1 Corinthians 1:26-31
You may be seated. Turn in your copy of the scripture
to 1 Corinthians 1. Today we’ll be looking at 26-31,
but to give us a bit of reminder of what we considered last week,
we’ll add verse 25. 1 Corinthians 1, we’ll read 25
and then look today at 26-31. Let’s ask for God’s help and
grace now before we read and hear God’s word. Pray with me.
Lord, we give you thanks that our risen savior, Jesus Christ,
has ascended to the throne of glory and continues in his great
role of prophet, priest, and king. As king, we thank you that
he rules his people by his word and spirit. As prophet, we’re
grateful that he speaks and we, his sheep, his servants, know
his voice and follow him. And we thank you for the priestly
ministry of Jesus, ever living above to pray for us, that we
might safely arrive at heaven’s gate. Lord, as we sit under our
prophet and king today, may his word convince and convert sinners
and comfort and build up saints. And we ask for this grace in
every life in this room today in his name, the name of our
savior, Jesus, we pray, amen. First Corinthians one, I’ll read
25 and then 26 to 31 is our passage. for today. Verse 25 says 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. He is the source of your
life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness
and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written,
let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. Amen. I think every
one of us has the question in our mind, what will heaven be
like? We get to think about the next
life. We get to thinking about the
life of the world to come. And we want to know, what’s it
going to be like? When I get there, what will I
enjoy? It’s a great question. There are scriptures that describe
what heaven will be like. And in general, we understand
that the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem will be a city. It’ll
be the city of God over and against the city of man or Babylon that
is destroyed. And this city will be a big square
city with streets and with gates and with lots of precious metals
and beauty. But the most important aspect
of the city of God is God himself, the presence of almighty God,
the presence and light of our triune God. And so that city
will be full of the glory of God, but it will be full also
of the gathering of the redeemed, the people of God who were ransomed
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Together with all the
created beings, angels and the creatures described in Ezekiel
and Revelation, but also the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And it would be a grand worship scene where the redeemed give
praise to the Redeemer for the redemption that comes to us through
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s a sense when we get to
heaven, when we get to that beautiful place, that we will realize that
paradise lost in the garden with Adam and Eve has now been gained
again, has been brought back to us. We now have access to
it through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So a question comes
to mind, what will heaven be like? A question comes to my
mind, at least, should the church on earth reflect in some small
way what heaven is like? what heaven will be like? And
of course, the answer to that question is yes. The present
reality of heaven that is unseen to us, the future reality of
heaven that will be seen by our eyes and experienced by both
our bodies and souls. That heaven, the heaven spoken
of in the Bible, ought to have little teeny tiny aspects in
the life of the church today. Heaven is very glorious while
the church on earth has its strifes and its struggles. But we often
speak of the church as an outpost of heaven. We speak of the church
as being the precincts of glory. And when we get to heaven and
see all sorts of people from every nation, tribe, tongue and
people, we will see the vast, a variety of people that God
has saved through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ll very
quickly realize there’s all sorts of people and they are not like
us, except in one way. They’ve been redeemed by the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so why is the church on earth
so divided? Why is the Corinthian church
so divided? There’s a bunch of answers that
we could give to that question, but the answer that comes from
Corinthians, why is the church divided on earth? Why is the
church divided at Corinth? It’s because of boasting. And
it’s not because of good boasting. It’s because of bad boasting.
