1 Cor No.4 True Wisdom

...and crucified. Indeed, when he moves on to the second chapter, he puts it even more pertinently when in the second verse he says, for I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And we examined the apostle's teaching as he applied this in a general fashion to the world, the message of the cross, and how he then takes this and applies it with regard to the Christian community at Corinth itself.

And then in an autobiographical section from the first to the fifth verses of the second chapter, he applies this to himself and tells us what the message of Jesus and Him crucified means to the apostle Paul. Now you could say that your response to the message of the gospel, the response of those who are sensitive, the response of those who are Christian, is to recognize that there is nothing that one can contribute to one's salvation. So the apostle on a couple of occasions tells us how boasting is utterly excluded.

There is no way in which a man, verse 29 of the first chapter, can boast that he is a Christian. He's contributed nothing to his salvation at all. It's all as a result of this great God of glory who has sent Christ Jesus into this world.

No one may boast before Him. You folks who've gone to the academy at Athens, those who perhaps like myself have been to a seminary in Jerusalem, it does not matter what their educational performance is, it doesn't even matter if we've had no education at all, whether we're rich or whether we're poor, whether we're slaved or whether we're enslaved or whether we're free. We have done nothing to bring about our salvation.

Therefore he says in the final verse of that chapter, therefore as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. Well, there we are. That's what I would have said last time if I hadn't have run out of opportunity to break open these verses to you.

This final thrust, the final response to the preaching of the gospel is to recognize that it's all of God. And therefore one, from the depths of one's being, should thank God primarily for Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Never allow anything, any doctrine, never allowed any person to be clouded from your own appreciation, the centrality of the cross.

When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, I ask you right away my friend this morning, have you surveyed the cross? That's the delightful occupation of every Christian, not only on the Lord's day, but throughout the week, to survey the cross, to recognize that here is the eloquence of God, here is the wisdom of God displayed. Now you say, why do I put it like this, the eloquence of God, the wisdom of God, deliberately? Because you see that links us into what the Apostle has to say from the sixth verse of this second chapter right through to the end. He has to speak about wisdom.

He has to talk to us about eloquence. Why? Well you see, in the opening chapter, he has from time to time expressed his own thinking about wisdom, and he said that there are certain areas in which the Christian, when he speaks, appears to be absolutely foolish. Let's just dip back into the first chapter for a moment or so, shall we? Because there in the seventeenth verse, we read Christ did not send me to baptize, but preach the gospel, not with words of human wisdom, or as the A.V. puts it, not in the wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

And then, in the eighteenth verse, and through down to the twenty-second verse, he makes reference again and again to the wisdom, on the one hand, of the world, and the wisdom of God in the proclamation of the gospel. Now, there are those of us, or at least there are those in contemporary society, as in Paul's day, who believe that the gospel is foolishness. That is what he said, is it not, in the twenty-first verse? God was preached through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

I, says the Apostle, being somewhat ironic, as far as the Jews are concerned, as far as the Greeks are concerned, this idea of God becoming man and being placed on a cross is absolute foolishness, it's absurd, it's ridiculous. And we'd rather have the wisdom of the rabbis, the wisdom of the philosophers, but, says Paul, sustaining the irony, all the wisdom of man is futility, compared with the greatness, the eloquence of God, who has spoken to us, not just through an audible word, but through a visible life. The wisdom of God, the eloquence of God, is found in Jesus Christ, and when you watch Christ being pinned to the cross, when you see there Him hanging between heaven and earth for you, recognize this, my young friend and my older friend, here is a display of the eloquence of God.

You say, how is a man converted? He is not converted through the fine auditory of preaching. Words can be very cheap vehicles. A man is converted as the wisdom of God, the message of the cross, lays hold upon his heart, as he recognizes that God has spoken finally and conclusively in Christ Jesus, and conversion does not originate from the eloquence of the preacher, it goes beyond that.

