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Boasting in the Cross

Although we come from lowliness, God raises us up to shame the proud.
This sermon is part of the sermon series "The Power of the Cross". See series.

Introduction

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the 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. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, 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."

Before we dive into this passage, let's focus on Paul's last phrase: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." He's drawing from an important couple of verses in Jeremiah 9. These verses are significant in our discussion this morning. Paul only quotes part of this passage, but he's really thinking about it all.

This is what the Lord says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the Lord (Jer. 9:23-24).

There are three emphases in this passage. First, God talks about three kinds of people, and we'll hear about them in the Corinthians text. Second, you can't miss the word boast all over these verses, and Paul is using this language in his own reflections. Third, notice what we are to boast about—"that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight."

As I've been telling you, when Paul wrote to the Corinthians they were torn by divisions. Christians chose sides like they were the theological Big Ten Conference. The rich were disdainful of the poor. Christians were suing each other. They argued and they bragged. I don't see that spirit here in this church, for which I'm very grateful, but I wouldn't put it past us. Would you? This morning let's let God remind us just where boasting in church belongs.

Back to our roots

We've all heard about someone rich and famous going back to their roots, to their small hometown, remembering where it all started. Maybe you've done that. I was just reading an e-mail from a friend who had just been working with five hundred Christian leaders in Africa. And I wrote to him, "Kevin, it's hard to believe this all started in Deep River Falls, Minnesota." We come from these little places, and God has opened whole new doors for us.

In verse 26, Paul particularly wants us to remember where we came from. "Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called." Paul's point here isn't to say that all Christians came from Skid Row, from desperate, down-and-out places. His point is that most of us did not draw a lot of attention in this world by human standards. Most of us were not rising stars when God called us to Christ. People who knew us then will never look at us now, made alive in Christ, and think, I saw that coming a mile away. She was always destined for success. When we're tempted to boast about who we are or whose side we're on, remember: God chose to save the likes of us to disgrace the status of those who ignore him.

Paul asks us to consider the status-defying makeup of the people God chose to save. He says, "Not many of you were wise by human standards." Paul isn't thinking about our IQ or our past education. That's not his point. Not many of us were once well-known for touting our philosophies of life in books or seminars or on Oprah. No one will ever come into the church of the living God, look around and say, Wow. So many intellectuals are Christians! This must be what all the intelligentsias are doing. You're not going to hear it. That's not where we come from.

Paul says, "Not many were influential." Jeremiah used the word strong, influential and strong. Not many Christians were once powerbrokers, the movers and shakers in society. No one will ever come into a living church and think, Wow, these Christians are like an assembly of the Senate, City Hall, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies all rolled up into one. They won't think that when they come to see us.

He says, "Not many were of noble birth." Jeremiah used the phrase rich. Those two went together in ancient days—noble birth and rich. There are probably some among us who were wealthy and who had a high social status before being saved, but not many. In the late 1700s, Lady Huntingdon, an English blueblood, came to Christ under the preaching and ministry of the Wesleys and George Whitfield. She used to say that she was saved by a letter "M." She said, "God's Word says, 'not many noble.' It doesn't say 'not any.'"

Verse 28 spells out the status of Christians even more explicitly. Paul says, "God chose the lowly things." God chose the lowly and despised people and things of the world, the nobodies. God chose nobodies to make his point. Peter wrote: "Once you were not a people [you were nobodies] but now you are the people of God." No one will ever come into a true and living church, look around at everybody here, and say to themselves, You have to come from good stock to go here. God must really prefer people with lots of money. God chose to save people who do not have status by human standards in order to prove a point.

Don't misunderstand the implication here. The people who God saves aren't Christians because they don't have brains or influence or means to do anything else. The emphasis here is on God's action. God did everything. When you were called, God chose you. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus. God chose to save people such as us. Why? To shame the wise. To shame the strong. To nullify the things that are something. It isn't necessarily saying that these people will feel ashamed, though that day is coming. Right now they don't feel ashamed. But Paul's point and God's point, going back to Jeremiah, is that systems and values rooted in wisdom or influence or money will be proven fruitless and empty when it comes to doing anything for the real heart problems of people. They're all talk and no action. The idea that worldly wisdom or muscle or money is the route to good living is disgraced by Christ. It's shown to be a sham by Christ's death and resurrection, and the changed lives of people who believe that message.

