The foolishness of God has been something I have been thinking about the last few weeks. The foolishness of God sounds silly at first, but if you look at the wacky methods that God has used throughout human history to get His message across, it tells me that God loves a good drama. Of course it’s more than that. I believe God has used oddball methods to make an impact. If you were the Divine Creator and you chose to create a people to call your own, you might want to make them the mightiest nation and empire to kick everyone’s butt…but Our Lord chose to do just the opposite.
He created a people to form as His children and His nation that never has, and never will be (that is, until we are out of here) a mighty empire or nation that could conceive to dominate the region, much less the world, using their own influence or strength. Israel for most of their history proverbially, has been the 98 pound weakling on the beach that constantly gets sand kicked into their faces. Why keep them weak? Isn’t that foolish? In our thinking as humans it is because humanity is eaten up with self elevation and self worth and self might, etc. The Lord uses foolishness to His advantage to prove His points; any success that Israel has ever had can only be attributed to The Lord and one place He drives that point home is in Isaiah where, while talking about how He will never abandon them, the Holy Spirit makes this point through Isaiah:
Isaiah 44:24-25 Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, And He who formed you from the womb: “I [am] the LORD, who makes all [things], Who stretches out the heavens all alone, Who spreads abroad the earth by Myself; Who frustrates the signs of the babblers, And drives diviners mad; Who turns wise men backward, And makes their knowledge foolishness; (NKJV)
How about the victory over a stronghold of Canaan called Jericho that we read in Joshua chapter 61. The Israeli military under the leadership of Joshua did everything they weren’t suppose to do including allowing the priests of the nation of Israel, the Levites to participate in the military processions around the city, as they silently circled the walls for six days…the soldiers watching from the walls of Jericho must have thought these people were insane…until the walls came crashing down on the seventh day. That whole military strategy was just totally insane…but it worked and it made an impact then on the whole world and it still makes an impact on those of us that read the accounts in the Torah.
Let’s also take look at what most would consider a really stupid thing to do; to go up against a thousand Philistines unarmed except for some bone you found lying on the ground, instead of doing the sane thing and running like a rabbit. That is what Sampson did in Judges 152 when the Holy Spirit temporarily indwelled in him and gave him the advantage. Why did Our Lord choose to do it this way? Look at it from a human point of view…assume you have 700 men coming up against 1000 men and slaying them, that is not an act that would get more than local attention and one that history would attribute the victory to the might and training of the smaller army…but when you take one lone man using the jawbone of a donkey he found lying on the ground, encountering and slaying 1000 men…that gets worldwide attention. Something like that makes headlines and it is something that not only would get passed down from generation to generation but the victory cannot be attributed to anything other than divine, supernatural influence and guidance.
The Lord also uses foolish moves to keep Satan off balance. Satan, all through history has tried to out-think and out-maneuver The Lord only to be confused and thwarted by some of these kooky things The Lord does such as: pronouncing a curse on the royal line of David that seems stupid and self-defeating on the face of it….until we learn that He had created an ‘out’ by the exception to the inheritance rule with the daughters of Zelophehad. Or using other foolish moves, such as allowing Satan to believe he has defeated God with the destruction of all Jewish male babies in Egypt…except for one tiny child named Moses, or reading about the maneuver to kill all the male line of Judah…except for Josiah which was saved, or by the destruction of all the copies of the Torah by Manasseh…except for one hidden copy…on and on, God allows these dramas to play out like an action movie where the fuse gets to the last inch before the hero snuffs it out.
The most foolish thing though, is recorded in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians3 where Paul states that the most foolish act of all is the preaching of the cross. Paul states there are those who will not accept it and that they will deny it straight out. We see all around us that there are those that take humanity to a level that if they can’t prove it, they won’t accept it and Paul, in verse 22 uses the Jews (I read Pharisees…remember the Pharisees from Matthew 12 that wanted a sign after they accused Christ of being of Satan?) and he uses the Greeks (who sat around expounding the philosophies of Herodotus and Socrates, etc.) as examples of those who consider the gospel as a quaint unprovable myth while example of all this foolishness of Our Lord has been recorded from the beginning and is there in plain sight for all to see…what we would call not seeing the forest for the trees. This is what Paul is getting at in verse 27 of I Corintians: But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; (NKJV)
God Bless, Jim Bussell
1 Joshua 6:20So the people shouted when [the priests] blew the trumpets. And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat. Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. (NKJV)
2 Judges 15 :14-16When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting against him. Then the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him; and the ropes that [were] on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose from his hands. He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and killed a thousand men with it. Then Samson said: “With the jawbone of a donkey, Heaps upon heaps, With the jawbone of a donkey I have slain a thousand men!” (NKJV)
3 1 Corinthians 1:18 on…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.22…For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; (NKJV)
jimbussell 