THE CHURCH UNCENSORED

SERMON TRANSCRIPT
 

“Folly of Human Wisdom”

1 Corinthians 1:20-2:2

Rev. Dustin Largent

January 25, 2026

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We've been talking from the book of 1 Corinthians because we study books of the Bible here at Sonrise and what we got a few weeks ago is that there's a lot of division in the church in Corinth and that's nothing new, right? There's a lot of division in the church today and you think well why are they so divided?

What's dividing the Corinthians from the Corinthians? Well one of the things that we saw is that they're divided because they're following specific people and they're saying that person's smart and that person's important and that person's good and so I trust that person to fix my life and to fix what's going on. We see that today too. We see people that follow political leaders and we say well that political leader, I'm a Biden guy or I'm a Harris guy or I'm a Trump guy and so I put all my faith in that and so it divides the church, right? We've seen that in the church. The church is divided over politics all the time and we had divisions when we were back in COVID, right?

I mean it was a lot. It was hard to pastor during COVID and so what happened is you'd have people that had different philosophies of life and different philosophies of how to deal with it. Human wisdom was telling some people that they should, don't you wear a mask? Some people human wisdom was telling them to wear a mask. Some was saying believe this narrative that's being said.

Some people, it's saying, don't believe this narrative regardless of where you sat on that. It caused division. It caused a lot of division where people that were in one camp didn't want to interact and deal with the people in the other camp because they thought they were stupid or they thought they were mean or they thought they were impinging on their rights or there were all kinds of reasons but the issue at hand was that they were being divided by philosophies really of life of how we think and what we should do and so the church is divided and we have the same thing today, right?

And the common way that the church deals with stuff now when we have division is the church just splits up, right? So, I don't have to worship with you if we have a division in how we view, how we philosophically view things. Well then, I'll just start a different church, and my church will follow this person, and my church will be this way, and you guys can be wrong and worship this way. We can't do that in Corinth when there's like one church there, right? Because you have to just leave the church completely and I'm not saying that it's healthy, that I mean if you're in Atkinson you want to go to church in Atkinson, this is your option, right? You didn't have any other options and you're like well we got to get together we got to figure this all out and so what divides them here in our church today and in our culture today and what divided them then really was human philosophies, wisdom, opinions and so Paul is going to dial in on that and so if you've got your Bible we're going to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 18 and we're going to go we're going to we're going to try to make some headway because I only made it through like two verses last week and I felt I didn't actually I didn't feel bad about it at all. So, here's what it says in 1 Corinthians 1 18 to 25 verse 18 says for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved is the power of God.

You say why is that? Why is it the power of God? Well, it's the power of God because the cross isn't a philosophy. The power of God the cross isn't a philosophy. The cross isn't an idea the cross is an event that happened in human history. It's an actual thing that happened by the direction of God that changes and transforms the actual reality of who you and I are in our standing with God.  It's not well I think this or I think that or this is my opinion. It's an actual event. It's something that's real and tangible. You could go up if you were Thomas and you could touch the hole in Jesus' side.

You could touch the hole in his hands. It's not some philosophy or some opinion. It's the real deal. And you and we see a declaration from Isaiah right after that in the Old Testament. We went through this last week, and I gave you a whole bunch of history about that of what comes from all these different philosophies. It says, it says, “for it is written I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning.  I will thwart.” Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't get an education right? Like I'm not saying hey Roman drop out of school. Right?

You'd be better off just to read the Bible and nothing else ever. Right? That's all what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. Right? Don't try to learn things. That's not it. But what Paul is saying is that human wisdom, human opinions, human philosophies, they are completely unnecessary. They're completely unnecessary.  You go, Dustin, how can you say that? How can you say they're unnecessary? They're unnecessary because they don't really solve the problem that you have.

