The Upside-Down Kingdom

We're going to open our Bibles to First Corinthians chapter one, and we're going to read the last sort of half of that chapter. First Corinthians chapter one, verses 18 through to verse 31. And you'll be able to follow that up on the screen, but as always, it's good to have your own Bibles because we will jump around, and we love studying God's word together. So it is good for us to have that open. First Corinthians one, verse 18, Paul writes, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing.

But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.

So far our reading. The great church father and theologian Martin Luther wrote in an article or a book at the time—I can't remember which one it was—about the contrast of glory and the cross. The theology of glory, he called it, and the theology of the cross. Now, you know that the word theology means the study of God or the understanding of God. So this was, in context, an understanding of God through glory or an understanding of God through the cross, and he holds these two as contrasting and sometimes competing ideas.

In a theology of glory, an understanding of God's true glory, he said, we ascend a sacred mountain to encounter a big God in His creative, awesome power. Approaching God through a theology of glory is to marvel at an impressive God, to try and figure Him out. Someone might take a hike through the countryside with a theology of glory and think, wow, isn't this amazing that the God who created this must be very powerful. He must be very big, the one who created this. And in response to this big God, I must behave.

He is very big. I am very small. He is more powerful than I am. So I must obey Him. A theology of glory will drive someone to unmask God or at least to attempt to unmask God in all His brilliance and glory.

But God, if you understand the Bible, if you understand the theology of the cross, refuses to be found out there. Ultimately, even though His fingerprints are all throughout the earth and in creation, we see aspects of God. Even Romans one tells us that, but He doesn't reveal Himself to mankind through this way primarily. If God was to let Himself be discovered through some esoteric spiritual reflection on creation, I think if we were to find Him that way, it would fuel our pride. It would fuel our desire for control.

Our pursuit of God would be hijacked by our corrupted nature of sin, where we would seek God's glory because really we're only seeking our own. If we could find God in the glory of creation, in other words, we could approach God on our terms based upon an unfolding understanding of who God is and what is around us. I think if you were to think of world religions today, if you were to go and study them, you could focus on the ones that do have this meditative aspect to it. A lot of our Eastern theologies, right—Hinduism or Buddhism, for example—somehow God or the gods that they discover is a god. Actually, if you pull the thread, it is a god in their own image. The god that they meditate on in the world around them is a god made in their own image.

Yet Paul says here in what we've just read that we find God through a theology of the cross. And he holds that against this theology of glory that at least in the understanding of glory that we have, we see a God here who is intentionally hidden, who hides Himself intentionally. Paul says mystery. And He instead reveals Himself in a way that we wouldn't expect—in weakness, in suffering, in shame.

At the cross, God reveals Himself most clearly to humankind through a death, through affliction, through rejection. Now, if you look again closely enough and reflect deeply enough, this is not unusual. Even in the Old Testament, we see God taking Israel, a nation who is the least of all the nations in the world—He calls them a nation He finds as slaves of an impressive nation of Egypt. He takes the last and the least of the nations, and he brings them out of Egypt, and He says He puts His name, His glory on them.

Somehow, Israel's health, Israel's growth is a reflection of the glory of God. Who does that? In the New Testament church, Paul is alluding to it here, but we can read it many other places. God doesn't choose disciples, followers that are the brightest or the boldest, the ones that are the most charming and charismatic to get this movement rolling. He takes fishermen.

He takes slaves. He takes men and women with shady backgrounds, tax collectors and prostitutes, and He launches a revolution through them. And this is what Paul is getting at here in First Corinthians chapter one as he begins his letter to these Corinthians as well. He calls them. I don't know how you'd feel if your pastor wrote this to you, but he says pretty much to them, not many of you were wise. Not very clever at all.

Not many of you are actually very powerful. Not many of you are very noble. Paul actually says there are two types of people in this world. Paul calls the theology of the cross foolishness to some ears and power for other ears. Two types of people: those who think the gospel is foolishness and those who think the gospel is God's power personified.

