"But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise..." 1 Corinthians 1:27a

This morning as I was finishing up reading 1 Corithians 1 I was once again humbled by verses 26-31. In short, these verse remind us that God is not interested in choosing the wise of this world or the strong. He is using the foolish and the weak of this world for His purpose.

In my economy this makes no sense. If I were in control I'd have the strongest, richest, most intelligent people in the world working for me. I'd have an army of body building Donald Trump's with nice hair and IQ's off the chart (now you see why I'm not in charge).

But this is not God's way...and I'm thankful for that.

God says that He uses the weak. He uses the foolish. He uses the poor. WHY?

"that no flesh should glory in His presence. (1:29)"

When God uses the lowly of this world for His purpose, He is glorified. When the weak proclaim the gospel it is not them who gains credit but God. When the uneducated of the world stand up and speak of the power of God and the salvation through the cross they are speaking greater wisdom than the highest scholar...because it is truth from the word of God. We see this in action in Acts 4 when Peter & John are speaking the truths of God and the response from the crowd was, "they realized that they had been with Jesus.(Acts 4:13)"

This is an amazing thing.

At the end of 1 Corinthians 1, Paul quotes from Jeremiah saying, "He who glories let Him glory in the Lord." Since we have nothing to ourselves and all that we have has been graciously given to us by a loving God...we can only boast in Him. The whole context of that Jeremiah quote is awesome, check it out:

“Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches; ²⁴ But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the LORD. "

As we join together to serve the Lord let us constantly be reminded that we boast only in the Lord. The gifts, talents, abilities we have are only from Him and therefore we can only boast in what He has done for us. This is also an encouragement to us, that He would use those who are weak to proclaim the most important news of all time and confound those who are wise. (27-28)