People are boasting in worldly wisdom. People are boasting in
characteristics and traits and markers and measurements that
are of this world and not of the heavenly reality of heaven. And so the church on earth often
pairs off. The church on earth often congregates
or segregates itself from this particular people or that particular
group. Our economy, what we measure
in value and how we live and operate, is not the same as God’s
economy. And so the more the church looks
like the world, the more the church acts like the world, we
give less and less of heavenly impressions. We seem less and
less like an outpost of heaven and perhaps are more like, I
hate to say it, an outpost of hell. And so what’s a church
to do? What’s the church to do? What
are the people of God at Corinth to do? Well, the Apostle Paul
is going to explain to them and to us that God takes nothings
and makes somethings. God takes nobody’s in heaven’s
eyes. They might be everything in the
world’s eyes, but he converts them. He gives them new life
in Christ and he brings about a change. And so when he’s speaking
to the Corinthians and us, he begins the passage in verse 26,
encouraging us, challenging us to consider our call. If we think
we are something in the world’s eyes and we bring that into the
church, we bring in our status, we bring in our accomplishments,
we bring in all our worldly things and say, well, I get the better
seat or we get the plaque on the wall or, you know, the church.
doesn’t make any big decisions unless it runs through, you know,
our family, that sort of business. You know what I’m thinking about
this, this church life in America, in many cases. Now the apostle
Paul says, God takes nothings and makes something. He takes
nobodies and makes them something in the eyes of heaven. A couple
of things in this passage help us to understand who we are,
who we are before Christ, who we are because of Christ, and
then how we ought to view one another in church. Verse 26 gives
us the first thing we ought to consider. And the first thing
we ought to consider is that not many of us Not many in the
church at Corinth, not many here at Covenant Presbyterian ought
to think much of ourselves because even in the world’s eyes, if
you’re going to use that standard. We could say, Paul says, God
says, you’re not that great, right? It’s kind of a, you know,
called a sheep in the New Testament. Now he’s saying we’re not that
great. Well, that’s exactly right. That’s what Paul is telling the
Corinthians. Not many of you were wise. Not many of you were
strong. Not many of you were powerful
or noble. In fact, you’re foolish, weak,
and you are low. That’s again where Paul forgot
to read his copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People,
right? Jesus comes in and says, we’re sheep and we wander off
and do dumb things. Paul comes in and says, we are
foolish, weak and low. But they’re both right. They’re
both right. In the eyes of the world, we
may be one thing, but in the eyes of God, we are another. Now there are a few exceptions
in every church. There is an exception or two
in the church at Corinth. Luke in Acts chapter 18 mentions
that Titius Justice host the church in his house. When the
synagogue grandpa and the Christian believers out of the synagogue
can’t come here anymore on the Sabbath and read the scripture
and have a sense or understanding of it, they go right next door
and they go to Tish’s justice home, had a big enough house,
probably had household servants, probably had the funds and the
resources. to host the church. There’s also Crispus. He was
the synagogue ruler at Corinth, a big man, big job, big task.
He gets converted and the synagogue has to elect a new ruler and
a couple others follow after him. A little bit later in Corinthians,
Paul is going to mention Chloe, Chloe’s household, tales of divisions. Well, Chloe’s household must
have been something if she had a household, she had servants,
she had people, as we might say. There’s also leaders of the state,
leaders of the Roman Empire in the congregation. It’s an exception. Not many of you were people of
noble birth. Not many of you were people of
power. Not many of you were people of strength. Now, if you went
to the church at Corinth and you looked around the congregation,
you might say, boy, this is a ragtag bunch of people. You might say,
this is a room full of vagabonds. This is a room full of people
that I never would have picked to go to church. Now you go to
the church’s Facebook site, you go to their Instagram site, you
go to the church’s social media pages, and you say, these are
my kind of people. That’s not what you would have
done with the church at Corinth. You would have looked at their
website, you would have followed them on Instagram. Not my kind of
people. I mean, these are sailors. These
are soldiers. I mean, these are really rough
people. I’m glad they have a church,
but that is just not my place. And we do that today, don’t we?
