The Foolishness of God, Part 3 B

The philosophy of man cannot grant true wisdom. It can't pay the price for sin. It can't make you holy, and it can't deliver you from sin's grasp, but it will do this. If you let it infiltrate the church, it'll divide you. It won't do what has to be done. It won't give you true wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption. All it'll do is polarize you at points that don't really matter. So, welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Perhaps you've explained the gospel again and again, told friends about sin, God's holiness, Jesus' work of redemption, the free gift of grace, and your message has been rejected. Maybe you've even been told what you believe is foolish.

Why does that happen? Why are so many people so reluctant to embrace the good news of salvation? John MacArthur answers that question today, showing you why some hear the gospel message and instantly believe it, while others find it nearly impossible to understand and embrace. The lesson you're about to hear is part of John's current study on the foolishness of God.

And now with today's message, here's John. Take your Bible and look at 1 Corinthians 1 again with me as we'll continue our study of this particular portion of Scripture dealing with chapter 1 verse 18 through chapter 2 verse 5 verse 30. But of Him are you in Christ, the reason you're in Christ Jesus, because of God, who of God is made unto us...what's the next word? Wisdom. As soon as you became a Christian, the first thing you received was wisdom.

But in addition to that, Paul can't resist throwing in some other things. You not only received wisdom, but you received righteousness. Another thing, and we could spend a sermon series on every one of these, but let's go. Another one, sanctification. That means to be set apart or holy. We'll use the word holy.

He not only declared you righteous, but He began an inside work of making you holy. You know, the moment you believed in Christ, the principle of the incorruptible seed was planted in you. And as John says, you cannot continue to commit habitual sin.

Why? Because God's holy seed is in you. When you became a Christian, the first thing you began to see was something was going on in your life that never went on there before, and that was holiness. Before you're a Christian, evil all the time. Just sin all the time. When you became a Christian, all of a sudden holiness with intermittent sin.

And maturity is the decreasing frequency of those sins as you eliminate them, walking in the Spirit. But you see, holiness is something God has done in us, isn't it? Paul said to the Corinthians, now are you holy?

Now are you sanctified? And so we not only are right before God, and that's a judicial thing, but we actually are made holy, and that's an experiential thing. We begin to walk in the Spirit. Romans 8 says we're taken out of the flesh, and we are in the Spirit.

If so be the Spirit of Christ dwells in us, and He died. Galatians 5 says the Spirit begins to produce fruit of holiness. 2 Corinthians 3 18 says the Holy Spirit begins to conform us into the image of Christ. Ephesians 2 10 says we were created unto good works. Holiness. Then he adds another great word in the Christian's vocabulary, redemption.

To redeem means to purchase. And God by Christ has purchased us from the power of sin, redeemed. And so we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, Ephesians 1 says.

What a promise. And Peter, I love what Peter says, we are redeemed not with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of the Lamb without spot and without blemish. All that is ours in Christ.

Look at it. Wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And what did you do to earn wisdom?

You're not smart enough to have known that on your own. What did you do to earn righteousness? By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be made righteous.

You didn't do anything. What did you do to be made holy? You couldn't make yourself holy. What did you do to redeem yourself?

You couldn't pay the price. The point is verse 31. According as it is written, he that glories, let him glory in the Lord. You see, all that you are, wise, righteous, holy, redeemed is due to the wisdom of God.

You did nothing. The philosophy of man, what part does it play? Does it play any part in that?

Do you see it there in 30 or 29? No. The philosophy of man cannot grant true wisdom. It can't pay the price for sin. It can't make you holy and it can't deliver you from sin's grasp, but it will do this. If you let it infiltrate the church, it'll divide you.

And boy, believe me, there are churches that are split all over this country over political issues. There's no need for that. There's no place for that. It won't do what has to be done. It won't give you true wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption.

