity is academically coherent. In fact, it's non-Christian thinking, when you start looking into it, that ends up falling apart. Now, there's probably a certain sense in which we all need to hear that today. I think evangelicalism as a whole needs to hear that today. There's certain wings of evangelicalism that honestly have a fairly anti-intellectual bent about them. And that can even seep into our churches, right? And the anti-intellectual bent is where someone says, well, look, you know, It doesn't really matter whether Christianity makes sense. It doesn't matter whether it's intellectually coherent. I just want to keep believing because it makes me feel a certain way. And I don't want to hear the tough questions. I don't want to engage in the tough issues. I just want to believe and just hunker down and just do my thing. And what people realize then is that Christianity ends up becoming just this experience. And they're not concerned at all about its intellectual, doctrinal, theological coherence. And Paul says, no, no, no, no. It really matters whether Christianity makes sense. And it does. And it's actually non-Christian thinking that's got the problems. Now, when you break down this passage, that just raises the question, what is Paul's big complaint then about non-Christian thinking? What is it that he thinks is the big problem here? Well, there's so much that could be said if we had time in a passage like this where Paul breaks down non-Christian thinking. But I want you to just get the nub of it. In all of Paul's discussion, he narrows it down to one main complaint. What is the problem with non-Christian thinking? It's simply this. It depends fully and utterly and entirely on human wisdom. On human wisdom. In other words, what Paul is saying is like, here's my complaint against all those philosophers in Corinth that you're so impressed with, you Corinthians. I know you think they're great. I know you think they make a lot of sense. I know you think they're wonderful and that they are impressive people. But don't you realize that when all is settled, all they have are their own brains. Their own minds, their own fallen, fallible human minds is all they've got. And why would you? The only thing they can offer you is their own limited, finite, fallen perspective on the world. They have access to nothing beyond themselves. In fact, we pick up on this very theme here in this passage of Paul's sort of challenge to the scholars in verse 20. Notice down in that verse what happens. Paul sort of issues this challenge. Look what he says. Where is the one who's wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Notice what Paul is saying here. Bring them all on. All your smartest people. Everyone you think is great and makes sense and is wise and is intelligent. They're scholars, after all. Bring them all on. When you compare them to the divine wisdom of God, they cannot hold a candle to what God is like. In fact, notice how Paul turns the tables here. Although Christianity looks foolish, notice what Paul says, God has made their views foolish. Has he not shown how foolish is the wisdom of the world? Now in order to sort of let this sink in a little bit in terms of Paul's complaint, I want you to think back for a moment to a recent conversation you had with a non-Christian friend. Maybe it was last week, last month, maybe it was last year, maybe it was 10 years ago. Whatever happens to be, you think about a conversation you have with your non-Christian friend and how they typically go. And they're all different, I know, but I can assure you, I've been in enough of them myself and know enough of them, and you have too, to know there's a fairly standard thing that happens in those conversations. And what I want you to notice, if you think back to that conversation, the amazing, grand, sweeping truth claims that your non-Christian friend makes. In a conversation, he'll tell you about what God is like. if he exists at all, what he prefers or doesn't prefer. They'll tell you what God would do or wouldn't do. They'll tell you what God's character is and how God feels about things. And they'll tell you about eternal matters. And they'll tell you about heaven and how you get there. salvation, what it means, and whether a person can be saved, whether everyone's saved, whether just some people are saved, and how it happens. They can tell you about hell, and about whether it even exists, or whether it doesn't exist, and how you avoid it. They can tell you all about these religious truths, and about the way eternity works. They have all these opinions and all these thoughts, grand, amazing, sweeping truth claims. They're convinced are true. They share them with you. They tell you you're wrong. And Paul, if he were on the scene, would have one simple question to your non-Christian friend, which is this, how do you know any of that? How do you know what God would prefer or not prefer? How do you know what God likes or doesn't like? How do you know about eternal matters and salvation and heaven and hell when all you have is your own human wisdom? Do you have access to these things that I'm unaware of, says Paul? Now, here's where it highlights the unique position the Christian is in when we talk about worldviews. We're not depending on simply our own wisdom. We're depending on God's own revealed truth. We're saying, yes, in effect, that even though I don't personally know about heaven and hell and salvation, God knows and has revealed that in his word. In other words, we as Christians are arguing that divine revelation has been laid out in scripture, and therefore we do know what God prefers and doesn't prefer and likes and doesn't like, because God has revealed it in his word. Now, at this point, I know what your non-Christian friends will say, because they say it to me