1st Corinthians Lesson 6

1st Corinthians 1 Part 3

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

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Lesson Transcript

Introduction and Context

Welcome to our class on First Corinthians. Please flip over to chapter 1. We left off in verse 17. I believe this will be our final lesson on the first chapter. And next week, Lord willing, Mike will pick up with chapter two.

Understanding Paul’s Statement About Baptism (Verse 17)

Chapter 1, verse 17: “For Christ sent me not to baptize.” We need to stop and talk about that verse. We need to read that verse in context, but not just that verse. We need to read every verse in context. So, this verse is not unique in that. We always need to read verses in context and see what is being said to us.

We know the issue here is not whether one must be baptized. That’s not the issue that’s being dealt with. In fact, Paul, as we talked about last time, is operating here under the assumption that they had all been baptized. I mean, that’s the underlying assumption of this argument, that you’ve all been baptized. And that’s what Paul’s assuming, and it was the case. They had all been baptized. They were all members of the church there.

The issue was who baptized you? And we can see that from the context here. Exactly, that was the issue being dealt with. In fact, this may have even been why we’re told in John 4:2 that Jesus did not personally baptize anyone, but his disciples baptized.

What Paul Actually Meant

Christ did not send Paul to physically walk into the water and perform the physical act of baptism. That’s what’s being said here. But that does not mean that Christ did not send Paul to preach baptism, because, in fact, we know that Christ did that very thing. We can flip over to Matthew 28:19, for example: “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” And we know that verse 17 here in 1 Corinthians 1 is not contradicting the Great Commission.

Paul, like all preachers of God’s Word, are told to go baptize. That’s the great commission. That’s what they’ve been commanded to do. So we know that Paul here is not saying that Christ did not give me the great commission. What he’s saying, when we read this in context, is that Christ did not send me to physically baptize people. He sent me to preach the gospel.

Baptism and Gospel Preaching Are Inseparable

Now we know something else here, too. We know for certain that Paul cannot possibly be contrasting baptism with preaching the gospel. He can’t be saying that preaching the gospel is different than baptism. We know that can’t be the case. Why? Well, because we have the New Testament and we can pick it up and read it.

Philip, for example, he preached Jesus to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8. And when Philip got through preaching Jesus to the Ethiopian eunuch, what was the very first thing the Ethiopian eunuch wanted to do? Be baptized. Preaching Jesus, preaching the gospel of Jesus, if it’s being done effectively and correctly and according to the Word of God, it will lead people to immediately want to be baptized into Jesus Christ and become a part of His church.

The very first sermon in Acts chapter 2, the first gospel sermon, Peter told his listeners at the end of that sermon when they asked, “What must we do?” Be baptized. That was the first gospel sermon. Ended with the invitation to be baptized. Every gospel sermon ends with that invitation, or it’s not a gospel sermon.

We know Paul was not contrasting baptism with preaching the gospel. We know that Paul was not saying that Christ did not send him to proclaim the necessity of baptism as part of the gospel plan of Jesus Christ. What was Paul saying? See it right from the context. He’s saying, Paul did not send me to physically baptize people.

Barclay’s Insight

I love what Barclay said on this point. He said, “It is not to be thought that Paul is belittling baptism. The point is this. Baptism was into the name of Jesus. To give money into a man’s name was to pay it into his account. To sell a slave into a man’s name was to give that slave into his undisputed possession. A soldier swore loyalty into the name of Caesar, meaning he belonged absolutely to the Emperor. ‘Into the name of,’ Barclay writes, implied utter possession.”

“All that Paul is saying is, I am glad that I was so busy preaching, because if I had baptized, it would have given some of you the excuse to say that you were baptized into my possession instead of the possession of Jesus Christ.” And then Barclay finishes: “He is not making little of baptism. He’s simply glad that no act of his could be misconstrued as annexing men for himself and not for Christ.”

And isn’t that the exact problem he’s dealing with here? Some people were saying, “I am of Paul,” “I am of Apollos,” “I am of Cephas.” And he’s saying, you know, if some of you people saying “I of Paul” are saying that because I physically baptized you, then I’m glad I didn’t physically baptize that many people, because that just means more people would be saying that. That’s what he’s saying here.

