In man's wisdom, with a transparent heart, he explains to them that in his coming, he came with that as his motive. He did not come that he might impress them with his words or his arguments, but he came that he might declare to them the simple message of Christ crucified. And frankly, he admits that he had many fears and weaknesses in doing that. That encourages me because it helps me to know that my fears and weaknesses are normal.
In the power of the Holy Spirit, preach the message that God sent him with. And he says that we speak wisdom, though the world calls it foolishness. Notice what he says beginning in verse 6. However, we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor the princes of this age, that come to nothing.
For we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even a hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the ages under our glory, which none of the princes of this age knew, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the law of glory. But as it is written, I have not seen nor will heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.
For the Spirit searcheth all things, though the deep things of God. For that man knoweth the things of a man, except the spirit of man which is in him. And so the things of God knoweth no man but the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is of God, but we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for there is foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. He that is spiritually judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For he hath known the mind of the Lord, he may instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ.
Let's bow together in prayer. Father, I pray that nothing would detract us this morning from the word of God. Give us the personal, spiritual discipline to be able to listen and receive with our hearts the message you have for us. Who can outprow this feeble tongue? May that which is said and heard, received and obeyed this morning be pleasing to you. In Jesus' name, amen. The apostle Paul wanted the faith of the Corinthians to rest not on human wisdom, but on God's wisdom.
He wanted their faith to rest not on what man can do, but on what God has already done. God's wisdom is defined for us in chapter one as being Christ Jesus crucified for our sins. Man despises that message because it puts down man. It removes any basis for pride in man. It makes man helpless before a holy God. It means that man is incapable in himself to earn his way to heaven. God's wisdom, God's message is Christ crucified for our sins as God's only way of salvation.
The Corinthians had believed that simple message. The apostle Paul had done a marvelous work in their midst. He had turned their lives around. They were moving in a different direction. Even so, the Corinthians were heavily influenced by the thinking of their day. They were influenced by human wisdom. And we are still today. We live in a world that thinks differently than God thinks.
And even though we've trusted Jesus Christ as Savior and loved His word, we too are often influenced by the thinking of the world around us. Today we don't call it human wisdom. We call it humanism. It's basically the same thing. It is the exaltation of man. It is living with a man-centered philosophy of life. That's humanism. We hear statements today like whatever happens between consenting adults in private is okay. That's human wisdom. It's not God's wisdom.
We hear statements like it's okay to be dishonest if that will keep someone from being hurt. That's human wisdom, not God's wisdom. We also hear that it's a woman's prerogative to abhor simple tissue from her body, even though that tissue may be a fetus in human life. That's human wisdom. It's not God's wisdom. Recently it's been popular to say you can't legislate morals, but that's a lie. That's human wisdom, not God's wisdom. But basically what laws are is the legislation of morality.
If you remove morality from laws, you have few laws. I feel that today there are too many of us that are influenced by human thinking. I find myself doing that occasionally, thinking the way natural people think instead of the way that God thinks as revealed in his word. According to humanism, man is his own judge of what is right and wrong. It's okay to do things if they make you happy. But if it feels good, do it. Humanism, not God's wisdom.
The chief end of man according to humanism is to glorify man and not God. Thus, we're paralleled with what God says in his word that in a society like ours, we would worship the creature rather than the creator. That's humanism. Humanism marks the idea of God's morality, God's authority, God's concern for human affairs, and man's accountability to God.
If you write a letter to the editor of one of our newspapers and express those kinds of ideas, that is that there is absolute right and wrong, that God is interested in what's going on and he has a right to say something because he is God. The man is accountable to God. If you do express those, you will be laughed at and mocked by a rash of letters that the father yours in that column. Human thinking controls the society in which we find ourselves today.
And what we need to be careful of is that our lives and our faith does not rest upon human thinking but upon what God says in his word. Paul argues for the wisdom of God in verses 6 through 16, the text that we've read today. He argues that our faith rests upon God's wisdom and not upon man's wisdom. He says that God's wisdom is far above man's wisdom. Follow his train of thought with me as he begins in verse 6 with an explanation of God's wisdom.