too, and they're like, well, I don't believe the Bible. You Christians believe the Bible is the Word of God. Well, I don't believe that. But that's missing the point. It doesn't matter whether they believe it. The point is clear, and that is which worldview, ours or theirs, has any basis for making grand sweeping truth claims? I mean, at least if you're going to make grand sweeping truth claims about eternity, you ought to at least claim to have some way to get to eternal matters in a divine mind. And that's exactly what Christians claim. And what you realize Paul's complaint is, is that why would you build your whole life about eternal matters on simply human wisdom? Now imagine even here this morning, there's probably some of you that are here and maybe you're on an intellectual quest of sorts. Maybe you're not sure what you believe about all this Christianity stuff. Maybe you fancy yourself the skeptic. Always on the hunt for truth. You're going to figure it out someday, you think. You're going to understand whether you're saved this way or saved that way or whether God is real or what God is like and so on. You'll figure it out, right? Paul comes to all of us today and says, hold on a second. It doesn't matter how smart you are. It doesn't matter how many PhDs you have. If you're going to know anything about eternal matters, you need access to someone eternal. You need access to God himself. Otherwise, it is intellectual dust in the wind. The only way you can have any certainty at all is if you rely on the divine mind and not on human wisdom. Now that's Paul's second adjustment. Let's look at the third and last one here. So Paul wants to, as we've already seen, to adjust our expectations right about Why people reject the faith when we present it to them. And then secondly, he wants us to realize that Christianity actually makes a lot more sense given that it's dependent on God and not merely on human wisdom. And then third and finally, he wants us to adjust our attitudes. He wants to adjust our attitudes to remember that if you understand the way Christianity works, it's designed to bring intellectual humility. It's geared towards humility. Now, we have to define what we mean by that, and Paul does. highlight that. Here's where I think Paul anticipates, in this third point, another misunderstanding. Just like in the prior point, he's sort of heading off a misconception, I think he's heading off another misconception here. As soon as he says that the world's wisdom is foolish, and that Christianity, in effect, makes sense, he knows there's another danger out there, and that is this danger of Christians standing up going, wow, you mean I've got a faith that makes sense? I mean, I've got a faith that's coherent and that's non-Christian thinking it's actually foolish? Well, if that's true, then I must be a pretty smart fellow. Paul realizes there's this danger that Christians might be rather impressed with their own intellectual abilities. They might, in fact, start concluding that, you know, I must be smarter than the next guy. The reason I'm a believer is because I figured it out and not my non-Christian friend. And I think in this third adjustment, Paul is, again, putting the brakes on it, going, hold on a second. Yes, it's true that Christianity makes sense. Yes, it's true that non-Christian thinking has got intellectual problems. But it's not true that you're a Christian because of how smart you are. And it's not true that you have any grounds for pride at all. If you understood how this works, it would not lead to intellectual pride, it would lead to intellectual humility. Paul goes on in this passage very simply to point out that you Corinthians are Christians not because you're intelligent and you're smart, because God has opened up your eyes to the truth by his grace. How does Paul make that point? Well, actually rather bluntly, I think rather humorously in this passage, Paul makes that point by actually telling the Corinthians, you know, I know it's not because of how smart you are because you're not very smart. I want you to notice this first 26 we read over it. Don't realize what Paul's doing here. Look what it says in verse 26 for consider your calling brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Ouch. Paul's like, okay, so let's just get it on the table. You're not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Intellectually speaking, you Corinthians. Yeah. On a worldly standards, you're not up on the upper scale of the intellectual elites. I want to point out. He says, Paul, that you believe these things because of him, not because of you. In fact, in verse 30, he uses his exact language because of him. You believe because of him, you understand it's all about grace. Here's what Paul wants. Paul doesn't want the Corinthians to act like the philosophers in Corinth. The philosophers in Corinth are rather pleased with themselves. Look how smart we are. Everybody else is an idiot because we're the most intelligent. No, no, no. If you understand the Christian worldview, you understand that, yes, it's true, but not because of me. And I have no stake here in terms of my own pride. And then I can let that go and say, I only get it fully and entirely by grace. You know what that means? There's a tremendous implication of that for your life and my life, and I want you to hear this this morning. If that's true, and it is, that means that we as Christians can be both absolutely humble and absolutely certain at the same time. I'm gonna say that again. If what Paul is saying here is true, then that means that we as Christians can be absolutely humble and absolutely certain about what we believe at the same time. Now, why is that so radical? Because our world will not let you put those two things together. Ever notice how our world defines