They don't really solve that problem at all. Where do you find the answers? Right? What you really need is not human philosophies and figuring out things. Oh well, Einstein's really smart so whatever he says I'm going to believe and I'm going to follow this. And then the philosophy of the Greeks and I'm going to take philosophy class and figure out all this. That's not really the answer. It's going to point you in a lot of different ways and you're going to sound really smart.

But it completely misses the one thing that you need in your life. Where do you find that? You find that in revelation from God. Who really knows the truth about everything?  God does. And what do the people on earth that are real brainiacs, what do they know? What they've been able to figure out from this perspective down here looking at the world and what they've been able to pass on to somebody else.  They're passing it on and they're like did anything change? No. Is there more peace in the world now than there was 6,000 years ago? No. Are people happier now than they were? No. Is there rest and peace and is there a feeling of salvation and a feeling of I'm at peace?

No. But these people are really smart. They've been telling us how to live, and they've been telling us the meaning of life.  Yeah, well they suck at it. Because it's coming from the perspective of a person, not from up above, from God who sees all and knows the truth of everything. And so this is what I mean by it's unnecessary. It's unnecessary in that once you have the truth from God's word and you understand the meaning of life and you understand your purpose in life and you understand what Christ did, once you understand the gospel, it's not going to help you to add philosophy to that. It's only going to hinder it.  Right? And so, in your notes, human wisdom and opinions don't help God's revelation. They don't help it. It only corrupts it.

 

So, we've got my man right up here, Kaden, right? Which by the way, there's a movie with a guy and it looks just like him. We're going to have to talk about that another time. But Kaden has been brought up to love God, right? He knows the gospel. He's been baptized. But then what's he going to do? Now if he wants, he could go to college and they're going to teach him a lot of stuff. And what happens to a lot of your Christian kids when they go off to college? They give them a lot of human philosophies of, well, this is true and this is the thing. Oh, well, you believe the world is only 6,000 years old?

Well, you know what? Science says differently. And so, your Bible is wrong and God is wrong who has the truth. And so he's not really true. And so, what happens? Human wisdom does not help God's revelation. It only corrupts it. It makes it worse. It tears it down.  Why? Because human wisdom and opinions call anything they're not able to understand that doesn't rationalize within their finite human brains. They call it nonsense. Anything that doesn't make sense to them rationally that they can't figure out is butterfly driving a truck. Doesn't make any sense. It's nonsense. You're like, wow. So there are only two kinds of wisdom in the world.

 

Let's break this down.  There are two kinds. There is wisdom that is from above that God gives to us through revelation. He gives it to us through his word.  He gives it through it through teaching, through situations, but then through the Holy Spirit, he guides us, he leads us, he teaches us, and then there is human wisdom that comes. Now I'm not saying that all that's bad, that you don't want to learn that. But what I'm saying is that you can't allow any of that to mess up your view of the world because you need to understand that the truth of God from revelation of God, truth from his word, that that is final and that's true.

Watch this. I'm going to go to the book of James. You remember we were in the book of James not too long ago in the book of James. Chapter 3, it says this in verse 14. It says, “but if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.”

Did you hear what he just said? You've got bitterness, jealousy, and selfish ambition. So, what is your goal here? It's all about myself. It's all about me looking good, me getting more, and I'm jealous because somebody else has more than me and they think they're better than me. And so I have selfish, it says do not boast and be false.

Why am I boasting? Because I think I'm better than you and because it's all what I know and it's nothing God did, it's me. It says, but if you have bitterness, jealousy, selfish ambition, or do not boast and be false to the truth. What he just said is that if you're boasting and you have all this selfish ambition, you're lying to yourself about who you really are.  Do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes from where? That's not the wisdom that comes from above. But it is, it's going to describe us, give us three descriptions of wisdom that doesn't come from above but that comes from below.  Right? Philosophies, human wisdom, tell us, describe that to us, tell us what that is.