And by the way, you may want to use the outline there in the back of the service schedule you received coming in this morning. The first thing he does is to explain God's wisdom. He does this by relating three simple statements about it. First he says that it is for the perfect. Notice what he says in verse 6. We speak wisdom among them that are perfect. What does he mean? Does he mean that God's wisdom is only for the sinners? No. The word perfect here means the mature, the fully developed.
In this context, Paul seems to be thinking about Christians, believers. Here's what he's saying. The wisdom that I am teaching you, he says, is for God's people. The world does not receive it as we'll see later. He says we speak wisdom and it's recognized as wisdom among God's people, but not among others. The second statement that he makes is that it is a distinctive wisdom. It is not the wisdom of this age, nor the princes of this age that come to nothing.
In other words, he says it did not originate with man, this wisdom that I'm declaring to you. It is not man created. Neither man nor his rulers brought this about. Notice, by the way, what he does say about the rulers. He says they come to nothing. When we're back in chapter one, Paul said that according to the world, we who believe in Jesus Christ are zeroes. He says God has chosen the nothings of this world to confirm the rise.
Paul says actually the ones that are the nothings are the rulers of this age. He says they are coming to nothing. They're being nullified. They're passing below. But God's wisdom isn't. He says we speak wisdom, the wisdom of God, in a mystery. And that's the third statement. He says the wisdom of God is a mystery. What does he mean by that? Does he mean that God's wisdom is a second cousin to Agatha Christie's novels? That kind of a mystery? Of course not.
This word wisdom is a particular word that means something that was hidden previously but which is now revealed. That's a mystery. What he is saying is that God's wisdom was hidden, but it has now been brought to light. What is that wisdom? Well, in essence, it is God's method of redemption. In the Old Testament, there were prophecies that pointed to a suffering Messiah. There were types and pictures of one who would come and be the sacrifice for sins for all time.
But all of those were readily available prophecies. The full meaning of them was not known. They were mysterious. Now, on this side of Christ's coming and his death and his resurrection, all of that is clear to us. We can go back to the Old Testament, you and I, and see so much more from the people of ancient Israel. Why? Because now the mystery has been revealed. It was hidden then, for the most part, revealed now.
Maybe like a statue that is going to be dedicated, and before that ceremony, a cloth is draped over it. And you can see the head and the arms and make out the general form of it, but you can't see the specifics. And then the ceremony takes place and the drapery is taken away and the statue is there for all to see. In the Old Testament, salvation in its outline was seen. But the specifics were not known, though are known now, this side of the cross and the empty tomb.
God has now revealed the mystery of redemption. But I think that we can take this concept a little bit broader and up. I believe in a broader sense, the mystery that Paul refers to here is the whole story of God's love for mankind.
It involves how man got here in the first place, and how we got into the mess that we're in now, and how God has led us from the beginning at a skewed wrap redemption, and how he's accomplished it and wants it to be announced to the world, and what he's planning in terms of glory for his people in the future. You see, God has told us all of that in the Bible. God has revealed these things to us. And that brings us to the second part of Paul's statement here.
Verses 9 through 11 deal with the revelation of God's wisdom. He says, and he quotes here from the Old Testament, I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. And for all these things, are there the mysteries of heaven to come? I've heard this at funerals, haven't you? We haven't seen yet, or yours haven't heard, we haven't imagined how beautiful heaven is.
And of course that's true, but that's not the context of this verse. He's talking about the mystery of who God is, and of what God has done, and what God's planning to do in the future. He says, I haven't seen it, or hasn't heard it, it hasn't been thought of by man. Verse 10, but God has told us. You see, God has revealed these things to us by his Spirit. Here he says, the Spirit searcheth all things, though the deep things of God.
You see, mankind has basically two ways of discovering knowledge. There is the empirical method, for one. The empirical method is basically our scientific method, it's observation and experimentation. Is that a legitimate way of gaining knowledge? Of course it is. We would not have many of the medicines or technological advances that we have today if it weren't for the empirical method of gaining knowledge.