Verse 18: for the word of the cross, the word, the message of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. And Paul is saying that there are these two types of people in the world. Five times in eight verses, Paul uses the word foolishness or folly to describe the unexpected nature of the gospel message. The Greek word is moriah. The adjective in Greek is moros, which is where we get our English word.

Can you guess which one? Moron. From moron. The idea of something that is moronic is to be ridiculous, someone to be ignorant or stupid. Now I want to ask you: how many times have you heard someone say of Christians, they are idiots or fools or morons?

Christianity is ignorant or stupid or ridiculous? What Paul begins by saying in First Corinthians one at the very beginning of his letter to this church is that many people will consider the message of Christianity, this belief in the cross, to be foolishness. And Paul says others will see the cross and say that is power personified. It is that stark. But why is there then this divide?

Why is there this rejection of some at the cross and some acceptance? That leads us to the second point with the question: what is the cause of repulsion to the gospel message? And we find that in verses 22 through to 25. Paul begins by explaining what the root cause of this rejection of the gospel is. In verse 21, Paul says ironically that in God's wisdom, God did not allow Himself to be found by wisdom.

He did not allow the world to figure Him out through thinking hard enough, investigating the world hard enough, and then joining all the dots together. That is not how God brings people to saving faith. He didn't allow the philosophers to find Him. Instead, verse 21, Paul says, it pleased God through the folly, the foolishness of what we preach to save those who believe. What is it that Paul preaches?

Well, he says it a bit later. He says, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That is what we preach. It wasn't the philosophers that discovered God. It was God revealed in Jesus Christ who went to the cross that Jesus showed Himself to mankind.

Paul says what keeps people from understanding this revelation is not how hard it is to understand Him. What will stop someone from believing that God has popped up in time and space is not simply the hard idea of the incarnation. It is pride. Pride is what stops belief. And it is exemplified by two instances that Paul talks about here.

He calls it wisdom and strength. He labels them wisdom and strength, and he holds out two examples that I think we can easily find in our context. He says, for the Jewish audience predominantly—and I'm sure there's always, you know, differences to the norm—but he says the Jews, they demanded power. They were looking for signs and miracles. They wanted to see strength from God to show that this is God speaking.

And then he says, then there were the Greeks. The Greeks who were asking for wisdom. They wanted logic. They wanted rationality. They wanted it to make sense.

I remember a conversation with someone I once had. His name was Brad, and he was an engineer who worked in the engineering workshop of a factory that I was a builder's labourer at. And we came to talk about God, and I explained the gospel to him pretty much. And he said to me, no. No. No.

I cannot. I cannot believe that. I'm a visual person. I have to see to believe.

We talked about what that means to see, and he said, well, God will have to come and stand next to me and reveal Himself to me before I will truly believe that He is real. In other words, Brad wanted his own personal fireworks show to experience the strength of God, a God who splits open the veil of the supernatural and the natural and steps through into time and space and says, here I am. In Paul's times, this is what the Jews were asking for. A sign, a miracle, and we will believe it if we see God's strength. Then he says the Greeks were asking, show us God's wisdom.

Show us how this all makes sense. Another friend of mine, Harry, who I have on my Facebook, who actually was a past teacher of mine, who's now a lecturer at a university who teaches teachers—he's a man very intelligent, a man who specialises in maths. And he sees himself as a scientific thinker, a scientific thinker. And he said to me, the Christian message is just too bizarre.

It is just too irrational. It offends my sensibilities. It doesn't condone what I condone. It doesn't sit well with modern civilised understandings. And this is complicated, of course, in the fact that he is a proud gay man.

Particularly offended at Christianity's view of sexuality and marriage. The gospel just doesn't sit well with him. It is not logical. In Paul's time, these were the Greeks. Show us how this message is wise and we will believe it.

Now, what God wants to point out this morning is that the heart of both of these positions, what lies at the heart of these positions, is not intelligence. It's not gullibility or lack thereof. It is not even a personal fireworks show or some special divine personal revelation. The barrier to belief is pride. To those who think they are wise, the gospel is foolishness.