Shaming the wise, strong, and rich

We in the church are God's living challenge to those people whose proud hearts are far from God. It's as though God says, "Mr. Wiseman, have your intellectual philosophies or religions produced anyone so wise and righteous as these people whom I have saved and who have come to understand and know me? Do you know that I have revealed to these believers what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what has never entered into your imagination. I've revealed it to them because they love me.

"Mr. Strongman, have you by pulling all your strings and throwing your weight around ever had such power as these people whom I have saved, people who can do all things through Christ who gives them strength, people who are strong enough to do what is right, strong enough to serve selflessly, strong enough to rise from the dead?

"Mr. Richman, have all your wealth and your social connections made you half so rich as these people whom I have saved, these children of the King who have treasures stored in heaven, who have a yes to every promise of God, who lose nothing even if every earthly thing is taken from them, who can still say, 'Yet I will rejoice in the Lord?'"

Why does God work this way? Why did he do it like this? In verse 29, Paul tells us, "… so that no one may boast before him." God says, "What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Wiseman? You're the fool. Put up or shut up, Mr. Strongman. You're the weakling. Your bloodlines and money bags aren't impressive now, Mr. Richman. You're the pauper. Come, stand before the almighty, saving God. Look at these whom he has saved, whom he has made wise and strong and rich through Christ alone. And then I dare you to come into my presence and brag."

This point began in verse 26 with God calling for us to think about who we are as a church. "Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called." Have you done that? Have you thought about what you were when you were called, how small you were? Some of us were children. Do you remember how miserably messed up your lives were? How arrogant and proud we were—of nothing. How empty and lonely, how hopeless? Even if by the world's standards you fell into one of those categories, if you are now in Christ, like Paul, you just count it all as rubbish. It was worth nothing in finding Christ.

Wisdom from God

Now Paul reorients us, because he's speaking to this tendency we have to move ourselves up the hierarchy in a group of people in one-upmanship. In verse 30-31, he says, "It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, 'Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.'" It's as simple as that.

These people have been breaking into factions in the church according to who has led them to Christ or whose teaching meant the most to them. Back in verse 12, he says, "One of you says, 'I follow Paul'; another, 'I follow Apollos' [one of the teachers of the church]; another, 'I follow Cephas' [Peter]; still another, 'I follow Christ.'"

These people that have influence in your life are very, very secondary. You are in Christ Jesus because of God. God did it, no one else did. You're not here because you were born a Lutheran or a Presbyterian or in the Free Church or any other tradition. You're not here in Christ because you sat under the preaching of someone or were discipled by some great teacher. We are here because God alone mercifully called us to faith in Christ. So let's boast about God and his love for us through Christ.

Specifically, verse 30 says, "Christ Jesus has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption." Sometimes those four words—wisdom, righteousness, holiness, redemption—are collected into one group, as if they are all synonymous. That can be true, but I think here the sense is that the wisdom of God takes shape in the other three particulars. This whole section has been contrasting God's true wisdom with the world's counterfeit wisdom.

No one ever became truly wise through the world's ways of wisdom. In verses 18-19 Paul said, "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." Then he quoted from Isaiah 29. "For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.'" Just before that statement in Isaiah, God explains the reason for his antagonism toward these pseudo-intellectuals. He says it's because "their hearts were far from me." Their hearts were far from God. He's going to frustrate their plans because their plans don't draw them any nearer to God. They put up proud, empty religions and philosophies. They bypass the elephant in the room that human beings created by Almighty God have hearts that are far from him. If the wisdom we embrace doesn't solve that problem, it isn't really very wise. If we don't have enough influence and power to pull ourselves nearer to God, we're really not strong enough. If we don't have enough wealth to cover the cost of the journey from this faraway country near to the heart of God, we're not really very rich. Only Christ can solve the problem of this vast distance between our hearts and God. He is God's own wisdom given to us, God's own strength, God's own treasure.

This wisdom of God is portrayed in these three words—our righteousness, our holiness, and our redemption. This doesn't come across very well in English, but these are word pictures. He gives us three photographs, you might say, that help us to see what the wisdom of God in Christ is like.

Righteousness
Righteousness takes us into the courtroom. Can you picture it? You have been accused of your sin, and you don't have any hope. You are dead to rights as surely as me. But then God, the Judge who shows no favoritism, honors the death of Jesus as payment for our sins. God's forgiveness doesn't really work like our forgiveness. If you offend me, I can choose to let it go. God cannot just let it go. Sin ultimately is a crime, and it must be paid for. And in this courtroom picture, Christ stands to take our place to pay our debt to God and to set us free. We don't walk out by the skin of our teeth, having dodged the bullet. We walk out declared by Almighty God, by the mercies of Jesus, "not guilty." That's the first picture of the wisdom of God.

