When the Wisdom of Man Becomes Foolishness

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Good morning. Have you ever been absolutely convinced that you were right about something? Only to discover later on that actually you were wrong. It happens. We've all been there. Sometimes what makes sense to us.

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Seems perfectly logical. But what happens when our wisdom contradicts the wisdom of God? Today we're going to take a look at some examples of the wisdom of man. But the question we have to think about is are we willing to trust God's wisdom?

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Even when it doesn't make any sense.

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Keep that in the back of your mind. That's what we got to think about today as we look at these. I want to revisit again just briefly to set the foundation of 1 Corinthians chapter number one. This is what we talked about yesterday. And I want to build on this foundation a little bit to compare and contrast, like Paul did, the wisdom of God versus the wisdom of man.

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And in today's episode, we're going to take a look at some examples. And there's a lot more examples in the Bible than what I'm going to look at today. But we're going to look at some examples of the wisdom of man. And then on Thursday, there won't be an episode on Wednesday this week. And then on Thursday, we're going to come back and we're going to take a look at the examples of the wisdom of God. So stay with me on this here. But let's go, First Corinthians chapter number one.

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And want to look here at verse eight, starting at verse eighteen, then we're gonna jump down to verses twenty two through twenty uh let's see, verses twenty two through twenty four. The scripture says for the preaching of the cross to them that perish is foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.

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But we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called both Jew and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. So we see as as as you know, we live in times today that that people keep telling us to trust in science, to

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And I think people are telling us that and and force feeding us that to be able to push their own agenda, the things that they believe are correct. And what Paul is teaching this church at Corinth here is that we can't depend on our own wisdom. We can't depend on our own wisdom. We got to depend on and trust on the wisdom of God because the wisdom of God is stronger.

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And better and and correct over the wisdom of man. Let's take a look at a couple of scripture examples here that tells us about the wisdom of man. And the first one I want to go all the way back to the book of Exodus. Exodus chapter number 32 is where I want to look at today. And we'll do this briefly here. This, of course, gotta get that out of the way.

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This, of course, is the story of the golden calf. Uh, quick, very quick background. Uh, Moses was up on Mount Sinai getting the commands of God, getting the Ten Commandments, getting the instructions on building the building the altar or the tabernacle, and instructions on what the priest should wear, and instructions on the furniture in the tabernacle. And pretty soon, here when we get to verse 30, chapter 32.

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Moses had been up there several days. It been 40 days by this point. And the people started getting a little antsy as far as what happened to Moses. And we read here in verses one through six.

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Now let's go one through eight, I'm sorry, one through eight. And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron and said unto him up, make us gods which shall go before us, for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

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And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings which are in their ears, in the ears of your wives and of your sons and of your daughters, and bring them to me and all the people. Break off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf. And they said, These be thy gods, O Israel.

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Which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made the proclamation and said, Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord. And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up and play. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down for thy people which

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Thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them, and they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. All right, let's break this down. What's man's wisdom here? Man's wisdom is we want to create something.

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That we can call a God that we could see, we could touch, we could feel. That was basically what had happened here. They didn't trust that Moses was still around. They they thought maybe Moses died up there on the mountain. Maybe God uh got mad with Moses and destroyed him. Uh, maybe Moses deserted them out there in the middle of the wilderness. What fascinates me with this whole story was the fact that Aaron went along with this because Aaron was was.

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The mouthpiece of Moses. Moses would tell Aaron what to say. He would tell Aaron what God had said to him, and Aaron would would tell the people. So Aaron was was essentially the first priest of Israel. And now he's going along with this whole false idol thing. And if we're not careful, we're going to fall into these false idols as well.

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Let me make this illustration, try to bring this home here. Um, let me let me take this pen, this Pilot G2 pen. What if I was to say something like, you know, it's with this pen that I got saved? This pen is what's given me eternal life. You would look at me and you would say, What is wrong with him?

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See off as rocker. But yet, how many of us put people like sports stars, movie stars? Maybe our possessions? We'll look at that one here in a minute. Maybe we have uh, I don't know, and anything, anything can turn into an idol if we allow it. And for Israel here, in their wisdom, being they they got tired of waiting for Moses.

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In their wisdom, they went out and created this golden calf and started saying, This is our God.

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They willingly did that. But yet so many of us today are willingly following other idols that we don't even realize, whether it's money, sports, stars, whatever, I already said that. Let's look at another one. Let's go back to the New Testament, Acts chapter number nineteen.

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Acts chapter number 19.

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Let's see. Acts chapter nineteen.