In fact, it sometimes bypasses that completely. Conversion comes about as the Spirit of God takes the message of the cross and applies it to our hearts. Now this is what the apostle has here to say.

You want to know something about wisdom? Well, he says, I'll tell you. I'll tell you where wisdom originates from. And he'll do that in the opening verses, verse six, right down to the ninth verse of chapter two.

And then he'll tell us how wisdom is communicated. From the tenth verse, he'll tell us that God reveals the wisdom of heaven to us through the Spirit. And then we shall discover how wisdom, or rather for whom wisdom is intended.

Who receives this message of the cross? The fourteenth verse, and right to the end, there's a contrast between those who accept it and those who reject it. So this is how I shall break open our passage this morning. We're talking, I repeat, about the wisdom of God, which is none other than the gospel.

All right. From where does it come? What is its origination? And then, by whom is it communicated? Who is the converting agency? And then finally, for whom is it intended? Who receives the gospel? Origination, communication, reception. Well come to this sixth verse of chapter two, and you'll see that the whole of Paul's teaching will fall open and be quite easy for you to comprehend.

Now before he tells us where wisdom comes from, he has something to say. Something that's very important in the sixth verse. You see, he's already confessed that in one sense his message was communicated to the Corinthians without any degree of eloquence.

That's what he said in verse four. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words. But he says, verse six, we do, however, speak a message of wisdom, of wisdom among the mature.

The A.B. puts there among the perfect. That's a little misleading. He is saying that to Christian people who are moving on to maturity, he has a message to preach, which is a wise message.

Well, where does this message come from? Oh, wait a moment, says the apostle Paul. I'm not yet prepared to divulge this. I want to hammer the point I've already made two or three times.

It's not the wisdom of this age, second part of verse six. It's not the wisdom of the rulers of this age. Rather, what they have to do and what they argue for is absolute, absolutely nothing.

It's inconsequential. No, he says, the wisdom, verse seven, that we preach is God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Well, what does all that amount to? Well, I say it amounts to this, that God in his great grace did not cobble together a plan of salvation when men got into a mess. Rather, before the world was created, God recognized that Adam and his descendants would fall into sin. And there must be a solution that man could never manufacture to help him out of his difficulty.

And when reference is made in the authorized version to God's mystery or in the NIV to God's secret wisdom, the idea is this, how God unravels the problem. What will God do? Now there's no one on earth who can in any way work it out for himself. This isn't like the Times crossword puzzle which occupies the minds of businessmen as they journey from the south coast to London on the train in a morning.

There is no human agency that can possibly realize how God will come to the help of men and women who are suffering as a result of the consequence of their sin. You see, the gospel does not start in the universities. The gospel does not start in the mind.

The gospel starts with God. God originated his plan before the beginning of this world. This is precisely what Paul has been arguing in the 16th chapter of Romans and the final verse is the 25th.

Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writing by the command of the eternal God. Where has this, where has this plan of salvation come from not concocted, says Paul, by me or anyone else? No, he says, verse 7, we speak of God's secret wisdom and people in this world, they didn't know it. They never came to a realization what it was all about.

They couldn't speculate on it. Had they done so, says the apostle Paul in the 8th verse? Well, the rulers of this age, Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate, I even Caesar in Rome, if they'd realized what this wisdom of God was all about, they would not have been so foolish as to crucify the Lord of glory. And that's what Jesus said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

If they recognized who I was and what was happening right now, they would shun from putting these nails in my hands, from fixing me to this cross. They do not realize that my going to the cross is part of the unfolding of your great plan. Here is your wisdom being executed, and I use that word in a double sense, as Jesus goes to the cross.