Paul’s Memory Lapse and Biblical Inspiration (Verse 16)

Now, Paul has a memory lapse in verse 16. And that’s been used by some people to cast doubt on the inspiration of the Bible. So let’s stop and talk about that. Paul says he can’t remember who else he baptized.

Well, first, such an argument I think really shows a basic misunderstanding of inspiration and how it works. God’s Word, as we know, was transferred to us without any error by human authors inspired by God. Each word, each character, each verb tense, singular, plural, all came from the mouth of God. God breathed every word, every verb tense, every letter.

How Inspiration Works Through Human Authors

But God used men as his writing instruments. And these men that he used had different abilities, they had different backgrounds, they had different experiences, and we can see that as we read what they wrote. It’s a wonderful process of inspiration, as the very words of God come through the human instrument he’s using as a pen to write his words.

Some, for example, were more educated than others. Luke was a Greek scholar. Mark had a much less good grasp of Greek. They had different backgrounds, as I said. They had different abilities. Paul, for example, is the master logician. We see him arguing in these epistles. When we get to 1 Corinthians 15, we’ll see him particularly when it comes to the resurrection. And that personality, that ability of Paul came through in the inspiration as God was using Paul to give us his word, God’s words.

God did not give them a vocabulary they didn’t already possess. God did not even give them grammatical skills they did not possess. And we can see that too as we read and study the original Greek. And God did not make them omniscient. Paul did not remember whether he had baptized anyone else.

The Memory Lapse Reinforces Paul’s Point

And rather than have the Holy Spirit remind him, which the Holy Spirit could have done, the Holy Spirit instead had him write down that truth about his memory that “I just don’t remember who else I baptized.” And in fact, isn’t his inability to remember, doesn’t that reinforce his point here?

I mean, what kind of point would it have been if Paul had said, “it doesn’t matter who baptized you? But by the way, I remember everybody I baptized. I remember where they were, what they were doing, what they were wearing, the day, the time.” I mean, would that even make sense? I mean, Paul’s point here is it doesn’t matter who baptizes you. And that would not have been reinforced if he had had a photographic memory of every event.

So he wrote down the truth that, you know, “I don’t remember. I was so busy proclaiming and preaching the gospel of Christ, I don’t remember everybody I plunged under the water.” So that should not cast doubt on inspiration at all. In fact, I think it’s a beautiful example of how inspiration works.

Paul’s Mission: Preaching Without Worldly Wisdom

Now, Paul ends here by affirming his mission. What was that mission? To preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to do so in a way that would not detract from the cross of Jesus Christ. You know, it’s very easy to detract from the cross of Christ when we pander to the wisdom of this world. If we do that, we’ll be detracting from the cross of Christ.

And that in fact leads us to Paul’s next main theme here, which is true wisdom and false wisdom. The root word for wisdom in the Greek, sophos, occurs 20 times in this next section. And some commentators think that Paul may have even been responding to some other slogan that was coming from Corinth. We know the Corinthians thought they were very, very wise and full of all this wisdom. And I think Paul is about to look at that and say, “Are you really that wise? Is this worldly wisdom that you’ve brought into the church?”

The Cross: Foolishness to the World, Power to Believers (Verse 18)

Verse 18: “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God.”

There are so many things we could say about that verse on the cross. And I’ll tell you, I’ll remind you that I guess five or six weeks ago now, I did a devotional lesson here just on the cross. And so you might recall some of those things we said then about the cross, because I won’t repeat all that here.

But we know the Corinthians had embraced the message of redemption through a crucified Savior. We know that because they were members of the Lord’s church. And what did the world think about that? Well, the world thought that was the craziest idea it had ever heard. And this seems to have given the Corinthians here a bit of an inferiority complex. They wanted to impress the world, and yet the world was laughing at them because of what they believed.

The World Still Laughs Today

And you know what? Two thousand years later, the world is still laughing, isn’t it? The media delights in belittling believers, doesn’t it? Hollywood delights in belittling and denigrating believers, doesn’t it? How many more stories on the news will we have to hear about potato chips that look like the Virgin Mary?

