Wherever you go these days, advertising surrounds you. Whether it is the leaflets that drop through your door advertising pizza delivery, the billboards and hoardings that line our streets, or our television screens, we have people seeking to persuade us to buy their products or services. Now even our weather forecast only comes to us courtesy of a sponsor, a company who pays for the privilege of having their name flashed before us on the screen. When you turn on the computer and go on-line there is a whole army of advertisements assailing you.

Perhaps we are becoming immune to it, or there again perhaps we are more likely unconsciously being manipulated and controlled by it. What a powerful effect it has on children when they daily see expensive toys or computer games or canned drinks advertised on the TV. The pressure is soon on parent or parents to provide the product as advertised.

How often the advertisers try to persuade us how essential their product is for our well-being. One of the tools the advertisers use now is psychology. Products are rarely advertised as simply and honestly what they are. There is always subtle suggestions and associations involved. Often celebrities are used to sell products and the suggestion is planted in the mind that if you purchase that product you will not just get the product but you will in some way share in the prestige of the celebrity who advertised it.

Even the politicians use the advertising agencies to project themselves in order to win and keep our loyalty. How important image and appearance is in our day and age. I mention this, because image was something that seems to have been very important to the church at Corinth. They were keen to impress their fellow citizens with the good news of the gospel, and they were trying to go about it with all the skill of the promotion experts of their day and age.

The thing that really made people, at least respectable people sit up and listen in Greek society was wisdom. So the Corinthian church was seeking to portray the gospel as something that was intellectually respectable, something that would appeal to chattering classes of Corinth.

Paul tells them that is not the way to present the gospel. The way to preach the gospel is to honestly and openly simply tell the truth. Paul reminds them that when he first came and preached to them he didn’t make any pretence to eloquence or wisdom, but simply told them about Jesus and his death on the cross.

That was not the way the advertising expert would have promoted Christianity in Corinth. They would have presented all the philosophical and intellectual arguments about Christ because they would know that was the sort of thing Greeks liked and were looking for. Greeks seek wisdom.

On the other hand, if they had wanted to promote Christianity to the Jews, and there were Jews in Corinth, they would have emphasised the miraculous side of Jesus’ life. They would possibly have arranged for a miracle or two to convince them to accept Christianity. Jews seek a sign.

Paul knew this. He had got a brilliant mind and could have given a very good logical argument for believing in Jesus for the Greeks. Paul was also a man who at times was able to perform miracles but he didn’t use miracles in an attempt to reach his Jewish hearers.

Rather he simply preached about Jesus and his death on the cross, a completely different sort of wisdom to the conventional wisdom of the Greeks, in fact God’s wisdom. Paul’s message was a rather more personal message as well.

At the end of chapter 1in verse 30 he talks about the righteousness of Christ that can deal with our problem of guilt, he talks about sanctification, which is something Christ does for us to deal with our uncleanness. He talks about redemption, a word that speaks about being free from bondage. That is all part of God’s wisdom, the wisdom he has revealed in Christ.

Paul was really telling the church that there was no point in trying to offer the world what the world was asking for, whether it was wisdom or miracles; because what they needed was Christ, and he could not be found in that way. Rather Paul tells the Christians at Corinth of the way God chooses to work to build his church.

God works through the foolishness of the church. In the church at Corinth, not many were wise by worldly standards. Yet God had chosen those people. Through simple people God chooses to embarrass the wise. To come to God we have got to have the humility to link up with up with ordinary humble folk, in the church.

And God works through the foolishness of preaching. Advertising experts say that if you want to get through to people, do not have sermons. (There are no sermons on songs of praise, if there were people would just change to another channel.) Paul knew that humanly speaking, preaching was not a good way to communicate with people but he used it for two reasons.

Firstly, because the alternatives just didn’t work. Wisdom can achieve an awful lot of things, but it can’t discover God. Worldly wisdom still leaves man at the centre of things and has no room for God, unless it’s a man made God.

Secondly, preaching is the way that God has appointed for people to come to believe. God’s power, the Holy Spirit works through preaching. When Paul had been in Corinth it was not his powerful preaching, but rather the Holy Spirit that gave those who heard the power to believe.

Faith is a gift of God. We can’t work it up. Faith is knowledge that what we hear is true. It is the Holy Spirit that gives that knowledge. God chooses to bestow that faith through preaching. Faith rests not on human wisdom but on God’s power.

There is a lesson here for the academic. When it comes to salvation, qualifications count for nothing. Beware of being contemptuous of simple folk. If we don’t accept the church, we will not feel at home in heaven.

There is a lesson for the would-be evangelist. Many people in the Christian world put much stress on technique and on apologetics or explaining the arguments for Christianity.

Paul knew that the chief obstacle to people coming to faith is not the technique of the person who tells the message. Nor is it the message that needs explaining in a better way. The chief obstacle is the heart of the person who hears the message.

If you win a person by eloquence alone, they can be lost by eloquence. If you win a person by argument, they can be lost by argument. All techniques and all arguments are no substitute for the power of God. Prayer is far more vital than training courses. Faith depends on a work of God’s grace in the heart.

There is also a lesson here for the non-Christian. Paul reminds the Corinthians that God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe (1v21). For those who are interested but can’t believe, there is no need to get frustrated. Faith is a gift that God gives. Although probably all of us here today are Christians, all of us have folk we know who are not, and there are positive ways we can them.

The way to faith is firstly, approach the matter in the right way; not to go searching for miracles, or attempting to think your way to God by your wisdom. They bring people no nearer to loving or trusting God.

And then, it helps to focus on the right object. Don’t focus on theological problems, there are answers to them, but pursuing them when you don’t know Christ won’t help. We have to look at Christ, and the cross. It’s as I look at his suffering, as I realise that he died for me that faith comes. I come to know that he forgives me, that he love me, that he accepts me by his grace.

Christ and him crucified, the wisdom of God and the power of God.

Amen.

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