Not only is it the execution of Christ, it is also the manifestation of the wisdom of God. Now, says the apostle again, quoting in the 9th verse, nobody could possibly have conceived this, the preaching of the cross, its foolishness at the human level. No eye, he says, has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

What's Paul here saying? Well, he's quoting, where he's quoting from is rather debatable. Some believe it's from Isaiah chapter 64, but it doesn't seem to fall into the context of that chapter. There are others who perhaps say that he's quoting from a secret or rather an unwritten saying of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But whatever the origin is, it doesn't really matter, as long as you gain this point, that neither by the eye, nor by the ear, nor by the heart, authorized version, or the mind, new international version of the Bible, can man have come to a conclusion as to how God would redeem humanity? This message of salvation, it's phenomenal. It can only come about, the last part of, or the first part of verse 10, by the revelation of God. Nothing to do with speculation at all.

You can't work it out. So what's Paul been telling us here? I repeat, true wisdom comes from the Lord, and it's illustrated in the life of Jesus Christ. And if you reject what God says through Jesus, you show how foolish you are.

And if you try to concoct some other method of salvation, well again, sustaining the point, you just become a bigger and a bigger fool. Where does this true wisdom come from? It comes from God. It originates from the Lord, who allows, can you believe it, it's incredible, who allows the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ, to be treated like a common criminal.

How amazing is this plan of salvation. Well then, if it comes from God, how is the message of salvation adequately told? Who communicates it? Well, from the 10th through to the 13th verses, you find the answer. And you discover it's through the intelligence of the Holy Spirit.

Come again to the 10th verse. God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

Some have referred to the Holy Spirit as the executor of the Godhead. He brings about God's perfect plan. What is an executor? Imagine somebody dies, they have a will.

How is their will to be enacted? How is it to be realized on earth? Obviously, they can't do it, they're dead. Well they have an executor, and the executor is a man or a woman with whom the one who is deceased has utmost confidence in. So the Holy Spirit is God's executor.

When Jesus dies, when Jesus is received back into heaven, His ministry continues on this earth. By whom? By men? No, not primarily. By the Spirit.

The Spirit whom Jesus said He would send to this world to maintain what He had commenced. That's why the fifth book of the Bible of the New Testament really ought to be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit, putting into practice what Jesus had determined. Well then, here in these verses there is a proposition.

There is also an illustration, and there is an assertion. What is the proposition? We've touched on it already. God reveals the gospel by His Spirit, and it's the Spirit who searches all things.

What is the illustration? Well, it's got something to do with the way we know ourselves. Does anyone else know us more than ourselves? Well, we'll see what the Apostle Paul has to say about that little conundrum in a moment. And then there's a final assertion, that the Christian is someone who knows about God through the Spirit.

Look at verse 10. Here is a proposition, expressed twice. God has revealed His wisdom to us by the Spirit, and then again, the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

What does that mean? Well, here is the claim that the only one who really understands God is the Spirit. And the idea of searching, then, is not so much accumulating information, for the Spirit of God has got all knowledge. It's penetrating.

It's diving into the depths, so to speak, into the deep things of God. Let me give you, by way of an example, what the Apostle is here referring to. Do you remember that ship that's just been, that divers have dropped down into, just off the coast of the Soviet Union? A lot of bullion was there.

It was sunk some decades ago. Gold bars have been brought to the surface, and the British and the Soviet government have some sort of arrangement as the sharing out of the spoils. Now, says the Apostle, that's just like the Spirit.

He's going to the very depths of God. He's brought up from the fathomless deep, the most precious, the most remarkable things. Only the Spirit has an awareness of this.

Now, he says, having made the proposition that only the Spirit can declare the wisdom of God, he says, how do you know about a man? Verse 11, for who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? What does that mean? Well, look, if you're married, does your wife know you? Well, you say, of course she knows me, but does she really know you? Well, as you're married for some decades, a sort of marital telepathy builds up where you've got a pretty good idea what your partner is thinking, even if she isn't communicating. But there are limits to what you can know about somebody else. Who knows me, myself, my spirit? I know what I believe.

I know the treachery of my own heart. I know when I'm being genuine, sincere. I know when I'm fooling people.