All it'll do is polarize you at points that don't really matter. If you're going to glory, and here he quotes Jeremiah 9, 23, and 24, glory in the Lord. He's the one who has done it all. Just to give you an illustration of this, go to Galatians 6, 13. Whenever the church gets involved in politics or any of those things, economics or anything else, gets into problems.

Because then you're dividing on non-essentials. Now here Paul says, if you're going to glory, glory in the Lord, that's all. If you're going to boast, just boast in Him.

You didn't do anything to deserve anything. Verse 13, neither they themselves, Galatians 6, who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised, that they make glory in your flesh. The Judaizers came into Galatia. They took the Galatian Christians, and they confused them by telling them they had to get circumcised and become Jews. And Paul says, they don't care about your souls.

All they care about is racking up some more converts. They want to glory in your flesh that you're now a Jew. Verse 14, but God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. You see, he says, there's nothing to glory in but the cross.

There is nothing for me to boast about. Another occasion, I think it's Romans, he said, I will not speak of anything that Christ has not wrought in me. He says, there's two reasons I boast in the Lord. One, it changed my relation to the world, by whom the world has been crucified to me and I unto the world. Two, it made me a new creation. Verse 15, at the end of the verse, a new creature. So Paul says, it was the cross that changed my relation to the world. It was the cross that recreated me, and I will give the honor to the cross. I put no glory in humankind. So all that happens when you do, is you cause division.

Now let me take you a step further. Go back to 1 Corinthians 1. Let's look at chapter 2, verses 1 to 5. Paul says then, that the party spirit at Corinth is a result of human philosophy.

You're divided over different opinions. There's no need for that at all, because all you need is God's wisdom. Number one, God's wisdom is superior in its permanence. It's, secondly, superior in its power. Thirdly, its paradox.

Fourthly, its purpose. Lastly, God's wisdom is superior by virtue of its presentation. And this isn't really so much a point as it is an illustration of a point. It illustrates all the former points. Paul says, if you're confused, if you're confused about the issue, remember this. Verse 1, And I, brethren, when I came to you, and here he's getting into historical facts, I didn't come with excellency of speech or wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God.

Stop right there. Now remember my presentation to you? My presentation is an illustration of everything I've just said. When I came to you, did I come talking fancy words and human philosophies, and what's the answer?

No. So let my coming to you be the illustration of how human philosophy fits. It doesn't.

It doesn't have a place. God had determined to save men not by human wisdom, but by the gospel. So when Paul came to Corinth, he didn't come as an orator, and he didn't come as a philosopher. He came as a witness. He came declaring the witness of God. And that's the word from Martyrace, the testimony, the witness of God. Now a witness is somebody that sees something, objective, something actual, something historical. He says, I am here to report to you the testimony of God's objective facts, not to speculate. I'm here to give you God's revelation. You know, that's all we're to do. He says, I came not with excellency or that is supremacy or superiority of speech and philosophy.

Logos and Sophia. I didn't come with all the flowery words and human philosophy. Boy, but I'll tell you, you'll hear a lot of places, wouldn't you? You turn on your television, and there's a guy on there who smiles all the time. And he smiles and says flowery, flowery things, words and happy thoughts and nothing, absolute zero. And it's all very positive. And you can do it. Whatever it is, you can do it. And the truth is, most of them can't do it.

You can't do everything. That kind of positive baloney that gets pumped out on that deal denies one half of the whole revelation of God. And that is, it denies sin. You don't ever talk about sin.

You'll never hear him talk about it because it's a negative. And you can't talk about negatives in positive thinking. That's just, that's human philosophy.

Who needs it? If you think the Bible is full of positive thinking, you better read it again. I sometimes read the Bible and feel like I just had a wrestling match.

I'm so beaten down, I can't take it. No, we don't need all that. We don't need all kinds of flowery words that mean nothing. Paul says, I didn't come just offering you a whole lot of human verbiage and a whole lot of human philosophy. I told you the testimony of God.

