God's Choice of Instruments (I. Cor. i. 27, 28)

Seth Rees


"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are" Cor. I 27, 28).



Corinth was a city famous for wealth, culture, science, and arts, and infamous for vice. It abounded with philosophers and rhetoriticians. It was a great center of learning; and yet in this first chapter of the epistle which the Holy Ghost had sent to the church at Corinth, He gives expression to these important truths set forth in our text, viz., that God, the great God, has chosen the foolish things to confound the wise. We have in the text a list of persons and things which God chooses for the battles of faith and triumphs of grace.



It may be that you will be surprised tonight to find yourself left out of God's first choice, and yet you have an excellent opportunity to come in if you will. You have your choice -- you can be among the foolish things, or among the despised things, or among the weak things, or among the base things, or among the things that are not at all; for these five things cover all that is expressed here as God's choice of persons and things for the accomplishment of His greatest achievements.



The first in the list is "the foolish things." God has chosen foolish things with which to confound the wise. The Corinthians must have been terribly chagrined and humiliated to find that if they were to serve God and be used of Him they must ignore their culture. Corinth was a sort of modern Boston, and Paul tells them that God holds their culture in derision, and if they serve God they must give it up or at least ignore it and be among the foolish things. This was an awfully hard saying for the Corinthians, but God's Word is settled forever in heaven; when He makes a choice the best thing we can do is to say, "Amen." If God counts us in, it is not wise for us to count ourselves out.



God chooses the foolish things. It must have seemed very foolish to the people of Jericho or the army of God, 600,000 men, to march around Jericho with no weapons but ram's horns! Think of it. What artillery! What cannonading can they do? To the military wiseacres this was worse than nonsense; but still the 600,000 men marched and did nothing but blow ram's horns until the time came to shout, and when they shouted the echo of their shout was answered by the roar and crash of the falling walls of the doomed city. The thing that seemed foolish proved the greatest triumph possible on that occasion. "Foolish things" hath God chosen. It must have seemed very foolish to smart men for Christ to tell twelve disciples to feed five thousand men and possibly fifteen thousand women and children with nothing in sight but five loaves and two fishes. They would have said at Harvard, or Brown, or Yale, or Oxford, that that was all nonsense, but it proved the victory that He intended.



It seemed very foolish for Jesus in choosing disciples to ignore Jerusalem with the Sanhedrin and all its culture. How strange that He ignored Rome; Rome ruled the world, and was in the height of her splendor. The Son of God goes down to the shores of Galilee and gets twelve men, unlearned, hard of heart, with broad, brawny hands accustomed to handling the oar and tugging at nets. Not one of them were educated. What a foolish thing to put them at the head of a movement that was expected to evangelize the world! But, sir, when He had chosen them and fitted them with fire out of the skies, the wisdom of this world was not able to resist the power with which they spake.