1 Corinthians 1:18-25

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’ Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

“For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

Happy New Year to you all! I pray that you had a wonderful time remembering the birth of our Savior and enjoying friends and family. I sure did.

Just a few days ago, I had the chance to see a short video collage of some of the Christmas services that some of the ‘churches’ in the USA did. There were some very ‘interesting’ shows (I would not call them worship services) attended by millions of people. One of the shows was alleged to have cost about $3,000,000. Wow, just wow! Some were entertaining, others very cringe-worthy. But they all speak of the ‘churches’ desire to make the Gospel more palatable to the masses.

There is a famous saying to the effect that ‘true Christianity is not popular, and popular Christianity is not true.’ I have attended well-produced Christian pageants; one of the local Pentecostal churches here in Mississauga used to put one on every year. Thousands came to see it, and I took many to see it. It covered from the manger to the cross to the empty tomb. It was wonderful. The Gospel was clearly laid out and an invitation to receive Jesus at the end. It has been years since I went there, and I am not even sure that they still do it. While this was professionally done, even using real animals and the like, there was no sensationalism to detract from Jesus as the focus.

In our passage today, Paul tells us an eternal truth – the Gospel in its pure form sounds like foolishness to the natural man. Only when we speak the truth of the scriptures and the Holy Spirit opens a person’s eyes can they see the sheer beauty of the Gospel. For those of us who have seen the truth, it never gets old. Those of us in church have heard the Gospel over and over again; I teach about it over and over. There is never a service where we do not speak of the Gospel. Even when it is not the main focus of a message, we always bring it back to this one central thing: Jesus and Him crucified.

I love the study of languages like Greek and the way that words are deliberate. I love the study of archeology and how many, many artifacts have confirmed the Bible. I love that they have discovered thousands and thousands of manuscripts over the centuries that confirm the scriptures; these are all wonderful. But for millennia, all that the Christians had was the word of God. Some had the Old Testament; some had fragments of the New Testament letters. It is unlikely that all of the churches had access to all of the epistles like we do today. But they had enough of the word of God to say it and for the Holy Spirit to take that and convert billions over the last 2 millennia. Romans 10:17 says this:

“So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.”

Our only tool is the Bible, the word of God. We are called to speak it often, speak it clearly, and let God do the work that only He can do. Only He can open the eyes of spiritually blind men and make the Gospel make sense. No amount of pageantry, lighting, and performing will make it less foolish. It makes us look foolish.

We are fools for Christ; there is nothing that you can do about that. The very nature of the Gospel is foolish. Supreme Court Justice Scalia once said:

“God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools … and he has not been disappointed. If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.”

Paul told us this 2,000 years ago, and it still stands true. To the lost, the Gospel is foolishness. But to the saved, it is the greatest thing ever. Now, with our eyes opened and our hearts re-born, we can see the hand of God everywhere, and we can rejoice in the way He superintends our lives for His glory and for our good.

It is okay to be seen as a fool for Jesus. Just don’t be a fool. Stop trying to make the Gospel tastier to the masses; it is not and never will be. Stay the course; as Paul says, we preach Christ crucified, nothing less and nothing else. Stop the shows and the pageantry. Speak the clear, unadulterated Gospel in the simplest terms possible so that a child can understand it, and maybe, just maybe, some of the adults will get it, too.

Go! Be a fool for Jesus, repent, attend church, love your enemies, give to the work of the kingdom, forgive those that hurt you, and pray for the ones that hate you. Trust Jesus when things don’t work out, give Him the glory when they do, and trust that He has everything in His control. Godly wisdom is more than all the degrees in the world.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding

Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook (live broadcast of Sunday’s Message at 11 am): https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09

Online: https://www.mmbchurch.ca

Email: support@mmbchurch.ca

 

2 Corinthians 5:18-19

¹⁸ “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, ¹⁹ that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.”