humility as uncertainty? That's the definition of humility according to our world, that if you're really humble, you're uncertain about everything. If you're really humble, you walk around saying all the time, well, I don't really know what to believe, and I really don't know what's true, and I really don't know if you're right or I'm right, and it's just all vague and foggy. That's humility in the mind of the world. That is not the biblical definition of humility. Don't take the bait on that. What you realize in the biblical definition of humility is I can be absolutely certain. Why? Because God has revealed things to us in his word, and I can be absolutely humble. Why? Because God has revealed things to us in his word. You can be humble and certain together. You know, there's another implication, though, of this idea that the Christian faith brings intellectual humility And it's not just that we need to realize that we are the recipients of grace and we're not Christians because of how smart we are. There's a second implication here, and that is, it reminds us that when we present the gospel to people, that it doesn't need improvement by us. It doesn't need an apology from us. And let's be honest, there's a sense in which we think that's the case. We tend to think that people become Christians because of how well we articulate it. That people become Christians because we're such good communicators. Or that people become Christians as long as I don't offend someone. Paul says, no, if you realize that people become believers because God opens their eyes by grace, then it's not your job to change, improve, or modify the message. Your job is to deliver it faithfully. And we need to hear that today, I think, because sometimes we have, if we're honest, a tendency to want to change and modify a message. Never been in a conversation with your non-Christian friends and you thought to yourself, man, if I get ready to say what I'm getting ready to say, they're going to be really upset. They're going to be really mad at me and they're never going to want to hear anything more about Christianity again. So maybe I should sort of modify things a little bit. Maybe I should, I'll just leave that part out for now and I'll just include this part over here and I'll just sort of reshape the message in a way that makes it more receivable by those I'm talking to and Here's what I want you to hear today from this passage from Paul, saying God doesn't need us to improve his message. The message is wonderful and glorious as it stands. All he needs us to do is to faithfully deliver it. And we know we can faithfully deliver it with confidence because it's God's job to open up people's eyes by his power to see the truth for what it is. So rather than being embarrassed by it, apologizing for it, modifying it, trying to find a way around it, God says, remember that even though it's foolish in the eyes of the world, to those who believe it's the very power of God. Faithfully deliver the gospel in the midst of a hostile world is all that God calls us to do. You know, it's interesting, when you look at these three things together, they really do fit together as sort of a recipe. for how to think about surviving a hostile world. I mean, we've got to have the right expectations, right, about what people's response is going to be. Then secondly, we need to realize that there's a way to think intellectually about the faith. We realize that I'm not a Christian because of how smart I am. But that does mean, still though, Paul wants us to see that Christianity does make sense. And we need to make sure we engage with our minds. And then thirdly, as we've just seen, it should also create a posture of gratefulness and thankfulness. Not a posture of pride and disdain for those who don't believe. In fact, I'll talk more about that in Sunday school in the next hour. But a posture of thankfulness to God that he opened our eyes to see. Now what's curious is the archaeological dig I told you about earlier, it continued on past what they found. So in archaeology, when you have an ancient Roman wall, there's usually accretions on the outside, and they scrape these away very carefully over time. And it revealed the graffiti I told you about. this crucified Savior hanging on the cross with the head of a donkey, this man worshiping at his feet, and this mocking. Alexa Menos worships his God. How silly, right? What's interesting is as they uncovered the wall further, they realized someone had actually written a response. Kind of like modern graffiti, right? It's like a debate back and forth on the wall. And someone had written a response. And the response they wrote in rebuttal to the first line was, Alexa Menos is faithful. Alexa Menos is faithful. Apparently a Christian had come by and saw the mockery, maybe even knew this person, Alexa Menos. He says, no, this isn't worthy of shame. Alexa Menos is faithful to worship what is in your eyes a silly religion, but in truth is the very power of God. That is the call for us. God does not call us to be intellectual giants. He does not call us to all go get PhDs. He does not call us to always be the most articulate. We stumble and fail all the time when we speak. But he is, he is calling us to be faithful. Be faithful even in the midst of a hostile world. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Amen, let's pray. Lord, we pause and confess that we don't always believe this. Lord, we confess that sometimes we think Christianity is actually foolish, and that there's no power there at all. But Lord, use this passage to encourage us, remind us that, in fact, it does make sense. And Lord, that it is powerful to save. And Lord, give us the strength and the endurance to faithfully speak that truth in the midst of a hostile world. We pray all this in Christ's name.