I've got a fair idea about myself. Well, you say, that seems a rather simple illustration. Well, it's not mine, and it is simple because Paul wants to get something across.

Who knows about God? The Spirit of God knows about God. The one who is linked in to the Godhead knows about God. And this is what the Apostle is saying.

It's the Spirit of the Lord who knows all about God, who reveals the wisdom of the Lord. No one, he says, knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. So here's a proposition.

The Spirit, he has plumbed the depths of God. He alone knows God properly, as your spirit alone knows your personality. But here is also an assertion.

The Christian is someone who has not received verse 12, the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. If you wanted to know what was going on in the Kremlin, as the Americans often would like an insight, what do you have to do? You've got to get into the Kremlin itself. Similarly, if you want to know what's happening in the White House, then somehow or another you've got to get into the White House.

Now that analogy is not very good in every aspect, but it is true to say that the Holy Spirit has got inside information about God. Now what is the Christian? The Christian is the one who has received the Holy Spirit into his heart and life. So in the twelfth verse, we have not received the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.

And in the thirteenth verse, this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught us by the Spirit. And that in the authorised version should have a capital S, but it doesn't. But it is referring to the Holy Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.

You say, I don't understand, you've lost me. Well, look, when a person becomes a Christian, they're not convinced about the gospel simply because someone stands in a pulpit and preaches. They become convinced about the gospel when the Holy Spirit convicts them of sin.

Down in Brighton this afternoon, there's something going on that you may have heard about. If you haven't heard about it, where have you been during the last few days? It's the biggest non-event of the last month. And you'll have three men, and they will each try to convince the trade union delegates that they ought to be the deputy leader of the Socialist Party.

And the way that they will convince will just be through words. But that's not the way that a person becomes a Christian. The words of a man are feeble vehicles to convince of holy truth.

It's when the Spirit of God enters into the life of a man, convicts him, takes up residence within him, that then a man is converted. That's why you say the Apostle Paul isn't terribly worried about the fact that he hadn't got much eloquence when he came to Corinth. Look at verse three of this chapter.

I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling. Or as Phillips translates it, I was feeling far from strong. I was nervous and rather shaky.

But my message, verse four, and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith may rest not on men's wisdom, but on God's power. What have we discovered so far? The words of wisdom, the gospel of God, it originates from the Lord, it's communicated by the Holy Spirit. Ah yes, but finally, for whom is it intended? Well look at the fourteenth verse and onwards.

And there there is a contrast drawn between the natural man and the spiritual man. Verse fourteen, the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit. Or as the authorized version puts it, the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him.

But in the fifteenth verse reference is made to the spiritual man, the man who has committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ. For whom is the gospel intended? For the man who has become spiritual as the Holy Ghost has entered into his heart and life. Let's look at the natural man for a moment, staying with verse fourteen.

The man without the Spirit, he's the man who has no spiritual horizons. He's the man who's worldly wise. It doesn't mean to say that he's got no intelligence at all, but he's boxed in on the human level.

He's got no desire for God whatsoever. He does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. The word there in the original is very interesting.

It's just like refusing hospitality. I say, will you come to my house and have a meal? No, I don't want to go to your house. Feel so uncomfortable there.

You've got nothing that really interests me, neither what you'll give me to eat nor your conversation. I don't really want it. Inhospitability.

Now, the man who rejects the Spirit is of that type of personality. He's embarrassed. He hears about the Gospel.

It's foolishness to him. He listens to something being told about the greatness of the Christ, and that which enlivens and enthuses and mesmerizes the Christian, falls on deaf ears. Foolishness.

Absurdity. Sometimes I read Bertrand Russell, and I've got nothing else to do, so I don't read him very often. And he's just like that, brilliant man that he is.

