ENGAGE
As most of you probably know, today is not only Easter, but it is also April Fool’s day. Although that occurs more often than you might think, the last time this occurred was back in 1956. The next occurrence will be 11 years from now in 2029.
So it’s certainly possible that some of you have already been the victim of an April Fool’s prank. Over the years, there have been some really ingenious hoaxes carried out on April Fool’s Day:
• Probably the most famous was the one carried out by BBC TV in 1957 where they ran a segment showing the Swiss spaghetti harvest, which was experiencing a bumper crop due to mild weather and the elimination of the spaghetti weevil. Apparently hundreds of people called the TV station to find out where they could observe the harvest in person or where they might be able to purchase their own spaghetti tree.
• In 1996, Taco Bell took out newspaper articles claiming that it had purchased the Liberty Bell in an effort to help reduce the national debt. Even some senators got taken in by that hoax and the National Park Service had to hold a press conference to deny the news.
• In 2015, Cottonelle used Twitter to announce that it was introducing left-handed toilet paper.
I’ve seen a lot of suggestions about how to play tricks on people this year since Easter falls on April Fool’s Day. One of the most common that I’ve seen involves wrapping grapes in foil to make them look like mini chocolate eggs. And I even saw someone suggest holding an Easter Egg hunt without any eggs. I promise that we won’t do that to your kids this morning. We have plenty of filled eggs for them to find.
TENSION
Now if you’ve ever fallen prey to those kinds of April Fool’s tricks or even if you get tricked by someone today, you may feel a bit foolish for a while, but you will probably recover just fine and you’re not going to experience any lasting harm.
But there is another kind of foolishness that I’d like to talk to you about for a few minutes that is far more serious because it has both present and eternal consequences which are permanent. And not surprisingly it’s a kind of foolishness that is not new. In fact, we know that it has been around for nearly 2,000 years at a minimum, since the apostle Paul wrote about it in a letter to the church in Corinth about 20 years after the resurrection of Jesus.
TRUTH
This morning I’m going to read just a paragraph from that letter and use it to make a few comments about this foolishness. I’ve included that passage in the insert in your bulletin if you want to follow along as I read. And there is also some space there to take any notes if you would like.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
(1 Corinthians 1:18–25 ESV)
Paul can get a bit wordy at times, so let me see if I can’t help you get to the bottom line here. Here is Paul’s main point:
It is foolish not to follow God’s ways
even when they seem foolish to me
And that is particularly true when it comes to the cross.
Things really haven’t changed a lot in nearly 2,000 years. Today, the majority of the world still considers the idea that the way we are made right with God is through the death of Jesus on a cross to be foolishness.
There were two main reasons that the people of Paul’s day considered the word of the cross to be foolishness and those are still the two main reasons that people consider it to be foolish today.
For the Jews, the cross was a stumbling block because it meant that Jesus was not the kind of Savior that they were expecting. In their thinking the Messiah was going to be a strong warrior who would liberate the people from their Roman oppressors, not succumb to them. He would triumph over God’s enemies, not be crucified by them.
For many people today, the cross is still a stumbling block because they, too, are looking for a God who will deal with all their earthly enemies and take care of all their problems. But the cross shows us that Jesus came to take care of far more destructive enemies that cause eternal harm and not just temporary pain and discomfort – our own selfishness and pride.
Many are looking for a God who will do things their way and give them what they want. So when God doesn’t answer their prayers when and how they want - when he doesn’t take away the cancer or fix their finances or restore their relationships or take away the hurt in their lives - they reject the cross and walk away from God.
Paul uses the term Greeks here to describe all non-Jews. And for them the cross was folly because it didn’t fit in with their way of thinking. The Greeks prided themselves on their wisdom and their ability to be able to understand and explain things. And they just couldn’t understand or explain a God who would sacrifice Himself for them. That made no sense at all.
A religion where people could earn their way into favor with God, in which they could do something to essentially buy their way into heaven by their good deeds – now that made sense. After all, that is the way that every other religion in the world operates and that is the way all their gods functioned. But they just couldn’t get their heads around the idea that no one deserves heaven and that the only way to be made right with God is to accept the sacrifice He made on our behalf. The idea of a crucified Savior was just utter foolishness to them.