Observing and experimenting, collating the results, and then coming to certain scientific principles on the basis of those experimentations and observations. And then the second method that man has of gaining knowledge is the philosophical method. This involves his ability to use his mind, something a lot of us sometimes fail to do very much. Man has the ability to logically reason to certain conclusions.
He can gain new insights to things because of his ability to be logical and to reason things out. When it comes to knowing God, neither of these methods will work. We can't put God in test tube. We can't send a capsule into outer space and have a search for God. We cannot find God by the empirical method, by observation and experimentation, it doesn't work. We can't discover God by the ability to reason either.
A man could sit in a room by himself and reason for the rest of his life and never discover God. It's impossible to discover God by these natural means. Look what Paul says in verse 9. Now by our or by your, that's the empirical method. Not through the heart or the mind, that's the philosophical method. We don't know spiritual truth by these means. But he says God has taken the initiative and has revealed spiritual truth to us.
The only way that we can know God is because God has revealed himself to us in this book. God has taken the initiative to do what? It's not come about because of our own wisdom, human wisdom. For an unsaved person to try to learn spiritual truth by his own natural abilities is like a blind man who goes to an art gallery. Or a deaf man who goes to a symphonic concert. Or a moron who attends a university. The simple is not the capacity there to grasp spiritual truth in man. He is spiritually dead.
But there man can't discover God on his own. God has revealed himself to us, he says, by the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? It means that God has revealed what he was like and how he thinks to you and to me through the Holy Spirit. Notice what he says. The Spirit searches all things, you the deep things of God. Every spirit knows, because he is God, knows all of the thoughts of God. And he has revealed those things to us.
He says in verse 11 that no man knows the things of a man except the spirit of man which is in him. In other words, my spirit knows me and knows what I'm thinking. But you can't know that. And I can relate to you because we are men, we are human beings, we are in the same order of creation. I can understand you to an extent, you can understand me. But I can't understand animals. My name isn't Dolittle. I can't understand animals. I don't understand their experiences. I can't understand my dog.
We have a poodle, I think she should be called a puddle. They call them poodles. I don't understand that dog. It beats me why she does some of the things she does, very unreasonable. She is not logical at all. But you see I can understand her because she is on a different level of creation than I am. And then I can't understand angels either. In fact I haven't talked to one recently either, does that matter? I appreciate angels, I believe that God has given angels charge over us as His children.
But I can't communicate with them, I can't understand them because they are in a higher order of creation. You see we can only understand what is on the same level as we are. And the man, woman, and woman. Then how foolish it is to think that we on this level can begin to understand God the creator of all by our own powers. How foolish to think that we can reason on the same level that God reasons. Or that we know better than God because you see He is so far above us.
But the Holy Spirit does know the mind of God. The Holy Spirit does know the deep things of God and He has brought those things down to you and to me. So that we can begin to understand what God is like. That's the revelation of God's wisdom. And where is this revelation? Will you hold it in your lap or in your hands this morning? It's this book. This is the revelation of God. These 66 books that are part of what we call the canon. These books, individual as they are yet comprising one volume.
These books reveal to us what God is like and how God thinks. And how we God will, where we are moving toward in our destiny. God's revelation. So move down to verse 12, we come to the illumination of this book. Now we have this revelation but how do we begin to understand it? He says, now we receive not the Spirit of the world but the Spirit who is of God. And that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
The Holy Spirit, the moment that we and I trust Jesus Christ, comes to live in us. He does not come to us in some second experience subsequent to our salvation. When we and I place our faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes into us. That's first. He's there never to leave. He indwells us. And one of His ministries to us is to teach us spiritual truth. You see, God has given me this book, objective, final, authoritative revelation.
And He's also given me the Holy Spirit on the inside so that I will have a resident professor of theology who lives in me. And He is always teaching me the things of God. That's the work of illumination. Obviously you see the Father giving light to something in that word. The mighty define this word, the work of the Holy Spirit whereby He enlightens the heart and mind of the believer. So that we can perceive the truth of God.
