The mayor and other dignitaries were looking into the vast pit dug for
the new hospital to be built. The town half-wit came up and gazed into the
pit, and asked the mayor what he was going to do with this big hole. The
mayor decided to humor him and said, "We are going to round up all the fools
in town and pile them in there." The half-wit thought a moment and then
said, "Whose gonna be left to cover um up?"
Even a half-wit knows that in some sense all men are fools, but I have
to confess I never really realized to what degree this is true until I
studied what the Bible says about fools and foolishness. The subject is so
vast, and the evidence is so overwhelming that only a fool would deny that
all men are fools. This does not sound very nice, however, and so it is wise
for us to see there is a positive side to being a fool. So much so, that
Paul in I Cor. 3:18 urges Christians to be fools, and in 4:10 he says, "We
are fools for Christ."
To add to the paradox of being a Christian fool, Paul in this passage of
I Cor. 1:18-31 glories in Christian folly, and links almost everything of
Christian nobility to foolishness. He writes of the foolishness of the cross;
the foolishness of wisdom, and the foolishness of preaching, and most
shocking of all, for it seems to border on blasphemy, Paul even writes in
verse 25 of the foolishness of God. Then he says in verse 27 that God chose
the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. And the foolish things
are the Christians.
So what it comes down to is this: All men are in some sense fools, but
sense all are not fools in the same way, we have to make a distinction
between worldly fools and wise fools. The worldly fools are those who feel so
wise they have no need of light from God. These fools say in their hearts
that there is no God. Man is the measure of all things, and He determines
His own destiny. They say science and human philosophy is all we need to
produce a utopia. We do not need the Bible or God to create our own heaven.
The wise fool, in contrast, recognizes that human wisdom is so limited,
and so there is a need for wisdom from above. They are seeing as fools from
the point of view of the worldly fool. God, however, sees them as wise, and
so the two perspectives make them wise fools-that is people who seem to
choose foolishness and trust in foolishness, but because it is the
foolishness of God they are wise. So what we have here is a study in
relativity. The worldly wise who reject God's revelation are, in relation to
eternal truth, fools. Those, however, who choose the way of God are seen as
fools, in relation to the way of the world, but in fact, they are the truly wise.
Type one fools seem wise to men, but are fools to God.
Type 2 fools seems fools to men, but are wise to God. So
wisdom and folly are relative to whose perspective you are seeing them from.
Paul's whole battle with the Corinthians was to get them to stop being
wise before the world and fools before God, and to reverse that to being
fools before the world, and wise before God. The goal of the Christian is to
become a wise fool. The Corinthians were missing this mark because they came
from a long tradition of philosophers who had all the answers. As Greeks
they were considered a wise people. The result was, the church was in chaos
because of all the pride of worldly wisdom. Some thought Paul was the best.
Others that it was Peter, and still others that Apollos was number one. Some
said they were all wrong, and we follow Jesus only. The church was divided
because, in their pride,they were deciding what was best. They were also
picking and choosing the gifts they felt were best. In pride Christians can
set themselves up as the judge of what is wise and what is foolish, and in so
doing they make their human judgment, rather than God's revelation,
the basis for their value system, and this is folly. If human reason is going to \
be the standard of judgment, then the whole
plan of God is nothing but foolishness, and nothing is more foolish than the
foolishness of the cross. Just look at the evidence of its folly.
1. The innocent dying for the guilty.
2. The folly of having a way out and not taking it.
3. The folly of having power to destroy your enemy, but letting them destroy you.
4. The folly of surrender to a foe you could easily conquer.
5. The folly of suffering when comfort and pleasure is at your command.
6. The folly of having the power to do miracles, and yet do nothing.
7. The folly of having an eloquent defense and yet not opening your mouth.
8. The folly of going to hell when you never had to leave heaven.
9. The folly of volunteering for a job that is certain death.
10. The folly of being God and yet letting mere men push you around.
11. The folly of forgiving those most worthy of judgment.
We could go on, but I am sure you get the point. The cross is pure
foolishness from a rational point of view. It is nonsense, and a ridiculous
way for God to go about saving man from the perspective of the worldly wise.
An intelligent lost man is scandalized by the cross. He feels that only
fools can be Christians if they buy into the foolishness of the cross. When
Paul gave his testimony and told of the death and resurrection of Christ, the
procurator Festes interrupted him in Acts 26:24 and said to him, "You are out
of your mind, Paul! Your great learning is driving you insane." Paul
responds in verse 25, "I am not insane...What I am saying is true and
reasonable. So what we have here is the worldly fool meeting the wise fool,
and each fool feels the other is a fool indeed. And the point is, both are
right from their point of view.
