What God Has Against the Church #3 - Foolish and Wise
Message Description
Senior Pastor, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund, continues the message series "What God Has Against The Church" teaching from 1 Corinthians 1:18-31. A person can be wise in the eyes of culture or they can be wise in the eyes of God - but they can't be both.
Message Transcript
Good morning and welcome again to Orchard Hill. It's great to be together in Wexford and the Chapel, Strip District, Butler, and online. Good just to have a chance on a snowy morning to come together. And just before we jump into the teaching, I want to highlight a couple of things, really one thing, and then thank you for something. And that is every year at Orchard Hill, we do something that we call year-end giving. And so somewhere around November, we take some time to talk about where we are, where we're headed as a church and encourage those of us who call this our church home to participate financially in what's going on. And many people do that over the course of the year, but we also have this time at the end of the year. And usually, the end of the year accounts for about 20% of the revenue of the church. So, what happens at the end of the year, is it counts for that. And it's used for ongoing ministry and then ministry expansion in the coming year or years, depending on what's going on in the life of the church.
And this last year, you as a congregation gave over a hundred thousand dollars more than what the target was to the giving, which is just phenomenal as a church congregation. So, thank you. I want to thank you for giving during the year giving to year-end, and that represents about 400 individuals or families. So, if you count families in that, that's about 1200 people that gave to the year-end giving initiative. And that's about a third of the people who are part of Orchard Hill. So, about a third of you gave to that, help make that happen. And here's what I'm so thankful for. I'm thankful that so many people that are part of this church believe so much in this church with an uncertain economy, with some just things that are going on in our world said, we believe in and want to invest in what God is doing here.
And so, I just want to thank you. You'll hear more about it in the coming days about what it will mean in the year ahead and years ahead, but great job being part of that. So, let's take a moment and pray and we'll jump into the teaching. God, I thank you for each person who's gathered. And God I ask today that you would speak to us. And God, if I've prepared things that don't reflect your truth and don't reflect the emphasis of your word, I pray you'd keep me from saying them, and God if there are things that I haven't prepared that would be beneficial to those of us who are gathered, I pray that your spirit would prompt me, and I would be attentive to that even in these moments. And God that each of us would walk away from today understanding who you are a little better and with a stronger sense of connection to who you are. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
So, we began a couple of weeks ago, a series that we've called What God Has Against the Church. And we chose that title for a couple of reasons. One is we're working through the New Testament book of First Corinthians. It's a letter that the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, and Corinth is a city in the ancient world that was very cosmopolitan. And so, there was a church there, and Paul writes this letter of First Corinthians, and it's really a corrective to the church. And that's why we've titled it, What God Has Against the Church. But there's another reason why we've titled it that, and that is in our day and age, so many people have this idea that they can and be spiritual, but not be part of the church, that they can be somebody who believes in God, but doesn't really do religion.
And what I have hoped is that in seeing the ancient issues that are very current, we would see that untying our spirituality from the church is not an option in the Bible, that the two go hand in hand. And although you can be spiritual without necessarily being at a church in a biblical sense, those two go together. And so, we've wanted to look at this book and this will be the first of several series that will take us through the entirety of First Corinthians, but this series is looking at some of these words of correction. And so, we began in chapter one verses 1 through 9, we simply looked at these phrases about how the people of the church were called saints, and yet we see when we read through First Corinthians that by most people's definitions, they were more sinner than a saint. And that, although the church has said to be enriched, it was flawed.
And so, we talked about this holding intention or holding in paradox, this idea of the perfection or the ideal of the church with the reality of the church, and how we need to hold those things together if we're going to have a proper understanding and relationship to the church. And so, we could say that what God has against the church is that so often we get negative about what the church is and decide to disengage. And then we looked at this idea of unity in chapter one, verses 10 through 17, where he says, I have this against you basically. Now he didn't use that exact word, but that you have divisions. And he says, I want you all to agree. And so, we talked about holding intention, this idea of unity, and yet being distinct and not getting caught up in secondary issues.
And today we come to chapter one, verses 18 through 31. And what we're going to do today is we're going to see something that in some ways will feel like it's the opposite of what we talked about last week, it isn't, but it's a different emphasis in the text. And what I mean is this, last week was saying, don't let secondary issues become a primary focus on the message of the gospel, be unified around it. And today what we're going to see is that there's this juxtaposition of the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God. And he says right off in chapter one, verse 18, he says that the foolishness of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. That the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it's the power of God to those who are being saved.
