October 18, 2009
Week 3
Community and Conflict
The Corinthian Story
“A Scandalous Gospel!”
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
I love that Title! Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 1:18, I want to read together some of the most meaningful words in all of the New Testament.
I have to say that I have really missed having the opportunity to share with you on Sunday mornings for the past few weeks. I must admit that I a restless pew sitter!
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
PRAYER
ILLUSTRATION
Some time ago the topic of the day on an Oprah show was “Having Affairs with Married Men.” While I didn’t see the show – I did read about it. She had brought together several women together who were involved in relationships with married men. One lady responded very positively, saying that her affair with a married man had been a long-standing affair and she was very happy about it. Then someone raised the question of morality. Instantly, the woman took offense. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I’m a Christian, but I want everyone to know that my personal life and my religion don’t interfere with one another.” They she went on to say, “I believe in a God who wants me to be happy. And if this man makes me happy, then God approves of the relationship.”
Of course you all know that our faith in Jesus and our personal life MUST interfere with one another. I want them to interfere with each other. When I’m sick and need healing – I WANT Him to interfere with my personal life, I expect it, I find everywhere in His Word that He tells me to claim it. When I need guidance…provision…peace…I want Him to interfere with my personal life! HE CARES ABOUT EVERYTING IN MY PERSONAL LIFE! EVERY INTIMATE DETAIL. He DEMANDS full access to my personal life! AND HE HAS A LOT TO SAY ABOUT MY PERSONAL LIFE!
ILLUSTRATION
A little boy was overheard praying: "Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it. I'm having a real good time like I am."
Rick Warren in his book “The Purpose Driven Life” that most of us have read, writes:
“Many of our troubles come because we base our choices on unreliable authorities: Culture – which says “Everybody’s doing it!” Tradition – which say “We’ve always done it this way”, Reason – “It seems logical”, or Emotion – “It just felt right!”
All four of these are flawed – what we need is a perfect standard that will never lead us in the wrong direction! Only God’s Word meets that need.
Since the beginning of time, people have always wanted a God who would place His stamp of approval on their life-style of choice, never requiring any change for the better. We have even created euphemisms to make our sin sound acceptable, even attractive…
• Adultery Having an “Affair” – Open marriage
• Homosexual Relationship Domestic Partnership
• Self-Indulgence Self-fulfillment
• Purity/Abstinence Neurotic inhibition
• Murder of the Unborn The right to choose
Jesus encountered this “Oprah show attitude” during his day as well. He looked at the religious guys of his day the Sadducees and Pharisees and called them “Hypocrites” and “White washed tombs”. On the outside they appeared to be pious, Prayerful, Religious – but on the inside they were rotten. They lacked a RELATIONSHIP with God!
Sooner or later…men and women must bump into an old rugged cross. There we meet a God who says, “I have the solution for your sin problem – Your sin required that I go to the cross and suffer and die for you!”
The first few words of our reading this morning beginning in V.18 speaks of the “Message of the Cross”. The Cross of Jesus is the best known symbol of Christianity. There is no other symbol that better represents Christianity than the Cross. Most of you wear a cross, believers and non-believers alike, some perhaps display a cross in your home.
The Cross is the very center of all that we do. Paul calls it in V.18 “the power of God”. Without the cross – we would not be here! Our songs books and some of the earliest Christian hymns are songs of the Wonderful Cross. (In your hymn books found right after the CHRISTMAS SONGS!!!!)
• At the Cross
At the cross at the Cross Where I first saw the Light
And the burden of my heart rolled away
It was there by faith I received my sight
And now I am happy all the day!
• Jesus Paid it All
• At Calvary
• When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
• He was Nailed to the Cross for Me
• Near the Cross – Song 83 “Jesus keep me near the cross…”
• The Old Rugged Cross
The question of our eternal destiny hinges on the meaning of the cross.
For so many, the cross would become a great reversal of human expectation. Who would have thought that God would work through the scandal of the cross?