The village screwball made a friend coming down the sidewalk, and he
said, "Tell me which is the other side of the street." The friend said, "The
other side is over there" pointing to the other side. "That's funny," said
the screwball, "That's what I thought too, but I just over there and the lady
there said it was over here." Such a paradox of both sides being the other
side can drive a screwball batty, but this is the paradox of life. Both
sides of the argument of what is wise are fools from the perspective of the
other side, and Paul's advice then is to be a fool for Christ. Be willing to
seem like a fool for the sake of Christ. We are so concerned about being
accepted that we do not like to be seen as a fool. But the more concerned we
are about being respectable to the world, the less we are concerned about
being faithful to the wisdom of God. We are so easily conformed to the world,
and we lose our sense of mission which is to confront the world with the
foolishness of God.
In the eyes of the wise
Don't be cool, be a fool.
It may be a loss,
And you'll suffer pain,
But this is the cross
That leads to gain.
Gain that goes beyond the worldly clever,
For it is gain that lasts forever.
We are called, not just to be April fools, but perpetual fools. If we
never identify with the foolishness of the cross, and always conform to the
wisdom of the world, we will still be fools, but not the kind we are called
to be. Christians are not beyond the risk of being worldly fools.
A pastor was leaving town, and he told the church secretary
he did not have his sermon titles yet for the bulletin, so she could just put
in something like, the pastor speaks. What about the evening service she
asked? He said he was speaking from Psa. 14 which begins with the words,
"The fool has said in his heart there is no God." The pastor told her to
just make up a title. So she did, and when the bulletin came out it said,
Morning-The Pastor Speaks.
Evening-What The Fool Said.
In the light of our study, however, it does not need to be seen as
embarrassing, for Paul calls himself a fool for Christ, and his ministry for
Christ he calls, the foolishness of preaching.
Someone said, "You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of
the people some of the time, but most of the time they will make fools of
themselves." Warren Hammer said, "No woman really makes a fool of a man-she
merely gives him the opportunity to develop his natural capacities." A young
preacher traveling with a Gospel team preached to a Wisconsin congregation,
and after the service a Scandinavian saint grabbed his hand and said, "That
was a wonderful message." Trying to be humble he responded, "It was just
Jesus." "No" said the saint, "It wasn't that good." It can be foolish to
attribute all we do to the Lord, for if it was the Lord it would be a whole
lot better.
Pastor Wally Klandrud of Phoenix tells of his first hospital call. He
wanted it to be perfect, and so he studied all the do's and don'ts of
hospital visitation. Nervously he entered the patients room. There was a
woman in her eighty's, and the nurse had told him she was senile. He was
just about to share some words of comfort when she leaped up on the bed
without a stitch of clothing. He tried to keep his composer, and asked her
if he could help. "Gotta go to the bathroom," she responded. The pastor ran
into the hall way to look for a nurse, but none was in sight. He was in a
panic, and ran back to his impatient patient and said, "Mam, there is nobody
out there, but I'll be back next week." As he fled out the door he heard her
scream, "Young man I can't wait till next week!"
True stories like this are endless that reveal the fallibility that can
happen even when we desire sincerely to be tools of God. Instead of tools,
God gets fools. Unfortunately, not every foolish thing Christian do is
funny. We have studied Peter and his many mistakes, and one of them was that
he felt it was foolish for Jesus to talk about dying. The Christian can see
the foolishness of the cross just like the world sees it, and that is what
Peter was seeing. God's way are so different than man's, that if we get
caught up in the wisdom of the world, even as Christians, the ways of God
will seem foolish and impractical.
Pastor Vajda of St. Louis tells of his organist who would always slip
down the back stairs to the basement just before the sermon began, and then
return just before it ended. During one of his Lenten services as the organ
ceased, he stepped to the pulpit and began with a gripping illustration. At
the height of a battle in the Civil War a young soldier thought the command
was to charge. He leaped out of the trench with the regimental flag and
started running across no mans land toward enemy fire. When the captain saw
that other soldiers were following the flag bearer, he shouted at the top of
his voice, "Come back here you fool!" As he paused, everyone could hear the
clatter of footsteps as the organist came flying back up the steps to take
her place at the organ. That was not his intention at all, but he notes that
she never again left the organ during a sermon.
