Several years ago, there was a Mensa convention in San Francisco, whose members have an IQ of 140 or higher. They were having lunch at a local café when they discovered that their saltshaker contained pepper and their peppershaker was full of salt. How could they swap the contents of the bottles without spilling and using only the implements at hand? Clearly this was a job for Mensa! The group debated and presented ideas, and finally came up with a brilliant solution involving a napkin, a straw, and an empty saucer. They called the waitress over to dazzle her with their solution.
“Ma'am,” they said, “we couldn't help but notice that the peppershaker contains salt and the saltshaker—”
“Oh,” the waitress interrupted. “Sorry about that.” She unscrewed the caps of both bottles and switched them (Sherman Lee Burford, Tuskegee Institute, Alabama; www.PreachingToday. com).
When it comes to repairing broken relationships, the world has a lot of complicated solutions. On the other hand, God has a simple solution, which makes the wisdom of this world look absolutely foolish.
Do you want to repair a broken relationship? Then I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 1, 1 Corinthians 1, where God gives us His simple solution.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 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 (ESV).
Here, the Bible contrasts the foolishness of the cross with the wisdom of the world and urges you to…
REJECT THE WISDOM OF THE WORLD.
Discard the solutions of sinful human people. Scrap the perspective of your culture when it comes to human relationships.
The “word of the cross” (verse 18) is a message of forgiveness and self-sacrifice, but the world says, “That’s folly.” Literally, that’s moronic. If I give up my own rights, if I let the other person have his or her way, then they will walk all over me. I’ll become a doormat. You want me to forgive and sacrifice myself when I “know” I’m right? The idea is moronic. It’s absurd!
But it is only absurd to those who are perishing (verse 18 says), literally, to those who are destroying themselves. The verb is in the middle voice. That means it is something they do to themselves. When people refuse to forgive, when people refuse to give up their own rights in an argument, then they are only hurting themselves; they are only smashing themselves like clay pots against a stone wall.
So set aside your own human wisdom. Take the advice the world gives you and smash it to smithereens. That’s what God does. Look again at verse 19
1 Corinthians 1:19-20 For it is written, “I will destroy [or smash] the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart [or set aside].” 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? (ESV).
God turns the wisdom of this world upside down. He makes it absolutely foolish.
Haddon Robinson describes a time when he was trying to fix his garage door. He came to a screw he had to get loose, and the more he worked to loosen that screw the tighter it seemed to get. A neighbor came over and saw his plight. He looked for a moment or two and said, “Oh, this has a lefthanded thread. It's a reverse screw. You have to tighten or loosen it going in the opposite direction.” Haddon Robinson said, “It took me fifty years to find out how screws work, and now they change the rules.”
Then he said, “There's a sense in which all the Bible is kind of a reverse screw. Everything in the culture that seems right, in the Bible comes out wrong. The way up is the way down. The way to spiritual wealth is to acknowledge your spiritual poverty. The way to live is to die. The way to rule is to serve. I mean the screw just doesn't work right. It's just incongruous.
“But unless you understand the reverse nature of the screw, you never do anything. The more you try to work it according to the values of the culture, the tighter the screw gets and the less you accomplish.
“The whole Bible is that way. Everything is upside down. When you come with the values of the culture and read the New Testament, it seems crazy. You spent fifty years learning how to play the game, and now they change the rules. God's always doing that” (Haddon Robinson, “The Wisdom of Small Creatures,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 93; www.PreachingToday.com).
God turns the wisdom of this world on its head. The world says, “Stand up for your own rights. Don’t be a pushover. Get your own way.” Then they provide all kinds of self-help books and seminars, promoting “10 steps to success” or “14 power negotiation techniques.” But God comes along with the simple message of the cross. God comes along with the simple message of forgiveness and self-sacrifice, which works powerfully, and He turns the wisdom of this world upside down. So set it aside. Reject the wisdom of this world, and…
RELY ON THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS.
Trust its simple truth to set you free. Depend on the message of the cross to deliver you from the prison of your own bitterness and rage.
Verse 18 says, “The word of the cross is the power of God for those who are being saved,” for those God is delivering from a self-centered, self-destructive lifestyle. And verse 21 says, the message of the cross “saves those who believe.” Its message of forgiveness and self-sacrifice sets them free.