I, you know, we redid our church’s website a year ago. And so we
cruised through some other churches, websites, and it’s amazing how
self aggrandizing we can be as Christians. And maybe you don’t
say it explicitly, but you give off the vibe. We’re, we’re, we’re
a pretty stout bunch of people here. You know, our, our, our
elders are industry leaders. It’s the doctors, it’s the lawyers,
it’s the who’s who, and we state that. We state nothing of their
spiritual condition and their ability to spiritually lead,
but we tack on worldly standards. Maybe I’m a tad cynical, but
I get emails, propaganda from the school I went to, and it’s
always the people in the big steeples. Right? So-and-so pastors,
this big church, he gave up a stock portfolio when he was a day trader
of X millions of dollars. Well, I thought, you know, Jesus
is like, you know, leave your fishermen nets, right? Leave
your tax collecting booth. But the world standards, even
in good Christian circles, can be that way. And so the worldly
standards, the world standards were leading at Corinth. And
they lead in the church today. Now think about the apostle Paul,
though. He goes anywhere and he speaks to anyone. In fact,
in Romans chapter one, when he writes to the congregation at
Rome and eventually gets to meet them one day, we believe, he
says, I am obligated to Jews and Greeks. I am obligated to
the wise and to the foolish. And then he throws out this word
barbarians. That was the roughest of the
rough people. He’s willing to go to the lowest
of low, but also we find him in courts of kings. We find him
in places where he gets a hearing to speak of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so the worldly standards at Corinth, the worldly standards
that come into the church today, we brag about our pedigrees. We got bumper stickers on our
car that tell where we went and what we have and what we do and
how great we are. Maybe churches now, birds of
a feather flock together, we say. And so you might have a
church on a certain street that’s the church of the who’s who in
the city. And it’s where the people of the economy or the
jobs or the white collar, you know, whatever. And we, you know,
we do cowboy church now and biker church and we just chop up. But here at Corinth, it was everybody. At Corinth, it was the highest
of the high, the middle, and the low. And what does Paul conclude
about this? He says, not many of you were
anything by world standards, but God, the foolishness of God,
is wiser than men. That’s verse 25. The weakness
of God is stronger than men. So just think about that for
a moment. Maybe you have accomplished something. Maybe you do bring
something to the table. Maybe you do have socioeconomic
status. Maybe you do have some smarts and successes. It’s all
from God, isn’t it? And maybe, maybe you got nothing.
Maybe, maybe you’re the lowest of the low. Maybe, maybe you’re
just kind of average intellectually, average financially, average
in social status. That’s all in Christ as well. One of the things is God’s people,
we have to be as comfortable in our skin. We have to be comfortable
with the way God made us, the way God gifted us, and the circumstances
of life he put us in. Godliness with contentment is
great gain. And when we rest in the status
and the position God gave us, and we make ourselves useful
in that status, we don’t pine away for something more or something
less, or even try to drum it up or create it because we don’t
have it and are dissatisfied, we become quickly like the Corinthian
church. And we have the seating section
for the rich, the seating section for the politicians, the seating
section for the poorest of the poor and for the intellectually
weak or the barbarians and on and on. And, you know, church
can get like that. And Paul says, no, at the foot
of the cross, everybody is the same. This is the foolishness
of God. This is the weakness of God. And it shames the strong
in the world. and it shames the wise of this
world. Well, it’s good for us to think
about how God has used those of us who are weak and average
and whatever. That’s all of us, right? We are
nothing in his sight. But the second thing is we revel
in the fact that God chooses us at all. Verse 27, verse 28,
but God chose God chose what is foolish, God
chose what is weak, and God chose what is low, despised, and even
things that are not. God’s economy is extremely different
than ours. Anytime in the scriptures we
come to a place that says, but God, it’s always a comparison,
isn’t it? To the sinfulness of man, but
God being rich in his mercy saved, or it’s always a contrast between
the pomp and circumstance of the world, but God does it differently. And here God chooses the foolish. God chooses the weak. God chooses
the nothings and the nobodies. And he shames the wise by making
them something. He shames the strong by making
them something. And he shames the ones who have
everything by taking the ones with nothing and making them
something. That’s the business God is in.
