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Rev Graham Harrison           Sunday May 3rd a.m. 1998

1 Corinthians 1:22-25

For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, 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 [1 Corinthians 1:22-25].

And, let there be no mistake, it is the basic thing because if you are not clear about the gospel, you will be wrong at every other point. Paul knew that many of their subsequent errors could be traced back to the fact that they had somehow lost the clarity that he had imparted to them, the clarity concerning the gospel of the Lord Jesus. So he says in a very plain and straightforward way there in verse 23: 'we preach Christ crucified'. He knew that in putting it like that he was coming to the very heart of their problem as well as confronting them once more with the essence of the gospel. The trouble was that these Corinthian Christians said, 'If you preach a message like that about a Messiah who was crucified, the Jews, and there are some of those here in Corinth, will find that hard to accept. The Messiah that they are looking for is not somebody who is so weak that other men can take Him and kill Him. No, they are looking for a strong figure. So that is not going to impress the Jews.' No doubt they would have continued, 'Moreover the majority of the population here are Greeks and as such they are steeped in wisdom and learning. They will laugh at us if we tell them that what they need is to trust in this man who was crucified on a hill just outside the city of Jerusalem, and that through trusting in Him their sins can be forgiven and they can go to heaven. Now, we do believe that, but we do not want to come at it in such a straightforward and naïve way. We want to present it in such a way that the message will appear a somewhat more intellectual. That also will remove the objections that these varying groups of people raise against it.' So in effect they were holding what Paul had taught them in some measure of disdain and regarding it as too elementary for them to hold forth to their fellow citizens there in Corinth.

Thus Paul, before he does anything else in this letter, has to deal with that. He says, 'I know what the trouble is: you are saying, the Jews require a sign. In other words you are arguing that they want some miraculous indication that this One who died on the cross outside Jerusalem, really is who He claims to be, the Son of God. I understand also what your fellow Greeks are saying. They want to present it in more philosophical language and sophistry, putting things in a way that sounds very intellectual and learned. I know all that. But when I came to you I deliberately did not do things in that way. I could not do it - "We preach Christ crucified." I see perfectly that when we do that the Jews are going to find it scandalous.' (That is actually the word that Paul uses, if you turned it letter by letter from Greek into English, it is literally saying that it is a scandal to believe something of that nature.) 'Unto the Jews a scandal!' Yes, 'and unto the Greeks foolishness'. I knew all that when I first came to Corinth. Had I wanted to proceed in the way that you think I ought to have proceeded, I could have done it with the best of them. But God did not send me to do that.'

'But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness'. 'Ah, yes', he says - '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'. 'So,' argues Paul, 'I hear what you are saying about the gospel seeming to be a weak thing, and seeming to be a foolish thing. But, you know, whenever the message of the cross is preached, as it ought to be preached, there will always be people who will react in that way. All that it proves is to show that they have not understood it, they have not grasped its meaning - if they had done they would see that here is not weakness; here is the very power of God. They would see that here is not foolishness; here is the wisdom of God. What they call foolishness, the foolishness of God, is wiser than any of man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than any of man's strength.' So that is how the Apostle is arguing.

I read to you from Matthew 16 as it is one of the several occasions that you have in the New Testament Gospels in which our Lord is in dispute with the Jews. They came 'tempting...him'. Sometimes it is very instructive to note who it is that comes and tempts the Lord Jesus Christ. 'The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven' [Matthew 16:1]. Now you might ask what is unusual about that. Well if I were to tell you that normally the Pharisees and the Sadducees were daggers drawn, one against the other, and neither of them had a good word to say about the other, but rather they looked upon each other as mutual enemies, perhaps you understand now the significance of it. They had combined in a common hatred of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So they come to Him and they tempt Him - and this is the line of temptation. 'Show us a sign from heaven! You are claiming to be somebody extraordinary. Well, if you really are somebody extraordinary you will be able to do extraordinary things. Show us a sign from heaven!' It is one of the several occasions upon which our Lord refused to do so. In fact He turns on them. He says in effect. 'You can read the weather. Red sky at night, shepherd's delight. Red sky at morning, shepherd's wa rning.' That piece of weather folk-lore apparently holds for Palestine as well. He says, 'O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?' Then He goes on to berate them: 'A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed' [Matthew 16:3-4].

