The Foolishness of God!

I love the story that Thomas Tewell, pastor of 5th St. Presbyterian Ch. In NYC tells of a little boy who had just been picked up by his mom after Sunday School had ended. Wanting to show interest in the things her child was doing she asked him what he had learned that day. And the little boy said, “Well, we learned about how Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and across the Red Sea into the Promised Land. You know the story. After Pharaoh finally gives in and permit’s the Israelites to leave he had a change of heart and went after them with his armies. Meanwhile the Israelites got to the Red Sea and it was too deep to cross so Moses had the Israeli Corps of Engineers build a Pontoon Bridge and the people crossed to safety, but when Pharaoh and the Egyptians got there with their heavy tanks and trucks they got stuck in the mud, so Moses had the Israeli Air Force fly over and they bombed the Egyptians and wiped them out completely!” Well, the little boys mother was absolutely horrified and she said, “Is THAT what they taught you in Sunday School?” To which the little boy replied. “Well, not exactly. But if I told you what they really said you’d never believe it!”

Paul writes, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength!”

Now Paul is talking here about the cross, and the apparent foolishness of God choosing to secure our salvation in such an obvious (in our minds) act of weakness and failure. But if you think about it, God works this way throughout the Scriptures!!

We see it in the story of Abraham & Sarah in Genesis, when God decides to begin His great movement in salvation history through a childless couple who, by rights, are too old to start a family but end up doing so anyway. Even the name given their son - he is called Isaac, which means “one who laughs”, hints at the absurdity of it all.

We see it in Judges 6 & 7, when Gideon is called by God to lead an army against the marauding Midianites. After testing God in an attempt to weasel out of this calling, Gideon starts out with 32,000 men, only to be told that’s too many. 22,000 are sent home - but that’s still too many. Another 9,700 are sent home, leaving 300 soldiers, and with that guerilla force God routs the Midianites! Even Jesus would appear to question that military logic in Luke 14:31-32

We see it in I Samuel 17, as a shepherd boy named David slays Goliath, the 9’ plus giant of the Philistines with a sling and a few smooth, round stones.

But most of all, we see God’s “foolishness” in the second chapter of LK’s gospel, and in the setting that He chooses to enter the world in! Ask any Madison Avenue trained PR man or woman. If you want to make a splash, you need to do it it in a way that will reach, and impress, as many people as possible - like buying ad time during the Super Bowl. But when God makes His grand entrance as one of us He comes as the child of a young couple who are so insignificant that they can't get a room in the sleepy village in the tiny, backwater nation where their child will be born. Can you imagine the King and Queen of just about any country being refused a room anywhere in their homeland? It's just foolishness.

But if you think about it, there are a couple of qualities that each of these persons had whom God had chosen to work through. While they may have been inititially confused, and even reluctant to act, in the end they all trusted God and obeyed. They weren't necessarily the brightest, or the biggest, or the strongest, or the richest or the most politically powerful! But they all, each in their own way, trusted God & allowed Him to accomplish His purposes through them!
In his book "The Peter Principle," Stan Toler writes: “I was a church planter at one time and felt impressed by the Lord to send $50 to some missionaries. When I shared with my wife what the Lord had laid on my heart, we took a look at our checkbook and found $54 in our balance. Not much room for error there. She said, ’Honey, I wasn’t raised quite like you, but I trust you and have faith in your stewardship commitments. Let’s do it.’ So I wrote the check and sent it to the Carters in Arizona, who were ministering to Native Americans in a small reservation village. Even though I knew it had been the right thing to do, I did begin to wonder how we were going to manage.
The next day I went to the Post Office, and amazed I picked up a letter from a student at Asbury Theological Seminary who had been one of my roommates at college. The letter read, ‘I just had you and Linda on my heart and felt impressed to write you. I’m enclosing a check for you, knowing you will probably put it in the offering plate next Sunday, but it is not for your church. It is for you.’ Fifty bucks!

When the check we sent arrived in Arizona, Doug Carter called immediately. ’Stan, your check just arrived. What timing! We had an appointment with the doctor for our daughter, Angie, but we had no money to pay the bill. I was just about to make the dreaded phone call to tell the doctor, but I paused to look at the mail first, and there it was. The Lord was right on schedule, wasn’t He?’”

Now I don't know how could God touch a poor church planter on the shoulder and say, ‘Send $50 to missionaries in Arizona,’ even though He knew the church planter needed it, and at the say time touch a student at Asbury Theological Seminary on the shoulder and say to him, ‘Send $50 to the Tolers’? Let’s just chalk it up to the foolishness of God, who works wonders through ordinary people like you and like me when we trust Him!