One of the things we we say every Sunday generally here is we miss
the sanctuary and we can’t wait to be in it I’ll tell you bigger
than that. I miss the hymn book, you know,
we put our we put our books away so they wouldn’t end up on the
floor in here and all that and This has gone on a really long
time and every Monday when I’m planning the next Sunday service.
I miss I miss our book And this week was a particular missing
of it because every hymn I wanted to sing was in this book and
not the not the one we had in here That’s okay And I thought
of the hymn, How Deep the Father’s Love for Us. How vast beyond
all measure that he should give his only son to make a wretch
his treasure. How great the pain of searing
loss the father turns his face away as wounds which mar the
chosen one bring many sons to glory. Behold the man upon the
cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed I hear my mocking voice
call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there
until it was accomplished. His dying breath has brought
me life. I know it is finished. Here’s the great line right out
of our passage. I will not boast of anything,
no gifts, no power, no wisdom, but I will boast in Jesus Christ,
his death and resurrection. What should I gain from his reward?
I cannot give an answer, but this I know with all my heart,
his wounds have paid my ransom. God chose what is weak and foolish
and what is nothing in this world and has made it something in
Jesus Christ. And we have to ask the question,
why does God choose any at all? Why didn’t he just leave everybody
dead in sins and trespasses? Why did God pick you? You know,
there’s that theology that’s wrong. It’s not biblical, but
it says something like this. God looks down the corridor of
time and he sees the ones who will be something. Well, right
there, you got to stop because it’s unbiblical and it’s illogical.
God does not look down the corridor of time and see anything that
he’s happy about. Right? We got that, right? This
world is sin sick and full of foolishness and death. And so
when he looks down the corridor of time, he doesn’t say, boy,
there’s a bunch of swell people. In fact, in Deuteronomy chapter
seven, I think it is, when he speaks of selecting Israel, Israel’s
this teeny tiny puny nation, got nothing really to brag about.
And he says, I didn’t choose you because you were the greatest
of nations. I didn’t choose you because y’all built the pyramids. I didn’t choose you because y’all
built the hanging gardens of Babylon. I didn’t choose you
because you harnessed the Nile or the Tigris and Euphrates.
No, I picked you because you are the least and I wanted simply
to set my affections on you. And so when we as believers come
into the church of the living God, we don’t walk in with our
credentials and say, well, he picked me because I could be
a good tither. He picked me because I’d be a great Sunday school
teacher. He picked me because I could really set up a great
nursery. He picked me because I can, you
know, play in the worship deal or whatever. That’s not it at
all. He simply saved us so that we
could be in heaven with him and we could glorify and enjoy him
forever. That’s it. And there’s no merit, there’s
no value, there’s no thing that he saw that said, hmm, I think
I’ll select this person. He simply loves because he wants
to. And what does Paul say is the
result of this? It’s so that no one can boast. That’s his
conclusion in verse 29. Why does God save all sorts of
people? Why does he very often save the least or the worst or
the smallest? It’s so that no one may boast
in God’s presence. glory of God and the worship
of the Redeemer is what we’ll find in heaven, not, not back-batting,
you know, with the Pope’s death recently, all the Pope jokes
came out, all the heaven jokes came out. And there was a great
one that said, uh, when the Pope got to heaven, Peter asked for
his hat back. Right. You know, if you get that
when you write, everybody descends from Peter. Um, but you know,
we got our, we got our heaven jokes. We get to the pearly gates
and we go to the Baptist section. Right. We get to the pearly gates
and we go to the Presbyterian section. We get to the pearly
gates and we segregate ourselves in heaven like we do on earth,
don’t we? We think probably there’s a section of heaven for people
like me. There’s a section in heaven for people like that.
But when you get a picture of heaven in the Bible, there’s
concentric circles around the throne of God where people from
every tribe, every nation, every tongue, are confessing that Jesus
is Lord. We got to be careful, don’t we?
To impose our standards, our economy, our worldly way of thinking
on church and even on heaven. Read the Old Testament. Who are
the people that stand out in Old Testament history? Well,
there’s Rahab, the prostitute who had faith in the God who
parted the sea and crushed the Egyptians. And she was a prostitute. She was a woman of ill repute.