Holiness
The second is his holiness. This is a picture that takes us white clad into the temple of God. The priests of the Old Testament were set apart. That's what the word holy means, that is, set apart for sacred service. When Jesus comes to us he sets us apart. Here we come with filthy hands, with minds that have been in the gutter. He takes us, cleanses us inside and out. He puts upon us white robes which are the righteousness of Jesus. He sets us, the people of God, into his temple to serve him. We handle holy things, and we wear white clothes.

Redemption
The third picture is redemption, and that takes us to the slave market. We were slaves. We were in bondage, chained to our sin, and we could not stop sinning. We were not good people. We were people bound to sin today and tomorrow and every day as long as we live. And every sin bound us more. All this sinning was killing us inwardly, and it would have been the death of us forever. We were slaves of no worth. Who would give a red cent for such useless slaves? Yet, the Lord Jesus Christ pays for us with his light, with his blood. He buys us out of that bondage. He sets us free from that dungeon of death. And when he does so he doesn't come creeping in in the middle of the night whispering, Come on. Hurry up. Get out of here. He says proudly and strongly, "You are paid for. Death has no claim. Satan has no hold. You are free, because I have paid the price for you. You are redeemed."

That is the wisdom of God. That is how God solved this horribly difficult problem: that our hearts were far from him. We couldn't do anything about it. God did all the heavy lifting. He did it because he loves you. He knows your name. It isn't all the same to God if somebody else comes to faith in Jesus but you don't. He also did it to prove to this world what real wisdom is like, what wisdom of God does, what genius he brings, what influence and power, what treasures of grace.

Boast in the Lord

So if we're going to boast, and every church worth its salt boasts, then let us boast in the Lord. What does a church that boasts in the Lord look like? Well, for one, when we worship, we mean it. We mean it when we sing our favorite song, and we mean it when we sing a song we don't know. The word boast in the Bible actually means more than brag. It's translated lots of different ways because it's so hard to reduce into one word. It means that in which we glory, that in which we put our confidence, that in which we trust. In worship as Christians, we certainly want to boast about God—not just brag on him, which would certainly be right and good, but also because he is all we want and need, because he delights us and we are eternally indebted to his grace. We worship when we're here together because our united worship is so wonderful and so pleasing to God. And we worship when we're alone, even in the dead of night when our hearts are heavy or afraid.

Also, regardless of our differences as believers, all these different things—our backgrounds and people we've admired who have shaped us—these variances of our convictions within scriptural bounds, our bottom line is the wisdom of God in Christ.

There's one other thing I think boast means: we will not try to impress this world around us with the measures of our old status. We're going to bask in Christ, brag on Christ, boast of Christ. We cannot try presenting ourselves to the world as being as cool as they. We don't want to meet their measures. That's what we've been saved from.

We have some friends that go to an interesting church in Denver. It's in a pretty rundown part of the city, right downtown. According to their website, they seek to minister to punks, skaters, ravers, homeless people. But it also includes Ph.D.s, like our friends who go there. It's an interesting place. They call it Scum of the Earth Church. Their newsletter is called Rubbish. I read about it from time to time, and God works remarkably in this place. I remember seeing something on Facebook at Easter. Our friends wrote that some other church had donated choir robes to them. They never even had choir before, let alone choir robes. They didn't have time to iron them or anything. So they just stood up in front with these rumpled choir robes and sang their hearts out to Christ. All kinds of people. On their website it says, Why Scum? That's what they call it for short: Scum Church.

Why Scum? It doesn't sound like a church name on purpose. The name implies that being people of faith does not mean we are better than anyone else. We know many non-Christians who think Christians are out to cast judgment on them. Our name makes it clear that we aren't about that. We're just aware of our need for God as scum of the earth. Fortunately God never sees us like that. You need to know that. God never sees us like that. But the name is humble, and we like that.

The power in that church and in ours does not lie in where we came from, who we knew, what we had then. Our strength, our distinctiveness is in what God makes of us through the message of the cross. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's how it works in the church, or it doesn't work at all. So let's boast about God. Let us all be billboards for Christ, who has become for us the wisdom of God.

Lee Eclov recently retired after 40 years of local pastoral ministry and now focuses on ministry among pastors. He writes a weekly devotional for preachers on Preaching Today.

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Sermon Outline:

Introduction

I. Back to our roots

II. Shaming the wise, strong, and rich

III. Wisdom from God

IV. Boast in the Lord