Well, you were designed to live with it, but it does not come naturally. It is an essential commodity for a productive life, but you can't buy it. You would think that you get it by experimentation, by research, by experience, but you don't. With regard to this, all of us would like to think we're rich, when really we're poor. What is this thing I'm talking about, what is this riddle? Wisdom! Sin levels the playing field; somehow, someway, sin reduces all of us to fools. Maybe that foolishness is pictured in my desire to win and control as I'm destroying the very relationships that I'd like to control.
Telling Yourself You Can Handle It
Maybe that is in telling myself that I can handle a sin that, at the very moment, is enslaving me. Maybe that's in telling myself I can afford something when I'm already swimming in debt. Maybe it's pictured in mundane moments of everyday life. I can remember the first time one of my children came to me about 10:30 on a Thursday night, saying, "Dad, I have a science project due tomorrow." You know that science project was assigned six years ago. What gives us that ability? We own garages that we can't get into any more, telling ourselves that we will clean them tomorrow.
Somehow, some way, sin does this to all of us. And so, we all ought to be deeply grateful for the passage we're going to look at this evening. Look in your 'Order of Worship' there to that wonderful passage in 1 Corinthians 2, verses 6 through 13. You can look also in your church Bibles at page 953. Paul wants us to understand that, although he's made a devastating critique of human wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1, that Christianity is not anti-wisdom. Christianity is all about wisdom, and so he turns now to talk about the wisdom that is at the heart of our faith.
Let me just read again these words for you: Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory... (ESV) "Yet, among the mature we impart a wisdom." By mature, Paul doesn't actually mean a class of Christian, rather the choice of a Christian.
It's a mature choice to gladly receive, gladly submit to God's wisdom, because we are all about wisdom. But then he makes this distinction, "not the wisdom of this age nor of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away." It's not the current fad cycle of wisdom that we've attached ourselves to, that's propagated by whomever is the popular ruling elite of the moment. Wow! There is so much business in that wisdom. If you go to Barnes and Noble, and you go to the "Self-Help" section, and you would buy a series of books there, and you would take them home, I would suggest that you read them, but you just hold onto them, and you will go back six or eight months later, guess what?
There would be a whole new set of books; many of those books disagreeing with the books you had purchased six months before. We live in a culture that rides that roller coaster of an ever-changing body of wisdom. What was brilliant yesterday, we disagree with today; and what we agree with today, we'll reject tomorrow. That wisdom is attached to the current situation. Think how many books on the economy will be written in the next several months. That wisdom tends to be culturally bound, tends to be biased because I can only look from my little human perspective.
Paul says that's not the wisdom we attach ourselves to. No, we impart a secret and hidden wisdom. I'm not going to say anything about those words right now; I'm going to say something about them in a minute, "the wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory." Paul says this: the wisdom that we attach our ministry to, the wisdom that we attach our life to, the wisdom that we live on, and hope in, and rely in has one source. The source is God and God alone - God who knows everything from before origin to beyond destiny, God who's not biased in His perspective or caught in a moment in time and space.
The Only Reliable Source
This God whose wisdom is awesome is the only reliable source to define who you are and what life is about, its meaning and purpose. I would ask you tonight, where the rubber-meets-the-road in everyday life, what wisdom forms your words; what wisdom shapes your decisions; what wisdom directs your relationships; what wisdom controls the way you act and react and respond? Are you actually living, based on the wisdom of Almighty God? Notice what Paul says next; he says, "None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory."
This is a devastating critique of human wisdom. I would propose to you that the cross is the ultimate critique of human wisdom. If you knew anything of God, if you knew anything of His character, if you knew anything of His grace, if you knew anything of His wisdom, if you knew anything of His plan, if you knew anything of your identity, you wouldn't crucify the Son of God, the Lamb, the Savior. You would worship the Messiah. You wouldn't curse His existence and want to end His life. Think about this, what is the thing that's wrong with the wisdom of the world?
It misses the thing that is the hope of the world - Christ. I love what Paul says in Colossians 2, "See to it that you are not taken captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of the world and not on Christ." The wisdom of the world is a system of redemption without a redeemer. And we understand that what we place our hope in is not a system; we place our hope in the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. Think about this, the cross defines who God is.
The cross defines who you are. The cross defines what life is about. The cross defines the nature of the human dilemma, what's wrong with the world. The cross defines the solution. The cross exegetes hope. The cross defines life. The cross gives meaning and purpose. You cannot understand what is, unless you look at what is from the vantage point of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the ultimate lens on what is. This thing that Paul says in verse 8 is not a minor side comment; it is a devastating critique; it is checkmate.
If you want to know and you want to understand everything that is important to understand about the nature of life, and the nature of God, and the movement of grace, and transforming hope, you start at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The wisdom that Paul holds out is the wisdom of the cross. The wisdom of God has an epicenter: it's Golgotha; it's the hill of Calvary. Now what Paul does in the rest of this passage, I'm convinced, is he exegetes those two words that he uses earlier. Look at verse 7, "But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom."
If you are ever going to understand this cross-shaped wisdom of God, you have to understand it only comes to you by means of revelation. Look at what it says here, "But it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit." If you have a Bible that has notes in it, you will notice that there's not a particular text that's attached to that little poem, and it probably is an amalgamation of Biblical text that had become part of the literature of faith of Paul's day, and so he's quoting there.
Now, it's sort of the popular thinking that this poem is about heaven, and it's actually not in its primary purpose. What Paul is saying is this, "Not in your wildest thoughts would you ever come up with the narrative of the Gospel; not in your wildest thoughts would you ever come up with what is in this Book. In your most brilliant moment, in your best research, in the best of education and the best of cultural socialization, you would've never come up with this. It only comes by revelation." That means, brothers and sisters, you ought to be deeply grateful for this Book.