And so, the juxtaposition, if you will today, is being wise and foolish, foolish in the eyes of the world, wise in the eyes of God. And there's an incompatibility between those two. And so, if we were to say, what does God have against the church? And again, remember the church doesn't mean necessarily the institution, it means people, because you are the church, I am the church, we are the church. What does God have against the church? It's that so often what we try to do is to be wise in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of our culture, in the eyes of our friends, we want people to think well of us. And so, we mitigate any position that doesn't feel like it's compatible with our culture to avoid being thought of as being foolish.
You understand the idea of incompatibility. If you have an electronic device, you know how this works, over time your device gets outdated so when you try to load new software onto your device, it becomes incompatible, and you have to upgrade the device. And what happens is when the spirit of God comes and lives inside of you, it's as if you have this new operating system and your way of thinking starts to become incompatible with the culture. But sometimes we chafe against that because we don't want the reality of our thinking, or our views being incompatible with the culture. And so, what this passage does, I believe, is it shows us two types of wisdom, two different ways of thinking about it. And I have a picture that defines this. So, this is a person up here on top. And basically, they're looking at things through the world and then to the Bible.
So, if you were thinking about this, this is a person who's looking at the Bible through the lens of our culture, through the lens of our world. This is what I'm calling the wisdom of the world. And then the other way is as a person to look at the issues of our world through the lens of the Bible and say, I'm seeing the things that are through the lens of scripture. And this is what you'd call a world view, a world view means how do you determine how you see the world? And the wisdom of the world is basically saying, I see the world as it is on its own terms, and the Bible if it has anything, is seen through that lens. And a Christian worldview means that what I do is see the world and everything that is through the lens of what God has revealed to us in the Bible.
And so, we have these two different ways. I want to look at these two different ways today. And the first one is what I'm going to say is the wisdom that God calls foolish. And this is what we see in verse 18 through verse 29. And this is when we have views that are at odds with our culture. And if you take a biblical perception of things, this will become true for you in one way or another. There are some statistics that have been generated by George Barna, who does all kinds of research on things. And he says that two-thirds of Americans call themselves Christian. And then he goes into a survey of what those people who call themselves Christians actually believe. Here are a few of these things.
72% of people who call themselves Christian would argue that people are basically good. Now, if you're not tracking with this, in the Bible there's this idea of original sin. And what original sin is, is it means that we aren't born basically good, we're born in rebellion against the God of the universe, and therefore we need a savior, we need a renewed heart. So, when somebody says, oh, I think everyone's basically good, it's not a biblical worldview, it's seeing the world through the lens of another perspective. Okay. Here's another one. He says, 66% of people say that having faith matters more than which faith you actually have or pursue. I call this the fallacy of thin ice. And the reason I call it that is it's really modern to say, listen, it doesn't matter to me what you believe, just as long as you believe something, you believe something. I believe something. We just have sincerity of faith.
And the reason I call it the fallacy of thin ice if you were to walk on a frozen body of water, having deep faith that the ice will hold you is misplaced if the ice is actually thin, it actually matters how thick the ice is. And therefore, simply saying, just have faith isn't really how that works. 64% of all religious faiths have equal value for some people. This is what, again, of the people who would self-identify as Christian. And this is, again, like saying, look, if you're sick it doesn't matter what medicine you take, just take some medicine, and that medicine will help you. And then 58% of people believe that if a person is good enough, or does enough good things, that they can earn their way to heaven. And 57% of people who, again, claim to be Christians, believe in karma.
Now, the reason I show you these statistics is that the wisdom that God calls foolish is the wisdom of the world. So, First Corinthians one verse 18, the wisdom basically of the world is foolishness, the cross, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those that are being saved, it's said to be the power of God. And what happens so many times is any view that you take that's counter to the way that the dominant culture sees things will be at odds with wanting to appear why. So, if you take the biblical message seriously and say that there is hell for people who haven't come to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, that will be an unpopular position. And so, what many of us do is we say, I don't like that, I don't want to be thought of as one of those Bible thumpers. So, I'm going to mitigate that, and I'm just never going to speak of it.