You can go to different places in the same or other Gospels and you will find that this is a relatively frequent occurrence in the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. They came to Him, they wanted Him to do a sign. Now in one sense of course He was performing signs all the time. Every miracle that He performed was a sign. In fact in modern translations of John's Gospel that word 'miracle' is often translated literally by the word 'sign'. It is as if John actually writes his Gospel around a number of signs that the Lord Jesus Christ gave them. Do you remember the first one? It is when He turned the water into wine in Cana of Galilee. 'This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him' [John 2:11]. Then you come on a few chapters to the end of chapter four. Having come through Samaria, our Lord goes on to Galilee and a man comes and asks him to heal his son who was at the point of death. Our Lord does heal his son, although he is not there, he is away in the village that was his home. Then you read: 'This is again the second miracle' or the second sign 'that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judaea into Galilee' [John 4:54].

Chapter 5 begins by telling us of our Lord going up to Jerusalem to the pool of Bethesda. There He heals an impotent man - another sign. On and on it goes. You come on a few chapters later to the healing of a man who was blind from birth. Then perhaps what is the most striking of all those signs, He raises Lazarus from the dead. Of course the gospel comes to its climax and culmination in this Jesus who was crucified, rising from the dead. So although our Lord had done all those signs, and that is just a selection that John picks on, in order to convey the message to us, it did not produce faith. They did not believe in Him. Even when Lazarus had been raised from the dead it simply made the enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ the more angry, with the result that they plotted and schemed with the greater intensity to have Jesus, yes and Lazarus also, killed.

So the mere reproduction of signs was not going to produce faith and that is really what Paul is saying to these Christians in Corinth. He says in effect, 'Have you not understood the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ?' I do not know if they actually had a written Gospel in Corinth by this time. Probably they did not, but they would have known many of the stories that are now part and parcel of these gospel accounts. Paul is saying in effect to them: 'Do you not understand that Jesus never operated on this principle. He never did the unusual or performed the miraculous simply in order to make people believe in Him. The performing of miracles although it does prove that He is the Son of God, does not automatically lead people to believe on Him. So', he says, 'I did not come performing miracles and signs.'

'The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom'. It is exactly the same point. The Lord Jesus, when He was just twelve years of age, went up to Jerusalem with Joseph and Mary. They then made their way back to Nazareth, unaware of the fact that Jesus was still there in Jerusalem. When they come back anxious and distraught, wondering what on earth can have happened to Him, eventually after searching for Him they find Him there in the Temple. Do you remember what He is doing? 'And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors,' -and that is not the medical doctors, it is the doctors of the law, the most learned men in the nation - 'both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers' [Luke 2:46-47]. Here is a twelve year old boy, He is able to engage in conversation and questions and answers with the most intelligent men in the nation.

You read on in the Gospel and you read of the amazing wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ: 'Never man spake like this man' [John 7:46].'And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth' [Luke 4:22]. He spoke words of wisdom but still men did not believe on Him. So Paul said, 'When I came to Corinth I did not come in the way that you evidently think, in retrospect, I ought to have come.' As he says in the next chapter: 'And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified' [1 Corinthians 2:1-2]. So he is bringing them back all the time to this centrality of the gospel.

Perhaps I could put it in a more explicit way: what is the gospel? What is the heart, the core of the gospel? This is it - Christ crucified. 'We preach Christ crucified'. We hold before sinners in this world the message of a Saviour who has loved them and died on the cross so that their sins will be forgiven, if they trust in Him. It is a simple message, elementary even; a child has the necessary intellectual capacity to understand that. There is nothing highfalutin, there is nothing complicated, there is nothing philosophical about it. It is simple, straightforward and as down to earth as it could be. So that is the message of the gospel. 'The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified'.

Now perhaps I can just digress. Or it might be more accurate to say perhaps I can apply this in one very relevant way in the modern Christian world. You know it never ceases to amaze me that there still are Christians who are repeating the old error of the Corinthians. They say, 'What we need is not the message of the gospel preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, we need something more than that. We need signs and wonders. You have probably seen on your television and read in your newspapers, of the sort of antics some people get up to. The incredible things that they are willing to believe, even though subsequently so many of them are proved to be frauds and charlatans. Yet people are eager for these things. It is as if they have lost confidence in the gospel. Surely that which should be ever in the forefront of our message is 'Christ crucified'. He is the One who we are to hold up before sinners. Only Christ crucified can do any sinner good.