To those who think they are strong, the gospel is weak. If God is so powerful, why doesn't He just turn up in my dreams and show Himself to me? But Paul writes the gospel message of the cross frustrates both the strong and the wise. At the end of the day, if you are a true believer, you've been utterly humiliated. Which leads us to the last point: the upside down kingdom with an unexpected King. It's a brilliant bit of wordplay that Paul does here.

It is amazing. If you are into poetry, if you could break this down, it is a wonderful playing on of words. But Paul begins to paint a picture of how God is wise by showing Himself to be unwise in the eyes of wise people. He paints his picture and he says the gospel is altogether stupefying and awesome. He sums it up in verses 27 through to 29, and I'll summarise it in this way.

He says, God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. Now, he's talking about both Jesus in that instance—the untrained carpenter from the backwaters of Rome—but he's also talking about the church, the slaves, the not so very noble, the not so very wise people of the church. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world, the despised things, the things that are not or should not be, to nullify and neutralise the things that are. With this result: so that no one may boast in pride.

I have another friend who I witnessed to for many years. She's also quite brilliant and was surprised one day when she became a Christian. Why was that? Because she had travelled the world, had pursued all sorts of wonderful experiences, had cared passionately for people, had strived to make the world a better place. And as we spoke from time to time, I encouraged her in my way to explore God a bit more.

And she, however, felt that she couldn't overcome some of her intellectual objections to God. Now, the amazing thing is she couldn't shake the feeling of what she only can describe as God pursuing her. She couldn't shake the feeling that He was always around. The thought of God would bug her all the time, and yet the more she picked up books to try and read about Him or to read arguments against Him, the more conflicted she became. She didn't really find an appeal to God intellectually at first.

He was too harsh. He was too strict. He was too one-sided. He loved some and He didn't love others. He exhausted from this struggle, however, she convinced herself that Christianity was a sham.

And yet she felt something was true. And in this frustration, she would collapse at the end of a thinking session on her bed, and she would resolve to give up on the impossible task of figuring out this God. She wouldn't believe. And yet almost immediately, she says there would be this overwhelming awareness of God's presence with her even when she gave up. And like a shadow that kept following her, wherever and whatever she would explore, she realised that she wasn't walking down some road towards God, but that God was pursuing her all along.

This friend of mine just stopped and turned around and received Jesus. She traded her pursuit of God for God's pursuit of her. And to her amazement, she didn't find God in the hallowed halls of philosophy or astrophysics, even though she explored that. She didn't find Him in human ethics or self-help books, even though she went down that path. She encountered Christ through scars and insecurities, through pain and frustration.

It was in the areas where she had not figured things out that Christ found her. And this is the way that all of us who are Christians have ultimately become true Christians—through the unexpectedness of the cross. The name Christian basically means little Christ, right? Someone who follows in the footsteps of Jesus.

And Jesus summed up what Christians do in this way. He said, if anyone wants to follow Me, they must deny themselves, die to themselves, take up their cross and follow Me. Jesus calls us to the way of the cross. But this cross is not some way that we break out of this world to get to God. It's a way that Jesus broke into our world to get to us.

The theology of the cross that Paul is talking about here shows this: a God who gives instead of takes. The theology of the cross also shows a God who self-sacrifices instead of self-protects, who dies rather than kills, who saves life through losing His own, who triumphs through a visible defeat, who makes others rich by giving away all His wealth and glory. This is God. But it is so hard for a culture of glory to accept. Watch any secular movie and when they imagine God—and they do that often—they will talk about God's largeness.

They will talk about God's wisdom or His oversight or His perfection. They will say that when we want to approach this God, we must approach Him with our best foot forward. If we can get ourselves together first, maybe we will find God as well. But in Christ, we see God beckoning us from brokenness—both our brokenness and His.

God breaks through the back door, not the front door. He goes and He dies in Judea, in Jerusalem, on a dusty cross on a lonely hill. This God invites us to encounter Him through our insecurities, through our brokenness in the pit of sin. He understands suffering. In fact, He waits for us there.