 

The first one is it says, it says do not boast, be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes from above, but it is earthly.
What does that mean? It's opposed. Earthly means it's opposed to being from God. It's opposed to the things of God. It's earthly.
Right? The second thing it says is it's earthly. It is unspiritual. Unspiritual means it's based on human desires, fleshly desires. Right? This is what I want and so I'm going to go and here's the third one. What's the third one it says? Demonic. Human ambition, human, human wisdom gets its source from the demonic. Right? It sources Satan. Satan uses it to corrupt and confuse people regarding the truth that's revealed in God's word. So, you're like, well, I can't understand God's word. Right?

And I've been studying all kinds of different people and they're all telling me this and I went to philosophy and I went to college and they told me all this stuff and so now I really don't understand God's word. Right? That's Satan's plan. He wants you to take God's word and say, yes, I believe you. Now this is earthly wisdom and it's contrasted to what he calls wisdom from above, verse 17. It goes on.

But the wisdom from above is first pure. What does that mean? It means it's morally clean.  Right? It's morally clean. It's not corrupt. It's morally clean. It hasn't been corrupted by human wisdom. It's then peaceable. So, it doesn't seek division based on opinions. Right? Wisdom from above isn't seeking us to be divided as a church based on opinions. It wants to unite us all around the truth of Christ. So, this is gentle. Right? Gentle, you say, well, you mean weak. No. That's not what gentle means. What gentle means is strength under control. So, you got a guy that's like, that comes up to you and he's a little puny guy and he says, hey, you know what? I'm going to beat you up.  Pow! You're like, “you can't beat me up. I could blow on you and knock you over.”  Well, you better do what I say.  No way. I'm not, but then you have a big guy, a huge guy and you're like, there's no way I could take this cat. He's got power. He's got strength. But he's gentle to you. You're like, I can't force on him. Even though he could force on me something, he could force me to do something. He's gentle. Even though he has all the power, he's still gentle on how he does it.
So that's why we like, like, big, you like big men that are gentle giants, right? And you're like, you like that, right? Because he's, because it's gentle. It's, it's power that's restrained and power that's controlled. That's better. That's not the same thing as not having power.

 

It says open to, to reason. And he said, well, Dustin, I thought you said that we're not supposed to do, I didn't say we're not supposed to look at reason. Reason means that open to reasons we're not stubborn. We're open to the truth. But we're careful where we get the truth. It says full of mercy and good fruits. So good fruits, what that's the results. That fruit is what you get as the result of the tree being a good tree. You get good fruit. And so, when it says good fruits, it's a result of action. It's effective. And then it says impartial and sincere God's wisdom, in other words, doesn't play favorites.

And this is what I mean. God's wisdom doesn't say, well, I am only going to give wisdom to the wise person, to the smart person, to the straight A kid in school, to the kid who had doctors as their parents that grew up and were able to go to university. They're the only ones that are going to understand the wisdom of God.  No. God says that it's for everybody. His wisdom is for everybody, not just the super-intelligent, not just the rich. It's for everybody.

Even for people like me, who are D and C students in high school. You say, well, then you must not have been very smart. How can you know the wisdom of God? How can you know the wisdom of God if you're not, you're not like a brainiac? Well, because God doesn't require that.  It's not what God requires. When it comes to the Pharisees, they're the most learned lawyers of everybody, and they can't understand it all. The real truth of Jesus, they just can't get it. To them, Jesus is a butterfly driving a truck. It's just nonsense. How in the world is somebody dying, being defeated, an itinerant preacher, with no education at all? Somehow, how is that death going to somehow solve all of our problems? That's butterfly driving a truck. It don't make no sense at all. It must be nonsense. And so, they're rejected. The smarter they are, the quicker they are to reject it.

Look at what it says. I mean, if you have the gospel, which is wisdom from above, so you have the gospel, that's wisdom from above. You have revelation from God given to us in Scripture.  Then why would you, let me ask you this question. This is just a point of light question. If you had that wisdom from above, you have the gospel, you have the truth that all of these guys of wisdom are all trying to figure out, and you already have the truth, not because you're smart, because it was revealed to you by God. If you already have that, then why would you add earthly wisdom to it, which is unspiritual and demonic to figure it out? Does that make rational sense to you? See, we're not giving up rational, being rational.