Why does Paul proceed in this way? Well, he does it because men need to be humbled. What men pride themselves upon can be reduced, as Paul does in effect in this passage of Scripture, into two things. Men pride themselves on their wisdom, or their cleverness, their intelligence or understanding - or else they pride themselves on their strength, their physical strength, their power or their ability to wield influence. Maybe not in a physical sense only, but power and influence in society. Of course if you can fit the two things together they reckon you have got everything going for you. If you are a wise man and you have got a position of authority and power, you have got the world at your feet. Therefore it is the very same thing here in Corinth and what God has got to do is to show men that their wisdom and their strength are as nothing compared with God. Man needs to be humbled before God.

Again and again the church goes wrong at this point. It always somehow seems to turn to the world and to seek to imitate and emulate the methods and techniques of the world. Whenever it does that it is betraying a fundamental lack of faith and a basic lack of trust in the gospel - the gospel of Christ crucified. Now it can be done in various ways. I must admit I am always a bit nervous when I discover Christians who are keen on what they call 'testimonies'. You get some leading figure in society converted, or professing to become a Christian. What happens to him immediately is that he is taken and put there on a platform and he is placarded before men and women. Here is this very eminent person, he is a Christian, let us hear how he became a Christian! The essence of the message, or the impact that it is designed to make, operates in this way. Here is this person, this eminent person in society or in some aspect of modern life - he is a Christian. Well, if he is a Christian, I can be as well. That is the impact that it is supposed to make.

You have seen it operating down through the years in a whole variety of ways. Sometimes you might have a professor So-and-So that is converted. Immediately, perhaps particularly in the Christian Unions in the Universities, they all start making a great fuss of this man who was perhaps once an atheist but who now is a Christian. So he is held before people - yes, you can be a brilliant men but you can still be a Christian! That means that we can be Christians too! And a bit of brilliance supposedly rubs off onto us.

Or maybe it does not touch us so much in that way. Maybe it is an athlete, somebody who is a world-beating athlete. He wins a gold medal or breaks a world record - then you hear that he is a Christian! Immediately he is taken around the circuit that some of these people operate on and he is giving his testimony. The message is this: you can still be a strong man, you can still be a great athlete and be a Christian. You do not have to be a wimp to be a Christian. You can be a real he-man and be a Christian. And of course, we all begin to think that our muscles are bulging and we are potential he-men and we can be Christians as well. But the reasoning is fundamentally flawed.

Or maybe it is from the world of entertainment, a pop singer is converted. Oh, great, they say, now he can use his art form to the glory of God. So he begins to appear on platforms and he sings as a Christian and he gives his testimony as a Christian and so on. Again I argue it is a basic fallacy. Can you give me any instance anywhere in the New Testament where that sort of principle operated, or any occasion on which one of these eminent people in society was converted and what the Christians do immediately is to set him forward and say, 'Look, here is a man. He was that, now he is a Christian and we want you to listen to his testimony.' The New Testament is totally silent in that area. I suggest to you that silence perhaps speaks louder than words.

Take even the matter of the choice of disciples, did not our Lord get it wrong? fishermen from Galilee! I was going to say that they could not speak the Queen's English, well I know that - but they could not have spoken the king's Hebrew. Remember what happened when Peter and John were there before the Sanhedrin, in Jerusalem? 'Now when they ... perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled' [Acts 4:13]. Untutored, they had not been to school. They certainly had not been to college. They had not got any degrees after their names. What are they preaching! Christ made a big mistake in choosing people like that, on that basis. He should have gone for the high flyers in society. He should have got the people who were the power-brokers in the world. The people who are really going to be looked up to and make an impact and choose them.

But He did not! He went to these humble fishermen, that is what most of them were. One of them was a despised tax-collector. Another one was rather a hot headed political fanatic, Simon Zelotes, Simon the zealot. Our Lord took men like that and made them His disciples. The one exception, you can argue, is the man writing this epistle, the Apostle Paul, a genius of a man in every respect. Yet you remember the way in which he speaks of himself when he writes to Timothy. He could never get over the fact that God had chosen him. It was not that he had come and had contributed some of his kudos to the gospel. Oh no! 'And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting' [1 Timothy 1:12-16].

It is as if what Paul is saying as he gives himself as an example there is, 'Look here! If God could save me, He can save anybody! I was a persecutor, I was a murderer of Christians and yet God came to me and He saved me. Why did He do it? He did it by His grace in order, you might say, to give an ongoing message to Christians. Do not write anybody off! God can come even to the Sauls of Tarsus of this world and save them - and He has done it with me!' Paul speaks therefore of himself in that amazing way.