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And we're going to start today in verse number 24.

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Man's wisdom says that I gotta protect my assets and my livelihood no matter the cost. Acts chapter nineteen verses twenty four and let's go down to verse twenty nine. For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain from the craftsman unto the craftsmen.

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Whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover, ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia. This Paul has persuaded and turned men turned away much people, saying that they be no gods which are made with hands.

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So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. And when they heard these sayings they were full of wrath and cried out saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians, and the whole city was filled with confusion.

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And having caught Gaius and Aristica Aristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul's compassion companions in travel, they rushed with one accord unto the theater. All right, what's going on here? In Ephesus, during during Paul's day, uh they worshipped a false idol named Diana. They had the temples there, everything. And

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Paul went into Ephesus, he ministered, he preached the gospel, he preached about Jesus, and many people had turned and put their faith in Jesus. If we back up here to verse number eighteen of chapter nineteen, it says and many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds. Many also of them which used curious arts, brought their books together and burned them all before men.

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And they counted the price of them and founded 50,000 pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed. So people's lives were being changed. They were following God. They were getting rid of their old ways. They were getting rid of their evil deeds. They were getting rid of their witchcraft. They were getting rid of their idols and their false things. And the people that made these idols, they said, Hey, wait a minute.

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If if people keep following this way, if people keep coming to Christ, we're gonna lose our livelihood. We're gonna lose our wealth. So we got to do something about this. So they incited this great riot to try to put a stop to this new faith in Jesus. And and people today, when we start going and preaching against the wisdom of man, today.

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People respond in the same way when we start preaching against science, when we start preaching against false idols, when we start preaching against witchcraft and the like, people start getting upset and people defend that. And we got to make sure that we're not defending man's wisdom. We got to make sure that we're defending the wisdom of God. One more I want us to look at real quick: Acts chapter 8.

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Acts chapter 8, and then we're going to go right over to Acts chapter 9. I want to do chapter 8 here just to kind of give a background about Saul. We know Saul as the Apostle Paul, and we're going to get a glimpse into him before he became the Apostle Paul. And Saul, what this is Acts chapter 8. I'm going to look at verses 1 and then 3 and 4. And Saul was consenting unto his death. This was the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.

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And at that time there was great persecution against the church, which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church entering into every house, and hailing men and women and committing them to prison. Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word.

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All right, so here's Saul. This is again the Apostle Paul before he was the Apostle Paul. He was going out and he was trying to stomp out this new religion, this new faith in Jesus Christ, this preaching of the cross, as he wrote about in First Corinthians. He didn't see that as being legitimate. He didn't see Jesus as being nothing more than a prophet, possibly. And and he wouldn't believe that message. He thought it sounded foolishness.

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And he was going around wreaking havoc in the church, arresting people who are putting their faith in Jesus and proclaiming Jesus. And if we jump over to chapter nine, this is where we see the conversion of Paul, of Saul. This is where he is on his way to Damascus. I'm gonna give a real quick um

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Real quick, um down. I'm not gonna read the verses, is what I'm trying to say. Um, he's on his way to Damascus. He wants to to arrest people who was putting their faith in Jesus and bring them back bound to Jerusalem, where I'm sure that they would be jailed andor killed for their faith. And as he's on his way there, all of a sudden this light shines around him and he hears this voice from heaven. And and he says, Well, who is it? I'm talking to who is it? Who's calling me?

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And Jesus reveals himself as I am Jesus, who thou persecutest. That's in verse five. Then in verse number six, scripture says, and he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what will thou have me to do? There is Paul going out doing what he thought was the right thing until he had a life-changing encounter with Jesus.

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And his only response that he could come up with was, what do you want me to do?

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I'm sure that he thought 100% that he was doing the will of God. And then he found out he was wrong.

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Many of us today could be in the same exact spot that Paul is, that we've been doing things that we thought was what God wanted us to do, but we were wrong.

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What does all this have to do with us today? Let's wrap it up. We got to make sure that we're not putting our wisdom in false idols. We got to make sure we're not putting our trust and basing our wisdom into our livelihoods, into what makes us us. We got to make sure that we're doing the will of God.

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Not what we think or we want the will of God to be. We got to make sure that we spend time in the Word, getting the will of God, understanding God, getting God's message, so that we can in turn live our lives for God. So again, I'm gonna ask the question: Are you willing to trust the wisdom of God?

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Even if it doesn't make sense to you. Think about that as you go through this day. And remember, get into God's Word and allow God's Word to get into you. Then share that word with someone today. Have a blessed day.