She would not have fit inside the camp of Israel because of
her lifestyle and her profession. You read on through and there’s
Ruth, Moabitess. She was an outsider. She was
another person from another nation. You read Hebrews 11 and you say,
how did they get in there? You read Hebrews 11 and you say,
okay, Moses, Abraham, great. But then you start getting on
through the chapter of Hebrews 11 and you think, I don’t know
about this list. And then you read Acts chapter
nine about Paul himself, breathing murderous threats, persecuting
the church, killing Christian believers. And you jump back
to Hebrews 11 and that wonderful little phrase of the people of
God who were destitute and went about in animal’s clothing. They slept outdoors, they lived
in caves. And there’s a wonderful little
phrase the writer of Hebrews says, the world was not worthy
of these people. What we exalt and oftentimes
in the church exalt, who we exalt, is not who is exalted in God’s
sight. Imagine when we get to heaven and You know, there are
some great ancients to heaven, right? The ones whose works that
pleased God, not for righteousness, but their works that pleased
and gave glory to God will receive crowns, which we will quickly
take off and lay it at God’s feet. I think we’re going to
see some of the most humble people that were quiet. We’re going
to see ministers of churches who never had a podcast or a
Twitter following. We’re going to see simple, quiet
saints who did simple, quiet things for a really long time
and did not receive all the fanfare. And so God chooses the foolish. He chooses the weak. He chooses
that which is nothing and makes it something. How does that happen? Why were many not anything? Why does God choose? Well, it’s
all about Christ. And that’s the third thing that
pops up in our passage. You land at verse 30 and it says,
he is the source of your life in Christ. He is our wisdom,
our righteousness, our sanctification, and our wisdom. You know, if
we walk through a church parking lot, maybe not ours, but if you
walk through a church parking lot, you would see on bumper
stickers, a little something of the people, right? Something
about honor students. or something about where they
went to school, or graduate school, or which football team, basketball
team they prefer, or maybe which country club they’re a member
of. But you can read the back of a car, not just the label
or brand, but you can generally figure out a church that way. Maybe people name drop the school
they went to, what sheepskin is hanging on their wall, what
awards they’ve accomplished, their achievements in this life.
Maybe their net worth is something that they measure, or their address,
the right part of town, the right neighborhood. Or maybe you can’t
hear, thankfully, but maybe you can walk around the church and
see whose name is on the ends of pews. Those plaques sometimes
get so ridiculous. I remember preaching in a church
where they had a clock on the back wall and you couldn’t read the
clock because a plaque was on it. Who gave it? It gets out
of hand, doesn’t it? But when you remember this, not
many of you were chosen, not many of you were called, not
many of you were wise and strong and powerful or anything, but
every one of us has this. We have Christ as our head. Christ
is our source. Christ is our wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification and redemption. These are really big, really
important salvation words. And so across heaven and even
across churches. We should look at one another
as God looks on us. Is any of us wise in the world
standards? Okay, fine and dandy. Maybe you’ve
got a doctorate or two, and that’s great. Maybe you have a very
average IQ and you know a thing or two, but not much, or you’re
somewhere in between. If you are in Christ, you have
been given the wisdom of Jesus Christ. You’re as wise as is
Christ. And we’ve been given the scriptures.
We’ve been given the Proverbs, the wisdom literature. We can
become wiser and wiser as believers. But the world may have all its
degrees and all its accolades, but if they don’t have Christ,
they don’t have the wisdom of Jesus. And then there’s Christ’s
righteousness, which is everything to us, isn’t it? God looks at
us in the sight of Christ just as if we’ve never sinned, just
as if we’ve always obeyed. Our dirty clothes, our dirty
deeds, our unrighteousness is exchanged for Jesus’ righteousness. The world can’t get that. You
can’t get degrees and get righteousness. You can’t earn money and buy
righteousness. You can’t achieve things and get righteousness.
