This Excerpt from John F. MacArthur's Sermon "Why the World Reject God's Word" Helps Me Become More Patient with Unbelievers' Misinterpretation of the Scriptures

I really can't count the number of times I get annoyed whenever unbelievers get the Scriptures wrong. It's written in plain simple English yet all he or she does is misinterpret it. Why does that happen? John F. MacArthur's sermon "Why the World Reject God's Word" has this meaningful excerpt:

I said a couple of weeks ago that we understand that nonbelievers don’t believe the Bible, can’t believe the Bible, have no interest in the Bible. It’s not only unclear to them, it’s obscure; they have no ability to understand it. So they don’t understand us, how we can be so passionately committed to the Word of God and love it so much and love obeying it for the sake of the love that we have for the One who died for us and rose again. They don’t understand it. And on the surface I understand why. Let me give you some reasons why non-Christians don’t believe the Bible, okay. 

Let’s go back to verse 18 of chapter 1. “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” Foolishness. The message’s first point is unreasonable. It’s foolishness. The Greek word is – this will sound familiar – moron. It’s stupid, pointless. The idea, the idea that God, the one true and eternal God, became a Jewish man, lived in Israel, was rejected by His people, crucified by the Romans, rose from the dead, and is the world’s only Savior was unreasonable. That’s what the early Christians were preaching throughout the Roman world. The crucified Jew rejected by His own people and rejected by the Romans and executed as a common criminal is the eternal God and the Savior of the world. That’s just unreasonable. It’s foolishness. How do you convince somebody of that? 

Put yourself in the position of a believer in the first century going into the Gentile world and saying, “I want to tell you about a man named Jesus who is God incarnate, born in absolute obscurity, in a manger laid, lived in a nondescript down called Nazareth, was totally rejected by His own nation as a false Messiah, handed over to the Romans and executed. And He’s the eternal God and only Savior, and He is going to reign over the earth and His kingdom forever. This is moronic. Its message is unreasonable. 

Look at verse 19. Its truth is also unattainable, verse 19: “For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” And then this important verse: “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.” Now let me just give you an overview of that. 

It’s verse 19 where we start, and that’s a quote from Isaiah 29:14. Isaiah had said when Sennacherib the Assyrian king was threatening the southern kingdom of Judah, Isaiah said, deliverance will come for Judah, but that deliverance will not come by the wisdom of the leaders. It will not come by the wisdom of the sages of Judah. It will not come because of their strength or because of their cunning or because of their craftiness; but God, by His wisdom would save Judah from Sennacherib. And Paul borrows that: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.” 

It’s God who delivers, and apart from God delivering, there is no deliverance. It can’t come from the wise men. Look at verse 20. This is also alluding to a couple of passages in Isaiah. “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” Take all the supposed wise counselors of Israel and they were fools. All the wise counselors of Judaism, they were fools. All the wise counselors of any nation, any people at any level, and they are fools; which is to say that as smart and wise as they may think they are – like Romans 1, “Professing to be wise they’re foolish” – they cannot attain to the truth. 

That is what verse 21 then sums up: “In the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God.” You can’t get to God through human wisdom. So I say again: we understand. We understand the word of the cross, the gospel is unattainable. It is unreasonable and unattainable, you can’t get there on your own. 

And then, thirdly, the apostle Paul says its claims are actually unattractive. They’re actually unattractive. They aren’t what people are looking for. Look at verse 22: “For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness.” You see the verb “ask” and the verb “search.” The Jews are seeking for a sign, Luke 11:16, “Show us a sign from heaven,” they said. They wanted a big sign. They wanted, I think, a sign in the sky, a sign that Jesus was their Messiah, that He had come to fulfill the messianic promise, and that He would conquer all of Israel’s enemies and establish His glorious kingdom in Jerusalem, and Israel would be elevated. 

In Matthew chapter 12, Jesus confronted this desire for a sign. Matthew chapter 12, verse 38: “Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, ‘Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.’ He answered and said to them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.’” Jesus said, “You want a sign? I’m going to be buried, but only for three days. You want a sign? I’ll give you a sign. The sign will be the resurrection.” 

They wanted a sign, they got a sign: the resurrection. When they went to the tomb, it was what? It was empty. The graveclothes were lying where they would have been when they were wrapped around His body. The stone was rolled away. And there were eyewitnesses: the women saw Him. And the apostles then saw Him, and He was with them for forty days. And then the Holy Spirit came and the church was established on the basis of the death and resurrection of the Redeemer Jesus Christ. In spite of that, the Jews rejected. And when the apostles in the book of Acts went out to preach the resurrection they put them in jail. 

The Jews wanted a sign. They wanted a different sign than they got because there was nothing in them. There was no faculty in them that could believe. It was too contrary to what their expectations were. 

On the other hand, the Greeks searched for wisdom. That’s a simple phrase. But if you go back and look at Greek philosophy you find that it is rather intricate, complicated, profound. Oratory was a big part of it, putting people through sort of mental mazes with your erudition. Esoteric kind of concepts were what appealed to the Greeks; and they laughed at a God who was crucified by the Romans. The whole thing was utterly ridiculous to the Jews and the Greeks. 

So there are some barriers here. The gospel, the word of the cross, is unreasonable. It is unattainable. It is beyond their ability to process. That is because they don’t get what they want. It doesn’t give them what they want. The Jews wanted a sign; the Greeks wanted wisdom. Jesus offered a sign, His resurrection, and He offered wisdom about sin and repentance and salvation, not a message they cared to hear. 

This is all compounded further because the people are also unremarkable. If you had a message like this so hard to sell, it might help to put it in the hands of famous people. I think sometimes Christians assume that, that if we could just have famous people affirming Christ, this would get past the resistance. But that’s not what God designed. Verse 23: “We preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, to Gentiles foolishness.” Verse 25: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” 

So how do we overcome this? Look at verse 26 to 28: “For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are.” 

“Not many,” three times: not many, not many, not many. Here’s the problem: the people who are proclaiming the gospel are unremarkable. The majority of believers are unimpressive.

Unbeliever always making misrepresentations and misinterpretations of the Scripture? It's to be expected already. You can spell it out in plain simple English or even use the Greek and Hebrew yet they don't want it. They are too stuck with their own misinterpretations. Atheist writers who have read the whole Bible yet still misrepresent it or pseudo-Christian cults preaching very much out-of-context are to be expected. It's because they really lack any real understanding of God's Word. It's really to be expected that I should be very patient and very gentle in explaining the correct interpretation - not resolve to childish fits and endless arguments whenever that happens.