This just, just, rationally, doesn't make sense. If you have the truth, you've got it figured out, it's been given to you. Why would you then go to stuff that God calls demonic and things that God calls unspiritual and say, okay, well, now we're going to find our truth from that?  Well, you already have the truth. God gave it to you in His Word. I'm going to keep pouring myself into that, because that's the source of this truth that I want. Let's turn to Colossians chapter 2 verse 8. Here's what Paul says to the Colossians, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy or empty deceit. What's going to take them captive? Philosophies, human wisdom, people that have figured out all kinds of stuff.

You've got your, guy with a big beard over here in a toga, right? And he's philosophizing, right? You know the Greeks, they're all philosophized and, and thou art this and this and this and explaining everything and everybody's like, oh, you're so wise. He says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. If you want to be taken captive by truth, go to Christ. The truth is in Christ. The truth is in the church.

So, let's pop back to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 20.  We'll keep going. It says, where is the one who is wise? Who's he talking about?  Right? The philosopher, the philosopher with all of his earthly opinions about what we should do. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe?  Right? The scribe, that's the person that's writing. He's writing all kinds of things. He's writing. He's peddling his opinions and human ideas and writing. And it says, where is the debater of this age? The guy that's out there trying, he's on YouTube and he's got his own channel and he's trying to explain to you the truths of everything and he's trying to get as many followers because he wants you to follow him. He's debating with people.  Where, where is that person? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? It says God made all wisdom foolish like a butterfly driving a truck. How? How did God make all this human wisdom foolish?

This is the best part. What we need is eternal life. What we need is eternal life. What we need is forgiveness. What we need is peace. What we need is purpose. And they've spent 4,000, 6,000 years trying to figure that all out. Trying to come up with some type of solution for how we can have all those things.  How we can unite people. All the, they've 4,000 years, 6,000 years trying to do it. Jesus, and they never could do it. They still can't do it. And you know what? Jesus did it in one morning on a cross and didn't say a word. Everything they've been, everything we've been earthly trying to figure out from our own wisdom and philosophies. For thousands of years, Jesus did it in a morning, one morning on a cross.

And he didn't say a word. Show me my picture up here. I got my picture of my man with the bat for thousands of years, people, trying to answer life's deepest questions. They discover life's most meaningful truths, right? The greatest minds are meeting with the next generation of the greatest minds, passing on, well, this is what we've learned, so you take it on. And the greatest minds over and over, and they've been able to accomplish anything that really matters. We still have all the same problems that we had before.

 

For 6,000 years, man has brought wisdom to the plate, come up to the plate with their wisdom in their books and all their intelligence. And they've taken a swing after swing after swing after swing at solving the problems that you want solved in your life, and they've never done it. It's been swing and a miss, swing and a miss, swing and a miss, swing and a miss for all of human history. And so God comes to the plate with no books, no bat, no degree, and on the cross of Calvary on a single morning with a single swing solves all the problems earthly wisdom tried to solve for thousands of years. And the philosopher, and the writer, and the public speaker are made to look like idiots. They're made to look like fools because they couldn't do what Jesus did. He did it on a cross in history, and it was effective.

Instead of sending some brainiac professor, God sends simple people like you and me to proclaim Christ crucified on a cross. He's not out there looking for the brainiac, he's not looking for the guy with a PhD, he's not looking for the person that has the best pedigree, he's not looking for that. That's what human philosophy wants, right? That's what human colleges are looking for. Well, you can't get into our college because your dad and your grandpa and so and so they didn't go to this college.

