It is a beautiful day in Kansas City today. The kind of day that lets you know spring WILL come. The kind of day that gives you hope in new life and resurrection from the old. The kind of day you breath deeper, cleaning out all the yuck that has accumulated from a long winter that is most likely not quite finished.
I fully expect a blizzard to roll in tomorrow. But today I am treasuring the sound of my youngest child playing outside with a friend. Their laughter, squeals and yells make me smile and for once I don't have to tell them to use their inside voices!
Today we will spend some time in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, so get our your Bibles and read that section.
We live in a culture obsessed with knowledge. We are highly educated and even more highly opinionated. Everything we could ever want or need to know is right at our fingertips. And we want and need to know A LOT!!! Or so we think. We want medical knowledge, parenting knowledge and financial knowledge. We want knowledge about current events, the latest technology and hollywood gossip. We want to know who to vote for, how something works, and who the Bachelor gave a rose to. And we want to know it now! Knowledge, however, does not always equal wisdom.
The first century Corinthians were also knowledgable people. They prided themselves on the how well spoken they were, how well they were able to influence people around them, how knowledgeable they were. They felt that they were wise. But that very "wisdom" they were so proud of, was the one thing keeping them from fully understanding the "message of the cross."
You see the message of the cross is this… King Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, lived a perfect life. He had no sin of any kind. Though he was perfectly innocent in all things he was found guilty and crucified in the most humiliating way. A way that respectable people did not even talk about in public!!! He was, is and always will be the King of Kings. Yet he was crucified! It makes NO SENSE! It is ridiculous, an oxymoron. The only one who could order a crucifixion was a King or his subordinate and no King would order his own crucifixion! The wise, knowledgable Gentiles of Corinth found this very idea foolish. Too foolish to comprehend.
Too many people today still find this idea foolish. Where is God's power? Where is His might? How can an all-powerful God allow such a thing. "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing," it was in the first century and it still is today. But to those who are being saved (that's you!) it is the power of God.
God's power is not in his might or his strength. It is found in the cross. In His Son… dying… for you.
Wisdom, my friend, is different than knowledge. Wisdom, the kind of wisdom to be treasured, is found in Jesus Christ. In King Jesus, crucified for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment