God’s power alone
Day 581, Sunday, Mar. 15
1 Corinthians 1:18 – 2:5
While different teachers may be revered for their wisdom, Paul insists that salvation is not based on wisdom, but on the crucifixion of Jesus.
We’ll see in some other places that humility is not always Paul’s strength, but he minimizes his role in the message in the first verse of chapter 2. “When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
Looking at the message through the eyes of the philosopher doesn’t lead to salvation: “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.”
Jews, he said, look for signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but that’s not where the power of the massage is. What we preach is “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Most of those God has called were lowly, he said, but suggests some may have come from the upper levels of society. “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.” “Not many” implies that there were some who were in these categories; they were not the majority, though.

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Sunday meditation

Psalms 95:1-11
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.
For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
Today, if only you would hear his voice, “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me; they tried me, though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”

Prayer focus
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.