Crestwood Church Blog

Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense. 1 Cor 1:25

In the days when the Apostle Paul was writing this letter to the Corinthian Christians, the Greeks were proud of their highly educated and philosophical thinkers. Paul himself was a trained orator (he was before his conversion a leading Pharisee) and was able to hold his own among the learned. The world was stunned by the message of the early church, which preached about a man who died on a cross and has risen again and can change us forever.
The philosophers had their own answers to the worlds problems and how could it be possible for a man who died on a CROSS to change the world. The cross was for criminals, foreigners, scum, even the Romans thought long and hard about crucifying their own. For the Jews the cross meant you were cursed by God.
These Greeks were professional speakers, they used every method of communication known to man, but their wisdom was still empty compared to that of God.
But God has used the cross as foolish (as it might appear )to shame the world’s greatest thinkers. All the worlds best minds can never free mankind from sin. The scholars may have stood and through rhetoric and other clever ways convinced the masses that gathered to hear their own message, but in the end their clever words led to nothing.
God used ordinary people with little education to declare his message, they on the whole were not trained, they didn’t stand and woo the crowds with clever methods, they just preached, Jesus crucified.
It wasn’t the way they preached that led many to trust Christ it wasn’t the personalities of Peter, Paul or Philip. It was the simplicity and accuracy of the message that when it went out to the people it went out with authority and power because it was the message of God and not of man. Paul himself changed his style from a public system of speaking to a bold message of proclamation which instead of amazing people by his clever style, convinced people of truth.
Today we compared to the wisdom of the world seem like fools, but our message of the cross, leads to divine revelation and understanding. Don’t give up, keep proclaiming and shouting it out.

Labels: Clever, foolish, Wisdom

Only fools say in their hearts, "There is no God." They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good! The Lord looks down from heaven on the entire human race; he looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God. Psalm 14 1-2

Do you know that you will never be embarrassed by God or made foolish when Christ reigns. People may mock your faith and seek to belittle you with cruel words today. You may feel a fool for serving God while you live now, but what about the endless days of eternity...

You will be proved right, your faith will be genuine and all those that mocked you today will admit how devastatingly wrong they have been. The bible says a fool says in their hearts, there is no God.

Have we stopped and thought how ridiculous that is, and if it is true that there is no God, then there is no creator, there is no plan or design to our life. We are just be a bunch of chemicals floating around in an aimless state.

And yet we can breathe and make decisions. We can produce art and make music and our deepest longing, in fact an aching of our soul is to be loved and to love back. Can a lump of metal do that, are we really as insignificant as a rock. If we take God out of the equation, that sadly is the only conclusion we are left with. We are formed by a chemical reaction, we function until the chemicals go beyond their sell by date and that’s it, nothing else, no other hope or aspiration. No wonder God would call anyone a fool for not believing in God.

But this verse has an even bigger impact. If it is foolish to say there is no God, how much more foolish would it be, to ignore the obvious that there is a God and mock him. God is not one to be mocked (Gal 6:7) but by mocking you and insulting your faith, that is exactly what they are doing. They are bringing judgement on themselves.

It may be hard to understand why those close to us at work or in our families ridicule the name of Jesus in us. But that’s our world that lives in darkness.

Our part in this is not to take offence but learn to forgive, so that through our seemingly foolish actions they may find wisdom which is the light and truth about God.

Labels: foolish, Forgive, Ridicule