Listen how Paul says it, V. 18
“For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…”
It is absurd for many to think that God’s greatest redemptive activity – His BIG REDEMPTIVE MOMENT IN HISTORY - involved simple rugged cross and the death of an innocent man – called the Son of God. That was it. And it was planned this way before the foundations of the world were laid.
To those who are perishing – dying without Jesus, the message of the cross is foolishness. “Who wants a crucified King? Why should I worship someone who died a criminal’s death?”
Most of us have seen the Passion of the Christ.
I saw it once in the theater and I have no driving interest in watching it again. I LOVE THE CROSS – but to see my Savior lied about, betrayed, beaten, and Crucified is far too hard to watch over again. I remember sitting in the theater when it was over – and it was dead silent at the end! Even though we saw that final glimpse of the resurrection at the end. I don’t necessarily enjoy hearing the details of the crucifixion…because it was so horrific and bloody.
But I am so incredibly thankful for what Jesus did for me on the cross. I love songs about the cross. He Was Nailed to the Cross for Me.
He was nailed to the Cross for me,
He was nailed to the Cross for me.
On the cross crucified for me He died;
He was nailed to the cross for me.
Colossians 2:13-15
13When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature,[b] God made you[c] alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.[d]
To the Corinthians Paul says,
1 Corinthians 1:22-23
“Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles…”
The Jews looked at the cross and stumbled over it because they didn’t see the kind of Messiah they wanted. The Jews had been handpicked by God, cared for by God, watched over and protected through 1000’s of years of history and he had prepared them to be the nation though whom the Messiah would come, he had promised them the Messiah would come. Told them how he would come, where he would come. But when He came – the rejected him and crucified Him. The Bible says…
“Jesus came unto his own and his own received Him not.”
Passages like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 Pointed toward a different kind of Messiah, a suffering Messiah – these prophetic images not at all what they had imagined!
Paul tells us that the Jews stumbled over the cross because “the Jews demanded miraculous signs.” They wanted a Messiah who would perform miracles on their behalf. The Irony of that is that was exactly what Jesus was doing. He was performing miraculous signs. He was giving sight to the blind. Walking on water, healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing the skin of lepers. But all of that went right over their heads because those weren’t the kinds of miracles that they wanted. They wanted signs of power and success. They wanted a Messiah who would overthrow the Romans and re-establish the Kingdom of David.
If he had marshaled in an army and led them into battle against the Romans, if He would have showed them that He was successful and victorious – they would have marched behind Him. But the Cross got in the way!
The cross doesn’t look like success, power, victory! In fact it looks a lot like defeat! The cross was a “Stumbling Block” to them – The words Paul uses here for “Stumbling Block” is “Skandalon” – you recognize that word – It’s where we get the word “Scandalous!” The cross was scandalous to them!
As far as they were concerned, they didn’t need a Savior – they needed a deliverer!
In the world of first Century Corinth – Crucifixion was a thing of shame, scorn, derision. It was reserved for only the most lowly of crimes and for the most vicious of criminals. To the Jews it was a hateful thing. Listen to the Old Testament…
Deuteronomy 21:22-23
22 If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, 23 you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse.
What the world doesn’t understand – is that in those hours on the cross, HE DIED AS A CRIMINAL because HE DIED IN MY PLACE! HE BECAME CURSED FOR ME!
How thankful I am for the Scandalous cross…it’s wasn’t His scandal that caused Him death – it was my scandalous life! My sin, my disobedience, my need, my inability to reach God by my own efforts!
Christ by his own sacrificial choice, was punished (penalized) in the place of sinners satisfying the demands of justice so God can justly forgive sins. It is called substitutionary atonement. IT WAS AN AMAZING THING THAT HE DID FOR EACH OF US!
Philippians 2:8
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself
and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!
The Corinthians, sensing the shame of the whole image of the cross, a criminal, a cursed man, the scandal of the cross - the Corinthians evidently thought it best to forget the about the cross and move on to higher things.
Paul goes on to speak of the Greeks or the Gentiles. (Non-Jewish in heritage)
V.22
“Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified…
foolishness to the Gentiles.”