You don't want opinions. So he says, I didn't come giving you human speech and wisdom, but I came with God's Word. That's the first thing, with God's Word, the testimony of God. What is the testimony of God? Testimony of God is, listen to this, it's Jesus Christ. Who does the Father testify to in John 15, 26? He testifies to the Son. The testimony of God is Christ, the gospel. I declare unto you the Marturian, the witness of God concerning Christ.

This is my beloved Son. Hear Him. Paul says, I'm not coming giving you my opinions and my speculations and my vagaries. I'm coming telling you this is what God said. God says.

That much better? We come together and on the Lord's Day and whenever we meet together and we say the first thing, let's open our Bibles. Let's look at what God says.

Not politics, economic, social issues, viewpoints, opinions, human ideas. Let me give you a further illustration. 2 Corinthians, go back to that fourth chapter in verse 1. Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not. We know our ministry and we stay at it.

And here's how it should go. We have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty. Nothing worse than dishonesty in the ministry.

There's a lot of it. Not walking in craftiness, nor handling the Word of God deceitfully. Being hucksters of the Word of God. Using it for our own ends.

Bilking people with it. But by manifestation of the truth, that phrase ought to be outlined in your Bible, underlined. The primary task, the only task of the ministry is to manifest the truth of God.

That's all. And therefore, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. We have a clear conscience and they can have one about us. We have a task, simple task. There it is. Manifest the truth, God's truth. Paul said to Timothy some important things about his ministry and what the priorities were. In 1st Timothy 4, he said this, I like it, verse 13.

He said, till I come. In other words, here's what you do and you just keep doing it. Give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.

Now that's pretty simple, right? Read, exhort, and doctrine is a synonym for teach. Now let me give you three things that'll tell you what you're supposed to do as a minister. Number one, read the Bible. Number two, explain it. That's teaching.

Number three, apply it. You know what I'd ever do with every text I ever teach? Read the text, explain the meaning of it, and apply it to your life. That's what he said to Timothy to do. He didn't say, read the text, explain the text, apply the text, and then give a few opinions.

No. He said in verse 15, give yourself totally to that. That's it, Timothy. Beginning, middle, and end.

Read it, explain it, apply it, then shut it, and go home. That's it. Now later on, in 2nd Timothy, he just reminded him of it again. Chapter 4 again. 2nd Timothy 4, verse 2. And this is a solemn obligation. He uses Diamarturumai in the first verse. He really lays it on him.

He used to be challenged to do this. Verse 2, 2nd Timothy 4, preach the Word. Not your own opinions, the Word. I cannot for the life of me, I cannot comprehend how any man can call himself a minister of God and do anything but teach the Word of God.

I mean, what else is there? Preach the Word. Be on standby in season and out of season. In other words, you are ready to fire out when the call comes. Verse 3, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. Has that time come?

Believe me, you can hardly find it. People don't want a sound doctrine. But after their own epithymia, their own lusts, desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. Now the itching ears belong to the hearers, not the teachers. They want their ears tickled with beautiful sermons.

Nice flowery words. And they'll turn away their ears from the truth and they'll be turned unto fables. You know, certain kind of biblical preaching, any kind of biblical preaching that is really biblical preaching is not popular. But there are all kinds of people who want to have sort of a God feeling and they want to go to church. So they'll find one where they get their ears tickled by nice sermons. They go where they can hear what they want to hear. Vincent says this, in periods of unsettled faith, skepticism and mere curious speculation in matters of religion, teachers of all kinds swarm like the flies in Egypt. The demand creates the supply. The hearers invite and shape their own preachers. If the people desire a calf to worship, a ministerial calf maker is readily found. End quote. He's right. Paul says, my testimony is this.

I will speak the testimony of God, not tickle the people's ears but giving them what they want to hear. Believe me, that's what people get. Don't want to bother them. Don't want to upset them. And so, people will gravitate from place to place to place until they find a guy who says what they want to hear.

Or else they'll create the need for one and some guy will see the need and jump on the bandwagon and make a mint out of it. All right, back to chapter 2 verse 2. Here is Paul saying, I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I just zeroed in on the cross. My only design was to preach Christ. Not as a teacher, not as an example, not as a perfect man, but Christ crucified.