The scientific establishment refutes intelligent design—not with an argument, but with what? Ridicule. The camera had a designer, but the eye, that is infinitely more complicated than that camera, did not have a designer, and that’s what they call wisdom. No wonder they have to resort to ridicule.

Who Are You Trying to Impress?

Paul is wondering here as he’s talking to the Corinthians: who is it you’re trying to impress with your wisdom? Are you trying to impress the drowning man who despises the lifeboat? Are you trying to impress the blind man who despises the light? Are you trying to impress the starving man who despises bread? Are you trying to impress the perishing man who laughs at the cross of Jesus Christ?

The question to them is the same question for us. John 12:43, do we love the praise of men more than the praise of God?

The True Foundation

To the child of God, the cross is not foolishness. The cross is the power of God. What is really foolish? Is any attempt to establish salvation on any other foundation than Jesus Christ and his cross? Will science save us? Will medicine save us? Will genetic engineering save us? Will Islam save us? Will Buddhism save us? What foolishness.

“For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Paul will remind them in chapter 3, verse 11. If your house is built on anything else, it’s built on a shaky foundation, and the earthquake is coming. There’s only one foundation.

God’s Wisdom Versus Human Wisdom (Verses 19-21)

Verse 19: “For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

Stephen Hawking: A Modern Example

Stephen Hawking. Heard that name before, I bet. English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of the Research at the Center for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. I think you’d need an extra large business card to hold that title. He is at the pinnacle of worldly wisdom.

When I was at SMU teaching, I got to hear him speak one time, but I didn’t really hear him speak. I saw him up there on the stage. But, you know, he has Lou Gehrig’s disease. And when he talks, you hear a speech synthesizer that he’s able to control with a little movement of his finger, a blink of his eye. He’s almost totally paralyzed. He’s been called the world’s greatest living physicist.

And yet, Stephen Hawking, the pinnacle of worldly wisdom, is a fool, isn’t he? Here’s just one thing he wrote: “The universe can create itself out of nothing, and God is no longer necessary.” Stephen Hawking is a fool. And he’s also without excuse, isn’t he? Romans 1 verse 20. If anybody in the world should understand the eternal power and Godhead from the created world, as Romans 1:20 says, it should be Stephen Hawking. And yet he rejects God. World’s greatest living physicist? I think he’s the biggest fool, isn’t he? Worldly wisdom.

Isaiah’s Context

Verse 19 here refers us back to Isaiah 29, verse 14: “Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder. For the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.”

In Isaiah’s day, as today, there were blind people being led by blind guides who knew nothing about God and nothing about His Word. What was going on at the time that Isaiah wrote that was that the political advisors were urging Israel to make an alliance with Assyria and then make a secret alliance with Egypt in case the Assyrian alliance didn’t work out.

So we’re going to be friends with Assyria. We got a secret alliance with Egypt just in case this doesn’t work out. They thought they had everything worked out. They were brilliant. They didn’t need God. They didn’t need to listen to Isaiah. They had every base covered. They knew exactly what they were doing.

And what happened? When Assyria found out about the secret Egyptian alliance, they became so alarmed that they just invaded—the very thing Israel had sought to avoid. That purely human ingenuity, that human wisdom, that human resourcefulness apart from God, it didn’t work out in the days of Isaiah, didn’t work out for the Corinthians, and it won’t work out for us if we’re trying to do things apart from God.

The Danger in the Church

Now we need to note, though, the context of these verses. It’s not the world’s false boasting in its wisdom that has caused Paul to write this section. It’s false boasting in the church. This is addressed to the Corinthian Christians. Christians at Corinth were glorying in men. Christians at Corinth were dividing themselves up along man-made lines. Christians in Corinth appear to have just absorbed uncritically the ideals and the values of the pagan world that surrounded them. That had come into the church.

The false wisdom of this world had invaded the church, and that’s a problem that we have to guard against, also. We need to consider ourselves and appreciate the ways in which our own thinking may have been influenced by the wisdom and secularism of this age.