This is in essence what Paul is saying to the Corinthians-"Get back here
you fools. You are following the way of worldly wisdom which to God is
foolishness. Come back to the foolishness of God which is true wisdom. It
is wiser to let the world think of you as fools, than to let God think of you
as fools." Somebody is always going to have you on their fools list, but
only a fool would choose to be on God's list. Be a fool for Christ, and be
on God's list of those who are truly wise. The truly wise are those who are
fools for Christ, and care about people who don't care about anyone but
themselves. Paul poured his life out for people who were self-centered and
worldly wise, and they only rejected him and sought to kill him. Paul still
cared and did all he could to win them to Christ by the foolishness of
preaching.
Billy Graham tells of the first time he ever preached. It was in a
little Baptist church in Florida. 32 people were there, and he thought he
had plenty to say. He had four sermons he thought were 40 to 50 minutes
each. But he was so nervous he preached all four sermons in 8 minutes. That
was the foolishness of preaching. But one little boy in the congregation
received Christ, and he realized God can use even our foolishness to
accomplish the wisest things that can happen on earth. He tells of one of
his evangelists who spoke at a university in Costa Rica. A student came up
after and said she was a Marxist, and she laughed and scorned the message he
was preaching. The evangelist said, "Before you leave do you mind if I pray
for you?" What folly, to ask if you can pray for one who is mocking you.
She was shocked and said, "I guess it couldn't do any harm." So he began to
pray, and as he did tears of compassion began to trickle down his cheeks.
When he finished, the Marxist was in tears also. She said, "No one ever
cared enough for me to shed a tear. I'll listen to what you have to say."
She heard the Gospel and received Christ as her Savior.
This is the kind of fool Jesus wants. He wants those who will be fool
enough to care about people who don't deserve to be cared about. It is
foolishness to waste your life caring about lost people. It is foolishness
to leave the 99 and risk injury, and who knows what abuse, to go after that
one stupid sheep who has gone astray. Worldly wisdom would say stay with the
odds; don't risk yourself for the stray. But those who are fools for Christ,
who understand the foolishness of the cross, will go, for it is this kind of
foolishness that saved them. God was in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself. God had the power to condemn the world, and let His Son go free.
Instead He let Him die so the guilty might go free. This is the foolishness
of God, and the foolishness of the cross. William Stidger wrote,
I saw God bear His soul one day
Where all the earth might see
The stark and naked heart of Him
On lonely Calvary.
There was a crimson sky of blood
And over head a storm;
When lightening slit the clouds
And light engulfed His form.
Beyond the storm a rainbow lent
A light to every clod,
For on that cross mine eyes beheld
The naked soul of God.
No man would be such a God for they consider it foolishness to suffer
for the folly of others. If God was not foolish from man's perspective there
would be no cross, and no way for man to be forgiven and reconciled to God.
Thank God for such foolishness. All Christian celebrations are really
celebrations of the foolishness of God. He had the freedom to just forget
fallen man, but He chose to send His Son that they might be redeemed. To
magnify the folly of God's plan, it is all based on grace. He pays a high
price, and then instead of reaping a huge profit, he gives away the salvation
he purchased for free. Jesus could have been the richest king that ever
lived. He could have made a mile high palace with streets of gold and walls
filled with jewels. He could have had heaven on earth had he charged as
little as a thousand dollars each. Every living soul would slave
in order to save that much to get into the kingdom.
There is no such plan, however, for salvation is free, and whosoever
will may come and drink freely from the fountain of life. Jesus had the
greatest money maker of all time at His fingertips, and He gave it away.
From the worldly perspective this was nothing but sheer folly. But without
the foolishness of the cross there is no answer to the folly of this fallen
world. A Polish Jew who had been converted to Christ was asked how he could
see his people killed and still believe in the love of God. He saw the blood
of his dearest friends stain the streets of his town, but this was his
response, "As I looked at that man upon the cross I knew I must make up my
mind once and for all, and either take my stand beside him, and share in his
undefeated faith in God, or else fall finally into a bottomless pit of
bitterness, hatred, and unutterable despair." He was saying, unless there is
a God willing to suffer for this loss world, there is no hope, and life has
no meaning. But if there is such a God, as we see in Jesus on the cross,
then nothing evil can do, can rob us of hope.
This is why men like Jim Elliot risk their lives and die to get the
message of the cross to the pagan world. He said, "He is no fool who gives
what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." May God help us to be
fools for Christ and share with this lost world the foolishness of the cross.