And so, they don't, they don't, you don't belong here, right? That's not the way Jesus does it. Jesus says, you know what, I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take, who's a jackwagon around here? Who's a nightmare, right? Who's a mess? Who, who, who, who, who couldn't hit a barn, hit the ball with a, who is that guy? I'm gonna pick Dustin. And all these brainiacs are gonna say, well, how in the world, because he doesn't have to be super smart. He just needs to understand that I love him. He just needs to understand that, that I died on the cross, and that all the power's in the cross. It's not in all your wisdom, it's in the cross. And so it says here, it says in verse 24, since 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, right? It pleased God.

What God thought was pleasing is to take normal folk who aren't like super-brainiacs or aren't super talented or anything like that, and to shame all of those people who think they can figure it out by all their human wisdom, and that they're gonna explain to everybody how to live. I'm gonna use regular people like you and me. And I'm just gonna give you the gospel, because that's the truth that they're all missing. And you know what? When they see it coming from you, they're gonna feel like fools. They're gonna look like fools. The angels are sitting there thinking, what in the world is going on? The smartest people are idiots.

And the regular people, they've got the truth. Why? Because God shows it to be that way. Verse 22, it says, for the Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, and folly to the Gentiles. So the message of Jesus is so simple. It's so simple that the Jews, the Jews, they're so spiritual. They're going, well, this is spiritual. So if it's spiritual, God has to show up. And so we're not gonna believe anything unless God proves it to us by giving us miracles. And so God gives them miracles. He does miracles from them, and they go, we still don't believe. Stumbling block, the cross, the cross is a stumbling block. They crucify Him. They're like, we can't get to that truth. Our human wisdom is too important to us. We can't let go of that in order to believe this crazy thing about you on a cross.

 

And churches today can't handle it either. There's a lot of churches today that have gotten rid of the cross. They don't preach the cross. What do they preach? They take Jesus, they believe in Jesus, but they're not gonna preach the cross. They're gonna preach the Sermon on the Mount. Because Jesus was philosophical and earthly and philosophically and gave philosophies in the Sermon on the Mount.  And so you'll go to a Methodist church, or you might go to a Congregational church, or some liberal church, and it's like, well, we believe in the Sermon on the Mount. Right? Blessed are the Paul for they shall inherit the kingdom of God. And I believe that too. But the power of the Sermon on the Mount is the cross. It's the cross. The message of Jesus is really simple.

And so, I want to help you with this message. I was reading, I don't know if any of you have heard of Alistair Begg. He's a Scottish guy. Whenever I tell a story of his, I end up speaking like with a Scottish accent. I don't know why. I'm very well influenced by that. But anyway, he was talking about the thief on the cross. The thief on the cross, right? Which is a problem theologically, don't you think?  The thief on the cross. That's a problem, because you've got this guy who's never been to a Bible study. He's never been to a church service. He's never been baptized. He doesn't know the theology of Scripture. He hasn't been to Sunday school. He doesn't know any of that. And he's on a cross dying for something really bad, because he's being crucified for it. This is a bad dude. And he dies and Jesus says, today you'll be with me in paradise. You're like, there's a fine, how do you do? This guy's jumping the line.

So, Alistair Begg says, he shows up to heaven and the guy at the counter says, so what's going on? Right? Who are you? Why are you here? Right? And “what are you doing here?” He goes, “what do you mean? What am I doing here?” He goes, “well, I can tell you don't know what you're doing.” So, the angel goes and gets a supervisor. I guess apparently, they always have to have a supervisor to kind of figure it out. And the supervisor comes over and says, “let me ask you a question here real quick. Do you understand?  Are you clear on the doctrine of justification?”  He says,” well, I've never heard of it. Never heard of it.”

“What about the doctrine of Scripture?”,  “Never heard of that. What's that? I have no clue.” Finally, he says, “on what basis are you here” the guy goes, “because the man on the middle cross said I could come. The man on the middle cross said I could come.”