The Gospel of Christ, absurd to him. So he writes a ridiculous book, Why I'm Not a Christian. But the man who's spiritual, the man who has a desire implanted into him by the Holy Ghost, he receives the Gospel, and he receives it with great joy.

The spiritual man, verse 15, makes judgment about all things, all things appertaining to the Gospel. In Worthing, there are two classes of people, not the Tories, nor the Socialists, nor even the, those who are hovering in the ranks of the Social Democratic Party. Not the rich, nor the poor.

Not the educated, nor the uneducated. There are those for whom the Gospel of Christ means something. Something positive.

Something wonderful. And those who reject it. There are the natural people, and the spiritual people.

That's why you're here this morning. Because you're concerned about the Gospel, otherwise presumably you could have been in the park, you could have been watching a football match, doing a hundred and one other things. But no, you've got an interest in the Gospel.

You have an interest in the Gospel, why? Because you realize it originated with God, and the Spirit has created a capacity for God in your heart. But when you talk about this Gospel to other people, some of you who come from mixed families, by that I mean not everyone is converted in your family circle. When they make judgments, verse 15, about the Gospel, and verse 16, they think that you're crazy.

And this is why the Apostle Paul says that the man who is spiritual, he makes judgments about the Gospel, and they're positive. But he himself is not subject to any other man's judgment. He's not subject to the natural judgment of people who are not Christians.

You don't understand what I mean? You imagine the art galleries in Florence, let's imagine you go there, and you love art, and you stand in front of some of those pictures and you're mesmerized by them. You're captivated, you stand there for an hour as you just look at one great picture turned out by an artistic genius of centuries ago. And then you move out, or come back to England, and you talk to someone whose acquaintance with art goes no more than the Giles cartoon in the Daily Express.

He can't pass judgment on what you've seen. You've been in the world of art, in the world of color. You're absolutely spellbound by it.

You don't tell the man who's given up to reading comics about Florence. You don't expect him to understand. Neither, says the Apostle Paul, can the natural man understand the things of the Spirit, because they're foolishness to him.

So he says in the 16th verse, dipping into Isaiah, who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him. Only the spiritual man can inform the spiritual man, and the remarkable thing is that in the performance of that sweet duty of encouraging one another in the faith, we have an insight into the mind of Christ. Why do I have this insight? Well, you see, the Spirit is within me.

This is not just something I've read. You say, why do I get excited about the Gospel? Well, it's not simply because I agree mentally with the argument. I can take you to a hundred books in my library, and I agree with the argument.

I can take you to books on educational philosophy, educational psychology. I agree with the argument, but I don't get excited about it. You see, the difference is this.

Not only do I agree with the argument, I know the author. The author of the argument is within my heart, the Spirit of God. He's brought the Gospel, the Gospel that originated in the mind of God eons ago.

He's made it clear to me. I listened to it being proclaimed by a human agency, but nonetheless, it was the Spirit who made it stick in my life. And I received it, and I moved out of the category of the natural to the category of the spiritual, not because there was anything in me.

There's nothing I contributed. I was absolutely nothing. I have no claim on any achievement in this world or before God.

But this is the miracle. This is what Paul says to the Corinthians. It's not the wise that he called.

It's not the rich that he called. It's not the mighty that he calls. It's the things that are nothing.

It's the offscourings of this world. He calls them to himself, and he makes them Christians as he imparts the Holy Spirit into their life, and the Gospel which he schemed up eons ago becomes the message by which they live their lives. What a Gospel.

What a God. Let's bless and praise his name forever for introducing us to the great message of the cross, foolishness in men's estimation, but the distilled wisdom of God to those of us who are Christian people. Amen.

361, our concluding hymn. Happy the man that finds the grace, the blessing of God's chosen race, the wisdom coming from above, the faith that sweetly works by love. No man may boast before God.

It is that as your salvation has arrived just because of him that you are in Christ Jesus who has become for us wisdom from God that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord. Father for the eloquence of Calvary, we bless your name.

Amen.