I might give intellectual ascent to it, but I'm just never going to say anything about it because I don't want to be thought of as being weird. The idea here of the cross certainly speaks of salvation, and this is offensive in our culture, because again, what the cross means is that everybody was so wicked, so sinful that they need a savior. That's not a popular thing to bring up at a dinner party, but it also means that we're so loved that God sent his Son to be the one who takes our place. And we could talk about other issues, things like the Bible's call to sexual intimacy, being between a marriage that's a covenant relationship, not just something that we give away, we could talk about giving and serving and forgiveness. And these things are all part of what it means to take a position or a view that says I'm willing to be against what God calls foolishness, which is the wisdom of the world.
And here's what we see. And that is the end of this wisdom. So again, verse 18, I'm just going to read through this in common. It says, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being saved it's the power of God." Verse 19, "For it is written," and now he quotes from Isaiah. He says, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." And so, what does he say? He says, in essence, that the wisdom of the world, isn't durable, it's not going to last. Verse 20, "Where is the wise person? Where's the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" And what you see here is that wisdom isn't, not just durable, but it's not reliable because he says here that God basically has made it so that what appears wise in our world isn't reliable.
And here's how you know this is true because it changes from generation to generation. And if you doubt this, pull up on Netflix or something, some sitcom from 20 or 30 years ago, and I guarantee you, it will assault your modern sensibilities. And the reason it will assault your modern sensibilities is as you're watching you'll go, how is that an okay joke to tell? Because as a culture now, we've changed some of our ideas. And some of that's very good by the way, I'm not bemoaning that, but what I'm saying is understand that what a culture thinks is okay will change, it will morph because it's not rooted in something eternal. And we read this, "For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe."
"Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength." And so, what you see is that human wisdom isn't powerful here. And you can look for a sign, you can look for wisdom, but it will never be sufficient. And then we see in verses 26 through 30, that this is not determinative.
Here's what it says, "Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many of you were influential; not many of you were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise; God shows the weak things of this world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.” And here's what's going on. He's saying that it's actually not our intelligence, not our wisdom that sets us up to be somebody wise in God's sight, but it's actually God saying I've chosen things that appear foolish because I don't want this to be the smartest, wealthiest, wisest, most socially connected people are the ones who get this.
And so, this is, again, at odds with how our culture sees things. I saw an article recently, it was about Harvard appointing a new head chaplain, and the man they appointed as head chaplain is an atheist. And what was interesting to me about this isn't that Harvard appointed an atheist to be the head chaplain, and, if they're just running an interfaith program that doesn't even offend necessarily, but what was interesting is Harvard, if you're not familiar, was established for the education of clergy. When it was first formed, it was so that people who would be teaching in churches would have an education.
Now, obviously, it's drifted from that mission a little bit, but here's what this new atheist chaplain of Harvard's said at one point, this is the part that I thought was interesting. He said this, “We don't look to God for answers, we are each other's answers.” Now, I know that that sounds profound when you hear it, we are each other's answers, but here's my point. The wisdom of the world says we don't need any higher authority, we can figure this all out for ourselves. And that is foolishness before God. There's a book that was written several years ago now, by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff and it's called The Coddling of the American Mind. And they didn't write it from a perspective of faith, but they were talking about free speech at one point, and how there's an agenda today to shut down opposing viewpoints in our culture.
In other words, there's a cultural narrative and if you don't hold to it, we want to shut down any conversation that comes from an opposing viewpoint. Here's what they write. "The idea that we should campaign against hurtful speech among adults arises from a failure to understand that free speech is our chosen method of resolving disagreements. Being a citizen in a democratic Republic is supposed to be challenging, it's supposed to ask something of its citizens. It requires a certain minimal toughness and commitment to self-governing, to become informed about difficult issues, and to argue, organize, and vote accordingly.” And here's what they're arguing in a sense, is they're saying our culture is moving to a point where if you disagree with the dominant narrative, you're seen as somehow being dangerous and we need to shut you up. And as a person of faith, one of the things that will happen is your views in any culture in which you find yourself will at some points be against culture. And if your views are not at some point against culture, they're probably not biblical, because these things are incompatible.