Modern Applications

When you hear people in the church talk about how we need to accept evolution, so-called theistic evolution, you need to think about these verses. Are they following the wisdom of God in doing that? Or are they following the wisdom of men? Aren’t they making a secret alliance with the Egyptians when they do that?

The psalmist tells us, Psalm 111, verse 10, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And the world, what does the world tell us? The denial of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And they’re not just telling us that, they’re telling our children that, aren’t they?

“Know ye not that friendship of the world is enmity with God? James 4, verse 4. Whoever therefore will be a friend of the world is an enemy of God?” We can’t have one foot in worldly wisdom, and one foot in God’s wisdom.

The Result of Worldly Wisdom

Verse 17 of this chapter tells us the essential characteristic of this worldly wisdom, and that is, it can empty the word of the cross of its power. And what advantage did these people get from the wisdom of the world in which they place so much reliance? Verse twenty-one tells us they gain nothing from it. Because at the end of the day, they knew not God.

Stephen Hawking, I just quoted him to you. He knows not God. And they ultimately obtained the only thing that can be obtained from that, a demonstration of their own foolishness. Worldly wisdom could not save them.

I like what T. S. Eliot wrote on that: “All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance. All our ignorance brings us nearer to death. But nearer to death, no nearer to God.” That’s the path of human wisdom.

And what was God’s reaction? He offered salvation to all, but not on man’s terms. On his terms through the preaching of the cross of Jesus Christ, which the world saw as complete foolishness. That was God’s plan. And note the wonderful language here. It pleased God to save people that way. God delights in saving people, He loves to save people. So often the world pictures God as someone just throwing people into hell. God loves to save people. He gave everything to save people.

Jews Want Signs, Greeks Want Wisdom (Verses 22-25)

Verses twenty-two through twenty-five: “For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

The Jews wanted a sign, and the Greeks wanted wisdom. But neither would find God apart from Jesus Christ, no matter how hard or how long they looked.

Jewish Objections

The Jews, as we’ve discussed, saw Christ as a stumbling block or a scandal because the law of Moses said in Deuteronomy 21:23 that cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. They just couldn’t get over that. How could Jesus be the Messiah? To the Jews, a crucified Messiah was a contradiction in terms. They could not accept it, and they stumbled over it. Of course, some did, but many of the Jews stumbled over it.

Greek Objections

The Greeks saw crucified Christ as just foolishness. The Greeks wanted to speculate their way to God through human reasoning and argument. The Greeks thought their wisdom would save them. A popular proverb of the day was, “To the wise man all things belong.” That was the Greek thought.

In fact, the Greeks went further than that, though, because to the Greeks the first characteristic of one of their gods was apatheia, which means the total inability to feel, from which we get apathy. The word apathy. A God who suffered, who felt pain—to the Greeks, it was unthinkable. To the Greeks, the gods were detached and remote. They had no feeling. The Greeks couldn’t understand that. It was incomprehensible to them. It was ridiculous to them.

To proclaim a crucified Jew from some backwater town as the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, they must have thought that was utter madness.

Paul’s Response

And how did Paul respond to these objections? Did he water down the message to lure them into the building? Did he change the message to make it more palatable to them? Did he begin to just preach the resurrected Christ or just preach the returning Christ and not say too much about the crucified Christ? Did he just skip quickly over the crucifixion to avoid embarrassment?

Paul preached the crucified Christ. In fact, he knew nothing else among them than Jesus Christ and him crucified. Paul did not change the gospel for men. He preached the gospel and told men that they were the ones who needed to change, not the gospel.

The Divine Origin of the Gospel

The gospel message presents the very opposite of what people expect. It still does today. And isn’t that very often the very thing that persuades them to believe it? No man would have taken the cross, that ancient symbol of death, and made it a symbol of life, and placed it front and center. No man would ever have done that, but God did that. And isn’t that wonderful, powerful testimony to the divine origin of the gospel?

Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. The Greek word for power used there is the same word from which we get dynamite. Christ is the dynamite of God, and God shows his power by bringing to nothing the powers of this world through a crucified Savior.

What would the mighty Roman Emperor have thought at this time if you’d told him that a crucified Jew would one day judge him and find him wanting? What would he have thought?