Redeemer, the Savior. I didn't give opinion, that's revelation. I didn't give speculation, that's fact.

Right? That's fact. Now, he's not saying there that he denied the rest of the scripture because in Acts 18 it says that he, for 18 months, declared unto them the Word of God. But his emphasis was the cross. And he means by that God's redemptive plan.

God's revelation as opposed to human speculation. That was Paul's message. In fact, it was so much a dominant message in the early church that people thought that the Christians worshiped a dead man. Celsus said Christians worship a dead man. And the Palatine Hill in Rome, there's some archaeological digging some years back and they found a picture that somebody had drawn to caricature Christians. And they had a Christian kneeling at the foot of a cross with a crucified donkey on it. And the bottom of the picture said, Alexa Menos worships his God. Now you see, that's what Paul meant when he said in Corinthians that to the Gentiles the cross was foolishness.

But be it foolishness or not, Paul never changed his message to accommodate the people. Did he? Never.

Never. You say, yeah, and that's why they all stumbled at it. Yes, but for those that were called, there was redemption. So number one, now mark it, when he preached, he preached God's Word. Number two, verses three and four, when he preached, he preached with God's power. Verse three, and I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.

Now that doesn't like him, is it? Usually the earthquakes, but not Paul. Usually everybody in town shakes, but not him.

What's he doing shaking? When he came to Corinth, he was really shook. The fear and trembling here, I don't think means physical illness.

Some have said that, but I don't think there's any indication of that. I just did a little look at the terms that are used here. And the idea of fear and trembling is used in several other passages. It is used, for example, in 2 Corinthians 7, 15, Philippians 2, 12 and Ephesians 6, 5, and each of those times, it has to do with mental anxiety over an important issue. For example, in Philippians 2, 12, it's work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

It's an anxiety that comes with something that's very urgent. And so Paul says, I was in such urgency over you, and Corinth was the Vanity Fair of the world. It was a corrupt city. In fact, it got to be that when a person was so debauched that their life was one steady stream of gross immorality, they were said to Corinthianize. That was synonymous with filth.

That became the verb for continual prostitution. And he was in this city, and he'd been thrown out of Philippi and had to run for his life. He was thrown out of Thessalonica and had to run for his life. The Thessalonians traced him to Berea, and he had to leave there. He got to Athens, and he was about at the end of his rope.

Finally, he got to Mars Hill and preached, and there wasn't a great response. He hustled off the Corinth, he lands here all alone, and he's very, very discouraged. He sees a city just dominated by sinfulness. It's just a filthy place all alone, and he's afraid.

He has a terrible mental anxiety over the lostness of the city, and he knows that he's hopeless in himself. And so in verse 4, he says, my speech and my preaching were not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. He didn't come with his own words, and he didn't come in his own power, believe me. He came in the power of the Holy Spirit. He said, I didn't want to come my own power, because if I had, then you would have identified with me and not Christ.

Verse 5, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. I didn't want you to buy a philosophy. I wanted you to be new creatures. I didn't want you to put faith in my speculative ideas. I didn't want to put faith in my opinions. I wanted you to put your faith in God, whose power can transform you.

So he says, I didn't come with logos and kerygma, and those are almost synonymous terms. Maybe speech refers to personal contact and preaching to public preaching, but I didn't come with persuasive words. Enticing means persuasive.

Didn't come to persuade you, to use the right words, to exact the right responses, to draw you over to my opinions. I just came and let the Spirit flow, and let his power flow, and he and his power were able to change lives. He said the same thing in 1 Thessalonians, when he reminded the Thessalonians of how it had been with them. He said, our gospel came not unto you in word only, but in power and the Holy Spirit.

And only that can mean there's a change in a life. Spurgeon said, the power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher. Otherwise men would be the converters of souls. Nor does it lie in the preacher's learning.