Stunning Insight in This Book
There is stunning insight in this Book; there's glorious hope in this Book. There is powerful warning in this Book. There are practical principles for everyday living that you would never come up with on your own in this Book. There's life in this Book. This revelation will turn you upside down and set you on a different course. It will undo you and build you again. It will transform who you are, and what you think, and what you do. This is an amazing Book. It ought to be one of your dearest friends.
You ought to love it from cover to cover. You ought to hold it close to your heart. You ought to do everything you can, hear my phraseology, to be mastered by it. You ought to want to be biblically literate and theologically aware; you should love the garden of God's Word. You should love every flower; you should sit in front of them and consider their beauty; you ought to smell their fragrance. You ought to run to the garden and say, "It's been given to me; it's been given to me; it's been given to me."
Oh, perhaps we don't celebrate enough the reality of the revelation of God in His Word and the epicenter--that revelation being the Gospel. Are you excited; are you grateful; are you committed to this Book? Because, think about this; be humbled with me; you didn't have a clue. You and I were fundamentally incapable of ever coming up with what we discover in the pages of the narrative of the Gospel. As I was preparing, I felt like I ought to just stop and give us a moment to bow our heads and say, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!"
How could we ever thank You enough?" Verse 10: ...These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depth of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (ESV) Why is the Spirit of God able to reveal His Word?...because He's God. The Spirit of God has the mind of God so the Spirit of God directed men of God to write the Words of God for the people of God.
What an awesome plan! I can actually, this is mind-boggling, and I think we get used to it; I actually am holding the Words of Almighty God in my hands. I can say this is the Word of God. WOW! I sort of want to pastorally shake you and say, "Are you getting it?" But there is another ministry of the Spirit that we need, and this is what is picked up in verses 12 and 13. If you're ever going to understand that stunning, life-transforming, hope-giving wisdom of the Gospel, you don't just need revelation; you need illumination.
"Now we have received not the spirit of the world, [verse 12] but the Spirit who is from God, [Now notice this--purpose statement] that we might understand the things freely given us by God." Perhaps there could be no sadder reality than to have somebody holding in their hands, the Word of God, the ultimate in wisdom, the ultimate in life and hope, and have those words dead to them, have those words mean nothing to them, have those words actually, at points, be nonsense to them. Some of you remember those days, don't you?
You remember reading the Word of God, and it was a closed Book to you. You wondered why people were so amazed by it. You read passages, and you thought they were foolish; you thought who would believe that? And then, in an act of undeserved, transforming grace, God's Spirit shed a light on the page, and a light into your heart, and all of a sudden, these words began to makes sense to you; they began to bring tears to your eyes. They began to bring joy to your heart. They began to look like wisdom to you, and you couldn't get enough of these words, and you read passages that you read before, and they were completely different to you.
God Broke Through Our Self-Reliance
What an amazing thing that God would love lost, rebellious, arrogant, self-sufficient, selfrighteous, pseudo-knowledge-wisdom people this much, that He would break through the walls of our self-reliance, break through the walls of our wisdom and open our hearts to Him and to His Truth. Praise Him! Praise Him! Praise Him! It's humbling, but it's important to say: this Book isn't precious to you because you're smart; this Book isn't precious to you because you're analytical and intellectually oriented.
It's not precious to you because you have natural theological tendencies. It's precious to you because the Spirit who revealed the Word, (are you ready for this?) now actually resides inside of you, and the God who gave the Word now opens the Word to your heart. I'm about to say something very theological-- wow. Wow. How amazing! I can't tell you how encouraged I was by this passage this week; maybe there's hope for this man. Verse 13, "And we impart this [wisdom] in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual."
Paul says this ministry that God has called us to rests on this wisdom, but rests and relies on this Spirit to impart this wisdom as we seek to interpret His truth to God's people. You see, if the Spirit of God is not active in this moment, doing what the Spirit of God can only do with the words of this preacher and the words of this text, applying them with specificity to your heart and your life in moments of conviction, and moments of encouragement, and moments of hope, and moments of challenge: If the Spirit isn't, at this moment, active, what we're doing, in this moment, is a phenomenal waste of time, because I have little capacity to apply or drive these truths home to your heart.
I have no capacity to give you the heart to receive them. Thankfully, it's not my job. God's Spirit works. I love those moments when someone comes up to me after I've been out for a weekend somewhere, or on a Sunday night and says, "Did my husband talk to you this week?" Or, "Do you live in my house?" Or, "How did you know I was thinking about that?" And I always say to people, "I don't actually have a clue, but there's a Spirit of God who delights in applying His Word to His people." Well, your response should be, "Who is a God like our God?
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" We run to the cross; we run there for forgiveness; we run there for power; we run there for hope; we run there for deliverance, because the veil over the cross has been removed for us, and we see it for its glory. We see it for its beauty; the cross is no longer foolishness to us. We wrap our arms around the cross and say, "Thank you!" We sing with that hymn, "In the cross of Christ I glory." And we do that because the Spirit that lives within us is a Spirit of revelation and illumination.
If you're here tonight, and you have never had that experience, pray right now. "Oh, God, by your Spirit, won't you, this evening, shine a light on your Word, and shine a light into my heart that I may know and understand." Let's pray: Oh, Lord, what a glorious passage of Scripture. How it fills us with hope. We are not trapped in endless foolishness because wisdom has come in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and through the ministry of the Spirit; You have revealed Your truth in Your Word, and You have opened that truth to us by Your Spirit, and You have transformed us. Thank you! We thank you. In Jesus's name, Amen.