Some of you may remember the story Erwin Lutzer tells of a young woman who got married but found that she could not relate to her husband. As a child, her step-father sexually molested her for a number of years. That experience had made it difficult to have any kind of physical love. A molested child may not like to be touched, even though the thing that they need the most is to be touched and to be hugged.
But this young woman was transferring all of the revulsion and the hatred for her step-father toward her husband because of the depths of her shame and bitterness.
She came to a pastor, and he pointed her to Luke 6. He said, “What does the Bible say that you should do to your enemies?”
She looked at verse 27 and said, “Love them, do good, bless them, and pray for them.”
The pastor said, “That's what you have to do about your stepfather. Until you release all of the feelings of bitterness and you are free in your relationship with him, you will never be free to love your husband.”
Every fiber of her being revolted against such advice. She thought to herself, “Why should I forgive him? Why should I love him when he did all of those awful things to me?”
Yet this young woman decided to apply this text of Scripture. She decided to bake her step-father a birthday cake. Rather than speaking evil of him, she decided to speak well of him. Upon further reflection, she realized that there were many good things she could say about him. In spite of this horrible sin against her, the fact was that in many other ways he was a good father. She began to think about those ways and speak well of him rather than evil. She decided that she would pray for him three times a day, that God would bless him, and that is what she did.
Several weeks went by as she continued to obey the Scriptures and to forgive the man who had so severely wronged her. She told the pastor later that she saw her step-father leave a supermarket and walk across the parking lot with a bag of groceries in his arms. For the first time in all those years, there were actually feelings of love toward him rather than revulsion. She said that except for their previous relationship, she could have gone and put her arms around him.
Then she made the crucial statement that was very important to the survival of her marriage: “Now I'm free to love my husband” (Erwin Lutzer, “Learning to Love,” Preaching Today, Tape No.99; www.PreachingToday.com).
It doesn’t make sense, does it? The idea of forgiveness and self-sacrifice is moronic, but it works! It works powerfully to set people free. It works powerfully to deliver them from themselves. It saves people from destroying themselves with their own bitterness and rage.
So believe the message of the cross. Trust its simple ways to set you free. Depend on it to deliver you from yourself.
1 Corinthians 1:22-23 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles… (ESV)
Literally, it’s a scandal to the Jews and moronic to Gentiles.
1 Corinthians 1:24 …but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (ESV).
The message of Christ crucified is powerful wisdom to those God has called to be a part of His family. Do you belong to God’s family? Are you a believer in Christ? Then take to heart the message of the cross. Trust its message of forgiveness and self-sacrifice to make a real difference in your life and relationships.
In his book Practice Resurrection, Eugene Peterson tells the story of a woman named Judith, an artist in textiles. He writes:
Judith had an alcoholic husband and a drug-addicted son. She kept her life and her family together for years by attending twelve-step meetings. One Sunday, when she was about forty years old at the time, she entered the church where I was the pastor. She came at the invitation of some friends she knew from her meetings—"You need to come to church. I'll meet you there.” She had never been to church before. She knew nothing about church… She was well read in poetry and politics and psychology, and knew a great deal of art and artists. But she had never read the Bible…
Something, though, caught her attention when she entered this church, and she continued to come. In a few months she became a Christian and I became her pastor. I loved observing and listening to her. Everything was new: Scriptures, worship, prayer, baptism, Eucharist—church! … [She was so excited]: “Where have I been all my life? These are incredible stories—why didn't anyone tell me these? How come this has been going on all around me and I never knew it!” …
Peterson says that when he moved across the country, he kept in touch with Judith through letters. In his book Peterson shares a portion of one of her letters:
Dear Pastor: Among my artist friends I feel so defensive about my life—I mean about going to church. They have no idea of what I am doing and act bewildered. So I try to be unobtrusive about it. But as my church life takes on more and more importance—it is essential now to my survival—it is hard to shield it from my friends. I feel protective of it, not wanting it to be dismissed or minimized or trivialized. It is like I am trying to protect it from profanation or sacrilege. But it is strong. It is increasingly difficult to keep it quiet. It is not as if I am ashamed or embarrassed—I just don't want it belittled.
A long-time secular friend, and a superb artist, just the other day was appalled: “What is this I hear about you going to church?” Another found out that I was going on a three-week mission trip to Haiti and was incredulous: “You, Judith, you going to Haiti with a church group! What has gotten into you?” I don't feel strong enough to defend my actions. My friends would accept me far more readily if they found that I was in some bizarre cult involving exotic and strange activities like black magic or experiments with levitation. But going to church branded me with a terrible ordinariness.