It tells us that salvation comes from God. Salvation is not something to which we contribute anything at all. Salvation is by the grace of God. It is a theme that runs right through the Scripture and so often it comes very explicitly to the surface. 'But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.' But then a little later on in verses that we will look at on another occasion: '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; and 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 nought things that are' [1 Corinthians 1:26-28].

Our salvation is by the grace of God. Paul does not say: 'I decided to be a Christian'. He says, 'No, I was called. I was chosen.' Chosen, not because of anything good in ourselves. No, Paul in those words that he wrote to Timothy could see only evil in himself. But he says: 'the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus'. So, this is why Paul, when he went to Corinth did not preach in the way that retrospectively the Corinthians think that he ought to have preached. 'No', he says, 'I did not do that deliberately. I did not come with signs. I did not come with human wisdom and sophistry. What help would that have been? That would not have saved you! That would not have lifted you up from the gutter of sin that so many of you were in. That would not have released one of you from the bondage of your rebellion against God. You needed something that only God could give. You needed the very power of the Holy Spirit to bring you to spiritual life. Your salvation is all of God. That', he says, 'Is why we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, 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'.

This really gives us the explanation as to why Paul proce eded in this way and why we must proceed in this same way. Human wisdom does not save the sinner. Had it been able to, the Greeks as a race would have been saved, because they were so wise. But brilliant men are sinners. Paul did not come performing miraculous signs and wonders because as in the Gospels the vast majority of people would just have looked at those and said, 'How amazing!' And then waited for the next one. Or perhaps of they had been there at the feeding of the five thousand, they would have said, 'Isn't that wonderful! when is He going to do it again!' They would not have stood back from it and said, 'Well, what does this say to us about Him? He must be the Messiah! He must be the Son of God! He must be the Saviour!' No, on and on they went following Him, hoping that He would perform miracle after miracle. And when He did not, they were angry with Him and they vilified Him.

No, Paul says it is the message of Christ crucified that needs to be preached. That gives the sinner hope, that lifts him up, that saves him - because when Jesus died on the cross He took to Himself the sins of rebel sinners and they were punished in Him. Therefore as a rebel sinner comes and trusts in Jesus, his sins are forgiven and he is transformed. Something wonderful happens in his life.

Now this gives the Christian - or it ought to give the Christian if he thinks about it as he should do - great confidence in God and great confidence in the gospel. And great hope, not for the sinner, as sinner, but great hope for any sinner as the grace of God comes to him and touches him. It means that nobody can be written off because of what they are. God's grace can yet come to him and save him.

I was looking last evening in my study at an old book that I have got by a man whose name is J Wesley Bready. It is a historical book, its title is England Before and After Wesley. He wants to get across to us the amazing difference that was wrought in Britain because of the Methodist Revival. He gives lots of statistics, but I was drawn to one thing in particular. He has a number of illustrations in there and he has reproduced one of Hogarth's prints. Hogarth was an eighteenth century artist whose work often depicted various aspects of contemporary life. The one that Dr Bready uses is called 'On the road to Tyburn'. That was the place in London where public executions by hanging were held until well on into the eighteenth century.

The prison that most of the prisoners were held in was Newgate. When the day of their execution came the prisoner would put in a cart, drawn by a horse. There in the cart with him would be the coffin in which his corpse would be placed. He would be taken by cart from Newgate to Tyburn where he would be publicly hanged. What used to happen was that the noose was put around the prisoner's head and then they would whip the horse and it would pull the cart away and the man would be hanged.

But this print by Hogarth, 'On the road to Tyburn', gives a picture of what was happening. There was a grandstand on one side, packed tight with people watching, for this was a public execution to be enjoyed by the general populace. Hogarth depicts all sorts of debaucheries going on; people selling various things, little children being trampled under foot, prostitutes plying their trade. Apparently it was just typical of those scenes. There in the middle of the picture was the cart. You could see the prisoner and behind him you could see the coffin. But in the cart with him there was a figure of a man. In one hand he is holding a Bible and with the other he is gesturing with an outstretched finger. He is preaching. That, you might say, was the comment in art form by Hogarth on what was so common at that time.