It is a free gift of God. And at least in Paul’s economy
here, he generally offers it to the low and to the weak and
to those which are nothing. And then he speaks of sanctification
or holiness. The same way righteousness, we
get that from God. We can’t achieve holiness ourselves.
We can’t work it up, drum it up, set a to-do list, accomplishment. And then it speaks of redemption.
One day, God will fully redeem us. Our purchase of redemption
finally made when we leave this earthly tent, we’re raised up
imperishable into the heavens. mind and body and soul and even
our experience in the new heavens and the earth, we will be fully
redeemed. The world can’t accomplish that.
And I mentioned to y’all from time to time, if you ride down
church street, uh, on church street, you can fix every problem.
You can go to a place and get your hair back. You can go to
a place and get some teeth back. You can go to a place and get
your eyes where they can see. You can get your nails done,
your skin done. You can do all the sort of things
that hold back the effects of the fall. But at some point your
body’s going to die and you may go to your grave with nice nails.
And you may go to your grave with a really nice pair of glasses.
You may go to your grave with a nice pair of teeth. Right? Those things will not last and
do not last. But what will last? The wisdom
of Jesus, the righteousness of Christ, the sanctification that
comes by the Holy Spirit, and that full redemption that we
enjoy when we are in the presence of God, worshiping Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit for the redemption. You know, we say around here
from time to time, saved people sing. I think it’s also good
to say saved people boast. And we don’t bad boast like the
Corinthians. We don’t bad boast like the world. We boast well.
We boast that we know the Lord because he’s come and he saved
us. When Paul is writing to Titus, And he writes three pastoral
letters, two to Timothy, one to Titus. He tells Titus, you
got to straighten out the church on Crete. The Cretan churches
have gotten out of order. So Titus, you’re going to go,
you’re going to straighten them out. And he says, tell these people all these
things they need to do in order to get the church straight. But
he reminds Titus, remember this, remember that you once were foolish. You once were led astray. You
once were worshiping and serving idols. But one day, the goodness
of God in Christ Jesus, the loving kindness of God and our Savior
appeared and he saved us. That’s something to remember,
isn’t it? He saved us not because of our works done in order to
accomplish righteousness. He saved us according to his
mercy. He saved us by washing us and
regenerating us by the power and renewal of the Holy Spirit.
And he poured out his love on us richly through Jesus Christ,
our Savior. You know, you may have some neat
bumper stickers that indicate who you are and what you’ve accomplished.
You may have some things on your wall. You may have gotten in
the mail yesterday your brokerage account balance. You may feel
pretty doggone good about yourself. But unless God in his kindness
has chosen you and called you and redeemed you in Jesus Christ,
he says that is foolishness, that is weakness. And in fact,
that is nothing in his sight. All the categories, all the things
we may list about ourselves are nothing if we are apart from
the Lord Jesus Christ. But when we come in the room,
when we come into the room of Christians, the ground is level
at the foot of the cross, isn’t it? The ground is level at the
foot of cross because we are all saved by the mercy of God
and Jesus Christ. Let’s give him thanks now, pray
with me. Lord, we ask for help and blessing now to think about
who we once were and what we now are in Jesus. We thank you
for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to show us that in our
death and in our sinful estate and in our animosity and hatred
towards you and our exile from the garden. We who hated you
and were at odds with you have been brought near and brought
peace by the blood of Jesus. Something we never could have
accomplished, but a thing we needed so desperately. You sent
your son, the Prince of Heaven. to become a servant and to lay
down his life for those he loved. And we give you thanks for this
reminder and pray now that in the sacrament we would remember
our low and baseless life that has changed so drastically through
the power of the blood of the Lord Jesus and the washing and
the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. Help us in this sacrament
to reflect on that and to glory and boast in you, for you have
done it. Hear us and help us. We make
our prayer. In the name of Jesus, our Savior, amen.