The Collision of Wisdom

You know, we know Isaiah 53 portrays the suffering Christ. But we need to note the last verses of chapter 52 of Isaiah. That discussion really starts toward the end of chapter 52. And right at the end of chapter 52, we read, “So shall he startle many nations. The kings shall shut their mouths at him. For that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall consider.”

I love that verse. Because that’s the collision of the wisdom of God with the wisdom of man.

The Rational Nature of Faith

We should note in these verses Paul’s repeated emphasis on preaching, preaching the Word of God. One commentator wrote, “However much he denounces and renounces the worldliness of human wisdom, he passionately believes in the rational nature of God’s revealed wisdom.”

In the next chapter, Paul tells us that he imparts wisdom with words, but words from the Holy Spirit rather than words from the wisdom of man. But Paul here is not denigrating words. Paul is not denigrating the faculty of reason or contrasting faith with reason.

Faith is never contrasted with reason in the Bible. Faith is contrasted with sight. God told Isaiah, “Come, let us reason together” in chapter 1, verse 18. He says the same thing today. Christianity is a thinking man’s or person’s religion. It was then, it is today.

And we know that’s not true of every religion. I don’t have to name them here. You can think of them. Most of them you have to check your brain at the door. Not true of Christianity. It has always been a thinking person’s religion. Always. Remember, it came into being here when the church was established during the height of Greek rationality and reason and thought. That’s the world into which God placed his church. It’s always been for thinking people.

God’s Choice of the Humble (Verses 26-31)

Verses twenty-six through thirty-one: “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are. That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, that according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”

Empirical Evidence from Corinth

In these verses, Paul offers empirical evidence of the foolishness of God, as it’s referred to here from the Corinthians’ own experience. If they had looked around, they would have had to have admitted that most of the members of the Corinthian church did not come from the cream of Corinthian society. And for the few that did, Christianity had done nothing to enhance their social status.

What about the mighty? What about the noble? What about the wise? Well, Paul says not many are called. Now we know, and we’ve talked about it already, that he cannot possibly mean that they have not been called to obey the gospel. Because we know that everyone is called to obey the gospel. It’s proclaimed to the whole world. God delights in saving people, He delights in saving the mighty just as much as He delights in saving the poor. God would have all men be saved.

Some Mighty Did Respond

In fact, we know that some mighty people obeyed the gospel and they heeded the call. They answered the call. Sosthenes, Crispus, Gaius, we’ve talked about them. Paul did not say not any are called. He said not many are called.

And he’s making the same point that is made throughout the Gospels. The same point Jesus made, Matthew 19:24 about trying to get through the eye of the needle. It’s hard for rich, powerful, mighty people to be saved because they’ve got so much else going on. Isn’t that the exact same point we read about in Matthew 13:22, where the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word?

That’s why it’s so hard for the mighty to obey the gospel and hear that call. But they’re being called just like everybody else by God to obey the gospel. But most of them then and most of them today don’t answer that call. They do not become partakers of the heavenly calling. They reject a message that would pour contempt on all their pride.

God’s Consistent Pattern

Throughout the Bible, God consistently chooses the most unlikely people to act on his behalf. We could go through so many examples, all the way back in the Old Testament. And Paul maintains that God has continued this pattern, hasn’t he, by adding people to the church in Corinth who were not among the world’s mighty, the world’s rich.

And why did God work this way? Verse 29 tells us it’s the same reason that God has always worked this way, so that no man would ever glory in his presence. So that all the glory would go to God. That’s why God works this way. He’s continuing to work this way.

The Problem of Human Pride

The problem with man is not that he feels too weak. The problem with man is that he feels too strong, that he thinks he is God. Since the days of Adam and Eve, man has been man’s disobedient servant and has worshipped the creature rather than the creator.

The arrogance of man is incredible, even today, especially today, with nothing more than our education. We’re going to destroy poverty. We’re going to wipe out disease. We’re going to get rid of death itself eventually. They’re working on it. And we’re going to live in this eternal utopia with no need for God, all with our own education and human wisdom, or so we’re told. Is that the way it’s working out?