And what I think God might have against the church is that we try to make our views palatable to a culture that says we don't recognize God, and we don't care about any of these things. So, there's the wisdom that God calls foolish, but there's also the wisdom that our world calls foolish. And this is what we see juxtaposed here in this text, but specifically toward the end here when it says, verse 29, "...so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ, who has become for us wisdom from God - that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord." And that's a quote from Jeremiah nine, where we have this idea of boasting. When you hear boasting, you might think, well, boasting means that somebody's proud and uncouth in their pride in the way that they do it, but in the Bible, boasting meant to take your validation from something.
And so, Jeremiah nine says, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the wealthy person boast in their wealth, let not the strong person boast in their strength, but let the person boast who knows the Lord. And so, Paul here picks it up and he quotes it and he says, here is what it is to have the wisdom of the world. It's not to boast in all the things that our world says are wise, but it's to boast and get your validation from God himself rather than from all the things of our world.
Now, this is applicable on a couple of levels. One is, being willing to sometimes speak into an issue that you know is not well received. Now, I don't think that every time there's an issue, that you have a difference of opinion you need to raise your hand and say, let me tell you what I think, but there are some moments where you will have an opportunity and maybe a responsibility to say something that is counter to the cultural narrative and you'll have to say, I'm going to appear foolish to say this right here right now.
And that on some levels can be the thing that you may say are ultimate issues, maybe they aren't ultimate issues. And then there's this idea here where he says that the wisdom of God is our righteousness, our holiness, and our redemption. And this ties, I believe back to the cross, because the whole story here isn’t just taking unpopular positions, it's that the most unpopular position is the position of the cross of Jesus Christ. So, I'll come back to that in just a moment, but let me just tell you a story, and this ties into something you heard a little earlier, and that is about this idea of abortion. You heard it said that we believe in life here at Orchard Hill, and we're not going to go into all of the arguments for that. And I know even to say that for some people is challenging because you'll say, I don't know about that. I'm not sure if I agree with that. And I get that.
And certainly, I was somebody who had a view of this growing up, when I grew up that said, this is what I believe, but if you've been around, maybe you've heard my story, if not, let me just briefly tell part of it again. For me, this is a deeply personal issue. I was born just a couple of years before Roe versus Wade became the law of the land. And I was placed for adoption after a few months in foster care, grew up in a home, knew all along that I was adopted, didn't know a lot about it. And when I was 21, I got a phone call one day from the woman who had given birth to me. And in the course of my first conversation with her, she said something very close to this. It's a little fuzzy, it's been a few years, but this is my memory of it. And that is if abortion had been legal when I had you, I probably would've aborted you. And all of a sudden for me this issue went from being a theological, theoretical conversation to, do you mean I never would've existed?
And I had that moment of understanding that there are real people's lives that are taken away. Now you can certainly argue whether or not my life has been significant enough to be worth living, but I have liked it. And I think it's been good for my wife. I think it's been good for my kids, there are a few, you should ask them, but there are a few things that we could say. Now, here's my point. A couple of years ago, I was with one of my sons. We were doing the college trip. We were going to all the schools he thought he might want to go to. And we were at the University of Pennsylvania, and he was out on the tour with the campus tour. And so, I do what I do when I'm at a college campus, and I have a little time, I go to the bookstore, love bookstores.
And so I went to the bookstore, I'm looking around the bookstore. And when I come out of the bookstore, my son's still out on tour, and this young woman approaches me. She has a petition, she has a placard, and it was about abortion rights. And she wanted me to sign the petition. And it's one of those things where you don't even know what you're asked to sign, but I, in just a moment said, you know what? I said it's doubtful that I'm going to sign your petition. I said, but I'll tell you what, I said why don't you give me your best 60 seconds on why I should sign your petition? And then would you give me the respect of giving me 60 seconds to tell you why I doubt I'll sign your petition? And she said, sure.
And so, she proceeded to give me her best 60 seconds. And it was something along the lines of women should not be forced to carry a baby against their will. And I certainly have sympathy toward people who are in tough situations. And then I just looked at her and I said, I was born a couple of years before Roe versus Wade. When I had my first conversation with the woman who gave birth to me, she told me she would've aborted me if it had been legal. I want you to look at my face, and I want you to tell me that my life isn't worth living. I didn't even take the 60 seconds.