Christmas is a great time for most families. Those of us with children and grandchildren are just as excited to see our children open presents as they are to get them. Those of us who are Christians are excited that we can talk about Jesus without fear for the next 2 weeks or so. We will hear the Gospel via music in the stores, in commercials, and on the radio for the next few weeks, and for the most part, no one will be offended.

On the other hand, Christmas can be a very difficult time for a lot of people and families. It can be a time when the divisions and cracks that are ignored all year come to the surface. This can even happen in the family of God, in our local churches and assemblies. Last night, during our mid-week Bible study, I pointed out that as God’s children, we are all in the ministry of reconciliation. I will expand on that in a bit. But the word reconciliation refers to the fixing of an estrangement, particularly that between mankind and God. John Calvin calls reconciliation ‘the peace between humanity and God that results from the expiation of religious sin and the propitiation of God’s word.”

Simply put, man is sinful to the core, God is pure and holy to the core, and these two are estranged and in need of reconciliation. That can only come, as we see in verse 18, through Jesus Christ. You and I are reconciled to God once we come to believe in Jesus and then put our trust in Him for the redemption of our souls and the removal of our sins. Jesus did the work on the cross; this is summed up in 2 Corinthians 5:21:

“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Our reconciliation to God has been paid for in full by Jesus, and from Him, we have His righteousness that allows us to have fellowship with God. We are no longer under condemnation, as per Romans 5:1 and Romans 8:1, and we are justified by faith. Thus, we have fellowship with God and are no longer estranged. Now that we have been reconciled to God, we are now in the ministry of reconciliation (verse 18).

• The Message of Reconciliation to the Lost – verse 19

It is our job as children of God, redeemed ourselves, to now go out and help others to be reconciled to God through Jesus by telling them what God did for us through Jesus. This is the most important mission of Christians and the churches that they attend. Every program, every meeting, every decision, and every goal should have one main theme, one main focus, and one sure goal: how do we get the Gospel to more people? How do we tell others about the reconciliation that we have in Jesus? If there is something that gets in the way of that one thing, it needs to go.

The marching orders of the local church are Acts 1:8, Matthew 28:18-20 and anywhere else that we are instructed to tell others what Jesus did for us and what is offered to all men everywhere, freely from God to us. God, in His loving kindness, has done all He can to make reconciliation possible for every man, woman, and child on the planet who will trust in Jesus. What are you and I doing to help others be reconciled to God?

• The Practice of Reconciliation with the Saved

On top of the act of reaching the lost, we have the idea of breaching the gap between each other. If you have been a part of any group, whether it be a family, an office, a club, or even a church, there will be conflicts. Even the apostles had conflicts and envies between them. We are called to constantly be in a state of being reconciled to each other.

Ephesians 4: 31-32, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, outcry and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Jesus taught about constantly forgiving each other. 

Luke 17:3-4, “Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”

This is how we demonstrate the reconciliation that we have received in Jesus. We are always looking to destroy any kind of estrangement between us and a sibling in the Lord. When we fail at this, we create more and more gaps between us, and soon, these create divisions and hatred inside the Lord’s churches. This is wrong. Our constant desire should be to forgive and to be forgiven. Even the Model Prayer shows us this: we are ‘forgiven as we forgive our debtors.’ God is a God of reconciliation; we, as His people, ought to be the same way. Let go of grudges and let go of unforgiveness; it is an affront to all that the Lord has done and is doing for us.

Let this Christmas be a season of reconciliation. There are people God has placed in your life that need to hear what Jesus did for them. And there are probably people that you need to forgive and that you need to humble yourself and ask forgiveness from. Why wait a minute longer? We are called to the ministry of reconciliation. Too many Christians wonder what God wants from me, but here we have clear instructions. Let us be about God’s business.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding

Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook (live broadcast of Sunday’s Message at 11 am): https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09

Online: https://www.mmbchurch.ca

Email: support@mmbchurch.ca

Sign up to be a part of our Bible Study Community: https://bit.ly/draw-closer-to-God