SIN’S PRICE. MAN’S FEAR. GOD’S VICTORY. Dying SIN’S PRICE. MAN’S FEAR. GOD’S VICTORY.

The Wisdom of Death 1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-25

“… no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.” Bertrand Russell

13Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. 14The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. 15Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 16For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! 17So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. Ecclesiastes 2:13-17

1 Corinthians 1:18 The “word of the cross” is folly to a world defeated by death, but for us it is everything!

1 Corinthians 1:19 Paul quotes a passage which celebrates how the wonderful works of God would confound unbelieving human wisdom (Isaiah 29:13-14).

1 Corinthians 1:20 Have the cynicism, the fatalism, the nihilism, or the escapism of this world amounted to anything?

1 Corinthians 1:21 God did not banish death; He triumphed in it. He has used folly to cast down wisdom.

Our demands of God will go unanswered except by a cross. 1 Corinthians 1:22-24 Our demands of God will go unanswered except by a cross.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1 Corinthians 1:25