Who was the preacher? Well, he would have been a Methodist. What had he been doing? Probably he had been spending the previous night in Newgate with the man who was going to be executed. Now he was travelling with him in the cart on the way to the place where they were going to hang the prisoner - and he was preaching to him and to the crowd as well. It brought my mind back to the Journal of Charles Wesley for Wednesday, July 12 1728. Charles Wesley has been a Christian only for less than two months when he wrote this in his Journal:

Wed., July 12th. I preached at Newgate to the condemned felons, and visited one of them in his cell, sick of a fever; a poor black that had robbed his master. I told him of one who came down from heaven to save lost sinners, and him in particular; described the sufferings of the Son of God, his sorrows, agony, and death. He listened with all the signs of eager astonishment; the tears trickled down his cheeks while he cried, "What! was it for me? Did God suffer all this for so poor a creature as me?" I left him waiting for the salvation of God...

Thur., July 13th. I read prayers and preached at Newgate, and administered the sacrament to our friends, with five of the felons. I was much affected and assisted in prayer for them; and exhorted them with great comfort and confidence.

Fri., July 14th. I received the sacrament from the Ordinary (the Chaplain); spake strongly to the poor malefactors; and to the sick Negro in the condemned hole, moved by his sorrow and earnest desire of Christ Jesus.

Sat., July 15th. I preached there again with an enlarged heart; and rejoiced with my poor happy Black; who now believes the Son of God loved him, and gave himself for him...

Mon., July 17th... I rose free from pain. At Newgate I preached on death (which they must suffer the day after to-morrow)... Newington asked me to go in the coach with him. At one I was with the Black in his cell; James Hutton assisting. Two more of the malefactors came. I had great help and power in prayer. One rose, and said, he felt his heart all on fire, so as he never found himself before; he was all in a sweat; believed Christ died for him. I found myself overwhelmed with the love of Christ to sinners. The Black was quite happy. The other criminal was in an excellent temper; believing, or on the point of it. I talked with another, concerning faith in Christ: he was greatly moved. The Lord, I trust, will help his unbelief also...

Tues., July 18th. The Ordinary (i.e. the chaplain) read prayers and preached. I administered the sacrament to the Black, and eight more; having first instructed them in the nature of it. I spake comfortably to them afterwards...

At night I was locked in with Bray in one of the cells. We wrestled in mighty prayer. All the criminals were present; and all delightfully cheerful. The soldier, in particular, found his comfort and joy increase every moment. Another, from the time he communicated, has been in perfect peace. Joy was visible in all their faces. We sang,

"Behold the Saviour of mankind,
Nail'd to the shameful tree
How vast the love that him inclined
To bleed and die for thee," &c.

It was one of the most triumphant hours I have ever known. Yet on

Wed., July 19th, I rose very heavy, and backward to visit them for the last time. At six I prayed and sang with them all together...

At half-hour past nine their irons were knocked off, and their hands tied. I went in a coach with Sparks, Washington, and a friend of Newington's (N. himself not being permitted). By half-hour past ten we came to Tyburn, waited till eleven: then were brought the children appointed to die. I got upon the cart with Sparks and Broughton: the Ordinary endeavoured to follow, when the poor prisoners begged he might not come ; and the mob kept him down.

I prayed first, then Sparks and Broughton. We had prayed before that our Lord would show there was a power superior to the fear of death. Newington had quite forgot his pain. They were all cheerful; full of comfort, peace, and triumph; assuredly persuaded Christ had died for then, and waited to receive them into paradise. Greenaway was impatient to be with Christ.

The Black had spied me coming out of the coach, and saluted me with his looks. As often as his eyes met mine, he smiled with the most composed, delightful countenance I ever saw. Read caught hold of my hand in a transport of joy. Newington seemed perfectly pleased. Hudson declared he was never better, or more at ease, in mind and body. None showed any natural terror of death: no fear, or crying, or tears. All expressed their desire of our following them to paradise. I never saw such calm triumph, such incredible indifference to dying. We sang several hymns; particularly,

"Behold the Saviour of mankind,
Nail'd to the shameful tree ;"

and the hymn entitled, "Faith in Christ," which concludes,

"A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
Into thy hands I fall:
Be thou my life, my righteousness,
My Jesus, and my all."

We prayed Him, in earnest faith, to receive their spirits. I could do nothing but rejoice, kissed Newington and Hudson; took leave of each in particular. Mr. Broughton bade them not be surprised when the cart should draw away. They cheerfully replied, they should not; expressed some concern how we should get back to our coach. We left them going to meet their Lord, ready for the Bridegroom. When the cart drew off, not one stirred, or struggled for life, but meekly gave up their spirits. Exactly at twelve they were turned off. I spoke a few suitable words to the crowd; and returned, full of peace and confidence in our friends' happiness. That hour under the gallows was the most blessed hour of my life.

Amen
 

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