We think of things being hard and that we must get ourselves in order to see God clearer. God says He is already suffering and has suffered before we even arrived. This is why Paul writes in verse 24: to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks—he's saying anyone—to those who are called, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. When you find Him like that, it just makes sense. For those who have come to truly believe, we know that we must go to God through the cross.

And at the cross, we know that Jesus took our horrible fate. At the cross, we know the wrath of God was poured out on Him as punishment for my sin. My sin. Our pain and our suffering doesn't hold a candle to the suffering under God's eternal punishment for our rejection of His rule. And we know, don't we?

We know so clearly that the cross was necessary. It was necessary. There was no other way. If we had a million attempts over a million years, we would not have figured out this salvation ourselves. It is the wisdom of God, even in the foolishness of the cross, that shows us God's power.

It couldn't have worked any other way. Who can conquer eternal death? Only someone who has eternal life. Who can forgive sin? Only the one who has been sinned against.

Who can reestablish justice for all the earth? Only the one who is supremely just and created that earth. Who can show complete and utter mercy? Only the one whose name is love. The story could not have ended in any other way.

The cross was indeed the power and the wisdom of God, par excellence. As we finish, if we think about our non-Christian friends, and we have so many of them—George and Ria, your sister—this will be perplexing for them. This will be foolishness for them, at least for now. But we should pray and pray and pray that by God's grace and through our witness, they may one day understand.

At some point, at some point, we must also realise that they will understand. When they see God face to face, they will know. And that foolishness of the cross will become horrifying and terrifying wisdom. But it will be too late. So we must continue. We must continue holding out this foolishness.

That is all we can do. Even when it hurts, even if the attacks on our intelligence and our character are so painful, even if the barbs against our character or our niceness is very sharp. Remember: yes, this does sound like utter folly to them, but it is the power and the wisdom of God. There is no other message to proclaim. And so if you've ever thought that the gospel needs to be more civilised, and I've been tempted to think that way, it needs to be less gory and less bloody.

The gospel needs to be more culturally sensitive. If you've ever thought that your church needs to be cooler, the pastor needs to wear nicer clothes, the elder needs to pray shorter, the worship team needs to make sure that they play their notes at the right time. If you've ever thought that you need more wisdom and to be better polished in your theology when it comes to sharing the gospel, please remember this. The pure gospel, the pure gospel, will always be foolishness to those who are perishing.

So it doesn't matter how hard we try to pretty it up. You can be the nicest church with the best lighting and the best worship team. But if you preach a true, pure gospel, people will walk out of there and they will say that was crazy. That was foolishness. That was rubbish.

The pure gospel, however, on the flip side, will always, always be the power that saves those that God calls, no matter how unimpressive, no matter how unimpressive that vehicle is. And so this morning, as we finish, we worship and thank God because we realise that while we are striving to move up towards heaven, making a name for ourselves, the truth is God broke from heaven into earth, bringing saving power through the back door. We're invited again not to set out to find God, but to stop running and to simply be found by Him. And similarly, not to try and make God understandable to our friends and our family members, but to plainly and simply try to bring them to the cross.

Our theology must be shaped by the cross because through this, God has gained glory. Pray. Pray. Father, we thank You for this message again, Lord, and isn't it wonderful that we may approach this gospel story, the one that we know, the one that we set our hearts on and put our hope in, but just to see it from another perspective again. Lord, we thank You that we may come to the cross even though at one point we thought it was foolishness.

And we thank You, Lord, that You irresistibly pursued us. You came to us. And so, Lord, for the Brads who said that You needed to step into time and space, You did in Jesus. To the Harrys who need to make sense of it all, God, there is no other solution. Who alone but God can forgive?

Who alone but God can give eternal life? Who alone but God tells us how we should live? And so, God, this cross, this dusty, lonely cross, is the wisdom and the power of our God. Help us, Lord Jesus, to share this to all those who need to hear. And sovereign spirit, let every ear hear.

Give us the opportunities, God. Give us the urgency in our hearts and souls. And, Father, help us to see the power of this gospel bearing fruit. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.