Secular Humanism as Religion

The secular humanist movement, or more properly, the secular humanist religion, is a rebellion against God. It’s an exaltation of another God, man, in place of the one true God. And it permeates our culture like no other religion. We’re told there’s a separation between church and state in this country, but our state has fully embraced the religion of secular humanism, hasn’t it? And that religion, along with its priesthood and its sacred writings, are openly invited into our schools, isn’t it? Well, I could preach a whole sermon on that one.

God’s Opposition to Pride

Verse 29 is a theme that’s carried throughout Scripture. God opposes the proud. In fact, God is so intent on breaking down all human pride that He acts in a way that reveals its emptiness. He wants us to recognize our pride and understand its emptiness. And that’s what he’s doing here in Corinth. He chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. He chose the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. He chose the base and despised things of the world, and the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, or the things that man thought was important.

That’s the way God was acting then. That’s the way God acts today. But by using such methods, God was overthrowing one of the false standards of this world. The notion that those who matter most are the wise, the well-bred, the articulate, the gifted, the wealthy, the wielders of power and influence, the politicians. Such standards die very hard even in the church, don’t they? We studied that in James chapter 2, verses 1 through 5. Remember that discussion? When the rich man comes into the assembly, the poor man comes into the assembly?

All Things Found in Christ (Verse 30)

Look at verse 30. Do you want wisdom? It’s found in Jesus Christ. Do you want righteousness? It’s found in Jesus Christ. You want sanctification? Look in Jesus Christ. You want redemption? It’s found in Jesus Christ. None of these things can be found outside of Jesus Christ.

There are no wise people outside of Christ. There are no righteous people outside of Christ. There are no sanctified people outside of Christ. There are no redeemed people outside of Christ.

How to Get Into Christ

So, what’s the question? How do you get into Christ? If you get your Bible out and do a search on that phrase, “into Christ,” you’ll come up with two verses. Romans 6:3, we’re baptized into Christ. Galatians 3:27, we’re baptized into Christ. So, how do we get into Christ? We’re baptized into Christ.

Is that really that hard to understand? I mean, the denominational world, what excuse do they have on that? Really? Really? Is it really that hard to understand?

Those baptized into Christ have been added by God to his church, the saved church, the church of Christ, the Lord’s church.

The Wisdom of This World Offers Nothing

It’d be easy for us today to be carried away by the wisdom of this world, more so than ever before. But for those who have tasted the heavenly gift and become partakers of the heavenly calling, the wisdom of this world has nothing to offer. Nothing. Nothing. It offers no temptation because we know in whom we have believed.

Chesterton’s Poem: “The Convert”

There’s a poem by G.K. Chesterton that I think just beautifully expresses this idea. It’s particularly at the end of the poem, but you can’t just read half a poem, so I’m going to read the whole thing, but it’s really toward the end. Here it is, it’s called “The Convert”:

After one moment when I bowed my head,
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said.
Forest of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed
Being not unlovable, but strange and light,
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite,
But softly as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give
They trace their crawling cosmos like a tree
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus, and I live.

When you read that poem closely, you understand that Chesterton is not talking just about Lazarus, he’s talking about us. Because, like Lazarus, we’ve all been called out of that tomb, haven’t we? There was that day, now long ago, when Jesus said to me, “Eric, come forth.” And I came out of the watery grave of baptism, just like Lazarus was once told to come forth. He came out of that human grave.

We’re all like Lazarus. We live. And like Lazarus, that should change how we see that human wisdom.

Conclusion: God’s Wisdom Versus Man’s Wisdom

Jeremiah 9:23 and 24: “Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this. That he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercised loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, saith the Lord.”

In Isaiah 55:6-9: “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Wisdom of God or the wisdom of man? The wisdom of God is eternal. Wisdom of man will be burned up. Wisdom of God offers salvation. Wisdom of man emptiness and vanity. The wisdom of God is unchanging. The wisdom of man changes with the headlines. The choice is simple.

Thank you so much for your attention and these lessons. I’ve really enjoyed teaching them. I hope you’ve gotten something out of it. I’m looking forward to chapter two. I think it’s time for our closing prayer.