God hasn't handed us the book and said, now just go up and study by yourself. God has given to you and me a precious book here that is His self-disclosure. And He has given to us the Holy Spirit so that we have not a teacher who is with us all the time to help us to understand this book. Verse 13, Paul continues. He speaks about the instruction of God's wisdom. He says these things that are freely given to us of God, we speak.
Not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches. Now what Paul says, he applies directly to himself and to the other writers of scripture. They do not apply primarily to us. Paul is writing this verse as a unique vessel of God because he is one of those men that God used to pin the words of scripture. And what Paul is claiming here is that his words are not his own. But his words are those which the Holy Spirit teaches him.
In other words, Paul is claiming here the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for his writing. Now the doctrine of inspiration is a very, very important one. That word is found in our English version in 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16. All scripture is what? Given by inspiration and is profitable and so on. That phrase given by inspiration means God breathed. It says there God blew his breath through the writers of scripture. What does it refer to?
It means that God superintended, he oversaw Paul and Peter and Jeremiah and Isaiah and Moses and everyone who wrote the scriptures. He superintended them so that they may sit down and write their words. What they wrote were the things he wanted them to write. Those are the very words of God. Not just in fact but in words as well. We believe in the primary inspiration of scripture, that is the facts of it, in its whole teaching. And we believe in the verbal inspiration of scripture.
That is down to the very words God had a part in selecting those words. It doesn't mean that God overwrote the personality of these men and that he dictated to them as a man to dictate to a secretary. No. In some mysterious way the Holy Spirit used the personality of each man. And yet when that man sat down to write using his own mind, his own vocabulary, the Holy Spirit oversaw what he wrote so that what was put down was the very words of God. That's a miracle.
And it's a miracle too that has been preserved for us today. You see what we have here is an authoritative word from God. This is not the opinions of the apostles. This is not a book containing the realms of the prophets. This book contains the very mind, the very heart of God. And what God wants to communicate to you today is found here in this volume. There are those today that are trying to suggest that the Bible is not inherent.
But we can't really trust the Bible when it speaks in other areas than theology. I would jump that position totally because it undermines the authority of scripture. If I can't trust the Bible when it speaks in terms of history, then how do I know I can trust the Bible when it speaks in terms of theology? In ancient Egypt it refers to the whole thing or to none of it, and I'm convinced that because God is an inherent God, that what he has written here is an inherent revelation.
Paul says, when I write, when I instruct you, when I teach you, this is the word of God. I'm using words which the Holy Spirit teaches, not which man's wisdom teaches. Today, inspiration is no longer taking place. I would help people to get inspired for a concert, to sing a song or whatever. That's a different kind of inspiration. This is a special inspiration that has ceased.
Occasionally I read in a magazine that a man has received a certain revelation or word from God, and it's different from the Bible. So this is God's word today. He gave it to me. And there's where that important theological word comes in that we've shared before, baloney. God is not revealing any more truth to man today. Everything he needs to say to us has already been revealed. What is needed now is for you and me to understand it better.
But God is not today inspiring man like he inspired Paul when Paul wrote these words. That work ceased with the apostles and with the writers of Scripture. But there is an application for us here today. We now have the words of Scripture now. They're written down for us. And our concern needs to be that we teach what the Bible says. I think that's one of the main concerns that we have here in Grace Church. I have a lot of opinions about things. And they're very important to me.
Just like your opinions are important to you. And when we come together for a time like this, a time that's too precious for it to be used for the sharing of my opinions. Or yours for that matter. What we want here is a word from God. I know a pastor who got Charles Shultz's Peanuts book to be put up one day and gave his moral for the sermon out of peanuts. That's probably what it was worth too. Peanuts.
When we come together as God's people, whether it be in the church body or whether it be in a Bible study, a prayer meeting, our thinking, our attention needs to be centered upon the Word of God. That's why we're here. There have been many who have brought blows against the Bible, trying to undermine it, to say that it's irrelevant. It's not for us today. There are mistakes in the Bible. I had a person tell me one time, the Bible is filled with so many inconsistencies.