That's the gospel. Why are you here? Well, because I've studied all kinds of philosophies and I know justification and I know all these things. But you haven't been baptized? No, the man on the middle cross said I could come. You're saved because the man on the middle cross said you can come by believing him and following him to freedom, following him to life, following him to love, to a kingdom where he reigns, and you're just his guest there by grace. Because he said you could come. He worked it out on the side, on the cross. He worked it out so that you could come if you agreed. And so verse 24 says, 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.  Right? The power and wisdom that has real effect is Jesus saying yes, you can come. And doesn't that sound moronic? Our whole religion is based on this man on the middle cross saying I fixed it.

Yeah, you're invited. And scholars can't deal with it, man. They can't understand it. They're freaking out. They're losing it. We'd rather kill this guy than have him keep talking this kind of crazy stuff. I've had a few mentors in my life. I got saved when I was 14, and then I had a pastor, a great pastor, a youth pastor, and then he kind of moved off. And I found another pastor. He was a Methodist, but he was kind of Pentecostal too.

So, he was kind of a strange cat, right? Not a lot of Methodists are like speaking in tongues and stuff, and that wasn't me. But that was my first mentoring. And then I went to college and I met a guy that was my cross-country coach named Bubba. His name was Don Church, but we called him Bubba. And I think his wife was a little bit offended that all the guys on the team called him Bubba because everybody else was called Professor So-and-So, Professor So-and-So. But the thing about Bubba is that Bubba, he was a professor, he taught like PE. He taught running.

I took a class from him on running, which is funny because I was on his team. It was an easy class, I'll tell you that. But you'd show up to class and we never ran in class. Not once did we run in class. We got into class and he started to just teach from the Bible. He just started to share how much God loves us.  Now, I want you to catch this. When I went to Wheaton, they were turning away Valedictorians. It was considered the Harvard of Christian schools. It still is. It's really hard to get into there. I already told you I was not the sharpest tool in the shed, right? My elevator didn't go to the top floor, right? I was a C student.

 

But I applied. And Bubba, for some reason, I found this after I graduated, got me into the school, even though I didn't have the grades to get in. He decided maybe he thought I was kind of like him. You know, a guy that just doesn't have a shot. Otherwise, I'll tell you something about Bubba. Bubba failed the second grade, twice. When it was time for him to go to college, he wanted to go to Wheaton really, really bad, but they told him he couldn't. So they said, if you're going to come in, you have to come on a trial period, and you can come in in the summer and you can stay in the dorm and your mom has to stay in the dorm with you. Think about how embarrassing that would be. He was majorly dyslexic, and had a really, really hard time reading. And here's the paradox, and here's why I'm telling you this.

Because I became a theology major, and I started studying under some of the brightest theological minds there were. Yeah, that's Bubba down there on the bottom. And that kind of weird guy, too, over, that's me. 100 pounds lighter. But I had professors in New Testament, in Old Testament, in Luther, in Calvin, in Bonhoeffer, and all types of theological classes, just more than I could even go into. Apologetics, historical theology, all these different things. And these professors are professors. Some of them studied at Princeton, some of them studied at other places. And they taught us lots and lots and lots of stuff that I remembered. And I remember, I remember about my junior year, I remember really struggling in my faith. I was taking five theology classes, and I was so struggling with my faith, I couldn't hardly even open up the Bible, because when I opened it up, I felt like I was opening up a math book. I felt like I was opening up a textbook, and I would pray, and I felt like my prayers would hit the ceiling and just fall back down. And I was like, I don't even know if I have a spiritual life. What is my spiritual life?

Because I was being bombarded with all this theology and heady thinking. But at the same time, I had my cross-country coach. And when I would see him, he didn't sit down, he would say, Hey, God loves us sinners. Now, I just spent five hours in theology classes. Bubba just told me, Hey, all right, God loves us sinners. I learned a thousand times more from Bubba than I ever learned from a professor at Wheaton. Because Bubba just told me the truth from Scripture. I'll tell you what irritated me.