While the cross was a Scandal to the Jews – it was “Foolishness” to the Greeks – They wanted WISDOM. They wanted what made sense. The cross made no sense to them! A crucified Christ seemed ridiculous to them. The idea that a criminal could be the Messiah was regarded as foolish. They weren’t looking for deliverance – they were looking for WISDOM. They had produced men like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Great thinkers.
In the 17th chapter of Acts Luke describes the scene when Paul comes to Athens. The Athenians sat on Mar’s Hill, the Aeropagus and they sat there all day, think their profound thoughts and Luke says, “The told each other everything new.”
Then one day the Apostle Paul walks up and started telling the about a God who was unknown to them. This God came to earth, walked among men, died on the cross, and rose again from the dead. But it was all foolishness to them.
• Reason tells us that babies aren’t born to virgin girls.
• Reason tells us that God who is spirit doesn’t become flesh.
• Reason tells us that the Almighty God will not allow puny men to nail Him to a cross.
• Reason tells us that when a man died he cannot be resurrected back to life again.
The Greeks also had a different concept of salvation. To them EVERYONE IN THE END GOES TO BE WITH THE GODS. If your life was good enough, then you stayed with the god’s. But if your life wasn’t good enough - then you were reincarnated into another body and you get another chance … until you get it right! I’LL NEVER GET IT RIGHT! So they had no need for Savior – certainly a “suffering Savior”…they didn’t need Jesus…a criminal dying for them – it was all foolishness to them. THEY COULD DO IT ON THEIR OWN!
NONE OF THAT MAKES ANY SENSE! Remember the Bible says that
“Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
The beliefs of Christianity have always been out of sync with human understanding. Humanity, impressed with its own intelligence, can’t think big enough to grasp the simplicity of God’s plan.
What I find interesting is Paul – the author of 1 Corinthians – had tried it both ways. He had been a good Jew, even to the point of committing murder because he thought that was the right thing to do for the protection of Judaism! He also tried scholarship, he sat at the feet of the finest teachers. Both would come up short! Until his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road!
Foolishness of the Cross OR the Scandal of the Cross
Q: Where are you at this morning? You can’t get to Jesus without coming to the Cross. Are you one of those Paul speaks of in the very first verse who “are being saved”. The cross is the “power of God.”
When I first read Paul’s words “Being Saved” – it almost sound like a PROCESS. The word is SOZO. Meaning SAVED – “Being delivered from the penalty of sin and it’s consequences” Rescued!
Your SALVATION happens in a moment when you invite Christ into your life to forgive you of sin – you accept his offer of substitutionary atonement. HE BECAME SIN FOR YOU! He died for your Scandalous Life! That happens in an instant.
But that where it all begins…then you mature, and grow, and repent, and he stands with you changing you, fixing you, encouraging you, loving you, singing over you for the rest of your life!
In 2 Corinthians 3:18 Paul tells the believers that they are…
“…being transformed into his likeness”
That word “Transformed” is the same word that used to describe what occurs when a Caterpillar transforms into a Butterfly. Metamorphosis! We learned in our Men’s Bible study this week that any scientist will tell you that the DNA of a Caterpillar is 100% the DNA of a Butterfly.
Though they look nothing alike. Though they still look like a catapiller – IT IS IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING/LOOKING LIKE WHAT IT ALREADY IS!
THAT’S YOU! When Jesus “SAVED” you. Sozo! You inherited the DNA of a MAN of GOD…a WOMAN OF GOD. A fully developed, strong, Son or Daughter of God. That’s your DNA…what you’ve done ever since that is you are IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING WHAT YOU ALREADY ARE! It all begins at the cross!
There’s story about a little girl who proudly wore a shiny cross on a chain around her neck. One day she was approached by a man who said to her, “Little girl, don’t you know that the cross Jesus died on wasn’t beautiful like the one you’re wearing? It was an ugly, wooden thing.” To which the girl replied, “Yes, I know. But they told me in Sunday school that whatever Jesus touches, he changes.”
Galatians 6:14
“…may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Sing: The Old Rugged Cross