And so I reached across the desk and handed over my Bible and I said, well, show me one. Well, I'm not sure I can. But it's filled with them. You see, there are a lot of people who reject God's message because of the matter of the will. It's not a matter of the intellect. They just do not want what God has to say. There's a poem somewhere that's written called The Anvil. It sort of expresses how the Bible has stood the test.
Last day I passed beside a blacksmith's door and heard the anvil ring the whisper chime. Then looking in, I saw upon the floor old hammers worn with beading wheels of time. How many anvils have you had? said I. To wear and battle all these hammers so. Just one, said he. And then with clinking eye, the anvil wears the hammers out, you know. And so thought I the anvil of God's word, for urges skeptic blows have beat upon. Yet though the noise of falling blows was heard, the anvil was unharmed.
The hammer's gone. And so it is that we may have today a word from God that has stood the test of generations and that will forever because it is the word of God that lives and abides forever. It shall not pass away. Now as we come to verse 14 in our text today, we come to the comprehension of God's wisdom. Paul seems to contrast here two kinds of men. The natural man, verse 14, and the spiritual man, verse 15. Who is the natural man? The word natural really means the soulish man.
The Bible seems to teach that man is a three-part being. There is the body, the soul, and the spirit. The body is that visible, physical part of us that sits there in the pew this morning. It's tired. It gets sick. It ultimately dies. The soul and the spirit are very difficult to separate. That's the immaterial part of us. That's the part of us that never dies. But if you were to separate the soul and spirit, it seems that the Bible would do it this way.
The soul of man represents his mind, his ability to think, to reason, et cetera. His emotions, he can feel happy, feel sad, feel discouraged, feel encouraged. And his volition, his will. He chooses certain things and rejects other things. That's the soul. And everybody has a soul. And then there's the spirit. The spirit is the inner core of a man, that part of him that relates to God. It's that part of us that is dead in sins when we're born into the world the first time.
One of the reasons our world is in such a mess today is because we've got people running out over the place, only two-thirds here. You see they're here physically, they're here in soul, they have a mind, they have intellect, they have emotions, they have volition, but they're dead spiritually. When you now trust Jesus Christ, God brings that core of us, that spirit of us to life. That vacuum is full, there's reality there instead of emptiness.
The natural man is the man who's only two-thirds complete. Paul doesn't use a word here that refers to a degraded, low-living person. There's a word for that in the Greek. The guy that lives like an animal, who's lustful and impure, low-down, mean, sorry, rascal kind of a guy. Paul uses the word here that refers to the cultured, civilized, educated, moral person who's outstanding in his community. That's the guy that Paul has in mind here.
The good guy that has never become a believer, who's still just living in the natural realm. He says three things about him. Number one, he does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. The word received means he does not welcome them. In other words, he has a prejudiced attitude. He is ballast against spiritual truth by his very nature. Number two, he calls them foolishness. He has pure judgment.
When he hears the message of the cross and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, when he hears that there's absolute right and wrong, when he hears that man is going to stand before God and give account of himself, he says, oh, come on. And you never want to believe things like that. That's the natural man. Third thing, neither can he know them. He has a limited ability. He cannot understand spiritual truth. Why? Because they are spiritually discerned.
In other words, they are known only by the Spirit, and the Spirit part of him is dead. He cannot grasp spiritual truth because the Spirit inside of him is incapable of responding to it. He's dead. But then he says there's also a spiritual man. And who is this man? It's the man who's alive in the Spirit. The same person, the person who has trusted Christ, he says he that is spiritual, who lives in that plane, judges all things, yet he himself is judged with no man. What is he saying here?
He's saying that one who is a believer is able to discern all things. He has a capacity to have insight into issues in this world. Well, that's why it is a person who's a Christian, but who may not even have completed high school, has better insight to life than a guy who might have a PhD. That's right. Dan Sadler says a PhD simply means phenomenal, Doug. Anyway, I'm not sure I agree with that, but that's his opinion.