Again, the cross is folly to most in our culture today for the same reason. First of all people don’t want to admit that they are incapable of doing anything to earn favor with God. And, secondly, they don’t want to commit to anything that they can’t completely understand and explain with their own human wisdom.
But as Paul makes clear here in this passage, when it comes to the cross…
It is foolish not to follow God’s ways
even when they seem foolish to me
APPLICATION
Paul makes it clear that there are only two options when it comes to the cross of Jesus:
• Those who treat the word of the cross as foolishness and folly are perishing.
• But to those who embrace the word of the cross, the cross is the wisdom of God and the power of God that makes it possible to be saved and to have a relationship with a holy God.
And God leaves it up to each one of us to choose which one of those two options we are going to live by. We can either be wise and choose to follow the way of the cross, even when it might seem foolishness to us, or we can be fools and choose to reject the cross.
I know that right now, some of you may be asking how all this relates to the event that we are celebrating today – the resurrection of Jesus. Without the resurrection, then the cross really would be foolishness, wouldn’t it?
After all, it was not uncommon for someone to be crucified by the Romans and by at least six other ancient civilizations that preceded them. No one knows for sure how many people the Romans crucified until the practice was stopped three centuries after the crucifixion of Jesus, but estimates range from tens of thousands to even hundreds of thousands. So Jesus’ method of death was not unique in any way. And any of those people could have claimed to be the Son of God or the Messiah. I wouldn’t doubt that over the years some of them had probably done that since we know that throughout history many have made those kinds of claims. But not one of them rose from the dead and is still alive today.
So it is the resurrection that proves that everything that Jesus claimed about being the Son of God who came to earth to voluntarily die to pay the penalty for our sins that we rightly deserve is true. It is the resurrection that proves that the cross is not foolishness after all.
INSPIRATION
Lee Strobel is a former atheist who was once one of those people who considered the cross to be foolishness. Earlier this year, he made a video in which he shared these words:
When I was an atheist and legal editor of the Chicago Tribune I would have smirked at the fact that Easter this year falls on April Fool’s Day. Because back then I thought that anyone would have to be a fool to think that Jesus literally rose from the dead.
Lee goes on to explain that after his wife became a Christian, he spent the next two years of his life trying to prove that the resurrection of Jesus was nothing more than a hoax. Lee came to the conclusion that there is so much evidence – both Biblical and extra-Biblical – that confirms that the resurrection of Jesus is an actual historical event. And as a result of his investigation, the former atheist decided that the cross which he once considered to be foolish was in fact the power and wisdom of God and that he would be a fool not to follow God’s ways even though they had seemed foolish to him for most of his life.
ACTION
It is foolish not to follow God’s ways
even when they seem foolish to me
Perhaps some of you here this morning need to make that same decision that Lee Strobel made once he discovered that the cross was not foolishness after all. Maybe you’ve been like the Jews and you’ve rejected Jesus because God hasn’t done things in your life the way that you would like Him to or the way you expect Him to. Or maybe you’ve been like the Greeks and rejected Jesus because the cross just doesn’t make sense to you.
But hopefully I’ve been able to show you this morning that the cross is not foolish at all. In fact is it really the only possible way to be made right with God and have a relationship with Him. At a minimum, I hope that I’ve at least piqued your interest in exploring that idea further. If you feel like that describes where you’re at right now, I’d love to talk with you more about what it means to place your faith in Jesus and to embrace the wisdom and power of the cross. If you’d like to do that, let me know after we’re done here and we’ll set up a time to talk. Or if that’s too intimidating, you can contact us through our website.
I know that the majority of us here this morning have already discovered that the cross is not foolish at all and have put our trust in Jesus alone for our salvation. For us, the cross is still relevant because it reminds us how we are to live. It reminds us that we are to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and live in humility, not pride, in weakness, not in power, in suffering not in comfort, in love, not in hatred,
Today it may very well be that someone will play a trick on you and that you’ll get fooled. But as I said earlier, if that happens, you’ll recover and be OK. But my prayer for all of us here this morning is that we won’t get fooled when it comes to the cross because if we do that the effects are eternal.