There'd be like five or six of us guys coming to the dining hall, and we'd see Bubba, and he's got his loafers on, and he's coming around, and hey, all right, you guys, all right. He never coached us the whole time I was there. Never taught me anything about running. We had other coaches did that, not Bubba. Bubba would just tell us about God. We'd have a meet on Saturday. He'd get us all together. He'd have me play the guitar with all the team there. And then he'd just talk about God and the Holy Spirit. Hey, all right, I'd be walking down to five guys and say, Hey, you guys, you're all good men. Then he'd look at me and say, God loves us sinners. Bubba!

Bubba! I look back on it and I see the wisdom. The wisdom of God is simple. It's powerful. That man who couldn't hardly read changed my life drastically because he shared with me the simplicity of the gospel. But God loves me. I thought God was out to get me. No, God loves me. God cares about me. God has a purpose for your life, buddy. You have sin in your life. God will forgive you for your sin. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Find out what God's got for you. What's good? How can you bless other people? And when you do that, do you feel good about it?  Right? And are you doing it better maybe than other people? And do you get excited about it? And do you feel full after you bless other people? And that's the Holy Spirit. That's your gift. Well, I just took a five-hour quiz on my spiritual gifts and he just explained it to me in 30 seconds. God likes to bless people through us. And when he does, makes us feel good. And we're good at it because God's power does it.

I don't know. I just think we need to be careful. It says, “for consider your calling, brothers and sisters, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many of you were powerful. Not many of you were noble of noble birth. “ Let's look around a little bit. How many queens and kings? Now, not you can call yourself queen, but I'm saying real kings and queens. How many nobles we got in here? How many super brainiacs, PhD professors? How many have invented lots of things for us and changed the world through that?  Not a lot. But God shows what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God shows what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God shows what is low and despised in the world.  Even things that are not, but to bring to nothing things that are. Why would God do that? Why would God pick you and me rather than Elon Musk and Einstein and the rich and the powerful? Verse 29, “so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” That's why.

Because God knows that we are going to pridefully boast about ourselves in God's presence. Hey, look at me. I figured it out a lot. I solved all the world's problems. I don't need God. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us. Christ Jesus became to us wisdom from God. Christ Jesus is the wisdom from God. Righteousness and sanctification and redemption. We get all of our righteousness and wisdom from God as a gift by his revelation. So that as it is written, let the one who boasts, boasts in the Lord and I when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. So he's saying, when I came to you guys at the church, when I first planted this church, I didn't come to you like with really great eloquence and with all kinds of wonderful philosophies and you're like, man, that guy's really smart.

I just came and told you about Christ. Why didn't he do that? Why didn't Paul craft well-reasoned eloquent arguments and speeches? Because human wisdom and opinions don't help God's revelation. It doesn't help us understand the truth.

It only corrupts it. Well then, what did you bring them, Paul? Finish with this. God loves us sinners. I chose to bring you this. God loves us sinners. I chose to bring you the man on the middle cross said I could come. I could have brought you all kinds of stuff, but that's not going to help you. What matters is you need to understand this church. You need to understand this church.

The man on the middle cross said you could come and God loves us sinners. He used to do this with his thumbs. I don't know why I did this.  I still do this all the time. Whenever I'm talking about Bubba, the thumbs go like, I don't know. It's some kind of Elvis thing.  I don't know. God loves us sinners and the man on the middle cross said you can come. So come.

 

God, I thank you for your word. I thank you for Paul. I thank you. I thank you for Bubba, who had a big impact on me and I hope we'll make even an impact even today on my friends here in the body. God, I ask that you'd help us to focus on the truth of your word and on the simplicity of it and that that can transform us because the other stuff just kind of gets in the way. It bogs us down.  It bogs down our minds and it bogs down our spirits. God, the simple truth is that you love us. You love us like crazy. And on the middle cross, you died for us. You said, all right, come. I fixed it. God, burn this into our hearts and give us the passion to share it to everybody who's being corrupted by human wisdom everywhere they go. We pray that in Jesus' name.