Now, my point is not that, that's this great story, but it was a moment where my understanding of biblical truth, and whether you share my understanding or not isn't even the point right now, but my understanding of biblical truth called for me to say something that in that context was seen as foolish. There will be times if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, that you will be in a position where you are the person who has the chance to say something challenging. In Matthew chapter 10 we're told this, and that is that there will be brothers who will rise against brothers and parents against children, and children will rise against their parents because of these issues. And then Jesus says, and the whole world will hate you because of me.
And so, what happens sometimes in the Christian community today is people say, I want my faith to be palatable to culture, rather than understanding that some things won’t be palatable. Now, I mentioned this idea in verse 30, about our righteousness, our redemption, and our holiness. These are words that point to salvation, and the whole context here starts with him saying that the cross, the message of the cross, which is Jesus crucified, is he said, basically foolishness to those who are perishing, but it's the power of God to those who are being saved. And here's what I know. And I had a friend remind me of this recently. And that is when the church's message, my message, any message you hear is this, and that is Jesus died for your sins, therefore you should believe. Most people are like, what sins? What did I do? I'm pretty good. Again, even the people who are self-professed Christians say, I believe most people are good, and just have faith in something.
And so, what happens is for many people they hear that message, and it just doesn't register. And then for another group of people, the message that they hear from the church is, come to faith in Jesus Christ, and he will make your life better. And when their life isn't better, what happens is they say, I'm not sure about this faith thing, I'm not sure I like this faith thing at all. And here's why this is important. We need to understand the cross, we need to understand why the cross was necessary to embrace the message. And I think ultimately this is more what this passage is about than even our wisdom that's tied to the scriptures, it's about understanding that the very root of the Christian message is foolishness in our world.
Here are a couple of stories that maybe can help us think about this. I want you just to imagine with me that you have a friend who comes up to you and says, you know what? I'm going to pay for your speeding ticket. I have $50,000 to pay for your speeding ticket and I'm going to pay it for you. Now here's what most of you would do. You would say $50,000 to pay for my speeding ticket. One, I didn't get a speeding ticket. And secondly, I certainly didn't get that kind of a fine. And even if I did get that kind of a fine, I'm not sure I would want you to pay it, maybe I'll try to pay it, you'd probably take the money, but you'd be like, I didn't get that much of a fine.
Now imagine with me that the situation was a little different, that you had been driving one day and some signs said a speed limit and it was low, and it said school for deaf children. And you drove through that speed limit sign that's 60, 70 miles an hour, and then there another sign, then there was a flashing sign that said, slow, there are children from a deaf school ahead, and you just kept going, and then you hit and killed a couple of those children and you are now being sentenced for manslaughter and given fines, and somebody came along and said, you know what? I'm going to pay your fine. And if the court will allow me, I'll take your place. Do you see the difference? What we need to understand, and the message of the cross is, not come to Jesus because you have some small sins, it's come to Jesus because of your sin, my sin is so great that we cannot pay it back. And we have done something to a God who's righteous that we can't in our own goodness, make enough.
And here's the challenge of this, and sometimes people confuse these ideas of law and grace, this is Romans three verse 20. It says, therefore no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law, meaning you can't be good enough, you can't drive the speed limit enough to overcome your past sin, metaphorically speaking. And here's what that means. He says, rather through the law we become conscious of our sin. If there's only grace taught, what people hear is God has forgiven you for your sins and we don't think that we have an issue, but it's the cross that reminds us that we're so sinful that we need a savior and that we have sinned against God. Now, sometimes people will start with grace and then they'll go to law, this is what Galatians is about, the book of Galatians.
They'll start by saying, I understand grace. And then they'll think, but the way I get closer to God is more and more law, but what law does in the Bible is it reminds us of our sin and our need for grace. And that is a message that's foolishness in the world, but also in Christian subculture a lot of times, because people think, okay, I get saved, but now I go on to the deep things by being full of law. There's one other story that relates to this, and that is this idea that if you come to faith in Jesus Christ, he'll make your life better. Now there are some elements of that, that are true. If you come to faith in Jesus Christ, God's spirit lives inside of you, and when God's spirit lives inside of you, we're told that we get the fruit of spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness. These things become part of us. So, there's a sense in which, yes, your life is better, but there's not a guarantee that when you come to faith in Jesus Christ, that somehow it makes everything work out in your life.