But that is what endears it to me, both the church and the twelve-step programs, this façade of ordinariness. When you pull back the veil of ordinariness, you find the most extraordinary life behind it (Eugene Peterson, Practice Resurrection, Eerdmans, 2010, pp. 143-144; www.PreachingToday.com).
The message of the cross is foolishness to the world, but there is an astonishing life behind it all.
Kenneth L. Woodward once said, “Clearly, the cross is what separates the Christ of Christianity from every other Jesus. In Judaism there is no precedent for a Messiah who dies, much less as a criminal as Jesus did. In Islam, the story of Jesus' death is rejected as an affront to Allah himself. Hindus can accept only a Jesus who… escapes the degradation of death. The figure of the crucified Christ, says Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh, ‘is a very painful image to me. It does not contain joy or peace, and this does not do justice to Jesus.’
“There is, in short,” Woodward says, “no room in other religions for a Christ who experiences the full burden of mortal existence—and hence there is no reason to believe in him as the divine Son whom the Father resurrects from the dead…” (Kenneth L. Woodward, “The Other Jesus,” Newsweek, 3-27-00, p.50)
The world wants a Jesus who is benignly powerful. They can’t accept the Jesus of the cross. They can’t accept a suffering Savior, because it just doesn’t make sense to them. But it DOES make a lot of sense to those who believe. The concept of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, sacrificing Himself so we could live is the very foundation of our faith. His message of forgiveness and self-sacrifice means everything to us.
42-year-old, David Saunders, waited in the driveway of his Hanover, Michigan, home for his 4-year-old daughter, Danielle, to get off her school bus. A pickup truck was stopped behind the bus. Saunders crossed the street to meet Danielle at the bus and then the two crossed the street together and stood in the Saunders' driveway.
Suddenly he noticed that a car behind the bus was traveling too fast to stop safely before entering the crossing zone. The car swerved to avoid the pickup and went into the Saunders' driveway. Heading directly for them both, Saunders grabbed Danielle by the arm and flung her away from himself and into their front yard.
He was then struck by the car. Saunders was pronounced dead at the scene. Danielle was treated for minor injuries at a nearby hospital and soon released. The 16-year-old driver and a 15-year-old passenger were not injured.
Sheriff's Captain Tony Philipps said, “It was a heroic act by a father to save his child. He did everything he could, and in the process, he lost his own life” (“A Father's Love,” Detroit Free Press, 11-19-00; www.PreachingToday.com).
That’s exactly what Jesus did for us on the cross. He got in the way of God’s speeding judgment and took the full brunt of it upon Himself, so we could live. Then three days later, Jesus arose from the dead and offers eternal life to anyone who believes in Him.
We, who believe in Christ, understand the power of the cross. It is our very salvation. So lift high the cross in your everyday life. Esteem its message to be greater than any advice any person has to offer. Hold its message of forgiveness and self-sacrifice in high regard.
1 Corinthians 1:25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (ESV).
The message of the cross is wiser and stronger than anything man has to offer. Even though it seems foolish to the world, it is vastly superior to the wisest advice of any man. And even though its message seems weak and powerless, it is vastly stronger than any power any person can exert.
So, if you want to repair your broken relationship(s), reject the wisdom of this world and rely on the foolishness of the cross. In dependence upon Christ, sacrifice your own rights and forgive your enemy. It’s the only way to be set free from the prison of your bitterness and rage.
In the movie The Poseidon Adventure, the ocean liner S.S. Poseidon is on the open sea when it hits a huge storm. Lights go out, smoke pours into rooms and, amid all the confusion, the ship flips over.
Because of the air trapped inside the ocean liner, it floats upside down. But in the confusion, the passengers can't figure out what's going on. They scramble to get out, mostly by following the steps to the top deck. The problem is the top deck is now 100 feet under water. In trying to get to the top of the ship, they drown.
The only survivors are the few who do what doesn't make sense. They do the opposite of what everyone else is doing and climb up into the dark belly of the ship until they reach the hull. Rescuers hear them banging and cut them free (Men of Integrity, Vol. 1, no. 2; www.PreachingToday.com).
In life, God has turned the ship over (so-to-speak), so the only way to find freedom is to do what doesn’t make sense to most people. Lay down your life by serving, supporting, and sacrificing yourself for others, especially for those with whom you disagree.