A believer has more insight into life and its mysteries than any guy in the world who's educated as far as he can be educated. He discerns all things. And yet it says he is discerned by no man. In other words, an unsealed person looks at a Christian and says, what was going on in his life? Maybe you've experienced that in some loved one or friend. They look at you and say, why in the world doesn't he do the things he used to do? Why does he think differently than he used to think?
The person who lives in the realm of the spirit can be discerned by no person who's still in the natural realm. The Christian is an enigma to the unsaved man. Hopefully, we're the kind of enigma that entices that unsaved man to our Savior. Which category do you fit in? Are you a natural person still? Maybe you're fine, moral, religious, and all the rest, but that spiritual part of you has never been brought to life through faith in Jesus Christ. That's your need today.
That's the reason your life feels so empty on the inside. That's why, though you've attained certain things in life, you still feel frustrated. Your life is in disharmony and falling apart. A people around you can't see that, but you feel on the inside. It's because you're still in the natural realm. What you need is a supernatural birth. Doesn't mean all your problems are solved overnight, I guarantee you that. It does mean that you'll have more insight to life than you've ever had.
It means that you'll be able to go to the Bible and understand what this book is saying. It means that you'll have the assurance of heaven forever. My friend, if you today are just on the natural level, why don't you enjoy life in another dimension that you've never known yet? By trusting Jesus Christ. Letting him bring that core of you, that spirit part of you into life. To satisfy you and give your life purpose.
Now, if you belong in the spiritual part this morning already, that is you trusted Christ, you live on that level, let me ask you something. Did you have to dust your Bible off before coming to church this morning? How much time are you spending in this book? God has called you to be his child. You belong to him, you're in his family. How much do you know about him? Everything you're ever going to know about God is right here. You're not going to find it anywhere else.
And God has already put the teacher inside of you. Have you been going to class lately? How we need to reverence this book and appreciate it. There is no other book in the face of the earth like it. It is God's self-disclosure. Delivered to us by a miracle, given to us that we may come to know him. I hope today that you will determine in your heart that this week you'll spend more time in this book than last week. Let's pray. Father, we are able to see the needs in our lives today.
We can hide them from others and sometimes from ourselves. But I pray that right now you'll open up our hearts so that we can see what our needs really are. I pray for some friend who has never trusted Jesus today. In whom there is no spiritual life. I pray that that person will today trust the Lord and be saved. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I wonder if we'd bring this service to its close. Whether or not you're saved.
If today you can save beyond the shadow of a doubt, that you know that you're a Christian, that you're alive spiritually, that you know that your home is in heaven. You have the teacher, the Holy Spirit in you. If you can say that with some confidence and assurance, as God wants us to, would you just put your hand up as a testimony of that? You know that you're saved. Well, that's marvelous. I wonder if there'd be someone here, thank you, you may put your hands down now.
I wonder if there's someone here who'd say, I lifted him, Pastor Carl, I don't know that I'm saved. I do sense a lack in my life. I do need to trust Jesus Christ as my Savior. I know that. I wish you'd pray for me that my need would be met. Would you lift your hand and put it up? And put it back down? I'm not going to point you out and embarrass you. But I would like to know specifically for whom I'm praying. Anyone who senses that need today?
God, I pray that as we spend time in your Word this next week, we may learn to love it and love you more. Draw us close to yourself. Show us more of yourself than we've ever known through this marvelous, miraculous, priceless revelation, the Bible. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. We're going to close our service by singing together Hymn 119. This is a hymn that we might well sing before the service, but we're going to sing it today afterward.
It's a prayer that the Holy Spirit would illuminate our hearts. And as we close with this hymn, I want to remind you that if you have a spiritual need today, if something's not right in your life, and God is bringing pressure upon you, we have a prayer room available. We'd love to pray with you and talk with you. It's down the hallway to your left as you exit the auditorium. Someone's there waiting to pray with you right now.
So as we sing, maybe you want to slip out or after we dismiss, feel free to go to that room and pray. This day and as we sing, open my eyes that I may see.