So, imagine with me that you're about to go into a building, it's a building you have to go to on a routine basis, you need to go, you don't have a choice. And somebody says, listen, when you go into this building, carry this fire extinguisher with you. There will come a day when you need it. You will be thankful you have it. You will need this. Now my guess is, if you were in that scenario, you'd say I'm not going in that building anymore. But if you had to, just play with my story here for a moment, you carry this fire extinguisher in, it would be a pain at times. You're getting coffee, you're carrying your fire extinguisher. You've got your bag to go to work and you've got your fire extinguisher. Some of your coworkers are like, what are you doing? You're carrying a fire extinguisher. You look goofy carrying that thing around. Do you think there's a fire? Whoa-ho, fire guy. You could hear all the stuff going on.
It would be an unpleasant experience in some ways. But if you were convinced that having that fire extinguisher would one day save your life, that it would help you to one day extinguish a path out of that building, you would carry that fire extinguisher without any sense of remorse. But now switch the message, if somebody hands you that fire extinguisher on the way into the building and says, listen, carry this fire extinguisher, it's going to make your day better in this building. What happens? You walk into the building. You're holding the fire extinguisher and the coffee, you spill a little coffee on yourself because the fire extinguisher is a little bulky, and you're like this stupid thing, or you want two cups of coffee and you don't have two hands because of the fire extinguisher, or somebody mocks your fire extinguisher, and you're like, yeah, this is goofy. I don't want this anymore. What do you do? You take the fire extinguisher, and you say I'm done with it.
And the reason so many people of faith have said, I'm not sure that I want to continue to believe is because instead of hearing the message of the cross that is foolishness to those who are perishing, it's the power of God into salvation, what they've heard is, come to Jesus and he'll make your life better. Jesus may make your life better, but the Bible also says that in this world you'll have trials, you'll have tribulations, you'll have trouble. And therefore, if your whole idea of coming to Jesus is he's going to give me a better life, you've probably missed the message of the cross. And here's what we sometimes do is we confuse what is important and what is not. And what's important to see here is that we can't ultimately be wise in the eyes of our culture and wise in the eyes of God.
In fact, I wrote down a statement just to crystallize what I'm trying to say. And that is you can be wise in the eyes of culture, in the eyes of your friends, in the eyes of this world, or you can be wise in the eyes of God, but you can't be both. You can't be both. And so, a person who understands what Paul is driving at here will say, I'm willing to be foolish in the eyes of the world and wise in the eyes of God, whatever that means.
Now he ends with this idea of this boasting again, where he quotes Jeremiah nine, I talked about it just for a moment. And boasting means, where do you get your validation? And if where you get your validation is being well thought of by the people that are in your life, then you will struggle at this point mightily. But if where you get your validation is to say, it's from God himself, that's my boast, and I realize that it's foolishness to a lot of people in my life. Then you will cling to that fire extinguisher, you will accept the payment for your penalty because you'll say this is the power of God for me. And that changes how we approach religion and faith.
See, what does God have against the church? We try to make everything palatable instead of saying there's a necessary disconnect between how the world sees things and how we see them. And if you're here in your teens, your early twenties, I want to especially encourage you because the culture that you're living in is going to increasingly have positions that you will say, if I am faithful to the understanding of God that's found in scripture will be seen to be ridiculous and even dangerous in our culture. But if you will embrace the wisdom of God as your controlling way of thinking, then you will be somebody who can say, God, you are my boast, you are my validity, and it doesn't matter to me what everybody else says.
Let's pray together. And if you're here and maybe today, just as we've talked, you realize that your approach to faith has been Jesus is going to make my life better, or it's just an option, I just want to invite you to trust in Jesus Christ, the one who went to the cross because you were so sinful that he had to go, but you are so loved that he did go. And you can just do that right now by saying, God, I'm a person who hasn't been good enough to deserve anything, but I go to the grace that's offered in the one who was enough, Jesus Christ, who is my righteousness, my holiness, my redemption.
And if you're a person who says, I believe that I've lived in that reality, but I've been trying to have a faith that's palatable, maybe right now's just a moment for you to say, God, I open my hands and I'm willing to be considered foolish in the eyes of the world, the eyes of my culture, the eyes of my friends, if that's what it means to be wise before you. God, allow each of us to see clearly what your word says and apply it to our situations. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Thanks for being here. Have a great day.