Otherwise it could consist in the wisdom of men. We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we would exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted, unless the Holy Spirit be with the Word of God to give it the power to convert the soul. End quote. Now you see that is precisely what Paul is saying. I came to you, not with a human message.

No, no. The testimony of God, the cross, I gave you. And not with human power, with divine power. The reason that your faith should not be standing in philosophy, but in the power of God. I never forget a pastor said to me one time, pointing to a guy after a service, he said, CFL, he's one of my converts. I said, really? He said, yeah, not the Lord's, mine. Well that stuck with him.

Made his point. Stott said this, it seems that the only preaching God honors, through which his wisdom and power are expressed, is the preaching of a man who is willing in himself to be both a weakling and a fool. You see, God not only chooses weak and foolish to save, but weak and foolish to preach. And the weaker and more foolish you are, the more God's Word and God's power can be expressed.

So now you know the truth. And hopefully the result is you don't have converts to John MacArthur, but to Jesus Christ. Paul makes his case, don't you think? He makes his case for the fact God's wisdom doesn't need human wisdom. The Corinthians didn't need to bring human wisdom into their church, and neither do we.

It'll only bring division. May it be that we always unite around God's Word and God's Spirit. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for a clear message from your Word. Thank you, Father, for our time together. It's a blessing that your Word has been to our hearts.

Confirm it to us. Use it through us to your glory in Jesus' name. Amen. You're listening to Grace to You with the verse-by-verse Bible teaching of John MacArthur. He's Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today's lesson is part of his current series titled, The Foolishness of God. Now, John, for the listener who understands that human wisdom gets you only so far, that it can't answer the ultimate questions that we have, what is the next step?

What can such a person do today to grow truly wise and biblically wise and help someone else do the same? Well, you have to start with the Word of God. You have to start with the Bible.

I know that sounds like a rather obvious statement, but I can't make it strongly enough. The Scripture is the revelation from God. Every word is inspired by God.

It gives us the truth, and wisdom is the ability to understand and apply truth. And so you've got to know the Bible. It's one thing to have a Bible.

It doesn't mean that even if you have a Bible, you understand what it's saying. And that's why, through history, there have always been some study aids that come along with Bibles, and we have one of our own, and that's the MacArthur Study Bible. Basically, you have the text of Scripture, either the ESV, the New King James, or the New American Standard. And the text of Scripture is there, and then at the bottom of every page, there are many, many explanations. Verse after verse after verse is explained. There are charts and graphs to help you understand and relate the Bible to other locations in Scripture where the same truths might be taught, issues about history and geography, insight into words, all these things—about 25,000 footnotes in all. And what you have then is a library inside your Bible to explain the meaning of the text. That is what the MacArthur Study Bible is designed to do, and millions of people have found it extremely helpful.

I want to remind you about it. It's available. Shipping is free in the U.S. You can order a MacArthur Study Bible today. The New American Standard, the one I preach, the New King James, if you like that, or the ESV, if you prefer that, you can order it from grace to you.

That's right. And friend, if you want to learn more about Old Testament prophecy, the life of Christ, the formation of the early church, and so much more, turn to the MacArthur Study Bible. It has the tools you need to dig deep into every part of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. To purchase a copy, contact us today. You can order online at gty.org, and it comes in any translation you prefer—the English Standard, the New King James, or the New American Standard versions.

It also comes in seven non-English translations, and you can place your order at gty.org, or call our toll-free customer service line at 855-GRACE. And this note, if John's Bible teaching is helping you apply God's Word to your life, keep in mind that grace to you is listener supported. That means people like you are the ones who help give us a voice around the world. So please, keep us in prayer. Tell us how God is using this broadcast in your life, and know that your financial support makes a real difference in the lives of people you help us reach. Mail your gift to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412, or you can make a donation at gty.org, or when you call us at 800-55-GRACE. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today and be here tomorrow when John looks at the path to true spiritual wisdom. He's continuing his series, The Foolishness of God, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.